Thinking that Neil Smith's comment on building international allegiances
sounds very exciting, I found myself asking the question how many
non-Anglo-American contributions I have come across on these pages since I
joined the forum. Not very many I believe, and this is particularly
striking with regard to "German-language" geographers. This might be
because a lack of information about the CGF or because of language
barriers, but I strongly feel that both the Anglo-American and German
communities would profit from exchange (I don't know enough about Austrian
and Swiss, or other geographies, so I limit myself to my 'national'
environment). Given that the exchange of ideas follows an extremely uneven
and one-sided route (that is German geographers enthusiastically take up
recent developments in and ideas from British and American geography,
while students from the latter camp often appear to have a somewhat dated
view, for instance, of what is called Rhineland capitalism), it would be
important to try to at least redress this imbalance.
Having spent the last two years in the UK academic environment, I might of
course lack information as to whether there have been steps to establish a
similar forum in Germany and whether there have been attempts to link up
with the CGF. So could I ask anybody on the list (whether German or not)
to comment on this? As I will take up an academic job in Germany in
January, and expect to spend much of the next two years moving between the
UK and Germany, I would be extremely interested in contributing to
overcoming "national, pre-internet dinosaurs as a form of organisation".
Christian Berndt
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|