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Presents a list of titles and abstracts of papers regarding geography presented to the Association of American Geographers from 1904 to 1910.

The disciplinary space that geographers conceive to be theirs has all been previously possessed, or latterly colonised, by other disciplines. Geographers defend their existence on the basis of their oft-asserted, but never tested, cross-disciplinarity. The journals in which refereed papers were published by members of the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG) and the papers in Australian Geographical Studies were analysed for the period 1998–2002 to test the hypothesis of cross-disciplinarity in both subject and method. IAG members do strongly tend to publish in more than one disciplinary area, and a large proportion of papers in Australian Geographical Studies are integrative across subdisciplines in geography, with many using more than one methodological approach. However, transgression of the physical geography/human geography divide was sufficiently uncommon to create a statistical break between sets of subdisciplines. Based on the data used in the present paper, Australian geographers can make a case for being members of a vital, integrative discipline, likely to make substantial advances in the hybrid spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of articles from the Association of American Geographers in 1940. "The Relations of Some Texas Soils to Their Parent Materials"; "The Historic Indians of Louisiana"; "Louisiana Foods".

The article presents information on the 58th meeting conducted by the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers in North Carolina. The annual meeting of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG) was held in North Carolina on November 23-25, 2003. A series of New Voices of the Southeast sessions, an innovation conceived by SEDAAG President Ron Mitchelson, was implemented this year. These sessions showcased new geography professionals in the region. Three New Voices sessions with twelve papers were organized by Allan James and Kavita Pandit.

This paper considers the ways geographers (proper) and (geographical) economists approach the study of economic geography. it argues that there are two areas where the approach of the latter is more robust than the former. First, formal models identify which assumptions are crucial in obtaining a particular result and enforce internal consistency when moving from micro to macro behaviour. Second, empirical work tends to be more rigorous. There is much greater emphasis on identifying and testing refutable predictions from theory and on dealing with issues of observational equivalence. But any approach can be improved and so the paper also identifies ways in which geographical economists could learn from the direction taken by economic geographers proper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research process is more like finding one's way through a complex maze. ‘Home is where the heart is’, but foreign students face a number of problems upon their return home to do research. This paper chronicles the dilemma of a Zimbabwean student conducting fieldwork for his UK-based doctoral studies in his own country. The dilemmas were critical in that the fieldwork was undertaken during the ‘Zimbabwe crisis’ and the inherent problems of researching government-related organisations. This has a bearing on any research process and invokes use of the etic/emic dilemma. This paper contributes to the gaps and growing literature on methods and techniques for conducting qualitative research in human geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an analysis of the returns to a questionnaire survey on the state of department archives within UK departments of geography. The results of the survey are discussed in relation to recent work in geography which has examined the archive as a site for knowledge's making but seldom in its own terms as a resource for the history of geography, and studies within the archival sciences which have considered the archive as something more than a ‘storehouse’ for collective memory. The paper reveals that the archival record for the history of British geography is at best uneven, and in many departments non-existent, although information on departmental history is held, often as memory, by individual geographers. The paper considers the survey's implications for the future histories of British geography and addresses the nature of the UK geography department archive as resource and responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the contours of a ‘method’ for postcolonial development geography, which makes it possible to imagine another ‘world-picturing’. We suggest three steps towards such a method. First, we propose that a postcolonial method involves thinking about why we are doing research in the south in the first place; how we come to and produce our questions; and how we analyze and represent our findings based on our subject positionings. Second, that we need to recognize theorization as an inherent part of method, rethink how we currently theorize and reconfigure our methods of theorization to address wider political aims. Problematizing theorization helps challenge the universalism of Eurocentric theories, thus enabling development geography to move towards more decolonized versions and visions. Finally, that this must be accompanied by firmer recognition of our multiple investments – personal, institutional and geopolitical – and how they frame the possibilities for change. These are some possible steps that we think can reconfigure the ‘scholarly track’ that postcolonial development geographers traverse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature of the French discipline of geography through the research and writings of the eighteenth century geographer, d'Anville, the geographers on the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1798–1801), and those involved in the exploration of Algeria (1839–42), and illuminates a major paradigm shift which transformed geography from a science barely recognizable to modern geographers into a social science with many of the dimensions of the modern discipline. In the eighteenth century, French geographers were primarily concerned with locational determination and representation: locating and mapping towns, major natural or human-made features, and provincial and national borders. By the early nineteenth century, there is evidence that geographers were beginning to broaden their interests to include problems that were not strictly locational. In this period of transition, instead of radically reforming their approach, French geographers clung to their traditional methodologies and stretched them to solve nonlocational problems. By the mid-nineteenth century, they had substantially refocused their attention on the general nature of the terrain, description of major landscape features, ’man’ as a being interacting with the environment to produce race and culture, the movement of populations, hegemonic boundaries and territoriality, the history of exploration, and commercial geography. Geography retained an anachronistic and increasingly peculiar concern with the determination of location. This paper represents the first step in an attempt to explore geography's ambiguous role in the intellectual revolution that took place between 1750–1850 and which gave birth to the modern social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States regarding the development of the "Geographical Analysis" journal. Dissatisfaction with the publication policies of the existing journals in 1966; Publication of the first issue in January 1969 with Richard A. McKee as the first Production Editor; Politicking, panic and interpersonal and intradisciplinary squabbling during the formative period.

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States regarding developments in quantitative geography in the 1950s and 1960s. Arrival in the Department of Geography at the State University of Iowa in the fall of 1957; Appointment of Edwin Thomas to the department's faculty in 1958 which served as a catalyst in the accelerated and formal development of quantitative geography who brought with him his expertise in statistical analysis.

The question of what lies ahead is of particular concern for Latin Americanists. The last decade has witnessed a serious erosion of both the popularity of their specialty, and an equally troublesome reduction in employment opportunities. This paper uses Association of American Geographers (AAG) data bases to document the age-gender structure of contemporary Latin Americanist geographers, and projects likely compositional changes through the end of the century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relying on the fecund interface of three fields—studies in science, risk geography, and knowledge management—this paper notes first that the lack of understanding of the relationships between maps and territory and risks is an unfortunate consequence of the way the mapping impulse has been interpreted during the modernist period. Then, taking into account the advent of digital navigation, the paper discusses a very different interpretation of the mapping enterprise that allows a mimetic use of maps to be distinguished from a navigational one. Consequently, we suggest maps should be considered as dashboards of a calculation interface that allows one to pinpoint successive signposts while moving through the world, the famous multiverse of William James. This distinction, we argue, might, on the one hand, help geography to grasp the very idea of risks and, on the other, help to free geography from its fascination with the base map by allowing a whole set of new features, such as anticipation, participation, reflexivity, and feedback, now being included in the navigational definition of maps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, discussions on positionality and the relationship with research collaborators have been very much in the human geography realm. In this paper, we explore issues of expertise, positionality, collaboration and participation from our perspective as physical geographers working in a developing country context. We trace our journey from identifying ourselves as top-down ‘experts’ to participatory ‘facilitators’, and the difficulties and dilemmas encountered during this journey as we coped with the contrasting challenges of academic demands and local necessities. Our experiences highlight the many assumptions we make about doing research in developing countries and the real lack of capacity in these places to undertake typical short-term research projects designed in the developed world. We conclude with a call for a longer term and deeper commitment by physical geographers to the people that we engage with in our research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the role played by the specious present or moment, what some call the present of the now, in geographical discussions of social change. Its most explicit treatment as a temporal framing for such change has been in performative approaches, with their stress on the capacity of immersive body practices to produce difference through the ongoing repetition of such practices, a difference that plays on what is habitually or instinctively accessed through each specious present. However, we can also find debates focused on large-scale social practices that have combined various forms of structural or institutional contingency (ie customary practices, past investment cycles, etc) with becoming and which see becoming as rooted in the everyday reiteration of such practices, an interpretation that also privileges the moment as the point when becoming is actualised. Brought together, these different approaches provide the basis for a more broadly based interpretation of change focused on the specious present. This paper explores the case for this broader interpretation. It is divided into four sections. The first reviews those philosophical discussions of the specious present that have attracted most attention from human geographers. The second reviews the ways in which the geographical debate has used the specious present as a framing for change. The third examines how these different geographical treatments fill or extend the specious present, whilst the fourth and final section considers the implications of such thinking for how we interpret change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is adapted from an address given at the plenary session of the conference ’From Native and Landscape Research to Urban and Regional Studies‘ held in Tartu on 23 August, 2002, to mark the birthdays of J.G. Granö (120 years.) and Edgar Kant (100 years). The Finnish geographer J.G. Granö was Professor of Geography at the University of Tartu from 1919 to 1923, a period during which that university became the birthplace of many original geographical ideas. Edgar Kant was beginning his studies at that time, and a link was forged between the two scholars which lasted until Granö's death in 1956. The nature of this interaction and its significance for the history of geographical studies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the question "who are 'we' and how have the remarkable changes over the past century in who are 'we' changed the discipline. Quotations from Charles Colby in 1935; Statement cited in James and Martin in 1978; Notion that geographers are basically men.

Observations that submissions of physical geography research to the Southeastern Geographer have been low prompted us to question if the Southeast is understudied by physical geographers relative to other regions. We reviewed over 7,000 articles in eleven journals to estimate the frequency and types of field-based research being done. We also reviewed the online publication lists of physical geographers living in the Southeast to determine where they conduct their research. Based on the journal articles reviewed, 72% of the field sites were in international locations. Of the 28% that used U.S. field sites, only 8.4% (2.3% of the total) were in the Southeast. Given that the Southeast makes up over 12% of the land area and is home to 37% of the geography programs in the U.S., the concentration of research in the area is low. Aside from being understudied, field-based research in the Southeast is also unevenly distributed. North Carolina and Georgia were the most studied states. North Carolina was the most frequently used location for geomorphology studies and Tennessee was cited most often for biogeography. Kentucky and South Carolina were the least studied states. Few researchers from states outside the SEDAAG region come into the Southeast to conduct research. At the same time, a significant portion of the research efforts of geographers living in the Southeast have been put toward field sites in other states and countries. The resulting lack of focus on the unique environments of the Southeast is limiting our knowledge of the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the discipline of China geography and the contributions China geographers have made to the field of China studies, focusing primarily on the period since World War II and on China geographers working in North America. Outside of the PRC and North America, other key centers arc in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. China geographers (outside of China) arc relatively few in number, but have been increasingly productive ever since the opening of China in the late 1970s and the resulting expanded opportunities for doing fieldwork and collaboration with scholars there. This paper provides synopses of leading China geographers in order to offer insights into the scope and evolution of the discipline. The field has become increasingly sophisticated and the practitioners are increasingly Chinese émigrés Publications have been heavily focused on urban geography, as well as various aspects of economic geography, environmental studies, and cultural geography. Major gaps remain in cultural, historical social population, and political geography. These gaps arc areas of greatest interest to other China scholars--thereby accounting, in part, for the low visibility of China geographers. Collaborative research, especially in these areas, greater involvement in the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) and similar organizations, and more publications in China studies journals could help to raise visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of Fred K. Schaefer in the development of the science of geography. Family background; Graduation at the Kaiser Friedrich Real Gymnasium in 1927; Postgraduate studies at the University of Berlin from 1928 to 1932; Work as a statistician; Political refuge in London when the Nazis came to power; Migration to the United States in 1938; Staff member at the State University of Iowa; Famous article, "Exceptionalism in Geography: A Methodological Examination".

Establishes a ranking of journals reflecting the opinions of the academic community of geographers on the overall quality of their publications. "Arctic and Alpine Research;" "Geographical Review;" "American Cartographer."

Focuses on the importance of enlarged international contacts for the Association of American Geographers in the U.S. Significance of first-hand reports on geographers and geography in a session in a meeting; Presentation of a paper on China; Invitation for a Russian geographer to attend the meeting.

Most cities are influenced by those cultures which they serve and represent. At the same time, the cultures are influenced by their respective cities. This mutual relationship among cities and cultures constitutes a complex of processes of functional interrelationships. The geographic approach to these processes leads to the delimitation of twelve major world-regions and several sub-regions that are characterized by the areally varying processes associating cities and cultures. A system of world-regions of this nature is proposed in the present paper. The proposed system places every city of the world into a hierarchy of functional regions, far beyond the city's own hinterland. Every city is then visualized as a molder and reflector of its cultural environment. In addition, the following implications of such a regional system on the field of urban geography are discussed. First, the urban geographer is able to contribute to regional studies by considering the influence the cities have upon a given region. Secondly, the urban geographer adds another aspect to the research on any city by purposely studying the city as the expression of the surrounding cultural realm. Thirdly, the proposed regions are a tool for systematic and comparative study on the regional variation of cities from one culture-region to another.

Focuses on practices of fieldwork in geographical studies. Importance of fieldwork in geography; Difference between theory and fieldwork; Views of geographers from 1940's and 1950's.

Abstract: The Second World War marked an epochal change in the relation of geographers to war and the military. The military had long utilised the skills of geographers, but from World War II the relation changed at least in the United States, and the military began less drawing upon existing geographical knowledge than directing a new kind that was increasingly formal, instrumental, and model driven. With the growing importance of the computer, this trend continued even more strongly during the early Cold War period, and was further propelled by the interests of a new, collective assemblage, the military–industrial complex. A cyborg entity, the military–industrial complex enfolded diverse performances, ideas, inanimate objects, people and even academic disciplines into a larger composite, one product of which was a new regime for the production of knowledge. The purposes of the paper are to examine the process by which geography within the United Stated joined this cyborg entity, and the character of the disciplinary knowledge regime that eventuated. The argument is pursued by examining three individuals key to the new disciplinary regime: Waldo Tobler a pioneer of analytical cartography and later GIS whose first job was at RAND on a project to develop an early warning system for nuclear attack; William Garrison who spearheaded the use of economic modelling in studies of transportation that he carried out with his students at the University of Washington Seattle; and Arthur Strahler, a geologist at Columbia University, who through his links to the US Office of Naval Research, funded and directed a set of students who later entered physical geography utterly transforming it to meet the dictates of the new regime. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discusses how different forms of geography are continually being legitimated as geographers redefine and negotiate their roles in diverse circumstances and alliances. Debate on how expertise is contingently produced and might be democratized; Overview of the concept of boundary work; Geography and the problems of expertise.

The article presents the author's views on cultural geography from non-geographers. One might forgive those who sometimes mistake particular research as cultural geography which is in fact conducted by non-geographers or geographers who would not ordinarily identify themselves as cultural geographers. The author insists on extending subdisciplinary debates to new audiences, using vernacular languages for publication, thus engaging other academic/linguistic communities and opening up opportunities for other potential voices to enter the dialogues.

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States regarding developments in the discipline of geography from 1957 to 1977. Early graduate days in the fall of 1956 at the Northwestern University; Stagnation of geography for decades because of lack of tools, methodological insight and development; General trend of applying statistics to geographical research; Philosophical issues in geography.

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States the nature of the discipline of geography in the 1960s particularly in the University of Chicago. Quantitative revolution; Increased stress on theory and the shift from studies of areal differentiation to studies of spatial organization; Three-part revolution composed of the quantitative, theoretical and definitional.

Presents a first-person narrative of a geographer in the United States. Advice from Charles C. Colby at the University of Chicago; Career in city planning; Return to the academe as a faculty member at the University of Chicago after 10 years; Specific emphasis on detailed microgeographic field studies in the Platt tradition, the application of geography in conservation and resource planning, and urban geography.

Climatology is reviewed and redefined in terms of relevance to geography, and a programmatic statement for future research is presented. Instead of enumerating substantive areas, physical geography is defined and ranked according to five levels of methodology and attendant philosophy. The essence of geographical climatology is the analysis and description of process-response systems of importance to mankind occurring within the planetary boundary layer, interface, and substrates. The future of a climatology useful to geographers appears to lie in the numerical modeling of such systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fieldwork has been an important component of human geography. A multi-decade analysis of articles in three major journals shows that human geographers since the mid 1970s have produced less fieldwork-based research than ever before in this century. The impetus for this unprecedented decline and other similar disciplinary trends are traced to several causes; demographic change, technological change, institutional pressures, and the resurgence of applied geography. Such fundamental change places disturbing questions before geographers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American public high school of today is without counterpart in any other country. There are about twenty thousand high schools in the U.S. of three years and four years educational span. For many years past professional geography has had slight contact with secondary education. Professional geographers by and large, hold opinions on the high school that arise from individual experience with isolated schools and from an awareness of a lack of geographic background on the part of college students. Geographers tend to deplore what they hear about the school social studies programs.

Focuses on the excursion of the Association of American Geographers in December 1940. Field excursion following the Baton Rouge, Louisiana meeting.

Delves into the Association of American Geographers in the U.S. Discussion of the organization of the association; Identification of the association's presidents; Analysis of the National Council of Geography Teachers.

The authors discuss geography and interdisciplinary research. According to the article, fragmentation is a threat in making geography effective at addressing human-earth systems. The authors believe that government initiatives, university leadership and funding agencies have to integrate and start training facilitators to reduce the risks for scholars who attempt comprehensive research. They add that researchers and geographers should unite their specialties on a common geographical front.

This article explores the question of geoscientisation and its consequences for the discipline of geography. By geoscientisation, I am referring to the ways in which geography, under conditions of top‐down managerial neoliberalisation, has been subject to a range of administrative (re)locations in colleges and faculties of science and engineering and to forced mergers with programmes and departments in the physical sciences, most notably geology, earth sciences and environmental sciences/studies. It argues for a greater understanding of the forms of epistemic erasure and other negative consequences that geoscientisation engenders, especially for critical human geographers who find themselves in such administrative arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the role of geographer Denis Cosgrove as a interdisciplinary scholar. His book "The iconography of landscape" had a significant impact on geography as well as the change in the understanding of why geography mattered. His works always ranged from the classical age to the contemporary, however, he was always drawn back to the Renaissance and the global visions of geographers. He considers writing and depiction of the world as central to people's understanding of who they are as a species.

The author emphasizes the need for geographers in New Zealand to initiate and adopt on-going, practice-oriented debates about relevance and purpose. Topics covered include initiatives launched by geographers across the country that are renewing disciplinary identities, the public engagement of geographers and the assets that geographers need to develop.

The article presents comments of the author on enhancing the curriculum of geography in high school. Geographers who would like to become actively engaged in promoting geographic education at the local level have at least three strong factors working in their favor. There is a growing national awareness of the deplorable state of geographic knowledge and the dire consequences of geographic illiteracy. They can capitalize on the momentum already generated by the enhancement of geography's position in the curriculum of many districts and states.

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Professional Geographer is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This Forum takes seriously the proposition that everything we do as geographers is potentially 'relevant' to the affairs of the wider society. Using expanded conceptions of 'pedagogy' and 'politics', the Forum suggests why and how we are always engaged in processes of shaping and steering this wider society, wittingly or not, and intentionally or not. In the minds of many of us, this shaping and steering only (or mostly) occurs through activities we assume to be self-evidently 'relevant' in intention or effect — like undertaking policy-relevant research. However, this Forum argues that it is misplaced to regard only a select group of our activities as socially consequential. Pulling together recent debates on 'participatory', 'activist' and 'public' geographies, the Forum offers arguments and examples that show readers the potential relevance of the whole range of diverse practices in which we professionally engage. The introduction and five subsequent contributions together suggest that we aim for a 'joined-up' conception of ourselves and our activities as professional geographers embedded in a wider society. As such, the Forum aims to make a distinctive contribution to ongoing discussions of how big-G academic geography relates to the plethora of small-g quotidian geographies — imagined and real — that are the stuff of our world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the AGS Bowman Expeditions on the Mexico Indigena project sponsored by the American Geographical Society which began in 2005 and describes the background, development, and methodology of the prototype led by a multinational team of Latin American geographers. Each Bowman Expedition consists of one or more geography professors and several students who research a topic of the leader's choice concerning foreign lands and peoples. To develop an integrated, multiscale database, the researchers employed a combination of methodologies. The focus was on the geography of indigenous land tenure in Mexico which has one of the largest indigenous populations in the Americas whose homelands coincide with globally important biological diversity.

Even though many geographers work on topics of great societal import, geography is largely missing from wider debates on political and social matters. This state of affairs reflects the historical marginalization of the discipline and the paucity of visible studies linking geographical scholarship to the major concerns of the day. Addressing this situation presents fundamental challenges for the community of geographers—ones that go far beyond efforts simply to promote geography as a discipline. Geographers need to grapple more frequently with larger-scale questions, foster more in-depth understanding of different parts of the world, enhance interactions between discrete parts of the discipline, and make explicit the implications of geographical work for the discussions that are shaping public and intellectual agendas. None of this means that geography should allow its agenda to be set by others or that research without explicit social or policy relevance should be abandoned. If the virtual absence of geographical perspectives in public debate goes unchallenged, however, academic geography will not be the only casualty. Efforts to comprehend the nature and changing character of the world in which we live will be fundamentally impoverished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the things where geographers have always been concerned. Increase in the number of enrollees in geography; Primary custodian of the concern for the interrelationship of human beings and the environment; Interest of geographers ion the interaction of human activities and the natural environment.

Focuses on the future of geography in the 21st century. Greatest strength of geography; Ways to overcome the problem of factionalism; Constructive alternative offered by Helen Longino that benefits all geographers.

Presents the hundred years of existence of the Association of American Geographers. Future of geography; Foundation of the organization; Theory on structural framing.

Strabo of Amasia (ca. 64 B.C.-ca. A.D. 23) wrote the first comprehensive geography of the world known to the Greeks and Romans. Interest in Strabo and his Geography, which survives nearly intact in seventeen books, has fluctuated over the centuries among both classicists and historians of geography. After some historical background on Strabo and his reception, this essay considers the contribution of two significant recent English-language treatments, as well as Strabo's Geography itself, and suggests ways in which the Strabonic model may have renewed relevance to the geographer's task of interpreting the oikoumene in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]