Very interesting. However Noel's position seems to be that most of us
enjoy ourselves much more doing our writing and so-on in the academic
environment, and attempting to be 'active' is pretty difficult given
work pressures and so-on.
Since he ignores
a) people who HAVE to be activists in order to maintain their academic
jobs
b) hundreds of geographers who base their academic work UPON activist
movements (or - like my sister - evaluate policy, organizations and
programs of various hues), and in many cases feed back knowledge or
participate fully in them
c) work ongoing in developing countries, particularly the new breed of
development program or project with strong analytical components with
academics consulted and involved fully in them
d) the critical geographers working in policy institutes (or anywhere
else that is not at least a middle-ranking university with time
available for research and writing), whos JOB it is to initiate social
and institutional change in society at large
e) geography teachers not in the university sector
f) any reference to gender struggles, feminist debates, the necessity of
gender based activism in and out of the academy
g) policy focused geographer-scholars from Bob Colenutt to Gilbert
White
h) British geography departments with a specific practical mandate and
philosophy (ie - mostly the post-1992's)
i) many of my friends, who have pursued precisely the relevance-driven
and activist-driven agenda, as well as publishing hansomely
j) writing on 'interlocutors' in french and english, suggesting
academics can have that role (see Postgrad Fieldwork in Developing Areas
- DARG, IBG, 1997 ed. E Robson, K Willis)
k) lots of other stuff ...applied geography, applied anthropology,
social policy
l) the work of several people on this list
I am still looking forward to more debate.
S
Dr Simon Batterbury
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography and Regional Development
The University of Arizona
409 Harvill Building, Box #2
Tucson, AZ 85721-0076, USA
Phone: (520) 626-8054
Fax: (520) 621-2889
http://geog.arizona.edu/~web/faculty.html
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 19:55:44 +0100
From: Chris Russell-Jones
<[log in to unmask]>
Subject: defining the activist
In relation to Castree's recent 'Border Country' I thought that this
article below raised some interesting questions about in what ways
we can 'define' an activist. Noel covered some of the issues
between being an academic and being an activist, and the tensions
that emerged from this; this article questions what an activist
is.<underl=
ine><color><param>0000,8000,0000</param>
|