I agree with Fraser and Christopher. Any critical discussion that
gets going here usually lasts for, or generates, about 4 or 5
mressages then peters out. Given that academia is getting busier,
more competitive, more stressed - in fact, more "Mac-donaldised"
as a recent book of that name pointed out, i.e. more subsumed
into the general world and princplies of late stage capitalism, there
are perhaps three reasons for this.
1) People are just too busy to carry on discussions on this forum.
Anecdotally, i beleive a lot of messages are deleted by receivers,
unread, let alone assessed and replied to.
2) People don't want to give away ideas they plan to use in
publications, or....
3) They can't be bothered with/haven't the time to..read items
outside their iomediate areas of interest. 2) and 3) together are very
understandable from an individual point of view but will surely
encourage the fragmentation of a subject one of whose assets is
surely that it dioes apply to so many areas of human interest and
activity. Yes I know it's an old joke that geographers can, say, link
unemployment in Newcastle on Tyne with climate change in Nepal,
but also such cross-links are the very seed bed of new ideas. And
proper discussions on crit geog, ongoing, are one way to water that
seed bed.
Hillary Shaw, P/G Geography, University of Leeds
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