Journal of Historical Geography最新文献

Geographers have regularly employed biography as a means to an end, that is, as a useful method for the investigation of some other phenomenon. But writing, reading, and collecting biographical memoirs has an inherent and not just an instrumental value. Linked to memory, biography becomes a way of recalling lives, including those not personally known to the reader, and remembering how one's own life and work is connected to those of predecessors and, by implication, those of successors. This article examines how biography can be used to foster an inclusive and diverse picture of the discipline which more fully appreciates the difficulties many geographers have overcome to pursue their geographical work, and the unnamed collaborators – colleagues, friends, and family – who supported them in their work. Portraiture is introduced as a complement to written memoir, as a subject which would bear further scrutiny.

This short reflection on forty years of the UK's History and Philosophy of Geography group reflects on the poetics of geographical knowledge. Whilst histories of geography have diverged from philosophies of geography over recent years, the intervention proposes that a useful avenue of enquiry for future work is to develop fuller historical and philosophical accounts of the forms and poetics of geographical writing. This includes: philosophical reflection on form and space; historical studies of the varying forms, styles, and poetics of geographical knowledge; and active experiments with formal aspects of writing. Through a short reflection on the ethics of Jean-Marie Guyau (a sociologist whose naturalist and vitalist ethics had an important influence on anarchist geographers) the paper proposes an approach to the authority of geographical texts that is animated by an anomic ethos that is: genetic; affirmative; and generous.

In the wake of the elision of the 35th and 40th anniversaries of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) (RGS-IBG) due to a coronavirus pandemic, the paper takes advantage of the anniversal twists and turns to deconstruct what is going to come without getting any closer and without moving any further away, and to hail the cancerous growth that is driving the revolution of geographical thought. With candles at the ready, my birthday wish is for geographical thought to perish, save the cancer (and the virus).

This article offers a critical appraisal of institutionalised knowledge production and exchange on the history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom. We examine broad epistemic trends over 41 years (1981–2021) through an analysis of annual conference sessions and special events convened by the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG). We show how organisational, sociocultural, and epistemic changes were coproduced, as expressed by three significant findings. Organisationally, the group emerged through shared philosophical interests of two early career geographers at Queen's University of Belfast in 1981 and received new impetus through its strategic plan 1995–1997, which inspired long-term research collaborations. Socioculturally, the group's activities contributed to national traditions of geographical thought and praxis in masculinist academic environments, with instances of internationalisation, increasing feminisation, and organisational cooperation. Epistemically, the group's events in the 1980s shaped contextualist, constructivist, and critical approaches, and coproduced new cultural geography, but the emphasis shifted from historically sensitive biographical, institutional, and geopolitical studies of geographical knowledges, via critical, postcolonial, and feminist geographies of knowledge-making practices in the 1990s, to more-than-human and more-than-representational geographies in the early twenty-first century.

In this short commentary, I reflect on my experience of writing three progress reports on the history and philosophy of geography for Progress in Human Geography. In so doing, I consider the challenges of identifying commonalities and narrating progress in a sub-disciplinary specialism that is often characterised by diversity in its empirical and epistemological foci. I go on to propose three possible priorities for future work in the history of geography that, sitting alongside a wider cosmopolitan and decolonial agenda, are illustrative of the sorts of empirical and conceptual progress that might render future historiography more progressive and inclusive.

This article traces the genealogy of the idea of sustainable development in Latin America. It links perspectives from historical political ecology and the history of ideas to trace authors, conferences and major works that produced and disseminated socio-ecological knowledge relating to sustainable development in the region. Challenging the pretensions of ‘universality’ of this concept, the article presents the formulations of alternative development created by Latin American theorists that were influenced by the socio-political and socio-economic ideas prevalent in the region prior to the Brundtland report, and which established strong ties to issues of justice and rights. The North-South flow of ideas is palpable, however, there was also a South-North flow that enriched and challenged ideas such as the limits to growth through the Latin American World Model and the concept of ‘ecodevelopment’. This allowed for a Latin American construction of sustainable development that was different from other regions, and which eventually led to new formulations such as post-development, buen vivir and neo-extractivism. The article concludes that there were key moments, themes and contexts that led to a particular emphasis on socio-ecological justice that contrasts with ecological modernisation and environmental responsibility conceptual formulations that emerged more strongly in other regions.

This paper examines the role of law, particularly law related to private property, in the historical geography of class struggle. At the center of the analysis is the ‘access rule’, written by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in 1975 and struck down by the United States Supreme Court in 2021. Responding to the specific geography of California agribusiness labor relations and the long history of violent repression of workers' organizing rights, the rule allowed union organizers onto growers' property under highly constrained conditions to speak with workers about the merits of unionization. The paper traces the ‘pre-history’ of the rule – the decades of law officers and growers' efforts to deny organizers access to California's rural working class – the working of the rule during its more than forty-five years of existence, and its demise at the hands of the current, conservative supreme court. In doing so, it shows how law not only shapes class composition in particular landscapes but is an essential tool, strategically deployed, by all sides in class struggles.

The article presents the rationale behind the construction of the Oder-Vistula-Dniester Canal, the implementation phase of the project, the environmental impact and the remaining contemporary vestiges of the investment. The spatial turn approach has been used to study the state of inland navigation and the political and economic factors linked to it, both at the level of the Empire as a whole and at the level of Galicia and the micro-regions. The enactment of the Waterways Act 1901 was the result of political dealings, with economic considerations being of secondary importance. For the Empire, the canal was a means of appeasing national sentiment, while the regulation of the rivers flowing into the canal was seen by the local community as a means of preventing flooding. The inhabitants of the areas along the canal's route were opposed to the canal because it restricted their access to land. Despite attempts to continue the project after the collapse of the Empire, the project was eventually abandoned, leaving the canal and its associated investments as an infrastructural legacy of the Habsburg Empire. The canal had its greatest impact on the Carpathian rivers, the regulation of which irrevocably destroyed the natural bottoms of the valleys.

This paper critiques Mandalay city's gridded urban development within historical urban geography, providing a non-Western perspective in an increasingly global field that transcends the Eurocentric paradigm of urban form. The study combines historical and spatial analysis, literature review, and interviews to understand how Mandalay's urban grid embodies the shifting political landscapes. King Mindon's original grid, drawn from Burmese astrology and Buddhism respectively to legitimize his ruling power and reinforce social class division. British rule shifted the grid towards administrative and economic exploitation. Under socialism, adaptations to Mandalay's grid and land redistribution efforts, while seemingly equitable, primarily benefited the elite rather than marginalized squatters. Subsequently, the State Law and Order Restoration Council manipulated the grid for real estate purposes, reflecting monarchical practices. Mandalay's grid serves as a physical expression of power and governance, symbolizing the city's evolving political landscape from Burmese kingship to contemporary Myanmar under a top-down governance system. This research enriches historical geography by revealing the interplay between political history, symbolism, and urban geographic development.

The World's Edge — The Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity showcases, in exhibition and book form, the work of Thomas Joshua Cooper (b. 1946) and his project to chart photographically the edges and extremities of the Atlantic Basin. Cooper's large black-and-white prints, often abstract and tied tenuously to a specific location by words, are visually arresting and intensely geographical. This essay points to Cooper's work as an imaginative geography that inspires a deep rethinking about how we encounter land, sea, and sky; map space; contemplate emptiness; label extremity; and assign meaning to place.