A Long Way to Go: Collective Paths to Racial Justice in Geography

Despite decades of recognition and worry about diversity, our discipline remains persistently white. That is, it is dominated by white bodies and it continues to conform to norms, practices, and ideologies of whiteness. This is a loss. At best, it limits the possibilities and impact of our work as geographers. At worst, it perpetuates harmful exclusions in our discipline: its working environments, its institutions, and its knowledge production. This remains deeply concerning for many geographers, and there has been important research, commentary, and institutional activity over the years. Yet, research shows us that little meaningful progress has been made. We know that mentoring is one vital part of the journey toward change. As such, we reflect here on our experience developing a research collective built on a transformative mentoring practice. We outline the key challenges, strategies, and tentative successes of the collective in supporting women of color undergraduate, graduate, and faculty geographers, arguing that such feminist formations are a vital part of the path to intellectual racial justice in our field. Key Words: diversity, feminist geography, higher education, mentoring, race.     

Understanding and managing climate change: the UK experience

Climate change has emerged over the last 25 years not just as a physical reality, affecting global and regional climates, but also as a socio-cultural phenomenon – an icon of a globalizing world which is increasingly altering the physical fabric of our planet and at the same time demanding new forms of global governance. The UK, both through its scientific research activity and through its development of climate change policy initiatives, has been at the forefront of this emergence. This review traces some of this history from a UK perspective, with an emphasis on the last 10 years. The relationship between climate change science and policy has become increasingly reflexive, leading to new forms of research and institutional structures. The academic discipline of geography has been rather marginalized from this process.     

Making Space for Community-Engaged Scholarship in Geography

Geography has a long tradition of community-engaged research and teaching. Conventional institutional and departmental norms in many U.S. universities and colleges, however, often discourage such engaged scholarship and teaching, especially among junior faculty. We argue that geographers are well poised to unravel society's twenty-first-century intractable problems if engaged scholarship is more intentionally supported. As community geographers in junior faculty positions at research-intensive universities, we discuss our experiences with placing community engagement at the core of our scholarship, highlighting opportunities for a more robust integration of engaged scholarship in academic geography.     

Preparing Geographers for Interdisciplinary Research: Graduate Training at the Interface of the Natural and Social Sciences

Recent debates about the state of geography raise valuable questions about how the discipline can and should change in response to shifting institutional realities. Focusing on the breadth and interdisciplinarity of geography, these discussions often overlook the role of pedagogy—particularly graduate training—in adapting the discipline to new institutional landscapes. Drawing on experiences as current and recent geography doctoral students, we identify institutional seedlings of opportunity that can be cultivated toward a spectrum of alternative doctoral training models. These alternatives offer significant opportunities to better prepare early-career geographers for success and to solidify geography's position as a leader in interdisciplinary research.     

Geographic perspectives on urban sustainability: past,current, and future research trajectories

ABSTRACT

The 21st century has been called the “century of the city” and compounded concerns that current development pathways were not sustainable. Calls for scholarship on urban sustainability among geographers cites strengths in the human-environment and urban subfields that positioned the discipline to make unique contributions to critical research needs. This special issue reflects on the contributions that geographers have made to urban sustainability scholarship. We observe that that integration across human-environment and urban subfields reflects broader bifurcations between social theory and spatial science traditions in geography. Piggy-backing on the rise of sustainability science, the emergence of urbanization science compels geographers to reflect upon the ways in which we are positioned to make unique contributions to those fields. We argue that those contributions should embrace systems thinking, empirically connect social constructs to biophysical patterns and processes, and use the city as a laboratory to generate new theories.     

科学地理学的理论基础及其研究内容与学科性质

在科学与技术是不同的知识形态,科学史研究的地理思潮转向,地理学向“软”的一面转向并关注社会,科学史研究的地理思潮倾向于关注“社会→地理→科学”关系的历史解释,地理学家在科学史的地理解释思想上的贡献等理论基础上,拙文主要阐述科学地理学这一新学科在建构“科学—地理—社会”关系体系上的独特性:①建构关注过去的、现在的及未来的“社会→地理→科学”关系;②践行“以任务带动学科”和“任务学科并重”的地理学发展方略,主要建构“科学→地理→社会”关系;③聚焦于科学活动因素的区域性,注重区域相关性分析方法论。基于这种独特性和地理学方法论精髓,科学地理学研究的内容体系包括:①科学研究及其组织与传播的时空结构;②科学研究及其组织与传播的时空结构与地理环境、经济、技术、社会、文化等结构要素的时空结构及其相互关系;③科学研究及其组织与传播对自然景观、社会景观、文化景观等的影响;④科学研究及其组织与传播对“人地关系地域系统”演进的影响。科学地理学的理论基础、建构“科学—地理—社会”关系的独特性和研究内容决定了科学地理学的交叉性、综合性和区域性,这与地理学特征是一致的,促进着现代地理学微观上的“深”化发展和宏观上的“综合”发展。     

Women in the Field: Critical Feminist Methodologies and Theoretical Perspectives*

Feminist scholars have traditionally emphasized the importance of incorporating “the everyday” worlds of women into the historically masculinist theoretical and empirical foundations of the social sciences. Such emphases have commonly resulted in smaller-scale research projects and more interactive kinds of research methods and methodologies. Feminist geographers have uniquely contributed to the body of feminist scholarship through drawing out the importance of place in everyday constructions of gender and, more recently, sexuality. Critical field-based research has therefore from the beginning been the mainstay of subdisciplinary research. Like the discipline as a whole, however, little explicit attention has been given in publications or pedagogically to the politics of fieldwork (including how a “field” is defined and the politics involved in choosing and working in a particular “field”) or the politics of representation (which includes considerations of the partiality of knowledge and how and to whom we represent our work, ourselves and others in various kinds of texts). These “Opening Remarks” show how these issues are addressed in the papers that follow and how feminist geography has much to contribute to critical analyses of global and multinational processes, including patriarchy, capitalism, and racism.     

Climate change and national security: an agenda for geography

On 4 December 2017 the Australian Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee is due to report on its inquiry into the implications of climate change for Australia's national security. Public submissions to the inquiry closed on 4 August 2017 and, at the time of writing, some 59 submissions had been made by researchers, public-interest organisations and members of the public, including a number of geographers. A topic of profound significance, climate change and national security warrants deep and sustained public engagement such as that offered by the Senate Inquiry submission process. In this Thinking Space essay, I urge geographers, working in Australia and internationally, to make ongoing contributions to such engagements. The emerging debate about climate change and national security will likely amplify following the release of the Committee's report. Geographic data and analysis pertaining to various aspects of climate change and security are needed in order to shape policy directions and support evidence-based policy making. My contention here is that contributions ought to extend not just from those working at the coalface of climate change risk, for example in political geography, but from all quarters of the discipline.     

Forum on the Anthropocene

Geographers have been thinking and teaching about human interactions with the environment for centuries. Whether the phrase used to describe this area of scholarship is man‐land, man and nature, people‐environment, nature‐society, human dimensions of global change, or the Anthropocene, these studies are deeply rooted under the umbrella of geography. Scholars in the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and creative arts have embraced the concept of the Anthropocene, and often employ it as a vernacular term with no implied connection to a so‐called golden spike, or stratigraphic layer of sediment or rock that would mark an official transition from one slice of geologic time to the next. This collection of essays explores ways in which the Anthropocene may be a helpful framework to organize geographical teaching and scholarship about ways in which people have interacted with and transformed planet Earth. The term Anthropocene was coined in the realm of Earth System science, but the authors who contributed to this Forum relate the idea to topics such as novel ecosystems and species assemblages, conservation, commodification of nature, global capitalism, and ways in which our species, Homo sapiens, has markedly transformed the Earth for at least thousands of years. The Forum also engages with the fact that the Anthropocene as a proposed new epoch of the geologic time scale may not make sense at the spatial and temporal scales at which geographers view the world. Geographers have an opportunity to address myriad unanswered questions about the Anthropocene.     

Walking as Method: Toward Methodological Forthrightness and Comparability in Urban Geographical Research

Qualitative urban geographical research should explicitly acknowledge insights gained from walking (the iterative exploration and observation of cities on foot), which enhances local literacy and enables researchers to compare methods more explicitly. Some urban geographers might use walking as a method, but it is rarely reported in published scholarship. This article argues for the explicit inclusion of walking in methodological reporting for urban research. We suggest that reporting the walking that researchers do adds rigor to research findings and should be distinguished from research where this practice is absent, we report on international experiences using walking in combination with other methods, and we conclude with a proposal for comparable urban geographic walking practices.     

地理学本体论：内涵、性质与理论价值

科学哲学研究表明,本体论问题的探讨对于具体学科的科学哲学研究和理论研究都具有重要意义。本文界定了地理学本体论的内涵,讨论了地理学方法论、本体论和地理学哲学的关系,比较和分析了哲学本体论与地理学本体论之间的联系和区别,阐述了地理学本体论的性质,概括了地理学本体论的理论价值。地理学本体论包括两个层面：地理学家和地理学流派的哲学本体论观念、地理学理论的本体论承诺,地理学家的本体论影响和决定着地理学家的认识论、方法论和价值论选择,而某个地理学理论的本体论承诺则是该理论得以成立的前提和基础。     

地理学的政治

中国地理学的发展当前正处于十字路口,面临诸多方向的选择。如外生地理学和内生地理学的分化,实用主义和科学主义的混行,系统地理学和区域地理学的脱节,经济地理学和人文地理学的互为归属。这些问题悬而不决使地理学的向心力逐渐弱化,地理学者不得不面对诸多学科发展方向上的困扰,以及对学科规范和学术认同上的困惑。笔者以为,此时“搁置争议”并不是办法。为了学科的长远发展,中国的地理学家和地理学会必须做出一些选择。坚持一元还是认同分化,这即是地理学的政治。     

虚拟休闲社区的营造与表征:女性网购案例

科技的快速发展促生了虚拟休闲时代的到来。以虚拟休闲为切入点,消费者的网络购物实践为研究对象,采用半结构化访谈的研究方法,分析网络消费实践中所形成的虚拟社区,探索女性消费者参与虚拟休闲社区所塑造的互动关系与社区意义。基于ICTs媒介,研究发现:网络消费会重塑现代女性的休闲实践,消费过程中的每个环节包括购买行为结束后的感受都是其获得休闲体验的重要维度;女性网购者自发营造虚拟休闲社区,在强化自我社会角色的同时实现自我休闲;女性网购者在虚拟空间中所获得的愉悦感是群内成员发展其社区关系的纽带,并通过社区的延伸实现和维持积极的自我价值。虚拟休闲会随着载体虚拟化改变其体验形式,并为消费实践与虚拟空间的关系探索提供新的视角。人文地理学者尤其是社会文化地理学者除了关注“客观存在”的地理空间之外,也应该关注“真实存在”的网络空间,网络空间与地理空间一样具有其独特的空间性特征。同时还提出,虚拟休闲也是地理实在休闲的重要补充,并且在当今社会具有不可替代性。     

Awkward geographies: Spatializing academic responsibility, encountering Sri Lanka

This paper responds to recent postcolonial geographical scholarship that sets forth transformative agendas in order to create more cosmopolitan theoretical projects within the discipline. For many geographers the challenges they face are located within not only their own disciplinary parameters, but also those of other specific research communities within which their work situates them. By bringing geography and area studies into productive conversation, this paper explores the tensions between negotiating one's academic voice, position and responsibility within geography as well as within a specific area studies community. More specifically, as a UK-based geographer I reflect on some of my own fairly unremarkable, yet extremely awkward, encounters during the course of scholarly praxis in Sri Lanka in order to raise questions over the spatialities of responsibility and political engagement in such academic praxis. I seek to theorize the chasms that open in such awkward encounters between notionally situated 'local' and 'foreign' scholars respectively and, in particular, develop ways of engaging and reorienting those chasms in ways that might enable the production of theoretically rich, yet richly contextualized postcolonial knowledges committed to the site of one's scholarly praxis – not just to the advancement of a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography.     

Conflating Privilege and Vulnerability: A Reflexive Analysis of Emotions and Positionality in Postgraduate Fieldwork

Grounded in a self-reflexive, intersectional analysis of positionality, we examine emotions in fieldwork through the autobiographical accounts that we gathered during our postgraduate ethnographic research in the Global South. We show how we, two female early-career geographers, emotionally coped with instances that put us in a vulnerable position due to loneliness, commitment to the field, insistent questioning, violence, and violent threats. We argue that a culture of silence surrounding fieldwork difficulties and their emotional consequences tend to permeate our discipline. We contend that geography departments ought to provide mentorship that takes into account doctoral candidates' different positionalities, conflated vulnerability and privilege, and embodied intersectional axes. This renewed awareness will help not only to reveal possible risks and challenges connected with fieldwork but also ultimately to enrich the overall academic discussions within our discipline.     

Rethinking Geographies of Assimilation

This commentary argues for a reconsideration of the concept of assimilation in geographical research. Whereas critics of assimilation theory have often misrepresented assimilation research, those working within the assimilation framework have seldom explored societal understandings of “sameness.” This commentary advocates that geographers look at assimilation not only in terms of spatial patterns but also in terms of the discursive and material practices through which dominant and subordinate groups negotiate the terms of social membership. The need to arrive at a richer understanding of assimilation becomes more pressing as the assimilability of migrants becomes an increasingly salient topic of debate.     

The contribution of physical geography to environmental public policy development in Mexico

In recent years, physical geography in Mexico has contributed to the enterprise of geographical science by integrating with fields of study closely related to topics of sustainable development. This paper outlines the contribution of the discipline to environmental public policy development, particularly ecological land use planning and integrated watershed management. In terms of applications, physical geography appears to have reached a stage of maturity in Mexico. However, it must offer a stronger leadership in areas such as ecoregional analysis (in an integrated fashion, and not only from the biological‐ecological perspective) and regional vulnerability to global change processes. An excellent opportunity exists for scientists and decision makers to develop a common agenda.     

中国地缘政治学25年研究进展（英文）

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics(i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy), to internal geopolitics(i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography), to the new geopolitics(i.e., formal geopolitics), and to recent critical geopolitics(i.e., popular geopolitics). Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China's geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic breakthroughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice(in a problem-focused orientation), rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses(in a theoretical orientation), resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China's surrounding geopolitical environment.     

Twenty-five years of progress in geopolitics research: Efforts from China’s geographers

The world is currently undergoing profound changes, with a shift in global power centers and reordering of international power spaces, assigning new theoretical tasks as well as providing new opportunities for geopolitics research in China. Despite the peripheral nature of geopolitics research within their discipline, geographers have played a fundamental role in its origins and revival, from classical geopolitics (i.e., the German school of geopolitics and the Anglo-American school of geo-strategy), to internal geopolitics (i.e., electoral geography and administrative geography), to the new geopolitics (i.e., formal geopolitics), and to recent critical geopolitics (i.e., popular geopolitics). Although only few of these researchers were from China, great strides have been made in geopolitics and political geography research in China, with useful results being obtained. After demonstrating the importance of geopolitics research for the rising China, this review provides an overview of geopolitics papers led by China’s geographers in the past few decades, describing their achievements, the problems they have faced, and the directions they have taken. Twenty-five years of geopolitics have produced a range of accomplishments, with a growth in the quality and size of research groups and institutions, an expanding literature, and some geo-strategic break-throughs. Obviously, geographers have successfully reclaimed geopolitics, but some crucial topics are still absent or weak in the geopolitical research agenda, and need to be pursued vigorously. Most of the attention, from a positivistic perspective, has been paid to reflecting Western geopolitical thoughts, describing patterns of international power relations, and offering foreign policy advice (in a problem-focused orientation), rather than determining mechanisms and performing theoretical analyses (in a theoretical orientation), resulting in a lack of independent value judgments and of a theoretical basis for the subject. Moreover, in comparison with other disciplines, in terms of its academic community, research output, and status as a discipline, geopolitics research is very different from how it was three or four decades ago, when it was mainly the property of geographers, rather than political scientists and diplomats. For now, whether to support national geo-strategies or to enhance the diversity of the discipline, the involvement of geographers in geopolitics needs to become both more intensive and more extensive. The top priority is to strengthen theoretical, methodological, and problem- oriented research, including studies of geopolitical philosophy and methodology, the theoretical framework of the subject, global geopolitical evolution and shifts in power space, the roles of major powers and their geo-strategies, as well as China’s surrounding geopolitical environment.     

Power plays: reflections on the process of submitting an undergraduate dissertation

Summary This article is based on a performance on the power plays of research. It is a self-critical examination of the practices involved in submitting an undergraduate dissertation. The original performance was a dialogue between myself, reflecting on the specific experiences of my dissertation, and Craig Jeffrey, who punctuated it with more general aspects of the dissertation process. It was written for an audience of undergraduate geographers at the University of Cambridge to illuminate the theatre of inequalities and oscillations of power between various actors: the researcher, the researched and the agenda of the academic discipline. Later, my colleagues on the social anthropology Masters programme at the London School of Economics heard another version of the performance.