The Future of Radical Geography∗

Radical geography has posed new, and refashioned many old, geographical problems. These problems require attention irrespective of one's political leanings. Yet radical geography has been consistently ignored by mainstream geographers since its inception. This essay examines the reasons for this situation, and finds four answers in Peet's recent review of the history of radical geography [1]. It seems likely that radical geography will continue to receive a cold shoulder unless its future exponents take pains to counter this trend. Six conditions are required to ensure progress, including effective communication in established journals, methodological heterodoxy, and a systematic, discipline-wide evaluation of the contribution of radical geography.     

Transformations in the discipline of geography experienced over 60 years by a Norwegian geographer

ABSTRACT

The article presents the changes in the discipline of geography over 60 years as experienced both in fieldwork and in practice by a Norwegian geographer. Based on diaries and collections of memoirs, the author, Arild Holt-Jensen, presents his life story and how it has been impacted by people, places and special events. His intention is to show how geography and his own work reflect social, political and intellectual changes since the late 1950s. Initially, a regional geography approach was adopted in the fieldwork for his master’s thesis but the approach was challenged by new ideas and methods from both the spatial science school and model thinking. As a young lecturer in 1968, the author was shocked by the positivism debate and critical philosophy, and his spatial science and quantitative approach in his PhD project had to be adapted. His political engagement and interest in planning led him to research social exclusion in European neighbourhoods. His need to trace the identity of geography as a discipline resulted in a textbook that throughout the years has been updated by following up on research trends to the present. Thus, the book and the article show Holt-Jensen’s shifts in disciplinary identity and research practice.     

ODD VOLLAN: Ishavsfart. Selfangsten fra Suimmøre gjennem femti år

What is political geography?

Friedrich Ratzel is usually acknowledged as the father of political geography. His Politische Geographie was published in 1897. Reflections on the influence of geography on political events were, of course, made long before Ratzel's time. Herodot tells how the Persians wanted Cyrus to take them to a more fertile land, suitable for a Herrenvolk. The king declined, arguing that such a step might change them into a weak and decadent people. Similar ideas have often been expressed and are not unknown in our own time.

Herodot tells how the Persians wanted Cyrus to take them to a more fertile land, suitable for a Herrenvolk. The king declined, arguing that such a step might change them into a weak and decadent people. Similar ideas have often been expressed and are not unknown in our own time.

Ratzel's definition of political geography was:

Political geography studies and teaches the connection between spatial facts and political conditions, events and developments.     

The Use of Supplementary Beading

Abstract

Political geography has long been a major field of interest for geography teachers and students. One of the most interesting areas of political geography is the study of boundaries and boundary zones. In this context, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) as a political separating agent has been one of the most controversial issues in the twentieth century. The demilitarized zone of Vietnam, Korea, and Israel all constitute major zones of tension and friction. The major reason for the instability attending these frictions is that the DMZ's were created by military armistice agreements rather than more conventional political processes. Thus the DMZ's are the product of an unresolved conflict. This geopolitical analysis of the Israel-Syrian DMZ describes how the zone was created and how it functioned between 1949 and 1967.     

Rural and Urban: Using American FactFinder on the Census Bureau Web Site Lesson Plan: Grades Four through Eight

Abstract

Regional survey courses are often perceived as ancillary to the systematic foci taught by geography programs. This situation stands in contrast to the recent recovery of place and region as key elements in the practice and theory of geography. In this article, I outline one possible approach for bridging the gap between regional geography's revival in theory and research and its instruction in the classroom. This approach is described in the context of a survey course about the former Soviet Union—a region where the conventional boundaries of place have been severely questioned by political, economic, and social upheavals.     

Transformative Geography: Ethics and Action in Elementary and Secondary Geography Education

Abstract

Geographic ethics are profoundly important if students are expected to be stewards of the earth and responsible citizens whose decisions about the environment will affect our planet's future. The proposed framework, founded in geography but applicable to other subject areas, guides students to moral decisions for the well-being of the planet and its people so that geographic skills will be applied for beneficial purposes. It is in the tradition of Kropotkin, Dewey, and Freire and introduces Nel Noddings' concept of caring to geography education. This proposed framework for the elementary and secondary levels is called transformative geography.     

The Future of Radical Geography*

Radical geography has posed new, and refashioned many old, geographical problems. These problems require attention irrespective of one's political leanings. Yet radical geography has been consistently ignored by mainstream geographers since its inception. This essay examines the reasons for this situation, and finds four answers in Peet's recent review of the history of radical geography [1]. It seems likely that radical geography will continue to receive a cold shoulder unless its future exponents take pains to counter this trend. Six conditions are required to ensure progress, including effective communication in established journals, methodological heterodoxy, and a systematic, discipline-wide evaluation of the contribution of radical geography.     

Geography Undergraduate Program Management

Abstract

Vision and mission statements are the foundations for the types of undergraduate degrees departments confer as well as other types academic programs such as pre-major, certificate, and distance education curricula. Critical to each department should be careful administration of course selections and offerings and management of academic majors, minors, and class enrollments. The key concepts in these processes are detailed planning and conscientious implementation. Ideally, this paper's integrated conceptual model showing administrative relationships within undergraduate programs that link degree types, courses, and enrollments, will become a synoptic guide for departments and nurture a national dialogue about geography undergraduate programs.     

Childhood asthma: Regional and social inequalities in parents' perceptions of the diagnostic process in Norway

This paper focuses on the 'cultural turn' which has taken place in British and to a lesser extent North American and Australian human geography in the last decade. It begins by exploring what constitutes the cultural in what has been dubbed 'new cultural geography'. It then explores contemporary claims that cultural geography has eclipsed or marginalised social geography. The final section evaluates these claims about the demise of the social, arguing that the social has not been evacuated but rather has been redefined. While this paper tells a specific story about a particular tradition and geographical frame of reference, it nonetheless has wider relevance because it provides an example of the differential development of particular sub-disciplinary areas, of the way subdisciplinary knowledges shape each other, and of the way understandings of disciplinary trends are contested.     

Overcoming Geographic Innocence in Geography Education

Abstract

This article deals with the issue of providing geographic training to prospective teachers from the perspective of a secondary school teacher who also teaches a social studies methods course. Research in educational journals provided a background for describing the lack of geographic training among social studies teachers. While the National Geographic Society's alliance network is addressing this issue among practicing teachers, there is still a need to include some geography training for preservice teachers. Suggestions are offered for including geography within the context of the social studies methods course. A plea is also made for geography professors to include the new National Geography Standards in their courses, especially in introductory courses.     

AIDS to Successful Photography

Abstract

The National Geographic Society's Geography Education Program continues to work on improving geography in the nation's schools. A successful network of geography education Alliances is in place across the United States. These state-based Alliances emphasize grass-roots involvement by teachers and other geography educators. Features of the Geography Education Program include inservice teacher training at Alliance-sponsored summer institutes, institutes held at the Society's headquarters in Washington, and specialized institutes devoted to a specific topic such as technology in education, or water issues. In the near future, the Society's projects include urban outreach, technology training and application, development of preservice programs, and the implementation and dissemination of world-class standards in geography.     

The Trade and Industries of Western South America

Abstract

Geography, long the neglected step-child in the field of social studies education, evinces signs of emerging as one of its key integrating elements. Its prominent inclusion and embellishment in both national and state standards and state assessments bodes well for its future. Higher education's role in this endeavor is paramount. The successful understanding, integration, and alignment of geography standards require the fashioning of exceptional university alliances. Inter-departmental mutuality of purpose and effort can, indeed, produce the next generation of caring and competent geography educators.     

The cultural approach and geography ‐ the perspective of communication

An interest in culture developed in human geography from its beginning. It was rooted in a conception of 'geography as a science of places, not of men' (Vidal de la Blache), and focused on the study of man/milieu relationships through the analysis of landscapes or genres de vie , the origin and dispersal of agriculture, and the regional diversity of the earth. A neo-Weberian orientation appeared in the 1960s, but the main shift occurred in the 1970s, with the adoption of phenomenological or critical perspectives. The new cultural approach modernises the traditional orientations in the field, explores the meaning that people give to their spatial experience, and introduces new questions about the epistemological foundations of geography as a scientific discipline. In order to understand how society is produced and reproduced and how significance is given to the world, the new approach stresses the role of communication in cultural processes and spatial organisation.     

A Folk Guide to Geography as a Holistic Science

Abstract

This article defines geography as a holistic science that seeks to explain variations in the human-environment relationship over the earth's surface. By critically evaluating the ontological, epistemological, and methodological commitments of geography, an attempt is made to bridge the gap between the specialized, professional discussion of geography and practical pedagogical needs. The central argument is threefold. First, by combining natural and social science, the geographical perspective is crucial as a means to explain, and to help solve, real world problems. Second, such a multidimensional science demands a holistic approach. Finally, if this message is to be heard, geographers will need to put more effort into translating their professional discourse into that of nongeographers. The key is to change the prevailing “folk model” of geography held by nongeographers as a means to render the geographic project more intellectually coherent and institutionally legitimate.     

Media Institute on Geographic Concepts

Abstract

A new political geography has emerged that stresses the political conflict behind the production of space. This orientation in the subdiscipline constitutes a turn away from traditional political geography, where the emphasis had previously been on the spatial distribution of political phenomena. The “new” political geographic theory has been applied to the study of environmental issues, turning the attention of scholars to the political struggle behind the construction of nature as well as space. This article reviews how the new political geography of the environment (NPGE) perspective has impacted the study of such environmental phenomena as hazards, siting issues, human-land relationships, resources, development, and international environmental governance. It concludes by suggesting how the NPGE perspective can inform pedagogy in environmental education.     

Geographic Influences in the Atlanta Campaign

Abstract

The growing importance of law in American society and the potential contribution that geographers can make in implementing America's legal system point to rewarding future linkages between law and geography. This paper suggests the need for a course on Law and Geography to cultivate these linkages. The proposed course outline draws examples from water law and criminal justice law and other legal bodies that suggest significant avenues for future geographical research.     

Political Organization of Space in Advanced Placement Human Geography

Abstract

The political geography section of the course offers the opportunity to introduce students to one of the most important ways in which humans have divided up the surface of the Earth for purposes of management and control. By challenging students to consider what lies behind the patterns on political maps, this segment of the course can encourage the development of a critical geographical perspective while enhancing student appreciation of the link between geography and current events.     

Race,Space, and Struggles for Mobility: Transportation Impacts on African Americans in Oakland and the East Bay

Abstract

A long history of overt discrimination left an enduring racialized imprint upon the geography of the East Bay. While the benefits of a metropolitan decentralization of jobs, housing, and public investment fell to Whites, discrimination in employment and housing trapped African Americans in urban neighborhoods burdened by infrastructure encroachment and divestment. By circa 1970, overt discrimination succumbed to new, racially neutral, legal, and administrative forms, including regional planning processes. Using an environmental racism framework, we show that these new forms reproduced the existing racialized geography by means of new inequalities in representation and transportation service provision. These new regional transportation policies, like those challenged by a 2005 civil rights lawsuit, favored the mobility needs of more affluent suburbanites over those of African American East Bay bus riders. These policies, layered onto an existing racialized geography, reinforced existing inequalities by failing to address racial barriers to opportunity in the built environment. [Key words: transportation, race, segregation, Oakland]     

The Council at Work

Abstract

The field of geography education is sadly lacking in empirical data that might inform and underpin decisions about standard setting, curriculum design, materials development, teaching strategies, and assessment procedures. Large quantities of high-quality data are necessary if geography is to be successfully implemented in the American education system. This article advances four needs that, if met, would generate the data necessary to make the case for geography in America's schools. We need a new attitude towards research, a series of baseline studies, a research agenda, and a research clearinghouse if we are to make a convincing case for geography in America's schools.