Putting Geography in its Place

Work on the history of geographical knowledge and practice frequently draws inspiration from theoretical insights developed elsewhere in the academy. After briefly touching on some of these historiographical matters, I argue that geographers might make some telling interventions into this debate by attending to some of their own key concepts – space, site, location – and disclosing their significance for elucidating the history of intellectual traditions. The fact that historians of science have begun to remark on the role of ‘place’ in knowledge production and consumption further confirms the value of this ‘geographical turn’. Subsequently I dwell on the implications of a spatialised historiography for work on the history of geography itself, and urge that ‘the history of geography’ might profitably be reconceptualised as ‘the historical geography of geography’.     

Putting Religion First

Abstract

This paper examines a version of the religious violence thesis drawn from William Cavanaugh's critical diagnosis of it, and particularly the characterization of some of its proponents that religion is uniquely divisive and, consequently, a unique cause of conflict and violence. According to one representative model advanced by Martin Marty, Mark Juergensmeyer, and others, religion is an inherently disunifying phenomenon because it uniquely enables sacred and exclusive bonds that nurture antagonistic proclivities toward those outside that bond. This paper presents some viable counterexplanations for this kind of phenomena that provide a sufficient basis for questioning the core thread of the thesis.     

Presidential Oral History: The Clinton Presidential History Project

Most conventional oral history takes a bottom-up approach tothe past, focusing on settings where there is little in theway of a functional written record. This essay discusses thevalue of oral history in the opposite case of the American presidency.The written archive and journalistic record on each presidentis immense. Yet oral history is a valuable resource in thiselite environment, too. There are routine silences in even thebest of presidential papers, which oral history interviews canhelp fill. Moreover, the White House has become a workplacewhere recorded details can be hazardous to one's political health.Accordingly, few presidential aides today keep diaries or notesof key meetings—impoverishing the archive future historianswill use to study the presidency of our times. Oral historythus fortifies a weakening documentary record. This essay exploresthese broad issues and how they are being dealt with in theconduct of the William J. Clinton Presidential History Project.     

Putting People Back into Networks

This article argues that political scientists should spend more time observing policy networks, using ethnographic tools to capture the meaning of everyday activities. The first section reviews briefly the literature on policy networks, arguing for an ethnographic approach. To show how individual actors construct networks, the second section looks at the experience of consumers, managers and permanent secretaries of living and working in networks. The final section comments on what the fieldwork tells us about both network theory and ethnographic methods.