Abstract
Critical perspectives have become more visible in German human Drawing on an analysis of the debate around the German reader Kulturgeographie pub- lished in 2003, we suggest that this case provides new in- sights into the of geography. We briefly discuss the history of geography in Germany, lead- ing to a comparison of the conditions of geography around 1980 and in recent years. The focus is on two fac- tors in the changed role of perspectives in German geography: (1) the growing internationalisation of German geography, which opened new avenues and allowed new ap- proaches to enter the discipline; and (2) the high citation in- dices of critical journals, which leads to an enhanced rep- utation and a high significance of international geog- raphy in the German discipline. However, we draw an am- biguous conclusion: the increased role of approaches in German geography is linked to a growing neoliberalisa- tion of academia and a decline of approaches in other disciplines.
Highlights
Drawing on an analysis of the debate around the German reader “Kulturgeographie” published in 2003, we suggest that this case provides new insights into the “geography of critical 5 geography”
The focus is on two factors in the changed role of critical perspectives in German geography: (1) the growing internationalisation of German geography, which opened new avenues and allowed new approaches to enter the discipline; and (2) the high 10 citation indices of “critical” journals, which leads to an enhanced reputation and a high significance of international critical geography in the German discipline
5 We focus on two controversies that allow us to compare and contrast the state of affairs around 1980 with the situation more than a quarter century later: first, the controversy following the publication of Eugen Wirth’s book Theoretische Geographie [“Theoretical Geography”] (1979) and second, the one that followed the publication of the textbook Kulturgeographie [“Cultural Geography”], edited by Hans Gebhardt, Paul 10 Reuber and Gunther Wolkersdorfer (2003a)
Summary
At a time when Marx-inspired geography had its heyday in the US and while Marxism was still powerful in many other disciplines in West Germany, it was either invoked instrumen15 tally (Durr), dismissed on political grounds (Wirth) or ignored (as in the reactions to Petersen and Kneisle) in German geography. This is, a peculiar critical turn that is to a certain degree a top-down process that was initiated by powerful professors, and that has a strong focus on “culture” and cultural geography – as opposed to 25 “classical” concerns of radical geographers in social and economic geography.
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