From the Inside Looking out and the Outside Looking in: Whatever Happened to ‘Behavioural Geography’?

As part of the Institute of Australian Geographers' Millennium Project, this article examines the shift of behavioural geography from a cutting edge sub-discipline to a branch of enquiry that is now much less prominent in mainstream human geography, especially in Australia. Through an exploration of the rationale for behavioural geography, a brief outline of the nature of the work that was done, and a consideration of the critiques of behavioural geography, the paper argues that behavioural geography enriched the discipline in several ways: it was instrumental in encouraging geographers to consider the epistemological foundations of the discipline; it fostered consideration of a variety of philosophical and methodological positions; and it highlighted the need to consider interrelationships between individuals, groups, society and environment thereby bringing into prominence the ways in which shared environmental meanings are contested and negotiated. Behavioural geography might be a term that is used much less than it once was and behaviourally-orientated research might increasingly find expression in interdisciplinary outlets rather than in mainstream geography journals but contemporary geography is heir to the endeavours of behavioural geography.     

Geographic Connections: Language,Power Relations,and Relevance

The interrogation of language is crucial in all sub‐fields of geography and in related disciplines. This paper interrogates the terms nature, environment, sustainability, and resilience, given their importance in connecting geography with other academic pursuits and with people and organisations that make our discipline relevant. The paper explores how geography may be seen as ‘relevant’ while maintaining a constructively critical approach. It does so through the example of Sydney's metropolitan strategy/plan that was released in December 2014. The concept of resilience as defined and used in this new metropolitan plan fails to address transboundary issues such as climate change, raising concerns about sustainability. As such it serves the needs of political interests aligned with a growth agenda. This is one example highlighting that a challenge for many geographers is to maintain critical thinking while being relevant. It is an important challenge that geographers should relish.     

The challenges of feminist geography in Taiwan

Abstract

This article explores the development of feminist geography in Taiwan within the time frame of last three decades, since the first author became involved in the IGU Gender and Geography Working Group in 1988. It is found that Anglo-American influences have contributed significantly to the feminist movement in Taiwan. An important outcome over time has been the improved visibility of Women and Gender studies courses in academe. As social geographer and cultural anthropologist respectively, the authors trace important dynamics of growth in the academic fields of geography and the social sciences in post-secondary education. Owing to the history and the nature of the discipline of geography, and the structural constraints due to male-domination, there is still a high fence to cross over. Statistics show that a rising number of women in Taiwan have received PhD degrees. The authors note the mitigating development that younger women geographers have taken up administration positions as chairs of four of the five geography departments. However, up to the present time, in academic meetings and conferences, it is unlikely that any presentations on the topic of gender will be offered. The authors encourage younger generations of scholars in Taiwan to continue to look for and connect with feminist geographers abroad, to embrace diversity and inclusiveness in their research, and to help our society to grow in the level of gender equity.     

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.     

Educational Innovation and the Market for Geographers in Hungary

This paper examines the status of geography in higher education in Hungary. Stress is placed on reforms begun in the 1990s to launch new curricula for training professional geographers. The authors played an important role in developing this new curriculum by introducing new subjects into geography programmes, working out the scope and sequence of courses, obtaining accreditation and carrying out market research for graduates. The project was motivated by a decline in demand for geography and geography teachers in secondary schools accompanied by an increase in demand for geographers trained to work in public administration, government and business. The graduates of the new professional geographer curriculum receive a practice-oriented education designed to cultivate their spatial problem solving and applied geographical skills. In this paper the authors present the steps in the curriculum reform and suggest that it may serve as a model for reform in a number of nearby countries planning to join the EU.     

Problems of Geographical Education in the USSR

Geography education in the Soviet Union is found to lag behind advances in geography as a research discipline. Courses in both elementary and secondary schools and at the college and university level are overloaded with factual material at the expense of theoretical problems and general concepts. An essential requisite for improving the content of geography education is better training of geography teachers. Soviet geography teachers are now being trained mainly in the combined geography-biology faculties of teachers colleges. Combined training in more than one teaching discipline is essential because a teacher trained in geography alone would not have a full teaching load of 18 hours a week in most schools. However, the geography-biology combination does not appear to be optimal because the emphasis in biology is no longer on botany and zoology, as in the past, but on human physiology and genetics, with less relevance to geography. It is recommended that geography as a teaching discipline be combined with other subjects of instruction having greater relevance to geography teaching, possibly chemistry, physical education or foreign languages. Less emphasis on fact-loaded regional courses and more stress on systematic courses is recommended, together with training in mathematical techniques.     

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.     

Gender and geography in the Netherlands: from separation to integration

Abstract

This article reports on the development of feminist geography in the Netherlands in the past forty years. In response to critical feminist students, feminist geography originally developed in a strategy of separation with the appointment of university lecturers specialized in ‘women’s studies’, the introduction of elective courses and research projects, and the creation of national networks. Gender is currently more and more integrated in core geography teaching and mainstream geographical research and separate networks are dissolved. Although feminist geographers in the Netherlands are successful in teaching, publishing and acquisition of research funding, gender issues and perspectives are still not firmly rooted in geography curricula and research programs. Integration is highly dependent on the feminist commitment of individual lecturers and researchers and gender perspectives are at risk of marginalisation or disappearance. Feminist geographers in the Netherlands must still be vigilant to preserve the achievements of forty years of Dutch feminist geography.     

东西对话：中国政治地理学研究展望

中国政治地理学的发展尚处于起步阶段。中国与西方政治地理学者的学术交流相对有限,这主要是由于语言的障碍,以及中国学者对于研究课题政治敏感性的担忧,普遍缺乏对政治地理学研究内涵的理解。本文基于对中西方政治地理学发展现状及相关研究可能性的理解,指出以下五个在中国具有进一步拓展空间的政治地理学课题：广域行政与空间政治;国际关系与地理想象;边界冲突与划界研究;边界与边界区域研究;环境政治地理学。这些课题的开展不仅可以加强中国自身的政治地理学研究,而且对西方正在进行的政治地理学研究也会起到积极的推动作用。     

Searching for good practice in postgraduate education

Regional geography courses have declined in status and number at many North American universities. Yet it is regional courses which students with limited geographical education at the high school level may identify as typical geography, and thus regional courses may play a significant role in recruitment of geography majors. Regional courses on the students' country or state/province offer an excellent opportunity to showcase how geographic perspectives can enrich our understanding of the familiar, both in terms of place and discipline. This paper discusses the pivotal role a regional geography course has been given in a new university's geography curriculum, and the innovative structuring of the course so as to avoid some of the deficiencies of common instructional patterns which may deter some students from pursuing further geographic education.     

Straddling the Boundaries Between Sciences

The author reverts to the theme that, in addition to the particular disciplines in physical geography and in economic geography, there is a genuine need for a general geographic approach to study of the geographical environment and of the man-nature relationship. As a result of the growing social impact on the environment, the operation of natural laws and social laws becomes so closely intertwined that no single discipline operating with one particular set of laws is capable of understanding the complex processes and phenomena in the interplay between nature and society. The growing specialized differentiation of geography as a science does not eliminate it as a distinct field of human knowledge with a common object of study. However there is a danger that the process of differentiation may be going too far, with an increasing number of scholars from adjacent disciplines coming into geography. The trend is said to be evident in the advanced training of geographers in universities, where geography facilities are turning into collections of departments turning out, say, meteorologists with little general geographic background. And yet there is a growing need for broadly trained geographers, particularly in the entire field of long-range planning and pre-planning research, in which the author is engaged.     

The Terrible Geographicalness of Terrorism: Reflections of a Hazards Geographer

Oppositional engagement with the phenomenon of terrorism by geographers could bring much needed scholarly clarity and balance to the militaristic dominant discourse on terrorism. The hazards subfield within the discipline of geography is germane to research on terrorism, as hazards geographers have been deeply concerned with environmental and technological extremes threatening human life and well‐being. A hazards perspective on terrorism could contribute towards defining terrorism, clarifying the contours of the terrorism discourse, root causes, and response. Insights gleaned from geographical research on social violence, technological and environmental hazards can be eminently applicable to researching various aspects of terrorism. The fundamental point is that terrorism is a deeply geographical phenomenon with potentially disastrous consequences for international peace. Beyond enhancing human safety, the geographical research agenda in terrorism will be part of the struggle to wrest control of the terrorism terminology away from the Western politico‐military elites, to keep them from using it to whip their real or imagined enemies.     

Multidisciplinary Cooperation in GIS Education: A Case Study of US Colleges and Universities

This paper examines the degree of multidisplinary cooperation for Geographic Information Science (GIS) education programs that award GIS-related degrees or certificates at US colleges and universities. We classified departments and courses into ten major disciplines using Dewey Decimal Classification. In the 2007–2008 academic year, approximately 40 per cent of GIS education programs related to multiple disciplines and nearly 20 per cent were involved with more than three disciplines. Geography was the major provider of GIS education programs, but the ratio between geography-related discipline and other disciplines combined was approximately 1:3. Fostering multidisciplinary GIS education programs should strengthen geography in general as well as GIS education.     

作为中国人文地理学鉴镜的段义孚思想

段义孚的人文主义地理学在西方学界和社会引起巨大反响,但中国地理学界对其认识还非常欠缺,相关研究更是迟滞。针对目前常见的对段义孚的研究是否属于地理学以及如何把握和推广等问题,本文进行了回应和解释,并探讨了段义孚的思想与学术对中国人文地理学的启示与借鉴意义。作为中国人文地理学发展的一面镜子,段义孚不但具有开创精神,而且40多年的坚持更是令人敬佩;广泛取材于历史、人文以及其他学科,经验的方法,流畅生动的文风值得学习和推广;对其的专门研究应当得到鼓励;其理论不但具有较大普适性,而且是治疗人文素养和精神欠缺的中国人文地理学的一剂良药。     

Gendering environmental geography

Despite sharing common interests in being advocates for social change, feminist and environmental geographers have yet to acknowledge interests they share in common. Environmental geographers, particularly those focused on policy and institutional analysis, have not embraced feminist theories or methodologies, while few feminist geographers have engaged issues associated with environmental policy-making. Our purpose is to initiate a dialogue about how linkages might be forged between feminist and environmental geography, particularly among Canadian environmental geographers working on institutional and policy analysis. We begin by illustrating that environmental geographers working on Canadian problems have neglected to introduce gender as an analytical category or feminist conceptual frameworks to guide their research. Second, we identify four feminist research approaches that should also be pursued in environmental geography. Third, we consider examples of how feminist perspectives might be incorporated in three themes of environmental geography: institutional and policy analysis, participatory environmental and management systems and alternative knowledge systems. Fourth, we consider two research frameworks—political ecology and environmental justice—and suggest that these may be useful starting points for integrating feminist analysis into environmental geography. Last, we summarise our suggestions for how future research of feminist and environmental geographers could benefit from a closer association.     

Scientific Fundamentals of Higher Geography Education in Universities and Teachers Colleges of the USSR

The geography curriculum of universities is analyzed in terms of the total number of class-hours allocated to various groups of subjects: systematic geography, regional geography, specialization courses, courses in physics, chemistry and mathematics, and education courses. It is suggested that systematic courses could be strengthened by introduction of more courses on theoretical subjects, such as the fundamentals of landscape science and the theory of economic geography. Regional courses suffer from excessive factual material and not enough discussion of general patterns and concepts. Courses that shape the specialization of geographers should be more flexible in order to reflect continuing changes in emphasis in geographic research (for example, by introduction of a course in remote-sensing techniques). A background in the exact sciences is thought to be essential for the modern geographer.     

The integration of geography in a curriculum focused to internationalization: an interdisciplinary liberal arts perspective from the Netherlands

Internationalization has been an important concept in higher education over the past two decades. The way that internationalization is manifest has consequences to academic disciplines, including geography. A new system of liberal arts colleges in the Netherlands has created opportunities for interdisciplinary education, representing a departure from the traditional model of European higher education. At Leiden University College the focus on global challenges created an opportunity for geography to be integrated into a diverse interdisciplinary and international curriculum. The positioning of geography into the curriculum, however, occurred because its adaptability and breadth, which enabled it to be incorporated into diverse facets of the overall teaching programme. To be successful, however, geographers should be cognizant of specific facets of the discipline suited for an international context. The case study herein reviewed highlights important differences between the U.S. and Dutch (European) context. Additionally, important points for academic geographers (academics) who are in interdisciplinary programmes (i.e. not a geography department) are emphasized, which relates to the development of course materials to suit an international context. The identification of key thematic and methodological disciplinary strands serves as bridges to interdisciplinary opportunities, which was essential to geography’s successful establishment within an international curriculum.     

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.     

Historical geography and the society/nature “problematic”: the perspective of J. F. Schouw,G. P. Marsh and E. Reclus

The “retreat” of the recent past within geography to a conception of the discipline as an ahistoric science which is either spatial or ecological is seen to be an atavism—a throwback to a disciplinary framework or “problematic” which dichotomizes human society and nature into fixed exclusive categories. This essay explores an alternative “problematic” which integrates society's spatial and ecological dimensions in a study of the historical process of “dialectical” interaction between society and its geographic environment, and the political and economic consequences of this interaction. The significance of this alternative approach is elucidated through an examination of its emergence, at the time of the origins of modern geography in the early nineteenth century. Its developing importance for the present-day position of the discipline is exemplified in the work of three prominent, socially engaged, nineteenth-century geographers. Although these geographers have tended to be either ignored or misunderstood in the recent literature, their approach has much to offer the field at a time when its division into ahistoric spatial and ecological disciplines is being questioned.     

Restructuring physical geography

The tripartite division of physical geography into geomorphology, climatology and biogeography is still often quoted, but developments in the last two decades have resulted in restructuring of the discipline. Significant publications by physical geographers now occur dominantly in multidisciplinary rather than in core geography journals. Analysis of the contents of ten journals and of the submissions to the 1996 UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) demonstrate the current pre-eminence of two sub-disciplines: geomorphology with hydrology, and Quaternary environmental change. Complementing research in the sub-disciplines, six trends towards a more integrated physical geography are identified as indicators of restructuring that has already occurred. Three futures are suggested for physical geography. The first, the status quo, is thought to be unlikely. The second, the disappearance of physical geography into other disciplinary areas would leave holistic investigations to other disciplines and so is undesirable. Thus, the third alternative, a renaissance of a more integrated physical geography, provides the most likely future. It is supported by existing integrative trends, provides a natural sequel to reductionist specialization, reflects the strong identity for the geographical approach to the earth and environmental sciences and the spatio-analytical approach integrating deductive and inductive studies, and it focuses on human–environmental interactions that could have implications for geography as a whole.