Forum: Cultural Geography and Cultural Studies

This forum discusses linkages between cultural geography and allied ‘cultural’ disciplines. A symposium on this topic – held at the 2005 conference of the Institute of Australian Geographers in Armidale – was triggered by the targeted inclusion of geography in a cross‐disciplinary network funded by the Australian Research Council. Although non‐geographers in the network have articulated strong interest in and an enthusiasm for geography, their knowledge of, and everyday participation in its disciplinary travails have been limited. Given this, the papers in the forum review geography's long and dynamic consideration of the relations between place and culture, and raise a set of key issues for geographers to consider: how we might interact with other disciplinary debates about the ‘cultural’, retain distinctiveness as the home of intellectual inquiry around issues of space and place, and leverage opportunities to forge more permanent connections to geographers working not in our traditional institutional settings, but in a range of research centres, schools and disciplinary homes.     

Australian Geographers and Geographical Information Science

Geographical Information Science (GIScience) has become an important sub‐discipline for North American geographers but in Australia few geographers are engaged in this ‘research in GIS’ area. Australian geographers seem more concerned with ‘research using GIS’ which has become absorbed into the geographical tradition of thinking and communicating with diagrams, images, and maps. The breakdown of disciplinary boundaries in Australia makes it difficult to be sure, but most of those engaged in GIScience in Australia seem to identify with disciplines other than geography.     

Australian Geography and Geographic Information Systems

In Australian universities geography has had traditional links with geology, environmental science and the social sciences. Human geographers’ pursuit of links into the humanities has distracted many of them from understanding the implications of the increasing interest shown by computer science, geomatics and other disciplines in geography. The emergence of a dialogue overseas between the humanities and the geographic information systems community is an important development which may result in this new grouping colonising some of the traditional disciplinary areas of human geography. It is clear that although this emerging cross‐disciplinary linkage has not had any influence on the current phase of mergers and cross‐disciplinary linkages in Australia, it will undoubtedly become important locally in the future.     

Geography’s Emerging Cross‐Disciplinary Links: Process,Causes, Outcomes and Challenges

In Australian universities the discipline of Geography has been the pace‐setter in forging cross‐disciplinary links to create multidisciplinary departments and schools, well ahead of other disciplines in humanities, social sciences and sciences, and also to a greater extent than in comparable overseas university systems. Details on all cross‐disciplinary links and on immediate outcomes have been obtained by surveys of all heads of departments/schools with undergraduate Geography programs. These programs have traced their own distinctive trajectories, with ramifying links to cognate fields of enquiry, achieved through mergers, transfers, internal initiatives and, more recently, faculty‐wide restructuring to create supradisciplinary schools. Geography’s ‘exceptionalism’ has proved short‐lived. Disciplinary flux is now extending more widely within Australian universities, driven by a variety of internal and external forces, including: intellectual questioning and new ways of constituting knowledge; technological change and the information revolution; the growth of instrumentalism and credentialism, and managerialism and entre‐preneurial imperatives; reinforced by a powerful budgetary squeeze. Geographers are proving highly adaptive in pursuit of cross‐disciplinary connections, offering analytical tools and selected disciplinary insights useful to non‐geographers. However, this may be at cost to undergraduate programs focussing on Geography’s intellectual core. Whereas formerly Geography had high reproductive capacity but low instrumental value it may now be in a phase of enhanced utility but perilously low reproductive capacity.     

In praise of the International Geographical Union

This viewpoint is a highly personal account of what the International Geographical Union (IGU) has meant for a 50‐year career in Canadian geography and is a consideration of the importance of the IGU to geographers world‐wide. The author's earliest experiences of the IGU, the IGU's Commissions, its disciplinary perspective, some political problems experienced by IGU scholars, and the IGU as a global geographical community are the main topics considered.     

Feminist Geography 30 Years on – They Came,They Saw But Did They Conquer?

Feminist geography emerged in Australia in the 1980s, spurred on by the local Women's Liberation Movement and inspired by the academic activism emanating from England, Canada, and the United States. Producing critical evaluations of male‐dominated geography departments, curriculum, and journals, feminist geographers proceeded to stake claims in each of these spheres while also substantially revising the content of geographical research. There were significant interventions into urban, social, cultural, and economic geography and in environmental discourses, as well as into the gendered research process. Having arrived, identified, and addressed these issues, the discipline was critiqued and transformed over the 1980s and 1990s. Crucial to the strength of this critique were key individuals, the Gender and Geography Group within the Institute of Australian Geographers, and the role played by journals such as Geographical Research and the Australian Geographer in providing spaces for feminist work. However, as the new century dawned, the agenda changed and the anger and urgency dissipated as the broader and university contexts altered. It was a period of consolidation, as feminist insights and approaches were focused on key subject areas – such as the home, identity, and sexuality – and became more mainstream. However, is this work and the presence of women in the academy an indication of success or of co‐option? This paper will trace these various shifts – from the arrival to the mainstreaming of feminist geography – and analyse what might be read as a retreat from feminist politics and practice within the discipline in Australia. I will conclude by re‐stating the case to advance a new feminist agenda in the face of continuing gender inequality within the academy, in Australia, and across the globe.     

Travelling down the road to postdisciplinarity? Reflections of a tourism geographer

Like many other forms of scholarship in geography, tourism geography has evolved as a distinct subfield of inquiry within the discipline, although the contributions of tourism geographers are perhaps more readily acknowledged in the multidisciplinary realm of tourism studies. I trace the evolving relationship of tourism geography to both the discipline of geography and to the field of tourism studies. In doing so, I reflect on such influences as the role of institutions, paradigm shifts, technology, and other factors that affect the creation and management of geographic knowledge in the twenty‐first century. The intent of this article is two‐fold: first, to appeal to geographers for greater recognition of the importance of tourism as a quintessential component of geographic study that in today's world warrants integration into core aspects of geographic enquiry; second, to use current debates within both tourism studies and geography to reflect on issues of disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and even postdisciplinarity.     

Spatial and temporal tourism considerations in liminal landscapes

Abstract

Anthropogenic geographic studies in tourism should consider the liminality of the experience. Tourism by definition means a temporal and/or spatial movement takes place. How the tourist interacts and behaves during this transitory experience is a logical progression into human leisure behaviour. Several recent international gatherings of geographers provide the foundation to explore liminality in tourism and we build on those papers in this special issue. The papers are varied in geographies, yet have a central theoretical basis in all things liminal. Invited papers in this special issue are founded on the research presented at two international geography conferences in sessions devoted to tourism. The American Association of Geographers meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in 2017 and the Royal Geographic Society with the Institute of British Geographers in Cardiff, Wales in 2018 gathered geographers from around the world to study this theme. The following papers give the most comprehensive geographic review in tourism to date and we encourage additional dialogue.     

W(h)ither Development Geography in Australia?

This paper explores the changing focus and role of development geography in Australian university teaching and research. It is based primarily on interviews with Emeritus Professors Harold Brookfield and David Lea and Professor John Connell, which were conducted as part of the Institute of Australian Geographers’ Millennium Project on Geography and Geographers. Drawing on the collective wisdom of these geographers, the evolution and characteristics of development geography in Australia and the reasons for its past strength are outlined. Additionally, the contributions made by this branch of the discipline to Geography are described, reasons for the parlous state of development geography in Australia today are presented and a number of issues related to its future survival are raised. The paper argues that, for the discipline of Geography in Australia to retain social relevance, a continuing focus on global inequality and its impacts at the local scale is essential.     

Geography's secret powers to save the world

The purpose of this paper, prepared to present at the 2018 joint Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG) and International Geographical Union (IGU) regional conference, is to suggest three strategies, framed as proposals, that geography and geography education can deploy to “save the world.” The first proposal is to expand explicit instruction in spatial thinking to close gender‐based achievement gaps. The second proposal is to apply research from the learning sciences to develop persuasive geography curricula and instructional materials. The third proposal focuses on ways social media and geospatial technologies can be employed in civic education, an idea termed “spatial citizenship.” The paper suggests a re‐envisioning of geography education with an enhanced focus on teaching for, in, and about a world that fully appreciates difference and acts on that appreciation.     

Canadian studies and American geography: trends and issues

Geography is perceived to be a relevant contributing discipline within a growing Canadian studies community in the United States, and the Association of American Geographers (AAG) retains a viable Canadian Studies Specialty Group. Since the early 1990s, however, the number of American geographers affiliated with Canadian studies organizations has not significantly increased: the community of scholars remains small and geography holds a peripheral position in terms of its actual contribution to US‐based Canadian studies programs. This article documents and interprets these trends using membership data collected by prominent professional organizations in Canadian studies and geography. It also explores the question of why American geography's Canadian regional specialists are not engaging formal Canadian studies initiatives in greater numbers. The observations that emerge suggest that a diversification of research themes in Canadian studies, particularly in the realms of environmental and physical science, would both increase participation by American geographers and enhance the field's ability to address pertinent aspects of the Canadian experience. Although observations presented pertain directly to the state of Canadian studies in American geography, they may also shed light on the lack of involvement by geographers in a variety of area studies fields in the United States and elsewhere.     

Australasian Rural Geographies: At the Core,in the Antipodes?

This paper reviews ‘Antipodean’ rural geography research published over the period 2012–2014 inclusive. A broad, inclusive stance was adopted to what should be regarded as Antipodean rural geography. Key publication outlets were identified and scanned for what were deemed to be relevant paper titles and abstracts, then the institutional and disciplinary affiliations of authors, bearing in mind a general concern for ‘rural issues’. The review concentrates on the prominent themes of the recent mining boom and its externalities, new perspectives on agrarian and regional development, and population issues. Australasian rural geographers have not only become adept at ‘writing back’ to the centre but have played leading roles in the intellectual development of the sub‐discipline and cognate areas (e.g. rural sociology). Indeed, at least in the short period covered by this review and in the admittedly selective scope of that survey, Australian and New Zealand rural geographers have been at the forefront in advancing the sub‐discipline internationally. In doing so, they have not only placed the discussion of Australasian rural issues within a global context but have further refined the philosophical and conceptual approaches and tools used. In important respects, then, Australasian rural geographers are very much at the core of the international project of contemporary rural geography. Moreover, they have made – and continue to make – important contributions to the broader discipline of human geography.     

Australian geography: The next 10 years (and beyond)?

Geography: Shaping Australia's Future (2018) provides a ‘strategic plan’ for geography aligned with the national research priorities, as well other key areas where Australian geographers are addressing environmental and societal challenges. To provide context, we first describe the state of geography in Australian universities. We then articulate ways forward for strengthening Australian geography—both within the discipline and how we interact externally. We describe how geography may better contribute to policy agendas, capitalising on our unique perspectives of space, place and the environment, but also highlight how we might improve these contributions through a more unified approach across human and physical geography. Third, we discuss opportunities for geographers to build the reputation of the discipline and ways to advocate for its importance in the wider academy, school curricula and community. We conclude with some preliminary suggestions on how Australian geographers may better engage and contribute to the United Nations Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.     

Professor Penck's Bluff: Geography,Espionage and Hysteria in World War I

This article considers the image of geography during World War I through a discussion of newspaper controversies about the pre‐war activities of German and British geographers. Early in the war, Sven Hedin and Albrecht Penck, renowned geographers whose achievements had been widely celebrated by the British geographical establishment, were named in the media as enemy spies whose supposedly disinterested scientific inquiries in Britain and the Empire had masked their real intention to pass sensitive information to the German High Command. British geography stood accused of collusion with enemy ‘super spies’. This article examines how Britain's geographical community, represented by the Royal Geographical Society, sought to defend the discipline's patriotic virtue and head off a full‐scale media witch‐hunt. In so doing, the article comments on the media's role in shaping the image of geography and on geography's place in public debates about the sanctity of the national space.     

The Geography of Air Transport in Australasia: a Global Perspective

The air transport industry world-wide is undergoing radical restructuring, largely driven by the effects of deregulation, enhanced competition and the general processes of globalisation in the world economy. The impacts of these changes vary spatially, however, as local and historical forces remain important in shaping the geography of air transport. This review has been prompted by the collection of papers on the geography of air transport published in a recent issue of Australian Geographical Studies. It seeks to explore the wider international context of these researches, using the Australasian experience to analyse the ways in which local factors interact with global processes to produce a complex mix of global similarities and regional particularities in air transport provision.     

The Economic Geography of Australia and Its Analysis: From Industrial to Post‐Industrial Regions

The Australian economy has experienced profound change over the last five decades, moving from an industrial to a post‐industrial structure. This transformation has had far‐reaching implications for the nature of economic activity in Australia and has provided the backdrop for the evolving analysis of the nation's space economy. The paper argues that three interrelated themes underpin much of the work of economic geographers in Australia: the impacts of globalisation on Australia's space economy; neoliberalism and the governance of regions; and policy‐focused analysis of regions, their history and prospects. The paper concludes that economic geography will continue to make important intellectual and practical contributions to Australia in the near future as the reshaping of the Australian economy continues and as new challenges reshape the nation's regions.     

THINGS THAT ARE ALMOST BUT NOT QUITE WELL KNOWN IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY

The author, a physical geographer, sees no need to despair about the present state of the discipline and the future of geography. He places geography in context among the sciences and finds a need for a synthesizing discipline that pulls together the findings of the particular disciplines. Such a function might be performed by landscape science and regional geography. In general, geographers are found to go too far afield in their research and there is a need to define the focus of the disciplines to eliminate the present centrifugal tendencies. Such a unifying focus might be found in geographical prediction. Geographers should be aware of the limits and capabilities of their discipline; geography is most effective in fostering solutions in conjunction with other disciplines. Fieldwork per se is criticized; some geographers make a fetish of fieldwork, spending their life in the field without ever writing up the results as a contribution to science. The language of geographical exposition must be cleansed of pseudoscientific jargon; too much geographical writing is incomprehensible. The use of mathematics in geography should be placed in historical perspective; it is not the panacea for all that ails geography.