Awakening the Dead

Who Needs the History of Geography

Bibliographic Data

ID8964231
AuthorsClive Barnett (0000-0002-1291-1421, University of Reading, corresponding author)
Year1995
Volume20
Issue4
Pages417-417
Publication date1995-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2307/622971
OpenAlexW1976640098
LanguageEN
Citations received29

value and relevance of expending energy studying the history of geography as a means of throwing light upon the state of the discipline today. Let me start with a reading of a single remark, unapologetically ripped out of its original context.I David Livingstone's The geographical tradition (1992) tells of an incorporative discipline always able to assimilate any and all challenges. Towards the end of the book, Livingstone provides an account of the emergence of quantitative spatial science and writes that he cannot provide an adequate treatment of the subsequent criticisms of this project because 'it is still much too early to attempt any rigorous contextual elucidation of these most recent moves' (ibid., 329). This comment crystallizes much of the metaphysics of context which underwrites the recent revival of interest in the history of geography. It can be read as an unwilling admission that 'contextualization' runs aground when it comes to openly and critically addressing the only context that really matters: the contemporary one. It also indicates that contextualization works only on something which is not still changing its shape on something which is dead and which can therefore be made into a clearly defined and recognizable object of knowledge. Above all, 'context' seems to be something in which you are definitely not inextricably entwined. Squeezing even further meaning from this innocent-looking statement, we can see that contextualization supports a mode of critical judgement that presupposes a position external to the inert context under examination, a safe distance from which one can decide upon the motivations, delusions and relative merits of different actors. Determined in this way, 'context' disqualifies as illegitimate any sort of radical transformative intervention in the contemporary formation of the discipline. The logic is simple: because spatial science and postpositivist geography are not yet dead, they resist contextualization. Consequently, the adoption of any critical attitude in relation to this field (that is, taking sides) must be suspended indefinitely since it would involve a necessarily partial decision. So we are left with the deceptively polite-sounding pluralist formulation by which Livingstone allows that everyone can dance their own step to their own particular tune, just as long as each and every one of them respects the basic house rule NO TOUCHING (cf. p 345). Despite being unable to take the necessary distance which would support a complete and final evaluation of Livingstone's project, I want to take this opportunity to mark my dissent from this version of the revivified historiography of geography and its model of academic responsibility, this being precisely the sort of action which, on my necessarily provisional reading anyway, this version seeks to squash. The renewal of interest in the history of geography is not exhausted by Livingstone's work. More openly 'critical' work is routinely framed by proclamations about the necessity of attending anew to origins of modem geography in order to understand the contemporary nature of the discipline. But such claims often have a rather hollow-sounding ring to them connections are more often loudly asserted than convincingly demonstrated. If it is essential to understand the past in order to understand the present, perhaps this is for more mundane reasons than this work might lead one to suppose. All academics have a vested interest in the value of

Economic geography · Environmental ethics · Geography · Sociology · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · History · Philosophy

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