Geographica Helvetica Symposium

Les fabriques des “géographies” – Making academic geographies in Europe

19 October 2012 ; Fribourg, Switzerland

Human geography in Europe is still shaped by so-called “national” – or “language-based” traditions, such as Francophone or “deutschsprachige” geography. Even within Anglo-American geography, we can detect nuances between British and US geographies. These various traditions have emerged from very specific national genealogies of the discipline, which has been shaped by specific philosophical thought traditions, traditions of practicing social sciences and academic writing. These genealogies shape present-day practices of young and established scholars in these different academic spaces. In our view, this is not a problem, but a source of richness. While there is a drive towards internationalization, which largely means Anglo-Americanization, this richness of thought traditions should be saved rather than buried.

Switzerland as a country with at least three language traditions (German, French, Italian) finds this co-existence of different thought traditions in its own human geography landscape (in the books and journals available in its university libraries for instance). Until recently, we found two kinds of human geographies, one inspired by the French tradition in Francophone Switzerland and another by the German tradition in the German speaking part of the country. In addition, a series of Swiss geographers have had during the past thirty years strong links with Italian geography.  The common reference to Anglophone geographers has been superimposed on this intellectual landscape for two decades now.  This has generated a very specific Swiss mixture of human geography, including the preservation of a quantitative tradition and an empirical pragmatism, which has tended to be weakened in Anglo-American human geography.

This workshop takes our own experiences of cross-fertilization between German and French speaking geographers in Switzerland as a starting point to discuss the present-day practices of academic research and writing in different European traditions. We look for papers which discuss and contextualize these practices in different countries, based on own experiences, social science studies or a historical perspective.  We are also interested in comparative discussions of the following questions:

·         What are in different traditions the important recent turning points (say the return to ‘material geographies’ in Anglophone geography)? Are they the same? Do they have the same origin?

·         Can we identify different trajectories of theoretical and methodological cosmopolitanization in different countries? Does it still make sense to talk about national traditions?

·         How are the power relations related to cross-fertilization debated in different national contexts?

Contact and registration

There are no conference fees. In case, you are interested to participate, please contact Hanna Britt at [log in to unmask] for registration. For questions regarding logistics (e.g. accommodation), please contact Marie Descloux at [log in to unmask]. For questions regarding the content of the symposium, please write to Benedikt Korf ([log in to unmask]), Francisco Klauser ([log in to unmask]) or Ola Söderström ([log in to unmask]).

Provisional programme (Fribourg, 19 October 2012)

Speakers and abstracts

(Im)mobile geographies

Claudio Minca, Wageningen University, NL

The growing tendency to evaluate - sometimes even ‘measure’ - the ‘productivity’ of academics is seriously affecting what we consider to be relevant geographical output. This tendency is also significantly reshaping the actual geographies of the disciplinary debate, by introducing important questions about the nature of interdisciplinary research, and especially about the putative existence of many, different, national schools, but only one mainstream international literature. However, the related discussion on the Anglo-American hegemony in geography seems to be outdated by the pressure to identify adequate ways of ‘ranking’ good research and respond to the increasing internationalization of academic work. This paper will discuss how three national ‘geographies’ are reacting to these important trends: in the UK, in the Netherlands and in Italy. The neo-liberal agenda of many universities is producing in fact different results in these different contexts; in some cases originating perverse effects on the quality of geographical work; in others, creating the opportunity for innovative agendas and for more transparent ways of managing academic careers.

Translating/traditions in geography

Christian Abrahamsson, Lund University, Sweden

In this talk, I want to consider how traditions are translated and travel through different contexts. I will focus on the recent vitalist turn within Anglophone geography. There is a long tradition of vitalism in geographical scholarship beginning with the introduction of Darwinian and Haeckelian ideas into German geography during the late 19th century. Through a set of examples I want to demonstrate how the idea of vitalism has travelled through a series of different linguistic, ideological and scientific contexts. I will focus particularly on the works of Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellén, Edgar Kant, Torsten Hägerstrand and Nigel Thrift. Of interest here are the ways that each translation in this series of contexts simultaneously retain and cede aspects of the previous contexts. I will end with a discussion on the inherent boundedness or situatedness of translations.

Networks, nodes and ‘making sense’ in Human Geography: the 1960s revisited

Ulf Strohmayer, Galway University, IRL

In search of trans-national scholarship and languages within Human Geography, the so-called ‘Quantitative Revolution’ of the 1960s arguably holds considerable pride of place. More than previous innovations within Geography, which were largely bounded within (and by) national intellectual traditions, the innovative practices associated with the 1960s arguably hold a key to understanding how intellectual traditions become shared traditions and as such enrich both national and international research practices. The present paper uses insights gleaned from the 1960s and contrasts them with subsequent debates in human geography — the ‘cultural turn’, ‘postmodernism’ and ‘non-representational’ geographies — in an attempt better to understand pronounced (if historically uneven) interweavings of national traditions that shapes discourses and practices in human geography across the globe. Part of this analysis will focus on the importance of structures and careers in the making of such traditions, thereby contextualising the widely shared notion of an ‘Anglo-Saxon hegemony’ currently prevailing in human geographical theoretically informed practices.

French-speaking geography between linguistic culturalism, nationalism and cosmopolitanism

Bernard Debarbieux, University of Geneva, CH

Ulrich Beck’s theory of cosmopolitanism might be of some help for understanding what took place in the French (-speaking) geography, especially since the 1960’s. Though aiming at producing knowledge at the global scale, the Ecole Française de Géographie can be seen as a very national and nationalist mode of structuration of this academic field. Then this school deeply influenced the French-speaking world, with the migration of many geographers trained in this context, taking advantage of a common language and the prestige of this school. However new paradigms (quantitative, humanistic, cultural, etc.) developed by Anglophone geographers from the 1960’s have also been mainly imported in the French-speaking world by geographers located elsewhere than France.

When geographers located in France engaged in this renewal of geography, mainly from the mid-1970’s, some kind of re-nationalization took place through national/academic debates and institutions, and the making of some quite specific scientific agenda. The will to build and cultivate some kind of “French exceptionalism” in geography became obvious in the 1980’s along with a will to resist the spread of English as an academic lingua franca, and by a strong sense of reflexivity, the Anglophone world being under close scrutiny.

During the last two decades, French geographers have been engaging into many global networks, opening themselves to a wider diversity of theories and paradigms. However it is not clear yet if French geography is getting more cosmopolitan per se, or just more open to diversity with a still strong expectancy in national structuration.

Transnational Patterns in Academic Geography in Europe: On the origin and impact of a 20th Century Geographers’ Habitus

Ute Wardenga, Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography, D

Geography in the 19th century is widely thought to have been shaped by national traditions and modes of knowledge generation. Recent research in the comparative history of geography reveals, however, a histoire croisée of international geography that – with all due difference – had a great many aspects in common, especially research methods. Comparing German, French and North American geography, this paper will argue for an internationally shared habitus of geographers that developed not later than the turn of the twentieth century. Practices of map construction and usage were some of its central aspects that, in turn, stimulated common observation schemes of the physical world and influenced the significance of field studies for the geographer’s career.