This is another response to the Guardian article.
Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to Paul Brown's article 'Lost in sacred space'
(Guardian Higher Education 11/1/00 5H), in which Mr. Brown criticises my
RGS/IBG conference paper 'Whose space is it anyway? The experiences of solo
women travellers', along with two others.
Mr. Brown cites these papers as examples of the increasingly abstract and
impractical nature of some geography research. Both the abstract of my
paper (co-authored with Heather Gibson), and the press release, demonstrate
that far from being removed from the 'real world' this paper is based on
empirical work carried out in both the UK and in North America. Given the
growing popularity of solo holidays, and the significance of travel and
tourism in the 'real lives' of women today, it is difficult to see how this
study could accurately be perceived as 'losing touch with the positive
contribution geography is supposed to be making to practical policy issues'.
Surely a better understanding of issues, such as those which impact upon
womens' experiences of travel, contributes positively - as Mr. Brown
suggests geographers should - to our knowledge of 'what shapes social and
physical environments'. Did Mr. Brown attend the sessions in which these
papers were presented or was his judgement based soley on their titles? If
the latter is so, isn't this a little like judging a book purely by its
cover?
Yours sincerely
Fiona Jordan
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