Karen Morin's Gendered “Geography”

Abstract

Karen Morin's Civic Discipline is not about Charles P. Daly and not about the American Geographical Society. It is about social theory. As positivists would say, Professor Morin tests two null hypotheses: (1) gender played no role in Judge Daly's public life; and (2) archives play no role in our memory of him today. The null hypotheses are rejected, of course, and they should be. Gender does influence people and institutions. Archives do preserve tangible records. Who would argue otherwise? But Civic Discipline is, in fact, an exhaustive test of the explanatory capacity of social theory. Did social theory help or hinder this tireless researcher in her quest to understand the history of geography? Morin didn't ask that question herself, but she did give answers through her candid, personal style of reportage. Did social theory provide a useful foundation and framework for Morin's investigation? Obviously it furnished a template for viewing gender and archives, but what about other vital contexts? Social theory has plenty to say about power relationships, but Civic Discipline never explains the governance structure of the AGS. Without that essential context, Morin routinely confuses Judge Daly, President Daly, and the organization itself as if they were one and the same. Nothing becomes official AGS policy until it is voted affirmatively by the AGS Council. Yet, Morin never explains how the relationships among president, Council, staff, and members apply to her speculations. How many councilors were there? How many agreed with Daly on any given issue? Was there even a vote? Social theory has plenty to say about ageism, but Civic Discipline is persistently uninformed by it. How old was Daly when he became, in Morin's harsh words, an explorer? Readers can do the math themselves, of course, but Morin apparently didn't. Surely she wouldn't have chided Daly for not fighting in the Civil War, if she had realized he was already forty-four years old when it began. Surely, she wouldn't have flailed him twenty-eight times with that threadbare armchair if she had realized he was fifty-four when Charles Francis Hall headed for the North Pole aboard on the Polaris and sixty when Robert E. Peary first explored Greenland. Social theorists have plenty to say about manliness in the Victorian Era, but did they get it right? Can anyone living in our safe, cushy age understand the context of that dangerous time? Did that demanding code of conduct serve some useful societal purpose? Was it, perhaps, a coping mechanism for hazards that men, women, and children routinely faced? Arctic exploration was perilous, but so was all other travel on land or sea and just about everything else people did in those days. Did social theory provide a fertile, comprehensive framework for conceiving alternative hypotheses? Morin repeatedly claims that the AGS decision to drop Statistical from its name was motivated by gender. How can anyone understand that decision without the broader context of science? How can Professor Morin possibly make her case without distinguishing between descriptive and inferential statistics? In 1851, descriptive statistics, which aren't all that computational, were at the forefront of science, like taxonomic classification a century earlier or inferential a century later or GIs today. By 1871 the word statistics was superfluous, even passe, and it was dropped. Morin claims that Daly's support of Arctic exploration was driven by gender and commerce. Yet Daly himself said it was driven by science. Will readers condone such casual dismissal of the man's own words, solidly backed by his actions and sterling reputation? Daly was a jurist and a scientist--specifically, a geographer--not an explorer. He was a visionary, intellectual, promoter, fund-raiser, and civic leader who enabled others to explore. If that makes him the embodiment of Victorian masculinity, what about Queen Isabella who championed Christopher Columbus, Queen Elizabeth 1 who sponsored Francis Drake, and Jesse Benton Fremont who lobbied relentlessly to keep her husband, John C. …