Talking population geographies and a ‘love letter’ to the journal

Abstract

AbstractVarious significant anniversaries for population geography as a recognisable subdiscipline fall round about now, in 2023, serving as fitting prompts for reflecting upon its character, history and possible futures. This paper offers such a reflection, taking an interview transcript between the two authors as its basis, the format here offering a directness of address not always possible in standard academic papers. Arguments are advanced about widening the focus of the subdiscipline, centring on the complexity of what is taken to constitute a ‘population’ and its ‘demographics’—asking about who and what is being counted, how and why—and considering the many ways in which matters of geography, space and place enter into the ‘biopolitics’ of life and death, nurturance and eradication, survival and abandonment, inclusion and exclusion. Concurrently, claims are made about the value of being outward‐looking, drawing on diverse philosophies, theories, literatures and insights only fleetingly represented in the subdiscipline to date. More specifically, the paper is rooted in one author's intensive use of the present journal, Population, Space and Place, for undergraduate teaching, with commentary and scholarly endnotes (cross‐referencing past contributions to the journal) demonstrating the journal generative role in the past, present and future of population geography.