Writing the history of geography: what we have learnt – and where to go next

When writing the history of geography the subject is, customarily, one's own national geography. Moreover, until the 1960s, the discipline's history was generally told by recollecting the life and works of eminent scholars. Since then, the subject has been internationalised, owing a great deal to the IGU's commission on ''History of Geographical Thought''. It has also been broadened and aligned with the emerging sociology of science and later the ''cultural turn''; so biographical narratives lost ground in favour of thematic studies. Nevertheless, most kept to their own national geography tradition as a frame of reference – whose development they now analysed in non-scientific contexts as well. Due to the expansion of its scope, writing the history of geography lost its exclusivity and became part of our everyday practice. Loosely following Jörn Rüsen (1982), we can distinguish three types of narration that have been employed in writing the history of geography: traditional, exemplary and critical narratives. In different ways, all three reacted to changes within geography. Changes were often perceived as crises and thus brought about attempts to stabilise identity claims through history. Currently we see a new research setting emerging that strives to overcome methodological nationalisms by means of comparative studies and analysing transfer processes. Reflecting upon one's own position is key to this concept. It results in a historiography that studies transnational patterns of the discipline's development. In doing so, it does not only find dense international networks of historical exchange relationships but also sees the researchers themselves as agents in the deconstruction of national stereotypes

Interview mit Ernst Plewe Gespraechspartner: A. Kilchenmann und U. Wardenga

TIB: RN 4768 (67) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Boundary spanning in social and cultural geography

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Social and Cultural Geography on 6 February 2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14649365.2015.1126628.This article situates interactions between German- and English-language social and cultural geographies since the mid-20th century within their wider intellectual, political and socioeconomic contexts. Based on case study examples, we outline main challenges of international knowledge transfer due to nationally and linguistically structured publication cultures, differing academic paradigms and varying promotion criteria. We argue that such transfer requires formal and informal platforms for academic debate, the commitment of boundary spanners and supportive peer groups. In German-language social and cultural geography, these three aspects induced a shift from a prevalent applied research tradition in the context of the modern welfare state towards a deeper engagement with Anglophone debates about poststructuralist approaches that have helped to critique the increase of neoliberal governance since the 1990s. Anglophone and especially British social and cultural geography, firmly grounded in poststructuralist and critical approaches since the 1980s, are increasingly pressurized through the neoliberal corporatization of the university to develop more applied features such as research impact and students’ employability