Challenging the Ivory Tower: Proposing anti-racist geographies within the academy

The experiences of academic women of colour in geography have not been discussed in detail in our discipline. While we have witnessed an gradual increase in the literature about women of colour within feminist geography, transnationalism, and diaspora studies, among other subfields, we have yet to thoroughly explore how geography's historical engagement with colonialism and imperialism work to ensure the continued domination of whiteness among faculty and students within geography. This special issue brings to light the experiences of some women of colour who research, teach and work within the discipline of geography, suggesting some future avenues for more emancipatory geographies within the academy.

Cuestionando la Torre de Marfil: Proponiendo geografías antirracistas en la academia

Las experiencias de mujeres académicas del color en la geografía no se han discutido con todo detalle en nuestra disciplina. Mientras hemos presenciado un aumento en la literatura acerca de mujeres del color dentro de la geografía feminista, transnationalism, y los estudios de diáspora, entre otro subfields, nosotros tenemos mas examinar cómo compromiso histórico de geografía con el trabajo del colonialismo y el imperialismo para asegurar la dominación continuada de la blancura entre la facultad y estudiantes dentro de la geografía. Este asunto especial revela las experiencias de algunas mujeres del color que investiga, enseña y trabaja dentro de la disciplina de la geografía, sugiriendo algunas avenidas futuras para geografías más emancipadoras dentro de la academia.     

University-Industry Collaboration on Technology Transfer: Views from the Ivory Tower

This article reports the results of a national survey that examines the concerns of American faculty about close university industry collaboration and explores how these concerns may impinge upon their participation in industrial innovation. The data show that while academics are generally, but cautiously, in favor of close collaboration, they live with deep tension that is caused by two powerfully competing realities: the instrumental need for industry funding, and the intrinsic need to preserve intellectual freedom. A challenge to public policy is to fashion a positive-sum strategy (e.g., tax incentives) in which firms would be encouraged to increase funding for their academic collaborators, who then may fulfill their research mission better while contributing to industrial innovation.     

In the Trenches Around the Ivory Tower: Introduction to Black-and-White Issues About the Grey Literature

The “grey literature problem” is a common phrase because technical reports produced by the majority of practitioners are perceived to be inaccessible, not peer-reviewed, and of low quality. These issues, however, are as much cultural as they are about indexing and databases, review procedures, and content. Unconventional, non-university-based publication venues and alternative forms of literature constitute an opportunity for bringing fresh ideas and new perspectives to the discipline, for reporting state-of-the-art research, and engaging a wider pool of participants. Nontraditional publication venues have a range of benefits including speedy distribution, presentation of abundant amounts of data, inclusion of in-depth analyses, consideration of a range of methodological and theoretical issues using sizable datasets, often rigorous multi-tiered peer review, and avoidance of many of the stifling political hurdles and time delays of traditional publishing. Honest pursuit of knowledge and effective communication begin with citation of this alternative form of publication, objective assessment of its content absent a double standard, and acknowledgement of the scholars who produce it.     

Geographers in Their Ivory Tower: Academic Geography and Popular Geography in Paris 1931

Abstract: French academic geography achieved remarkable success during the 1920s making Paris an appropriate location for the XIIIth International Geographical Congress to meet in 1931. These scholarly activities were counterpoised by expressions of an exotic 'popular geography' at the great Exposition Coloniale staged in the French capital at the same time. At the Congress, French academics displayed their research achievements in denudation chronology, rural settlement studies and cartography, extending their work from the Hexagon to parts of the Empire. Patronage by leading professors in Paris and Grenoble clearly played a vital role in shaping the discipline. The location and content of excursions for visiting scholars also highlighted French achievements and suggested what remained to be done. Scrutiny of activities at the XIIIth IGC reveals a profession whose official pronouncements appear isolated from the momentous economic and political changes triggered by global depression at that time.     

Social Norm Change,Behavioural Approaches and the Politics of Knowledge: A Conversation between the Ivory Tower and the Field

The social norms approach (SNA), the new entrant from the behavioural sciences into the field of development practice, professes a scientific, more accurate, efficient and cost-effective methodology for identifying, measuring and changing harmful social norms. Despite its increasing popularity, no systematic, robust or long-term field evaluations are available to demonstrate the effectiveness and sustainability of using the SNA, nor its superiority over other, pre-existing methods. This article critiques the SNA from the perspective of development praxis, highlighting three concerns: the underlying cultural presumptions about development and its subjects; the problematic methodological design and its complexity; and the lack of contextual framing in the approach and its focus on individual behaviour to the exclusion of the structural constraints embedded in the social and economic environment. The recent drift to broaden the SNA framework is also discussed and assessed. To illustrate a contrasting approach, a case study is presented of MV Foundation, a civil society organization that works on changing social norms on issues of education and child labour. The article concludes that the SNA is arguably yet another instance of colonization of the field of development through hegemonic control of the creation of knowledge.     

The Ecology of Command: U.S. Pacific Command and the Environment of the Pacific Rim

Abstract

Environmental ethicists speak fervently about the impact of human activity on the sustainability and survivability of Earth's community. But often these discussions fail to acknowledge one human activity more powerful and with the potential for greater destruction than any other— the United States military and its "empire of bases" encircling the globe. Military operations, both peacetime missions and contingency operations, and military installations stamp a large footprint on the earth's environment. From the atmospheric nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll to the removal of the coral reef at Diego Garcia, the environment of the Pacific Rim has been shaped by the demands of U.S. national security. This paper examines the environmental footprint of U.S. Pacific Command. Secondly, it suggests that the exigencies of U.S. military presence need to be included in discussions of environmental ethics.     

The Exact Men of the North from Tool Makers to Historians

Abstract

This account of northern social scientists, historians, and machine-tool and astronomical instrument makers carries forward the author's construction of an intellectual profile of the North of England in previous articles. Principally by analysing entries in relevant biographical dictionaries, the author has demonstrated that northerners of distinction have been disproportionately numerous among 'men of science' in general and machine-tool engineers and astronomical instrument makers in particular, and — at least since the eighteenth century — among musicians and historians. Astronomical instrument makers and machine-tool engineers were above all exact men; so were the 'new' (scientific) historians like Stubbs and Mandell Creighton who followed the research methods of Leopold von Ranke; while the musicians produced in symphonies and oratorios exactly dovetailed, multi-layered structures of sound. A distinction is drawn between two forms of exactness: one of 'correspondence', the other of 'coherence'. The contrasted social contexts in which they are likely to arise are discussed. Musicians and historians (whose exactness lay in 'coherence') were big-city men; astronomical and mathematical instrument makers were more likely to have come down from the hills. The final result: the North was strongly represented in the front ranks of the nation's historians, mechanical engineers, and musicians; with only weak representation in the foremost ranks of social scientists and imaginative writers.     

The Nation as a Problem: Historians and the "National Question"

How is it that the nation became an object of scholarly research? As this article intends to show, not until what we call the “genealogical view” (which assumes the “natural” and “objective” character of the nation) eroded away could the nation be subjected to critical scrutiny by historians. The starting point and the premise for studies in the field was the revelation of the blind spot in the genealogical view, that is, the discovery of the “modern” and “constructed” character of nations. Historians’ views would thus be intimately tied to the “antigenealogical” perspectives of them. However, this antigenealogical view would eventually reveal its own blind spots. This paper traces the different stages of reflection on the nation, and how the antigenealogical approach would finally be rendered problematic, exposing, in turn, its own internal fissures.     

关于联邦德国第一代史学家的争论

联邦德国史学界历来争论不休。新旧世纪之交,那里又兴起了关于原西德第一代历史学家在第三帝国时期追随纳粹的历史的争论。这一争论涉及到许多历史学家,而争论中心主要是在战后西德史学界起主导作用的著名历史学家康策(W．Conze 1910—1986年),席     

Interpreting the Moon Landings: Project Apollo and the Historians

By focusing on the key book‐length studies of the Apollo program that landed American astronauts on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s, this essay seeks to evaluate the historiography about Apollo in the first decade of the twenty‐first century, dividing the subject into five major areas. The first area is the foreign policy and public policy antecedents of Apollo and its immediate ramifications; some of these efforts have yielded significant studies. The second area involves the evolution of space hardware, in many instances these are overwhelmingly detailed studies of rockets and other space flight technologies. Third, there is a great fascination with the astronauts and their actual flights, and a rich tradition of memoir and narrative exists in this arena. The fourth area receiving attention from historians of Apollo and the lunar voyages emphasizes the history of science, in which much of the focus is on the scientists, scientific findings from the voyages of discovery, and the use of this evidence in developing larger theories about the origin and evolution of the solar system. Finally, and increasingly so in the last 20 years, the Apollo story has been recontextualized through social and cultural investigations of its meaning in modern America. Assessing the five major areas enumerated above, this essay also offers some possibly fruitful avenues of future research.