Reconciling geographies:
unified fields or chaotic fragments?
Richard Howitt
School of Earth Sciences, Macquarie University, NSW, 2109
paper presented to the Institute of Australian Geographers 1998 Postgraduate Student Forum, Macquarie University, February 1998
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The walls have been built between us, and too many of us devote our time to despising the intellectual validity of what our colleagues are concerned with (Stoddart 1987: 327)
Edges
Drawing on the work of ecologists, Permaculture theorists (eg Kennedy 1991) identify edges as zones in which a number of different ecosystems overlap. Such edges are often areas of extraordinary productivity, diversity and complexity. They create unique ecological niches, and they juxtapose fragility and stability in relationships of exceptional beauty and wonder. In this way of seeing things, edges are relational.
In contrast, the popular imagination is easily captured by a notion that edges categorically separate things that are distinct and different. The land and the sea are irrevocably different to each other; the social and the biophysical sciences are methodologically irreconcilable; catchment boundaries distinguish 'natural' areas; class boundaries, national boundaries and all sorts of other lines on maps, in imaginations and between places characterise the edges between things that are different.
In considering links between Human and Physical Geography, one confronts the question of just what sort of edge this is. Is the academic discipline of Geography, as for example Stoddart argues, 'an integral branch of knowledge' and 'a subject of great antiquity' (1987: 327)? Is there an essential 'unity of geography' (Freeman 1986: 441) which derives from a set of common concerns that has been submerged by 'systematic fragmentation' (Johnston 1986: 450)? Is it possible to make the edge between Physical and Human Geography a rich, relational intellectual space in a world of competitive research grants, rationalist restructuring of universities, and increasing demands for production of output (which rarely includes ideas and insights). Or are we destined to witness the demise of a discipline with 'neither existence nor future' (Eliot-Hurst 1985: 59)?
I have spent life as a geographer working in and around edges of various sorts. I have been interested empirically, theoretically and politically in processes of marginalisation (Howitt 1993). I have worked as a researcher and activist at the volatile edge between indigenous Australia and the mining industry, and around the edges of 'settled' Australia. In some ways, I have felt my interest in indigenous rights placed me in many people's eyes at a marginal edge of academic geography (although I've felt that less often since moving to Macquarie the month before the Mabo decision was announced). My teaching in Macquarie's undergraduate Resource and Environmental Management program straddles the edge between Physical and Human Geography.
In many of my collegial relationships, I have found myself interested in the intellectual space that comes into being around the edges of our work. Metaphorically, these edges create unique intellectual niches. They demand communication, dialogue, clarity, explanation. They open opportunities for genuinely new insights. They also hold a host of opportunities for misunderstanding, cynicism, intolerance, chaos and doubt. They juxtapose fragility and stability in personal and intellectual relationships that I find are a constant source of wonder.
I find it particularly interesting that these edges occur across and beyond
the discipline of geography. I am sure that this holds true for most of us.
Things fall apart
So, just what sort of 'link' exists between Physical and Human Geography. Despite the appeal of genealogies that take our disciplinary traditions back to Strabo, Erastothenes and Ptolemy, there is no epistemological unity underpinning the work of all geographers. And despite the superficial appeal to people like myself of arguments that 'the environment' is the core business of the discipline and 'more geographers should active in the big, fundamental issues in which the unity of geography is obvious' (Douglas 1986: 459), rivers, atmosphere, deserts, cities, cultures, etc etc are all co-equally core business.
The academic division of labour that produced the discipline of Geography reflects the active implication of geographical knowledge (and 'exploration') in European powers' imperial efforts following the so-called Enlightenment. The intellectual trajectory that leads back to Strabo, Erastothenes and Ptolemy gets there via the imperial geographical societies, the 'royal societies' and rivers of fire, tears and blood that accompanied the geographical expansion of European civilisation across the globe. Sue Jackson and I have argued elsewhere that we need to understand and transcend the darker as well as the stronger parts of this intellectual inheritance (Howitt and Jackson forthcoming).
This alone, however, will not bridge the widening gap(s) within our discipline. Johnston (1986) identifies a number of lines of conceptual fragmentation within geography (and within Human and Physical Geography). He opens up the risk of simply dissolving marriages of convenience and relocating sub-disciplinary specialists into cognate disciplinary departments - producing an academic division of labour in which the current discipline of geography has ceased to exist, matter or be considered an 'integral branch of knowledge'.
Although many of us completed (and continue to complete) undergraduate studies with double majors in Physical and Human Geography, few of us maintain anything like a whole-of-discipline perspective in our active research work. In my own experience, I have seen Geography Departments recruit non-geographers such as forest economists, theoretical physicists, anthropologists and computer scientists to teach 'geography'. It seems one does not need an intellectual background in the discipline to nurture the next generations. We've also witnessed 'other' disciplines colonise areas and issues the discipline long considered its 'core business' - the planetary science of displaced and privatising NASA scientists; cultural studies' orientation to spatial domains in cultural practices; and so on. And most of us have witnessed intolerance, misunderstanding, disbelief and resentment develop between the arms of a discipline whose unity Douglas feels is so obvious (1986).
Incomprehensible postmodernist jargon in Human Geography is quoted out of context and without intellectual engagement by Physical Geographers in staff rooms. Detailed scientific descriptions and analyses - equally dense and jargon-ridden - are simultaneously ridiculed by Human Geographers. In less scholarly domains, geographers slog it out over funds, students, teaching spaces, resources, and research support. Competition over inputs, outputs, performance and recognition is rampant, and explicitly nurtured by rationalist management. This is hardly a picture of obvious unity.
So what is possible? Given the rapid reduction of career opportunities in
academia for young graduate geographers, I guess one of the things I would
advocate is that there is a very practical agenda of security, survival and
opportunity to be pursued. This is not to say that we need to leave aside
criticism of poor writing, sloppy thinking, or naive, selfish, arrogant and
ignorant behaviour in our workplaces. But perhaps it does mean that we need
to consider the common ground we might make together, and the relevance of
metaphors of reconciliation and coexistence that I will draw from my work
with indigenous Australians.
Holism as common ground
The academic division of labour tends to fragment biophysical, socio-cultural and political-economic research into separate specialisms (Figure 1). In my experience, one of the reasons that geography is poorly understood by other academics, and poorly supported within conventional academic management paradigms is because as a group we cover this diversity of intellectual endeavour. As a group, we seek to get our students to understand this breadth of experience. In some programs such as the one I teach in, we expect students to match depth in some sub-disciplinary areas with breadth across the other domains of the discipline.
Many of us have concluded that a holistic understanding of these domains, integrating our endeavours to understand and contribute to them, is a more likely path to achieving better outcomes in areas that I identify as fundamentally important - ecological sustainability; social justice; economic equity; and cultural diversity (Figure 2).
This leads me to see my colleagues and students working other parts of the discipline not in terms of needing to do things how I do them, or how I say they should do them, but to see them as both an important audience for my work, and as important sources of information, insights and understanding to strengthen my own endeavours.
In this there is no fancy philosophical call for unity, although I appreciate the need for philosophical sophistication and literacy. There is no appeal to long traditions stretching back to Ancient Greece, although I appreciate and recognise the discipline's genealogy. Nor is there exclusion of information, insights and understandings from non-geographers (including the traditional ecological knowledge of non-technical experts as well as academic colleagues). Rather, I am advocating here an exploration, celebration, nurturing and appreciation of the edges that we create within our own discipline as part of what is good about it as a place to work. Yet we risk creating those edges as categorically exclusive rather than relationally open.
Geographies, Geography and Reconciliation
This leads me to reflect on the work of reconciliation and coexistence that dominates much of my own professional life (eg Howitt forthcoming), and to consider the need for reconciliation and coexistence to be pursued within our departments and collegial relations.
In the indigenous rights struggle, recognition and respect are central expectations that indigenous Australians have of the wider community. Without these, any efforts to pursue reconciliation are either patronising or manipulative. In any case, they are self-serving rather than inclusive and expansive. Recognising disciplinary colleagues as part of our intellectual audience, respecting the work done (where it warrants respect) and seeking to engage in constructive and expansive dialogue about implications, meanings and parallels (eg work on common concepts such as geographical scale) is part of a continuing process of maintaining a valuable intellectual and scholarly tradition which seeks to understand and respond to the real-world, small-g geographies , and contributing to a wider reconciliation of that which bad science, bad social science and bad academic management would seek to tear apart.
In the Wik debate, we have witnessed the emergence of a major new metaphor
of social experience in Australia - coexistence. This powerful image of
indigenous and settler Australians coexisting in the same space and time
has parallels to our own situation within Geography. Like the nation, those
of us handling the discipline's heritage in this period have an awesome
responsibility and a range of exciting opportunities - none of which can
possibly benefit from failing to recognise, nurture and appreciate the links
that bring us together when it is worthwhile, while still allowing rigorous
specialistion where it is needed.
References
Douglas,Ian (1986): The unity of geography is obvious .... Trans. Inst. Geogr. N.S. 11, 459-463.
Eliot-Hurst,ME (1985): Geography has neither existence nor future, in Johnston,RJ (ed) The Future of Geography, Methuen, London: 59-91.
Howitt,Richard (Ed.) (1993): Marginalisation in Theory and Practice. (ERRRU Working Papers, 12.) Economic and Regional Restructuring Research Unit, Departments of Economics and Geography, University of Sydney, Sydney.
Howitt,Richard (forthcoming): Recognition, respect and reconciliation, Australian Aboriginal Studies (in press). (go to this paper)
Howitt,Richard and Jackson,Sue (forthcoming): Some things do change, Australian Geographer (forthcoming). (go to this paper)
Johnston,RJ (1986): Four fixations and the quest for unity in geography. Trans. Inst. Geogr. N.S. 11, 449-453.
Kennedy,Declan (1991): Permaculture and the sustainable city. Ekistics 348(May/June), 210-215.
Stoddart,DR (1987): To claim the high ground: geography for the end of the century. Trans. Inst. Geogr. N.S. 12, 327-336.
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