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Geography as the world discipline: Connecting popular and

academic geographical imaginations

Article  in  Area · March 2003

DOI: 10.1111/1475-4762.00110

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Area (2003) 35.1, 55–63

Geography as the world discipline: connecting

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

popular and academic geographical imaginations

Alastair Bonnett
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle NE1 7RU
Email: [email protected]

Revised manuscript received 6 November 2002

This article addresses and connects two areas of controversy within contemporary geography:
the parochialism of contemporary human geography and the gulf between university and non-
university geography. It is argued that we can find the cause of the latter phenomenon in the
origin of the former, namely in academic geography’s unwillingness to re-imagine the ‘global
claim’ that it has inherited from its imperial past. This difficulty has created the conditions for
the representation of popular geography as intrinsically dated, as politically suspect and/or as
mere ‘traveller’s tales’. It is suggested that geography cannot escape the burden of its global
claim. Rather it needs to critically engage this formerly imperial paradigm and, in so doing,
re-ignite geography’s role in public debate and as public knowledge.

Key words: popular geography, history of geography, future of geography, imperialism,

textbooks (geography)

Thrift 2002). University and non-university geography

Introduction appear to inhabit different worlds. I will argue here that
Geography has been chastised for its lack of global this situation has had deleterious consequences for
ambitions many times and for some while (Taylor 1993; both. However, the focus of my critique is upon human
Johnston 1985a 1985b). Moreover, Taylor’s (1993) faith geography as it is structured and introduced within
in the discipline ‘re-discovering’ its world vision still British universities. More specifically, it will be suggested
appears premature. Many of the recent textbooks that the chasm between the popular and academic and
introducing students to the basic concepts of human the parochialism of contemporary academic geography
geography, or to its sub-fields, discussed later in this are both real and related problems. Moreover, that we
article, give the impression that the only experiences can find the cause of the former in the origin of the lat-
that concern ‘us’ are those had by the 6 per cent or so ter, namely in academic geography’s unwillingness to
of the world’s population who happen to live in white engage, challenge and re-imagine the ‘global claim’
and English-language dominated societies. that it has inherited from its imperial past. Geography’s
The fissure between popular and academic geo- post-1945 attempts to define itself as a technical speci-
graphical debate has attracted less scholarly concern, ality, and its related research alignment towards the
although the relatively low public profile of academic relatively local policy considerations of the post-imperial
geography and the ‘decoupling’ (Machon and Ranger nation state, enabled it to flee the scene of its once
1996) of academic geography from school geography – intimate but increasingly uncomfortable relationship
a process which reflects a perceived ‘withdraw[al] of with the global imaginary. It is argued that this process
[geography] academics from active involvement in saw the enforcement of academic geography’s rupture
secondary education’ (Stannard 2002, 80) – have become from popular geographical knowledge. It also encour-
widespread concerns (Clifford 2002; Johnston 2002; aged a pre-existing disposition against non-university

ISSN 0004-0894 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2003
56 Bonnett

level geography. In sum, it created the conditions for Gardner and Craig 2001). Where people have a choice
the representation of both popular geography and the they choose geography. Geography magazines, such as
study of ‘other societies’ as old-fashioned and polit- The Geographical and National Geographic, and tele-
ically suspect. vision programmes and channels with a clear geograph-
As this set of connections suggests, the present essay ical remit (such as National Geographic Channel) have
is a critical engagement with familiar calls for geo- a world-wide audience of millions. Indeed, in terms of
graphers to re-discover their ‘lost . . . “geo” ’ (Taylor size of audience, an interest in geography may be judged
1993, 181) and /or to travel, imaginatively or literally ‘to one of the most widespread, disciplinary-related, intel-
the ends of the earth’ ( Johnston 1985a, 326) to find their lectual pursuits. Although, geography’s non-university
proper object of enquiry. What has been missing from outlets are highly diverse, they share a reasonably clear
these statements is an explanation of why geography, in understanding that geography matters because it is non-
Johnston’s terms, ‘disengaged’ from the global and insular; that it enables people to look beyond (and
why it matters. My claim is that the latter tendency is thereby, perhaps, appreciate better) their own particular
intimately bound up with two other forms of disengage- environment and society. Yet it is not too great an exag-
ment: that is, from the popular and from the discipline’s geration to say that academic geography is conducted
imperial heritage. as if these forums did not exist; as if geography was an
I would emphasize that, although the prescriptive almost entirely university-based specialism. In contrast
content of my argument concerns the need for a re- to other disciplines with a large popular audience, such
assessment of the relationship of university and non- as history and natural science, academic geographers
university geography, it does not rely on a sentimental have little active involvement with popular outlets (for
or intellectual fondness for the latter. Indeed, it is sug- example, not only do academics play a major role in
gested that the task of academic geography is to inform, magazines such as History Today and The New Scientist
challenge and conceptually re-wire people’s under- but they use these platforms to develop debates and
standing of the world. Yet, however critical this engage- encourage prospective students into their disciplines).
ment, it needs to be rooted in an appreciation of the This state of affairs may be taken to suggest one of two
way that geography achieves its definition, not merely things: that popular geography is hostile to academic
through the deliberations of academics, but in relation- involvement and/or that it is an embarrassment to the
ship to its wider actual and potential audience. The serious pursuit of the contemporary discipline; that it
notion of geography as the world discipline, combining gets its geography badly wrong. Whilst the former
two basic remits of inter/transnational and environmental explanation cannot be disregarded, those few academic
study, arises from this relationship and suggests that an commentaries that exist on the popular geographical
antipathy to insularity and parochialism is, or at least media suggest the latter as the more significant explana-
should be, the defining attitude of the discipline. tion. This is certainly the conclusion one would draw
from the depiction of these forms as offering nothing
but ‘traveller’s tales’ (Taylor 1986, 445) or, indeed, as the
Geography as a popular subject somewhat risible ghost of imperial ‘geography militant’
The category ‘popular geography’ is taken here to refer (Driver 2001). Such depictions illustrate the existence of
to all forms of self-designated geographical knowledge a persistent tendency to imagine popular geography
and representation with a mass audience and developed (especially, but not exclusively, in its popular media
outside of the higher education community. This defini- forms) as a throw-back to the imperial mind-set of racist
tion is employed, not to suggest that popular geo- ‘foreign adventure’, a benighted condition from which
graphy cannot also be many other things as well, or that academics have managed to extricate themselves. In
school geography does not have academic content, but the next section I question the nature and completeness
rather to make clear my focus on the institutional and of this process of extrication. I suggest that, by failing to
public culture of non-university geography. The two develop a clearly ‘post-colonial’ transnationalist iden-
most significant manifestations of popular geography tity and agenda, academic geography, far from having
are the popular geography media and pre-tertiary ‘dealt with’ or ‘moved on from’ its imperial past has
geography education. merely avoided it, and in the process fled its respons-
Geography is a popular subject. Its declining status ibilities to both its past and its potential contemporary
within secondary schools in Britain today reflects the public. Before such a discussion can be opened, how-
squeeze placed on the curriculum by the Government’s ever, we need to explore the genesis and meaning of
emphasis on ‘basic skills’ (Rawling 2000; see also ‘popular geography’ in a little more detail.
 Geography as the world discipline 57

The conceit of an encompassing, scientific, ‘world The fact that geography’s emergence as an academic
view’, along with its attendant logic of objectively discipline in Britain is now generally accepted to have
classifying, comparing and contrasting different societies taken place in the context of its role as ‘the science of
and environments, may be seen being disseminated imperialism par excellence’ (Livingstone 1992, 160),
and developed as popular and scholarly geograph- should not be taken to imply its ideological uniformity
ical knowledge from the sixteenth century (Livingstone or the political stability of the discipline’s global vision.
1992), and achieving its recognizable modern form What Said has called the ‘primacy of the geographical’
from the late eighteenth century (see Gregory 1994; also (in Eagleton et al. 1990, 77) within the anti-imperialist
Walford 2001). Amongst other things, it reflected the imagination mirrors yet also challenges the conceits of
rationality and the political ambitions of two inseparable a Eurocentric ‘world vision’. Moreover, we do not have
processes, European modernity and European colonial- to look towards explicitly oppositional or ‘alternative’
ism (cf. Stoddart 1986). This way of looking at the earth traditions of geography in order to witness the way
represents the invention of ‘modern geography’ and imperialism could generate types of knowledge that
provides a first indication of why geographical know- exceeded the imperial problematic. The ‘curiosity’ and
ledge (and its highly visual sensibility) remains a basic ‘concern’ about other places, environments and
component of the meaning of the modern. Although peoples that animate so much popular geography may
potentially politically fraught, in Britain the relationship swarm with colonial clichés, but they are neither
between the relativism implied in exercises of global necessarily determined by nor reducible to them. This is
comparison and the emergent role of geography as a the dilemma and also the opportunity of geography. It
conduit for patriotism to school children (Capel 1981), is a tension that Schulten (1995) draws out in her dis-
appears to have encouraged the discipline’s concern cussion of Reading National Geographic by Lutz and
with foreign and colonial places to be turned inwards Collins (1993). For Schulten, Lutz and Collins’s political
in the last years of the nineteenth century. Thus from disappointment with National Geographic, their focus
being virtually non-existent in the Proceedings of the on its imperial and racist content (see also Rothenberg
Royal Geographical Society and the Journal of the 1994), is not erroneous but neither is it sufficient (see
Royal Geographical Society throughout the nineteenth also Pauly’s 1979 account of the National Geographic
century, studies of regions within the United Kingdom Society’s complex relationship to democratic populism).
began to gain a foothold in the RGS’s The Geographical Indeed, Schulten is moved to assert that the magazine
Journal from the mid-1890s (it is revealing, however, ‘also strikes a more basic sentiment of human interest
that one of the first substantial contributions on Bri- which ought to be taken on its own terms’ (1995, 526).
tain concerned its ‘discovery’ by the ancient Greek This last phrase is an unfortunate choice, suggesting
geographer Pytheas; Markham 1893). This particular as it does that ‘human interest’ about the world is an
chronology of geography’s development indicates an innate, pre-political human attribute. Schulten is surely
intellectual trajectory rather than a rigid or universal right to criticize the mono-dimensional nature of Lutz
sequence. Ritter’s early regional studies addressed and Collins’s political dismay at National Geographic
Europe, whilst his later 19 volume opus Erdkunde and right to evoke the possibility of other, more
(1817–1859) dealt with Africa and Asia. Freeman nuanced, readings of the magazine. However, the polit-
(1971) roots Vidal de la Blache’s regional studies in ical and historical horizons of popular ‘curiosity’ must
France in earlier geographical attention (more spe- be explicit if we are to avoid any lapse into populism.
cifically, to the work of Coquebert and d’Omalius Within and through imperialism, popular geography
d’Halloy in the early nineteenth century) to the pays generated and reflected a view of the world and ‘other
(for an account of the relationship in France between places’ and peoples as an object, or arena, of public
geography as ‘colonial studies’ and as ‘regional studies’, interest and concern. Ploszajska (1996) has charted
see Soubeyran 1994). These forms of local regional school geography’s role in constructing imperial sub-
research appear to have a contradictory relationship jects from the late nineteenth century. She also asserts
to the global geographical consciousness produced significant continuities within this tradition, noting that
by European colonial expansion. However, in France, in pre-tertiary education ‘today the task of conveying an
as in Britain, it is difficult to abstract them from the understanding of the world and the pupil’s place within
spatial ordering of empire. In both countries geo- it is usually assigned to geography’ (Ploszajska 2000,
graphy’s frame was ‘the big picture’; its idiom one of 124; also Ploszajska 1998). The twentieth century
exploration and comparison, suffused and structured witnessed the importance of this type of ‘understanding’
by Eurocentrism. become both more widely accepted by more people
58 Bonnett

(caused, in part, by an expansion of global travel and whilst concurring with his assessment that there is no
the dissemination of ‘world news’) and increasingly pre-social or philosophical essence to geography.
linked to diverse ideologies, such as internationalism Attempts to define geography as and entirely within
and globalization, that cannot be adequately repres- academic geography arise from the mistaken belief
ented as mere echoes of imperialism. The ‘world view’ that geography is, in essence, a technical specialism
became more plural. Thus, for example, the relativist that is invented by ‘us’ and disseminated (perhaps) to
logic of earlier geographies may be seen transmuted ‘them’. ‘Our’ challenge then becomes to work out what
into the multicultural and anti-racist agendas developed that specialism should be (quantitative or interpretative,
by school geography teachers and planners from the for example). Yet whilst geography clearly contains
early 1970s onwards (Gill 1983; Walford 1985). This many technical specialisms, the discipline’s relationship
chain of association allowed geography to become the to and status as public knowledge suggests that it can
‘natural home’ of issues such as global change, ‘Third never be reduced to technique. It is, perhaps, unsurpris-
World development’ and world inequalities as well as ing that professional self-reflections often evidence a
contextalized local environment studies that afforded a militant solipsism and related deletion of an active
sense of the mutually dependent (between the human wider audience. In Re-thinking History, the historian
and physical world but also between different societies) Keith Jenkins offers a typical example: history he says ‘is
nature of environmental process. produced by a group of labourers called historians
The nature of this popular understanding was also when they go to work; it is their job’ (1991, 21). Yet
witnessed in reaction to the attacks on symbols of US Jenkins’ own book rebels against this kind of bland
power of 11 September 2001. Soon after these events, assurance. Indeed, it rests on the ‘common sense’ belief
Paul Brown (2001), in The Guardian, portrayed geo- that ‘the past’ is a meaningful and useful category
graphy’s world knowledge as essential to survival and understood across diverse arenas of historical work and
sustainability in a dangerous new century. ‘Just when across it various audiences. A great many of Jenkins’
world affairs underline the need for all citizens to have references are not to historians at all, but politicians,
good grasp of geography, why’ he queried ‘is the subject novelists and other intellectuals. Such folk produce
facing demotion by the government?’ Brown voiced this work that is history, not because ‘it is their job’, but
concern not from any sense of disciplinary loyalty but because there exists a widely understood, popularly and
from a fear of what will happen if we allow the myriad academically based, assumption about what history
insularities and ethno-national prejudices that threaten consists of. This process has, I believe, another implica-
humankind to go unchallenged. ‘Geography is needed tion: that those areas of academic enquiry with deep
now more than ever in a globalised world’ echoes roots in the popular imagination (history and geography
Stannard (2002, 73), a geography teacher, in a recent are the prime examples, although many disciplines
issue of Geography: An International Journal (the journal have some claim in this regard) will inevitably run into
the Geographical Association). Yet, Stannard also voices difficulties if they attempt to rupture this relationship
a certain discontent with the conventional disciplinary and try to define themselves purely in terms of tech-
hierarchy, in which the subject’s non-tertiary forms nique. In academic geography, a predictable sign and
have to wait for ‘scraps of inspiration from the high table symptom of this latter process has been the proliferation
of contemporary academia’ (2002, 81). of myriad but very specialist-sounding definitions of
Although it is relatively easy to demonstrate that what distinguishes geographical thought. From his
popular geography has shape, force and is misrepre- survey of the literature Golledge (2002, 4) has recently
sented if seen as the swill of empire, it is likely that detailed no less than 19, including such items as
many readers will remain unconvinced by the idea that ‘Comprehending orientation and direction’ (for example,
academic geography has anything to learn from it. Why ‘forward–backward; left–right; back–front’) and ‘Com-
should ‘lay geographers’ be allowed or expected to prehending locations and places’. A related chain of
have any power to define the direction and content of thought has encouraged other geographers to seek out
the discipline? Although some particular reasons may geography’s distinctive contribution by reference to its
be drawn from the above discussion, I want to make the ‘complexity’. Yet, although it may be comforting to
broader case that what modern geography means believe, as students are informed on the opening page
should not be regarded simply as a private academic of Modern Geographical Thought (Peet 1998, 1) that
matter but as a form and result of public knowledge. It ‘Geography has a permanent identity crisis because
is an argument that extends the critique of ‘internalist’ what geographers do is complex’, it is not convincing.
accounts of the discipline offered by Livingstone (1992), Indeed, the idea that academic geography suffers from
 Geography as the world discipline 59

a lack of definition because there is so much more to it spatial ‘contribution’ (for a polemical account of the
than other disciplines is suspiciously self-flattering. The limits of the spatial paradigm, see Eliot Hurst 1985; also
argument I have introduced above suggests that a far Saunders 1981). This process produces an additive
more likely, if prosaic, reason for academic geographers’ model of geography. To put it crudely, we take themes
perpetual angst is the perverse instinct that they are framed and defined in terms of Eurocentric social science
alone are responsible for the aims and scope of the and add space. By contrast, a vision of geography as
geographical tradition. the world discipline commences with its own set of
problematics – both theoretical and empirical – that
turn on such questions as the representation and forma-
Unworldly geography tion of global processes, world regions and the eco-
The location of continuities and discontinuities within nomic, social and environmental processes (such as
the discipline of geography is a contested enterprise. globalization and industrialization) that affect them.
Gregory (1994) has written persuasively on the way an This agenda already has a place within certain areas of
image of the ‘world as exhibition’ was sustained within academic geography, and is well reflected in a number
and through the development of geography as spatial of recent undergraduate textbooks, such as ‘The Shape
science. He argues that this reifying, classification- of the World’ series offered from the Open University
producing logic has been challenged by the decon- (for example, Allen and Massey 1995; see also Daniels
structive and cultural turns of the late twentieth century. et al. 2001; Cloke et al. 1999; Johnston et al. 1995).
My chronology of the discipline’s development also Moreover, because of different sub-disciplinary histories,
concerns the way it has staged the ‘exhibition’ of the some sub-fields are markedly less insular than others.
world. However, besides advancing a somewhat more Yet it is a perplexing scene. There are signs that histor-
literal reading of what ‘the world’ might be, my account ical geography is opening to broader horizons (Graham
suggests that the various ‘turns’ within geography in the and Nash 2000). Yet research methods in human geo-
second half of the last century (such as the ‘quantitative graphy can be communicated without even an allusion
revolution’ and the ‘cultural turn’) may be cast as part to the discipline’s internationalism or, indeed, to com-
of a single phenomenon: i.e. a turn away from the parative, contextual or cross-cultural issues (for example,
international and global and towards ‘the West’ (or Kitchen and Tate 2000). And whilst many political and
more accurately, the English-speaking West), as the economic geographers are fully engaged with con-
natural province of British geography. This process has nections, networks and societies beyond the English-
been accompanied by three related tendencies: (a) the speaking West (for example, Bryson et al. 1999; Storper
maintenance of geography’s practical involvement 1997; Scott 1998; Taylor 1989; Muir 1997), social,
with the ‘policy making process’, but shrunk down to a cultural and rural geographers often appear to have no
suitably modest post-imperial national scale; (b) the such inclination. Indeed, within social geography at
conceptual relegation of international and transnational least, the tendency to stick to policy-related and Anglo-
study to sub-fields, such as area studies and devel- American material appears to have become almost
opment studies; and (c), the assertion of a technical instinctual – in the sense that it is addressed and justified
vocabulary to define geography (the privileged terms in the most cursory of terms – from the mid-1960s (for an
within the new lexicon being ‘space’ and ‘spatial’). exception see Eyles 1986). Thus from Pahl (1965), Jones
This narrowing of scope and technicalization of (1975), Jackson and Smith (1982), Carter and Jones
vocabulary have made it difficult for academic geo- (1989), Knox and Pinch (2000) to recent, and otherwise
graphers to locate themselves in relation to either the very welcome, affirmations of the sub-discipline, by
wider public debate on geographical issues or the Pain et al. (2001) and Valentine (2001), the space alloc-
imperial configuration of the discipline. The demanding ated to non-Anglo-American material is meagre: indeed,
task of challenging and re-forming representations and in most of these texts, if it appears at all, it is only as an
understandings of ‘other places and peoples’, and ‘our afterthought and can be measured in paragraphs.
societies in the context of others’, as well as ‘our shared This critique is not premised simply on the contention
environment’, have been taken up by many. Yet a tend- that geography should make more use of ‘foreign
ency towards insularity has exceeded this work, draw- examples’. More profoundly, it concerns the construc-
ing the more adroit theorists and researchers away from tion and naturalization of geographical knowledge
the politically uncertain terrain of ‘representing others’ as Anglo-American and European knowledge. This
and towards one-sided ‘engagements’ with sociology narrow focus may avoid uncomfortable questions about
and cognate disciplines that rely on the notion of the ‘representing others’. Yet, by doing so, it sustains more
60 Bonnett

disturbing conceits, more specifically the sense that ‘add-on’ to ‘famous isms’, geographical theory is part of
the rest of the world is not worth knowing about and/ or the fabric of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
that it does not fall within the intellectual remit of a dis- My illustrations might also suggest that when geo-
cipline driven by national policy considerations. graphers look at a theoretical tradition that is a core
It might be expected that textbooks in the area of concern across the humanities and social sciences, such
‘geographical thought’ – i.e. those that describe and as Marxism, they will want to do more than sift out of a
assess current theoretical debates in geography – would ‘spatial contribution’. They should also, at least, be alert
be relatively immune from such a critique. They, after all, to the influence and development of Marxisms around
are addressing geography as it is, however ‘unworldy’. the world, the nature and context of the so-called ‘West-
However, this defence misses the selective nature of ern Marxist’ tradition and how, more broadly, these
their project, as well as the way their narrative of geo- traditions have constructed a global claim. It is at least
graphy has come to develop its own traditions and likely that the conventional negative reception of ‘ideas’
rigidities. The justification of a canon of geographical themes amongst geography students – Smith’s observa-
theory is not the explicit intention of Modern geograph- tion on student perceptions is that ‘the traditionally
ical thought (Peet 1998) Geography and geographers compulsory “thought” course is often the biggest bore
( Johnston 1983), Geography: history and concepts (Holt- and a waste of time’ (1988, 159; see also Phillips and
Jensen 1988), Approaching human geography (Cloke Healey 1996; Lorimer and Spedding 2002) – may have
et al. 1991) and The Place of Geography (Unwin 1992). something to do with their seemingly tangential rela-
Yet the problematic that animates the structure and tionship with what students, encultured into popular,
content of these influential works is very similar: namely public visions of geography, expect of the discipline. As
that ‘geographical thought’ consists of a spatial perspec- I have already indicated, although these expectations
tive on the same set of ideologies that are familiar across need complicating and re-wiring, the temptation to cast
the social sciences. In this way the contemporary intel- them aside as anachronistic and irrelevant to ‘university
lectual history of the discipline is staged through a series level geography’ is not always justified.
of dialogues with a generic set of authoritative theoret- For some readers the temptation to read these
ical actors: first positivism, then behaviourism, followed arguments as a kind of slyly politically correct way of
by Marxism, humanism and feminism and, in their returning to old-fashioned geography will be powerful.
wake, realism, structurationism and post-modernism. Indeed, it is interesting to note that area studies have of
My argument is not with the importance of these ap- late started to be re-defined in ways that resonate with
proaches, or the need for geography students to grasp my position: ‘the virtual demise of area studies in many
them, but with, (a) their decontextualization from geo- Departments is a cause of real concern’, note Thrift and
graphy; that is, their production as Western theory and Walling (2000) in a recent overview of British geography,
the nature and implications of their application in other because ‘the net result is a kind of pious Eurocentrism
parts of the world; and (b), their privileging as the in which much is written in theory concerning the
structuring, determining and essential foundations of necessity to appreciate difference, but this is too rarely
a generic field of ‘social theory’. In respect to this latter articulated in practice’ (2000, 106). However, the prob-
point, I would suggest that there are other ways theory lem is not that ‘area studies’ – conceptualized in its
can be and has been approached; pathways that may traditional guise as the regional study of discrete regions/
have as much, or more, to say about the geographer’s nations – needs to be defended but that geographers
(whether university or non-university based) intellectual have found it hard to re-invent it. For such is the aver-
landscape. Examples of such pathways include the sion to the colonial paradigm, misleadingly conflated
delineation of Anglo-American and other ethnicized or with popular geography, that any sense of Western
national traditions of social and geographical theory scholars claiming to represent, claming to know, ‘other
and an engagement with the theoretical and political societies’ has become dangerous territory. It is a senti-
fall-out of colonization. In a similar fashion, the themes ment neatly expressed by Rogers when he aligns
of relativism and universalism have a distinctly geo- attempts to talk at the global scale with an imperial
graphical theoretical agenda, one which can be aligned ‘claiming of the globe’ by ‘the Patriarchs of Geography’
with more empirical debates on multiculturalism, (1991, 131). In fact Rogers’s attack soon falls into con-
globalization, green theory and world-systems theory. tradiction, since like most people he is actually interested
These examples are not offered programmatically, in in societies and environments beyond his doorstep:
the hope of fabricating a new canon, but to illustrate ‘While mindful of the pitfalls of the global claim’, he
that, far from being a residual category, an optional also notes, ‘I would not want to be placed in a position
 Geography as the world discipline 61

of silence about current goings-on in Armenia, or for (Haggett 2001; Golledge 2002). While I cannot claim
that matter Sudan, Indonesia or Brazil’ (1991, 141). The to have done justice to the environmental tradition in
uncomfortable position I have been advancing in this this brief essay, the implication of my argument is that,
article is that geography is founded upon and inextric- however defined, ‘the environment’ achieves its most
ably tied to the ‘global claim’. Moreover, that this claim cogent role within geographical narrative when it
cannot be escaped without severing academic geo- emerges from and within a disciplinary culture stressing
graphers from the public meaning of the discipline and anti-parochialism and the interdependence of peoples
their own responsibility to create and disseminate critical and places.
and non-parochial traditions of world knowledge. The perspective I have advanced clearly implies that
university-level geography should explicitly engage (in
terms of ‘links’ and/or as critique) pre-tertiary and other
Conclusion forms of geographical knowledge. It also raises ques-
In his radical manifesto for the discipline, Harvey tions about the issue of student progression within
portrays contemporary popular geography as a the discipline. More specifically, that undergraduates
degraded, feral, form: should be able to understand their university studies as
a deepening of and challenge to their existing grasp of
What was once an important preserve for the the global scene. The spirit and purpose of geography
geographer fell into the hands of popular magazines should be a militant anti-parochialism and a refusal of
and the producers of commercial travelogues and ethnocentrism. This agenda is politically mutable: it is
brochures, television films, news, and document-
suffused with egalitarianism yet also chimes with the
aries. The failure to help build appropriate popular
understandings to deal with a world undergoing rapid
rationale for the ‘re-discovery’ of geography in the USA
geographical integration was a striking abrogation of developed by the Rediscovering Geography Committee
responsibility. (Harvey 1996, 99; first published 1984) (1997). Taking their cue from popular expectations of
the discipline, the Committee rationalizes the need for
Whilst agreeing with Harvey’s last sentence, it strikes the re-assertion of geography by reference to ‘a grow-
me as having an uneasy relationship to his first. The ing public recognition that our national well-being is
image of geography being the ‘preserve’ of academics, related to global markets and international political
of being entirely within their ‘hands’, is offered as an development’ (1997, 8). Clearly there are tensions here:
ideal, yet in the next breath this same group is scolded being globally minded to serve our national interests
for not entering into a relationship with popular geo- is an ambivalent, if ubiquitous, ambition. A vision of
graphical consciousness. Harvey’s association, in that geography as world discipline does not imply that the
first line, of ‘popular’ with ‘commercial’ does little to contested nature of geography can be overcome or
ease the strain, especially since the capitalist imperative resolved. However, the relationship of this contested
is often unclear or contradictory within the institutional enterprise to the wider society is something that can
structure of popular geography. It is precisely these change, and must if we wish to move towards more
tensions that make Harvey’s statement a useful reflection informed and less destructive forms of governance and
of a common academic stance towards popular geo- society. Unfortunately, the drift towards constituting
graphy: ‘they need us’, he seems to be saying, ‘but that universities as centres of entrepreneurial activity may be
just goes to show how important it is we keep our taking us in the opposite direction: locking researchers
distance from them’. My argument in this article has into structures of funding and consciousness that are
affirmed that ‘they’ do need us, but also that ‘we’ need merely national or reflect the priorities of pan-national
them. More fundamentally, I have tried to offer a vision corporate and government institutions. If geography is
of geography as a form of consciousness – rooted in but viewed as the flexible friend of these funders, prepared
not determined by the imperial experience – which can to add a pinch of ‘space’ to whatever agenda they
be shared by specialists and non-specialists alike. generate, it may have a lucrative – although I would
It will be noted that I have not had much to say on imagine, short-term – future. However, the vital task of
what has recently re-emerged as a commonly employed sustaining a cosmopolitan and informed disciplinary
defining focus of the discipline, the environment. The and public culture will be chained down, leashed not
precision of this putative focus is somewhat deceptive, by popular will or the academic imagination, but by a
since the term ‘environment’ is enormously flexible, bureaucraticized research culture.
being used as a synonym for many other ideas, such I am not aware of a single academic geographical
as space and /or for ‘human–environment relations’ organization in the world that does not use a world map
62 Bonnett

as the principal element of its logo. In my own School, Gardner R and Craig L 2001 Is geography history? Journal of
I climb the stairs past six enormous half globes, mounted Geography in Higher Education 25 5 –10
on the walls like big-game trophies, all making sure Gill D 1983 ed Geography and education for a multicultural
visitors know which subject area they are in and what society: context and curriculum Association for Curriculum
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Golledge R 2002 The nature of geographic knowledge Annals
to be a vast plastic globe rotating in the lobby (before it
of the Association of American Geographers 92 1–14
crashed to the floor one night). All these world images Graham B and Nash C ed 2000 Modern historical geographies
are part of the public and academic visual imagination Prentice Hall, Harlow
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and post-colonial potential. Geography cannot escape Haggett P 2001 Geography: a global synthesis Prentice Hall,
the burden of its global claim or, indeed, of its vast and Harlow
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Livingstone D and Rogers A eds Human geography: an
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Holt-Jensen A 1988 Geography: history and concepts 2nd edn
I would like to thank Mike Bradshaw and two anonymous Paul Chapman, London
referees for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this Jackson P and Smith S 1984 Exploring social geography
paper. George Allen and Unwin, London
Jenkins K 1991 Re-thinking history Routledge, London
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