Spaced Out ::

A really interesting opinion piece over at The Times Higher Education Supplement on Geography’s place in the world. Four academics and four opinions on the what must be one of the most inter-disciplinary and diverse academic subjects: geography. Carl Lee/Danny Dorling (Oxford) take the traditional (?) view of geography being integrative and relevant to everything in society and that it is in a good state of health. Nick Clifford (King’s College) takes an opposing view of the dual split between physical and human geography opening up a gulf within the subject, this being increased as non-geographers are appointed to “subject specialist” positions within the domain. Jenny Pickerill (Sheffield) notes geography being the unifier and particularly within the context of the “environment”, addressing both physical and human geographical traits. Michael Goodchild (California) finishes with an about face and focus upon geographic information science. That is, a knowledge and understanding of how you spatially represent and model data. This is my subject specialism and it’s interesting he places this centre stage - the core of geography.

I think I am more included to take Nick Clifford’s view on this one - there is a duality in the subject and the appointment of non-geographers to departmental positions points to perhaps the subject’s biggest weakness. It isn’t subject specific - rather it is pan-academic. Much of what we study as geographers is covered (at least in part) in other subjects and in the US where there are very few geography departments you see these interests in a range of other departments. So perhaps Michael Goodchild’s observation about GI science gets to the nub of where we are at. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are both equally valid, but there needs to be a handling strategy to deal with them. And these other subject areas now realise that and are expanding into this niche. It’s not so much that geography is in decline, but rather the spatial knowledge is being subsumed back into the core disciplines, in much the same way they might use statistics. There is still a need for spatial research, but the focus will be on GI science and those graduates that understand that will be at a significant advantage.