Reclaiming value from academic labor: commentary by the Editors of Human Geography

There have long been discussions about the need for an alternative publishing model for academic research. This has been made clear by the September 2017 scandal involving Third World Quarterly. The editor’s deeply problematic decision to publish an essay arguing in favor of colonialism was likely meant as click-bate to drive clicks and citations. But we should not lose sight of the fact that this latest scandal is only one recent manifestation of a long-simmering problem that has periodically commanded significant attention in the academic literature, blogs, email lists, conference sessions, and the popular press. As a direct result, over the last decade or more, new journals have been created that specifically endeavor to offer routes around corporate/capitalist academic publishing, and several existing journals have removed themselves from this profit-driven ecosystem. In this commentary, the editorial team of the journal Human Geography weighs in on what we see as the nature of the problem, what we are doing in response, what our successes have been, and what challenges remain

Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing

This handbook provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive overview of global land and resource grabbing. Global land and resource grabbing has become an increasingly prominent topic in academic circles, among development practitioners, human rights advocates and in policy arenas. Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing sustains this intellectual momentum by advancing methodological, theoretical and empirical insights. It presents and discusses resource grabbing research in a holistic manner by addressing how the rush for land and other natural resources, including water, forests and minerals, is intertwined with agriculture, mining, tourism, energy, biodiversity conservation, climate change, carbon markets and conflict. The handbook is truly global and interdisciplinary, with case studies from the Global South and Global North, and chapter contributions from practitioners, activists and academics, with emerging and Indigenous authors featuring strongly across the chapters. The handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in land and resource grabbing, agrarian studies, development studies, critical human geography, global studies and natural resource governance

Historical Geographies of, and for, the Present

While many human geographers maintain a long-standing interest in historical analysis, we believe that there is a need to more explicitly examine the theories, methods, and, ultimately, the stakes of such work. For this forum, we invited five geographers to reflect on their own approach to historical analysis and its implications for scholarly and political debates in the present. These commentaries suggest that, at its best, historical analysis is not just about the past; it is also crucial for critical human geographers’ efforts to understand, and intervene in, the present. Thus, we argue for a rejuvenation and extension of approaches to historical-geographical scholarship which are inspired by direct engagement with problems in the present and intend to do something about them