Future Of Geography Research Articles

Re-imagining the futures of geographical thought and praxis

The question of geography's future has recurred throughout the history of geographical thought, and responses to it often presume a linear trajectory from the past and present to a possible future. Yet one of the major contributions that geographers have made to understanding spatio-temporality is reconceiving both space and time as plural, fluid, and co-constituted through multiple space–time trajectories simultaneously. Amidst the ongoing crises of the present, this article opens the current special issue with a call to pluralize geography's futures by diversifying the voices speaking in the name of ‘geography’ and broadening the horizon of possibilities for the futures of geographical thought and praxis. We have assembled the contributions in this collection with the aim of raising important theoretical, methodological, and empirical questions about how geography's past and present shape the conditions of possibility for its potential futures. In doing so, we seek to demonstrate how the worlding of geography's futures is fundamentally a matter of transforming its disciplinary reproduction in the here-and-now.

The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World

The Future of Geography: How Power and Politics in Space Will Change Our World

Futuring geography’s pluralist pedagogy

The future of geography has to accommodate a constraint: academia's intellectual responsibility for school geography. This constraint can be utilized creatively, as it invites definitions of geography that grasp the bigger picture and accommodate difference, while also integrating prior conceptions of the discipline. This essay imagines a future where the resulting synthesis of ‘geography as an open pluralist pedagogy’ has potential far beyond schools to carry the discipline forward.

Whose geography, whose future? Queering geography’s disciplinary reproduction

In this commentary, responding to the prompt ‘re-imagining the futures of geographical thought and praxis’, I offer some provocations to queer this question of geography's future. I begin from moments of my queer experience in and of geography, from the recurring perception that I am ‘out of time’ in the discipline: that my ‘time’ and my ‘place’ in the discipline as a trans person have yet to come. Reflecting on the origins of this perception, I find that my present belonging in the discipline is foreclosed and deferred in part by the promise of a more progressive future. I refuse this discourse of the future – and the liberal progress narrative of geography upon which it relies – and instead approach the question of geography's future as a matter of disciplinary reproduction. Drawing on ideas of queer futurity, I situate the future as a site of queer potential in the present: an ever-present capacity for difference-making located in our embodied relations and practices. Doing so encourages us to transform our discipline by queering its reproduction in the here-and-now – by making a difference – rather than waiting for a progressive and inclusive future to come upon us.

What is a river? A transnational meditation on the colonial city, abolition ecologies and the future of geography

ABSTRACT This short essay, flowing through Nairobi and Toronto, represents a transnational conversation on what the contemporary status of urban rivers can tell us about the endurance of coloniality in these two spaces. Against the hegemonic bids for their “revitalization,” we attend to these two rivers, both of which helped propel the growth of their respective urban agglomerations, as symbols of people-centered struggles for abolition ecologies. We aim to provoke the incorporation of more plural understandings and narrations within the discipline of geography, and have been struck by the similarities across different post- and settler-colonial contexts, and, as well, the limited lenses that attend to these environments in academic scholarship. Accordingly, we also highlight the possibilities that emerge in thinking jointly with urban spaces across the “North” and “South” divide, in order to demonstrate the connected and pervasive nature of empire, and the variegated practices that resist coloniality in cities.

Grappling with Geography's Existential Dilemma: The Legacy of William Torrey Harris

Geography's existence as a school or college subject has never been a given. While geographers make cases for geography's importance, acceptance of those cases rests not on impassioned rhetoric but on the social and intellectual contexts into which disciplines fit. Contexts are contested and they change. From a seemingly secure position at the beginning of the twentieth century, geography's role in American schools has been eroded and diminished by corrosive forces. Geographers need convincing answers to the existential question lest the subject disappear entirely. Geography's enviable position was in large measure the work of William Torrey Harris. Harris made a compelling existential case for geography and his vision, its implementation, its rejection, and its fate offer a model from which geographers can learn. Understanding how to respond to a social and intellectual context is crucial to geography's future.

Rising Asia and postcolonial geography

There has been much discussion recently about the future of postcolonial theory. Some suggest that it is on the wane, while others defend its continued capacity for transformative critique. This paper contributes to these debates by considering postcolonial geography's future through the prism of ‘Rising Asia’. Rising Asia presents challenges to the spatial matrices underpinning current thinking in postcolonial geography, particularly the global South/North distinction and the histories of colonialism. What is the constituency of, and the emerging collectivities around, Rising Asia? What are the tensions between past, present and future in thinking about Rising Asia? We route our response to these questions by conceptualizing postcolonial geography as a disciplinary performance that draws on its subdisciplines. The argument is developed through three conceptual hooks—field, constituency and temporality—drawn from a reading of Edward Said's works Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975) and On Late Style: Music and Literature against the Grain (2007). Ultimately we do not seek to set an agenda for postcolonial geography; instead we suggest that greater attentiveness to the indeterminacies of postcolonial theory as it passes into postcolonial geography might allow more generative responses to the questions posed by Rising Asia.

Geography and the future of big data, big data and the future of geography

As digital social data have become increasingly ubiquitous, many have turned their attention to harnessing these massive data sets in order to produce purportedly more accurate and complete understandings of social processes. This intervention addresses the relationships between geography and big data and their intertwined futures. We focus on the impacts of an age of big data on the discipline of geography and geographic thought and methodology, as well as how geography might provide a useful lens through which to understand big data as a social phenomenon in its own right. Ultimately, we see significant potential in big data, but remain skeptical of the prevalent discourses around it, as they tend to obscure, more than reveal, the complexity of social and spatial processes.

Geography and glocal scale – generational conversion/Geografia i skala glokalna – przemiana generacyjna

The proposed text presents a conceptual change in the scope of some of the key concepts in the light of the two dictionaries (Britannica and Human Geography Dictionary) and Anglo-Saxon publications about the future of geography. Then, it combines the concept of references to the ongoing interdisciplinary studies included in the structure of the University of the Second and Third Generation. Applications built this way are of two types: (1) referring to a fundamental change in the process within the human perception of the environment for generations X and Y, and (2) referring to the process of glocalization, glocal scale and premises of the University of the Third Generation (3GU).

On canonical geographies

Histories of geography are, by their very nature, selective enterprises. The apparent tendency of geographers to disparage particular periods of the discipline’s history, at the same time as exalting others, is characteristic of the way in which progress has been measured, relevance defined, and novelty identified. Yet, whilst other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences actively engage with their textual canons and founding figures, geographers have notoriously avoided doing so. In this paper, we consider why this has been the case and how different conceptions of canonicity have mattered to the ways in which the history of geography and its intellectual foundations have been narrated. In thinking through the significance of geography’s texts to the ways we imagine the discipline – its past, present, and future – we consider how processes of remembering and forgetting have been employed to serve certain intellectual and ideological agendas. We conclude by advocating a more serious engagement with geography’s textual legacy: one which might benefit not only disciplinary historiography but also disciplinary consciousness, and thus the future of geography itself.

Introduction: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade*

Understanding the Changing Planet: Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences, produced by the U.S. National Research Council's (NRC) ad hoc Committee on Strategic Directions for the Geographical Sciences in the Next Decade, is an agenda-setting document that speaks to a transdisciplinary geographical science but nonetheless challenges geographers to think about how the discipline of geography can contribute to a better understanding of our rapidly changing planet. In this Focus Section, five geographers are invited to evaluate the NRC report, followed by a response from Alexander Murphy on behalf of the NRC Committee. We hope this Focus Section initiates a new conversation among geographers about the future of geography.

The future of geography in English universities

Geography in England is one of many university subjects that will be significantly restructured – with almost immediate effect – because of powerful external drivers altering research and teaching. In this commentary I want to speculate on the likely changes ahead, and to consider how university-based geographers in England might respond to them. Given the considerable international influence that geographers in England exert within the wider subject, this commentary ought to interest those working in other countries. Notwithstanding the perils of futurology, I consider some possible scenarios in the midst of a formative moment for higher education in the UK’s largest country.

Geography and education II

The subject of Geography maintains a relatively strong position in English universities today. In contrast, the subject is experiencing declining popularity in schools. In this article I report on recent developments in the English school curriculum for 11–14-year-olds which have contributed to the current state of health of Geography. At the same time, I warn against complacency on the part of university Geographers researching and teaching worldwide by advising a certain mindfulness around school curriculum policy reform in England and its impact on the future of Geography in universities. I begin by introducing current education policy reform affecting Geography before summarizing findings from four research studies to serve as snapshots of the impact of changes on school curricula. Following a discussion of the implications of policy changes for the future health and status of school Geography, I conclude by discussing examples of Geography education research studies which demonstrate how school Geography might contribute to the ‘imagination of alternatives and concrete demonstrations of other ways of living in a society’ ( Massey, 2009 : 137).

Dictionaries, disciplines and the future of geography

This essay contributes to the discussions initiated by Setten [ Setten, 2008. Encyclopaedic vision: speculating on The Dictionary of Human Geography. Geoforum 39 (3), 1097–1104], about The Dictionary of Human Geography. Rather than focusing on the identity and relative exclusiveness of the contributors, I emphasize how successive editions of the Dictionary have helped reshape the discipline in two ways. First, the proliferation of texts, like the Dictionary, aimed squarely at a student market has gone hand in hand with a variety of changes to the political economy of publishing in geography. Second, human geography has increasingly come to be defined in terms of its concepts and theories. The paper ends by considering the implications of these changes for disciplinary unity and the future of geography given the increasing prominence of both of integrated environmental science and of GIS.

Presidential Address 2007: The Future of Geography

(2007). Presidential Address 2007: The Future of Geography. Geography: Vol. 92, No. 3, pp. 175-178.

‘Public intellectuals’, geography, its representations and its publics

Recent years have seen academic geographers engaged in a series of debates over the current state of the discipline, its ‘relevance’ to others in the social sciences, to policy-makers, and to those studying geography at school age. This short critical review builds upon an issue raised in this journal [Thrift, N., 2002. The future of geography. Geoforum 33, 291–298], namely the role of geographers as public intellectuals. After reviewing the different ways in which the notion of public intellectuals has been understood, the paper turns to geography’s representations and to its publics. The paper concludes by arguing for an appreciation of the full range of ways in which geographers call forth publics through a range of representational strategies. It suggests that regardless of how geographers perform publicly and intellectually, two things are perhaps worth remembering: it is in the interest of geographers to name what they do as geography and to name themselves as geographers.

Geography past, geography future

Geography past, geography future

The future of geography

Geography is often being criticised for not being relevant, or not having enough appeal to students. But it should be seen as one of the most important subjects taught in school, says David Lambert

The future for new geographers

Two divergent viewpoints have recently emerged on the future of geography. The first, more critical, position was that human geographers were not sufficiently engaged in policy-relevant research (Martin 2001). There was both support for, and criticism of, this viewpoint (Cloke 2002; Dorling and Shaw 2002; Martin 2002; Massey 2002). The second, more optimistic view, was that geography was becom ing more successful, and more relevant (Thrift 2002). A series of responses to these papers followed, voicing both concerns and optimism regarding the future of geography (Clifford 2002; Johnston 2002 2003; Turner 2002; Gregson 2003; Ferguson 2003). The future for new geographers has been less debated. This commentary considers the future for new geographers given recent changes in academia. The effects of research funding concentration and the use of research groups are examined. The analysis is based on anonymous responses to structured face to-face (taped and transcribed) and email inter views, with a small number of current and former heads of geography departments in England, in 2003. The opinions expressed herein do not claim in any way to be representative of the perspectives of all senior geographers. The focus of the inter views was diversity and synergy.

The Past, Present and Future of Geography in Africa: The Case of Nigeria (Speech given to the Africa Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, March 10, 2004, Philadelphia, USA)

The Past, Present and Future of Geography in Africa: The Case of Nigeria (Speech given to the Africa Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers, March 10, 2004, Philadelphia, USA)