Victor Winston

Victor Winston, founder of Bellwether Publishing, which published leading geography journals for over 50 years, passed away on November 23, 2015, aged 90.

Victor Henry Winston was born in Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) on February 22, 1925. He belonged to a vibrant Jewish community which was subsequently destroyed in the Holocaust. A week before the Germans marched into Vilna in June 1941 the Russians arrested the Winston family for Zionist activities. 16-year-old Victor was sent to Siberia where he spent four years in jails and concentration camps.

Having survived his incarceration and the war, Winston left in 1946 for the United States, where he earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree at Columbia University in New York.

During the Korean War he was drafted into the US army and assigned to the Central Intelligence Agency. He was then transferred to the Mid European Center of Radio Free Europe, where he became its coordinator of research and later acting head.

In the 1950s, Winston taught at the Army War College before founding his own publishing house, Bellwether Publishing in 1959, headquartered in Columbia, Maryland. Concurrent with his leadership of Bellwether, Winston also served as Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at George Mason University, Virginia. In the 1990s he moved to Palm Beach, Florida, from where he maintained a branch office of Bellwether. In later years he also served as a Visiting Professor of International Affairs at Marshall University, West Virginia.

Much of Winston’s academic scholarship drew on his own heritage and experiences including the city of Vilnius during the war years and the deportation of Soviet Jews. He also wrote about economic and political developments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, including the economic geography of countries such as Poland, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, and reflections on the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s. As well as journal articles, he co-edited a book with Ed A. Hewett titled Milestones in Glasnost’ and Perestroyka, with one volume on ‘Politics and People’ and another on ‘The Economy’ (The Brookings Institution, 1991).

Bellwether Publishing started small but later branched out to New York and London, and the publication of some 45 scholarly journals. Winston later sold the major portion of his business but continued with a similar, smaller firm focused on five highly-respected geography journals: Eurasian Geography and Economics, Post-Soviet Affairs, Urban Geography, Physical Geography, and GIScience & Remote Sensing.

All of these journals became – and remain – important and prestigious outlets for different parts of geography, and have shaped the intellectual trajectory of the discipline over several decades.

Two of the titles grew from Winston’s own interests. Soviet Geography: Review and Translation, which he founded in 1960, was a groundbreaking journal whose aim was “to make available in English reports of current Soviet research in geography.” It subsequently was renamed Post-Soviet Geography (1992-1995), then Post-Soviet Geography and Economics (1996-2002), until taking its current title of Eurasian Geography and Economics in 2002 with a wider remit of publishing original papers on geographic and economic issues across Russia, China, India, the European Union, and other regions within the Eurasian realm. It has achieved the status of being one of the highest ranked journals in Area Studies.

In 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, Bellwether started to publish Soviet Economy. It aimed to present research results and analytical observations on the profound transition taking place in the Soviet Union. By 1987, when the nexus between economics and politics became the focus of some very interesting research, the journal started to publish seminal papers in political science and contemporary history. It was renamed Post-Soviet Affairs in 1992 and continued to offer important research and analysis on the reform process. Today it still publishes contemporary papers on the state of the economy and society in the republics of the former Soviet Union.

In 1980 Winston founded two new journals: Urban Geography and Physical Geography. For the last 35 years, Urban Geography has published original papers on problem-oriented research by geographers and other social scientists on urban policy; race, poverty, and ethnicity in the city; international differences in urban form and function; historic preservation; the urban housing market; and provision of services and urban economic activity. Meanwhile Physical Geography has been an important central place for publishing research on topics of the sub-discipline including geomorphology, climatology, soil science, and biogeography, as well as research methods. In recent years it has embraced the work of physical geographers at the human-environment interface and also publishes cross-cutting research in physical geography.

The fifth of Winston’s journals was Mapping Sciences and Remote Sensing, published from 1964. It was renamed GIScience & Remote Sensing in 2004 and now publishes basic and applied research on cartography, geographic information systems, remote sensing of the environment (including digital image processing), geocomputation, spatial data mining, spatial statistics, and geographic environmental modeling.

Winston’s hope was that through sharing geographic research he would foster collaborations across international and topical borders. He came to know the literature of each sub-discipline well, including the contributors, editors, and editorial boards. He was a hands-on manager, working tirelessly behind the scenes to maintain the quality and viability of each of his titles. He devoted substantial time and resources to ensuring that each journal flourished, overseeing processing of papers, printing, and distribution.

Over more than 30 years, the five journals combined published more than 3,000 refereed geography papers. At a time when the publishing industry was becoming increasingly dominated by large, impersonal corporations with agendas occasionally at odds from that of academia, Bellwether retained an important, more personalized, and specialized niche outlet. For his efforts, Winston earned the widespread respect and indebtedness of geographers the world over.

In 2013, Routledge/Taylor & Francis took on the five journals. Winston was greatly encouraged by this new publishing home for Bellwether, which could no longer cope successfully with the massive changes ushered in by Open Access, the proliferation of consortia, and other such developments. He was also delighted that this would also make the journals accessible to thousands of libraries and institutions around the world.

Winston supported the efforts of the AAG for more than half a century and was among the longest-serving members and mentors of the Russian, Central Eurasian and East European Specialty Group. In addition, he and the staff at Bellwether were active in other AAG specialty groups associated with the topics of the journals. Winston also served as the AAG Representative on the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.

In 2010, Winston and Bellwether Publishing received the AAG’s prestigious Publication Award, conferred in recognition of exceptional and outstanding contributions to the discipline by publishers. This honor recognized his many years of service as a rare combination of scholar and publisher, and in recognition of more than 50 years of sustained support for the discipline of geography through production of outstanding geography journals.

Jeremy Tasch, Chair of the AAG’s Russian, Central Eurasian and East European Specialty Group said: “Victor’s efforts to shape the intellectual development of our discipline are celebrated. But his heartfelt recollections of Lithuania, and his personal involvement in the lives of so many geographers, will be missed.”

Victor Winston is survived by his wife, Belle (nee Jaroslaw); their sons, Edward and Robert; and grandsons, Henry and Benjamin.

See All Memorials
    Share
Annual Meeting

David Lowenthal To Speak at 2016 AAG Annual Meeting

Thirty years after his classic book, The Past Is a Foreign Country, David Lowenthal explores anew how we celebrate, expunge, contest and manipulate the past. In his major new work, The Past is a Foreign Country – Revisited, he reveals the past as an almost entirely new realm, so transformed over three decades as to demand an equally new book.

During a special AAG “Author Meets Critics” session at the 2016 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, Lowenthal will talk about his new book, while panelists Diana K. Davis, UC Davis; Marie D. Price, George Washington University; and Dydia Delyser, CSU Fullerton, give their understandings and opinions on the new book.

David Lowenthal from the Department of Geography, University College LondonAbout the author

David Lowenthal is emeritus professor of geography and honorary research fellow at University College London. He is a gold medalist of the Royal Geographical, the Royal Scottish Geographical and the American Geographical Societies, a Fellow of the British Academy and honorary D.Litt. Memorial University of Newfoundland. In 2010 he was awarded the Forbes Lecture Prize by the International Institute for Conservation. His books include The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (1996), George Perkins Marsh, Prophet of Conservation (2000) and The Nature of Cultural Heritage and the Culture of National Heritage (2005).

    Share
Changing Human Populations Geography Essentials Planning and Development
AAG Staff
AAG Staff

Shiloh Sundstrom

Shiloh Sundstrom, a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the Department of Geography at Oregon State University, and a keen rancher, forester and conservationist, was tragically killed in a hit-and-run accident near Corvallis on November 22, 2015. He was 34.

Shiloh Forest Sundstrom was born in 1981 on Rock Creek Ranch in Deadwood, Oregon, which lies on the edge of Siuslaw National Forest between Eugene and the Pacific coast. As a farm boy, he enjoyed spending time with animals, particularly horses and cows, and became very knowledgeable about the area.

Sundstrom attended school in nearby Mapleton where he also enjoyed sports, particularly athletics, and was the Class of 2000 valedictorian. He then attended Brandeis University in Massachusetts, studying history with a minor in environmental studies, as well as running for the cross-country and track teams. During his time as an undergraduate, he spent a semester abroad at the School for Field Studies in Kenya, where the land and the people made a huge impression on him.

Having graduated with honors, Sundstrom continued with his studies. At Oregon State University, he gained a master’s degree in forestry then moved to the geography department as a doctoral candidate to pursue his interests in Kenya, specifically the livestock-herding Maasai people. His work investigated the challenges facing Maasai communities and their struggles to maintain traditional culture while adapting to modern pressures and opportunities.

During his first period of doctoral field research in 2014, he spent 5 months in southern Kenya examining the role of community-based conservation and development organizations in helping the Maasai to conserve their land and benefit from wildlife conservation and tourism enterprises. Although he returned with a rich set of data from interviews, he felt that he had much more to learn in order to tell a more complete story about the challenges and opportunities faced by the Maasai.

He returned to Kenya in Spring 2015 to learn more about the role that livestock continues to play in the Maasai’s cultural identity, their efforts to ensure that livestock production remains viable in the twenty-first century, the government policies of privatizing communal lands and settling the Maasai, and the challenges to pastoralism and wildlife conservation from the exploration for oil.

Because of his own deep ties to the land and his long involvement with community-based conservation in the US, Sundstrom was in a very special position to conduct this research, connecting theory and practice, and producing scholarship that demonstrated that conservation and livelihoods can go hand in hand.

Hannah Gosnell, associate professor at OSU and Sundstrom’s doctoral adviser, said that he was “an invaluable bridge between two worlds…interested in the challenge of conserving wildlife while maintaining traditional pastoral life ways – a challenge we have here in the West, too.”

Sundstrom was a student member of the American Association of Geographers and due to present a paper on his doctoral research at the 2016 Annual Meeting in San Francisco entitled “Redefining Conservation without Parks in Kenya’s Maasailand.”

He was working on his dissertation at the time of his death and his work will be continued, published, and used for the good it was intended to document and perpetuate. The university has also set up a memorial scholarship fund in his name to help OSU graduate students in geography and forest ecosystems and society who are engaged in research on conservation and livelihoods in rural communities.

However, Sundstrom was much more than a geography student. He was the cattle manager at the family’s Rock Creek Ranch and worked on its forest management projects. He had worked for the Siuslaw Watershed Council and was a conservationist and program director at the Siuslaw Institute in the Siuslaw National Forest. He was also a vocal advocate for more sustainable policies and practices for working landscapes, and was involved in the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition (RVCC), a network of organizations working on conservation-based community and economic challenges facing the rural West.

Gosnell said, “He was able to navigate comfortably between the halls of academia, theorizing about the political ecology of public lands ranching in the West, and the day-to-day realities and constraints of life on the farm… He was well on his way to becoming an important leader, like his father, in thinking about alternative, more resilient futures for our working landscapes.”

Maia Enzer, who worked with Sundstrom when she was director of RVCC, said that he was part of “a new generation of conservation leaders who are grounded in place—in the rural places they were born and raised—and fully see that the future relies on integrated solutions.”

Sundstrom was driven by dreams of a better world for people and nature, and for a balance between protection and productivity. He was articulate and passionate about the future of rural communities, and a budding leader in the field of community-based conservation who could talk knowledgeably and passionately with environmentalists, agency administrators, and congressional staff alike.

Shiloh Sundstrom will be remembered for his enthusiasm and positive energy, his warmth and gentle demeanor, his generosity and creativity. He will be greatly missed from the tight-knit community of Deadwood to the vast savanna of Kenya. He is survived by his parents, Johnny and Tchanan; his sister, Danell, her partner and their young daughter; and his girlfriend, Rachael.

See All Memorials
    Share
New Books for Geographers

New Books: November 2015

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

November, 2015 

    Share
Changing Human Populations Sharing Knowledge Spatial Narratives
AAG Staff
AAG Staff

Susan W. Hardwick

Susan Hardwick, professor emerita at the University of Oregon and national leader in the field of geography education, passed away on November 11, 2015, at the age of 70, after a brief illness.

Susan Louise Wiley was born on May 9, 1945 in Greensburg, PA. After completing her secondary education at Slippery Rock High School in 1963 she moved to Slippery Rock University for a bachelor’s degree in Education and Social Science / Geography, graduating in 1967.

Hardwick began her teaching career in a one-room schoolhouse at Honcut Middle School in Oroville, California in 1968. This was followed by a master’s degree in Geography from California State University, Chico, with a thesis entitled “Chinese Settlement in Butte County, California: 1860-1920.”

In 1974 she moved to the Department of Earth Sciences at Cosumnes River College, a community college in Sacramento, CA, where she stayed until 1986, teaching and serving as chair of the department. During this time she also spent a year as Director of Ethnographic Research for the City of Sacramento.

Concurrently she undertook doctoral studies at the University of California, Davis. Her thesis, completed in 1986, was entitled “Ethnic Residential and Commercial Patterns in Sacramento with Special Reference to the Russian-American Experience.”

Next Hardwick returned to the Department of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico, between 1986 and 1997 holding posts as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor. She also spent the last three years as the university’s co-coordinator of the Literacy and Learning Program.

She moved to Texas State University in San Marcos in 1997 as Professor of Geography and Associate Director of the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education. In 2000 came her final move, this time to the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon.

Hardwick’s early interests in the geographies of immigration continued throughout her career, in both research and teaching. Focusing on the North American context, she was interested in migration flows and spatial patterns, shifting identities of immigrants and refugees, and urban social landscapes. Her extensive publication record contains scores of books, book chapters and articles on the ways in which racial and ethnic differences shaped North American towns and cities. She was particularly known for her long-running work on Russian immigrants in North America.

In recent years she had also focused on Canada, particularly the migration experiences, spatial patterns and transnational identities of immigrants at the Canada-U.S. borderland. She spent several years as a Senior Research Fellow on the Metropolis Project at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University during which time she was the Principal Investigator on a number of projects. One of her most recent publications was a co-edited volume with Francophone geographer, Remy Tremblay, called Transnational Borders, Transnational Lives: Academic Mobility at the Borderland (University of Quebec Press, 2014) telling the stories of a selected group of geographers who migrated to one side to another of the Canada-US border. She left four publications in progress including work on the role of immigrants in the development of the United States, the Klu Klux Klan in Oregon, and the lives of Russian Americans in the Pacific Northwest.

Hardwick’s other major area of activity – in teaching, scholarship and activism – was geographic education. Oregon colleague Alec Murphy said, “It is hard to name any major development in geography education over the past few decades that does not in some way bear Susan’s imprint. She was a tireless and effective champion of the cause.”

Among her many accomplishments, she played a critical role in crafting the original and revised versions of the National Geography Standards and co-hosted “The Power of Place,” a hugely successful Annenberg public television series for educators. She also spearheaded the development of an online training program for teachers of AP Human Geography, and played a central role in bringing to fruition the “Road Map for the Large-Scale Improvement of K–12 Geography Education.”

She was a co-author for three widely used textbooks: My World Geography (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2011) currently being used by thousands of middle school geography and social studies students; The Geography of North America: Environment, Political Economy, and Culture (Prentice Hall, 2nd edition 2012) for college and university level regional geography courses; and Geography for Educators: Standards, Themes, and Concepts (Prentice Hall, 1996) a text that has been used by thousands of pre-service and in-service geography and social studies teachers.

University of Oregon colleague W. Andrew Marcus said, “Susan’s tireless efforts, her innovation in creating new programs and her capacity to build bridges where other people saw chasms, have given her a special place in the pantheon of scholars who have changed education.”

Hardwick’s professional service contributions were legion. Most notably, she served the National Council for Geographic Education as president and vice president of research and external relations. At different points during her career she sat on the national councils of both the Association of American Geographers and the American Geographical Society, taking the lead on many initiatives for those organizations. She was also an active member of the editorial board of the Journal of Geography for more than a decade. She was a great contributor to other professional organizations in the U.S. with a geographic remit, including the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers and the National Geographic Society.

Although she retired in 2010, Hardwick remained active in the geography department at the University of Oregon, teaching two courses each year, mentoring graduate students and future teachers, and serving as co-director of the university’s graduate summer program in geographic education.

Over the years, Hardwick’s commitment and achievements in different areas – scholarship, teaching effectiveness, service, leadership and mentoring – were widely lauded.

In recognition of her scholarship on the evolving ethnic geography of cities in the United States and Canada, she received the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnic Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers in 2001.

She was recognized throughout her career for her teaching effectiveness. From California State University, Chico she received a series of awards: the Meritorious Professional Promise Award in 1987, the Professional Achievement Award in 1994, the Outstanding Teaching Award in 1994, and the Outstanding Professor Award in 1995. In 1995 she was selected out of more than 23,000 California faculty for the statewide Outstanding Professor Award, and in 1999 she was selected as the California State Nominee for the Carnegie Foundation’s Outstanding Professor of the United States award. From the University of Oregon she twice received the Rippey Innovative Teaching Award (2003-2005, 2008-2010).

Hardwick’s service to her various institutions was also recognized: California State University, Chico (Outstanding Faculty Member Award, 1987), Texas State University (Outstanding Faculty Service Award, 1999), and the University of Oregon (Outstanding Service to the Department Award, 2001-2002 and 2009-2010).

For her contribution to geography education, Hardwick received the California Geographical Society’s Outstanding Statewide Geographical Educator Award in 1988 and the National Council for Geographic Education’s Distinguished University Educator Award in 1994. She was further lauded for her extraordinary service and leadership in advancing geography education with the AAG’s Gilbert Grosvenor Honors for Geographic Education in 2006 and in 2013 with the George J. Miller Award for Distinguished Service, the highest award given by the National Council for Geographic Education.

Hardwick gave many years of service to the discipline as an outstanding mentor and this was recognized by the National Council for Geographic Education’s National Outstanding Mentor Award in 2008 and the AAG’s Excellence in Mentoring Award in 2014. Such were her distinguished contributions that, shortly before her death, the AAG Council decided to name the latter award after her: it is now the Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award.

In sum, Hardwick’s contributions across academic scholarship, geography education, and professional service were remarkable. Her resume is a phenomenal record of dedication and achievement. Although she worked tirelessly in her professional life, she also found time to spend with her family, especially enjoying her grandchildren, travelled the world with her husband (North America Europe, Russia, Southeast Asia, Central and South America), wrote non-fiction, and simply enjoyed the blustery central Oregon coast where she lived.

Many grieve for the loss of such a wonderful friend and colleague. AAG Executive Director Doug Richardson, described Susan Hardwick as “universally beloved in the discipline. A very kind, caring person, open, constructive and helpful at all times.” Colleague W. Andrew Marcus said, “We will miss her terribly, but take solace in knowing that her influence lives on in so many ways.”

She leaves behind her husband and fellow geographer, Donald Holtgrieve; 3 sons, James, David and Randal; and 3 grandchildren, Paige, Austin and Annabelle.

With thanks to Alec Murphy for much of the material in this obituary

See All Memorials
    Share
Awardees

AAG Names Judith Butler as the 2016 Honorary Geographer

The Association of American Geographers has named Judith Butler as its 2016 Honorary Geographer. She is the Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and Program in Critical Theory at the University of California at Berkeley.

Butler has advocated lesbian and gay rights movements and has been outspoken on many modern political matters. Two of her influential books, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, challenge notions of gender and develop her theory of gender performativity, which is now a prominent position in feminist and queer scholarship. Butler studied philosophy at Yale University where she received her B.A. and her Ph.D.

In making its selection, the AAG recognized Butler’s foundational contributions to feminist and queer theory, cultural studies, and feminist and moral philosophy. Her work has transformed the ways in which scholars have understood gender and sexual identities and has thus fundamentally reshaped the theoretical underpinnings of the social and the spatial.

As such, her continuing interrogations of identity and subjectivity have inspired and informed feminist geography, queer, critical, and political theory in geography, and sexuality and space studies. In addition, as a political academic and activist she has served as a role model for many geographers who understand the deep entanglements of the academic and the political. This award, therefore, acknowledges her fundamental role in shaping geographic practices, theories, and actions.

AAG Past President Mona Domosh will confer the 2016 AAG Honorary Geographer Award upon Judith Butler at the 2016 AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco during her plenary session, “Demography in the Ethics of Non-Violence,” on Tuesday, March 29. Butler’s plenary will focus on “A principled approach to non-violence that often admits to exceptions where violence is conceded as legitimate. To what extent does the exception to nonviolence in the name of self-defense or for close kin implicitly make a distinction between lives worth saving and dispensable lives? A practice of non-violence has to take into account the demographic distribution of grievability that establishes which lives are worthy of safeguarding and which are less worthy or not worthy at all. Otherwise, both biopolitics and the logic of war can permeate calculations about when and where non-violence can be invoked. Does the demographic challenge revise our approach to non-violence? and if so, how?”

Every year the AAG bestows its Honorary Geographer Award on an individual to recognize excellence in the arts, research, teaching, and writing on geographic topics by non-geographers. Previous awardees have included sociologist Saskia Sassen, architect Maya Lin, economist Jeffrey Sachs, biologist Stephen J. Gould, political scientist Cynthia Enloe, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, neuroscientist Nora Volkow, and authors Calvin Trillin, Barbara Kingsolver, and Barry Lopez.

#AAG2016, AAG 2016, Honorary Geographer, Judith Butler, San Francisco
    Share
Changing Human Populations Qualitative Data and Analyses Sharing Knowledge
AAG Staff
AAG Staff

Edward Soja

Ed Soja, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at UCLA, who made considerable contributions to postmodern political geography and urban theory, passed away on November 2, 2015, at the age of 75, after a long battle with illness.

Edward William Soja was born on May 4, 1940, to a family of Polish immigrants and grew up in the Bronx, New York. He was “nurtured in its dense diversities” and was “a street geographer by the time he was ten” (book jacket of Thirdspace), formative influences that shaped his urban-centric geographic imagination.

Soja attended Syracuse University where, among his teachers, was Eduardo Mondlane, the first Mozambican to hold a PhD and the founder of the Mozambican liberation movement, FRELIMO. At Syracuse, Mondlane developed the East African Studies Program which caught the interest of Soja.

In the early 1960s, Soja went to Kenya to study urban planning as the country underwent a transition from a traditional society to more modern forms of social, economic, and political organization. On return from fieldwork in February 1965 he taught about East Africa, as well as quantitative techniques.

His thesis, entitled “The Geography of Modernization in Kenya: A Spatial Analysis of Social, Economic, and Political Change,” was completed in 1967 and published by Syracuse University Press in 1968 as part of the Syracuse Geographical Series.

Soja took up a position as Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, continuing to specialize in the political geography of modernization and nation-building in Africa. During his seven years at Northwestern he also held visiting appointments at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

In 1972 Soja was recruited to the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) where he remained for the rest of his career. There he began focusing his research on urban restructuring in Los Angeles, as well as the critical study of cities and regions. His interests were wide-ranging, including questions of regional development, planning and governance, and the spatiality of social life.

During his long and distinguished career as a scholar at UCLA, Soja devoted himself to teaching graduate and undergraduate students. He taught courses on regional and international development, urban political economy and planning theory. He also served as academic advisor to numerous doctoral candidates from the department of urban planning. He was twice the department chair and, for nine years, the Associate Dean.

For many years, Soja was also a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, specifically the Cities Program, an international center dedicated to the understanding of contemporary urban society, where he taught on the MSc City Design and Social Sciences course.

Soja was one of the key figures associated with the ‘spatial turn’ in geography. He brought the insights of critical social theory – including political economy, postmodernism, and cultural theory – to create innovative analyses of space and society, especially struggles over control of space in the city and the emergence of new forms of urbanization.

His work focused on Los Angeles, an enormously diverse metropolis with pronounced social and spatial inequalities. He sought to understand different aspects of urban life – its everyday rhythms, the division of labor, public policy, struggles over places, and the relations among distant locals – through the conceptual lens of spatiality.

His canonical paper on “The Socio-Spatial Dialectic” (Annals of the Association of American Geographers, June 1980) drew on the work of French Marxist urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre and other social theorists to argue that society produces, organizes and gives meaning to space, but that these spatialities in turn shape society and the relations of production.

Soja’s book Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso, 1989) and the concurrent work of David Harvey introduced postmodernism as a new kind of problematic of which geographers should take note. Postmodern Geographies drew enormous favourable attention worldwide and established him as one of the discipline’s leading theoreticians.

One of his greatest contributions to spatial theory and the field of cultural geography was his use of Lefebvre, author of The Production of Space (1974). Soja updated Lefebvre’s concept of the ‘spatial triad’ with his own concept of ‘spatial trialectics’ which included ‘thirdspace,’ or spaces that are both real and imagined. These ideas were published in two further works: Thirdspace: Journeys to Real-and-Imagined-Places (Blackwell, 1996) and Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions (Blackwell, 2000).

Soja also worked with Allen J. Scott to edit a volume on The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 1996) which brought together a variety of essays by experts in urban planning, architecture, geography, and sociology examining the built environment and human dynamics of Los Angeles, emphasizing dramatic changes that had occurred since 1960.

More recently he wrote Seeking Spatial Justice (University of Minnesota Press, 2010) where he offered new ways of understanding and changing the unjust geographies in which we live, and My Los Angeles: From Urban Restructuring to Regional Urbanization (University of California Press, 2014) which covered more than four decades of urban development in LA and other urban regions.

A characteristic of Soja’s work was his interweaving of theory and practice; his theoretical interpretations of place, location, landscape, city and region were grounded in his inquiry into the shaping of space and society in Los Angeles including the rise of the city region, the revival of inner cities, and social movements for the right to the city.

In 2013, the Association of American Geographers conferred Lifetime Achievement Honors on Soja in recognition of his path-breaking contributions to geographic theory and urban studies, especially his arguments for the importance of space in understanding society and the city, and his insights into postmodernity and the Los Angeles metropolis. It was especially fitting that the award was presented at the Annual Meeting in Los Angeles that year.

In 2015, Soja was awarded the 2015 Vautrin-Lud Prize, considered to be geography’s Nobel Prize. The prize honors the career of a distinguished geographer whose work has been very influential within and beyond the discipline. Unfortunately, Soja was unable to be present at the event in Saint-Dié, France, in October 2015 but his work was explored in a roundtable discussion between many of his international peers.

How to sum up the career and contributions of this remarkable man which started with modernization in Kenya and transitioned to postmodernity in Los Angeles? He was one of human geography’s most passionate and articulate advocates. His work reshaped urban studies. His writings on space, spatial justice, and cities have inspired many. His critical thinking continues to open new research directions for the theoretical and practical understanding of contemporary cities and regions.

Along the way, he motivated and provoked students and colleagues alike through his passion and enthusiasm for theory, criticism, cities, and social justice. Derek Gregory, recalling a sabbatical that Soja spent at Cambridge University, remembered that “Ed enlivened the Department of Geography no end too, and delighted the graduate students with his healthy irreverence, his sense of intellectual adventure – and by his evident happiness at spending time with them.” He will be sorely missed by many friends who knew his warm and generous personality.

Soja is survived by his wife, Maureen, and their children, Christopher and Erika. Following his death, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs decided to establish the Edward Soja Memorial Fellowship in his memory.

See All Memorials
    Share

Tony Hambly

Tony Hambly, an eccentric and well-loved teacher, who taught geography at schools in Zimbabwe and South Africa for 46 years, passed away on October 30, 2015, aged 73.

Anthony Hambly was born in October 1942 in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and educated nearby at Falcon College.

His father was a Latin teacher. While Tony also loved the subject and had intentions of following in his footsteps, his father warned of a dying subject with few job prospects. Meanwhile an enthusiastic teacher sparked his interest in geography and Hambly transferred his affections.

He studied for a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology and geography at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He also obtained a teaching diploma which he later followed up with a Bachelor of Education degree through the University of South Africa.

Hambly began teaching in 1964 in Southern Rhodesia. His first post was as a geography teacher at Churchill School in Harare. From there he went on to become head of geography at Jameson High School in Kadoma, then moved to Oriel Boys’ School in Harare, where he was also deputy headmaster.

He moved his family to South Africa in 1978 to take up a post as the head of geography at Treverton College. Over the years he taught all sorts of subjects including Latin, English, music and maths, but geography remained his main love.

“Geography is topical, it’s relevant, and it’s all around you,” said Hambly in an interview in 2011. “It’s about modern life and why things work. It’s a mixture of all subjects — physics, biology, history, economics — geography is at the middle of it all. Geography examines current topics, housing problems, economic problems, why this river runs where it does, why it rains, why it doesn’t rain.”

Hambly believed that the key job of a teacher was to teach critical thinking. He said: “With any subject it’s important to develop critical thinking, not accepting things at face value and simply accepting what people say. If I’ve produced some discriminating thinkers then I’ve succeeded as a teacher.”

This he achieved through an eccentric teaching style. Fellow Treverton College geography teacher, Dave Purdon, said Hambly was an “absolute character but a teacher at heart. He loved children and he found ways to really connect with them. He always said to me that he didn’t teach, he ‘told stories.’”

He was also well-known across the country as the chairperson of the Flat Earth ­South Africa (FESA), an offshoot of the Flat Earth Society, an organization that believes the Earth is flat rather than round. It started as a bit of a joke but became a means of stimulating critical thinking among students.

Hambly was always active in the wider life of the college, producing several dramatic productions, as well as coaching rugby and cricket at all levels. He also served as deputy headmaster between 1980 and 2003.

Outside the classroom, he was part of the team that set the geography exam for the Independent Examinations Board in South Africa. He also edited a number of textbooks for Heinemann.

After 30 years at Treverton College, Hambly moved to Maritzburg Christian School in Pietermaritzburg in 2008 where he taught for two further years before retiring at the end of 2010.

After retirement, he remained actively involved in education, working on new textbooks, generating teaching-support materials, and co-authoring a new atlas for South Africa.

Hambly will be remembered as a quirky but ­well-loved character. Colleagues and friends paid tribute to someone who taught ­life-long lessons rather than standard classroom lectures. He is survived by his wife Maureen and their two daughters, Clare and Vivienne.

See All Memorials
    Share
Journals

AAG Publishes New ‘GeoHumanities’ Journal

This month sees the publication of the first issue of a brand new journal from the Association of American Geographers: GeoHumanities.

GeoHumanities is a new kind of journal, connecting the traditional humanities to both science and the creative arts.

Dr. David Green, Publishing Director International for Routledge Journals, explains: “In the past decade, there has been a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography’s engagement with the humanities, and the humanities’ integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies. GeoHumanities journal will now provide the latest, cutting edge information and peer-reviewed research in the field.”

The journal’s editing is being shared by two scholars well qualified for the job. Tim Cresswell is Professor of History and International Affairs at Northeastern University in Boston, as well as Associate Director for Public Humanities at its Humanities Center. Deborah Dixon is Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow in the UK.

Dixon explains: “GeoHumanities is an opportunity to bring together original, scholarly articles that blur and blend disciplinary specialisms, but that also carve out new lines of inquiry, and new ways of doing research. And, it is an opportunity to present these alongside practice-based commentaries that speak to all manner of timely issues, from the wicked problems of the Anthropocene to the shifting sense of place created by geolocative media.”

In Issue 1, Cresswell notes, “a philosopher considers the role of place in western movies, a creative video artist engages with the politics of the Amazonian forest, a geographer explores the strange history of a perfumer, a poet contemplates the global connections enacted by a desert train, and a historian uses GIS to study eighth century China.”

This exciting new title adds to the AAG’s historic and prestigious portfolio of journals. As Executive Director Douglas Richardson points out, “This new GeoHumanities journal builds on a decade-long AAG initiative to engage research and scholarship at the intersections and convergences of Geography and the Humanities, as well as the recent publication (also by Routledge) of two ground-breaking AAG books examining these trends and interactions.”

Green adds: “It is Routledge’s pleasure to extend our publishing partnership with the AAG. We are most grateful to the Association, and specifically Doug Richardson and the teams of Editors, for continuing to entrust their journals to Routledge, one of the world’s leading geography publishers.”

All content in the first issue is freely available until the end of January 2016. Browse the papers on the Taylor and Francis website. New submissions are welcome at any time. Visit the AAG website for further information and guidelines.

    Share
Changing Human Populations Sharing Knowledge Spatial Narratives
AAG Staff
AAG Staff

John Wolter

John Wolter, a cartographer and librarian who served as Chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress, passed away on October 22, 2015 at the age of 90.

John Amadeus Wolter was born on July 25, 1925 in St Paul, Minnesota, the eldest son of Amadeus and Marjorie Wolter. He traced his lifelong fascination with maps back to his childhood days when he collected railroad timetables and route maps.

Between 1943 and 1945, Wolter served in the Merchant Marine with the Isthmian Steamship Company, whose vessels had been requisitioned for wartime service. After the Second World War he continued with the company as a deck officer until 1950, voyaging on passenger and cargo vessels to ports in the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, India, Ceylon, Indochina and Indonesia, and from New York west-bound ‘round the world.’

After a brief stint at the College of St. Thomas, Minnesota he entered the United States Army in 1950 starting with service in the Far East during the Korean War.

In 1956 he received a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University Minnesota then spent a year in Washington, DC working as a marine transportation officer for the Military Sea Transportation Service and also undertaking postgraduate studies at Georgetown University. He then returned to the Isthmian Steamship Company for the remainder of the 1950s. During his many years at sea as a navigating officer and cargo officer he used, and made additions and corrections to, a variety of navigational charts and maps.

Back on terra firma in 1960, Wolter returned to the University Minnesota. He served as map librarian, assistant to the director of university libraries, and as lecturer and research fellow in the geography department, as well as completing a master’s degree in library science in 1965. During this time he participated in several Library of Congress Geography and Map Division map processing projects and became familiar with the varied cartographic collections.

In 1966 took a post as assistant professor Wisconsin State University­­–River Falls, teaching geography but only stayed two years until being appointed Assistant Chief in the Library of Congress’s Geography and Map Division in 1968.

Alongside his position in Washington, DC, he carried out doctoral research in geography through the University Minnesota. His dissertation, completed in 1975, was entitled “The Emerging Discipline of Cartography.” Using bibliometric methods, he traced the history of subject bibliographies of cartography back to the nineteenth century, demonstrating the increasing independence and strength of the field of cartography. He also looked at the growth of textbooks and manuals written for students of cartography, and provision for the education and training of cartographers in the US.

In 1978 he was promoted to Chief of the Geography and Map Division, succeeding Wally Ristow, and shortly after oversaw the move of the Division from Pickett Street in Alexandria to the Madison Building on Capitol Hill. It was the first special collections division to make its home in the building and they enjoyed much local and national media coverage given the photogenic nature of maps, charts and atlases.

During his tenure as Chief of the Division, he wrote a number of reference works including an article giving “A Brief History of the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, 1897-1978,” a co-edited “World Directory of Map Collections,” an article on “Geographical Libraries and Map Collections” in an encyclopedia of libraries, and a piece on “Research Tools and the Literature of Cartography.”

Because of his position, he also sat on many committees including the United States Board on Geographic Names, serving as its Chairman for some time, and the board of directors of the Philip Lee Phillips Map Society aiming to develop, enhance and promote the collections of the Geography and Map Division.

Wolter was also member of many national and international organizations that reflected his interests and specialisms. He was among the founders of the Washington Map Society which was established in 1979 and, under his suggestion, they met in the Geography and Map Division. He was a member of the Society for the History of Discoveries, serving in various executive roles including as President; the International Cartographic Association, including being the US member on its Commission on the History of Cartography; and the International Society for the History of the Map.

He joined the Association of American Geographers in 1961, receiving his 50-year membership in 2011, and he was a member of the International Geographical Union serving two spells on the United States national committee. In addition he was a member of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping, the North American Society for Oceanic History, the Society for Nautical Research, the Naval Historical Foundation, the American Merchant Marine Veterans, the Disabled American Veterans, the Special Libraries Association, and Theta Delta Chi.

He also served on the editorial boards of Cartographica, American Cartographer, Terrae Incognitae, ACSM Bulletin, Surveying and Mapping, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, and was an editorial advisor for The Portolan and a contributing editor to Imago Mundi.

During 1989-90 he took on the additional role of Acting Director for Public Service and Collections Management before retiring from the Library of Congress in 1991. For all his contributions Wolter was recognized with a Presidential citation from the American Congress Surveying and Mapping (1985), an award from the Smithsonian Institute (1986), and a Distinguished Service Award from the Library of Congress (1992).

In retirement he did some consultancy work, continued his research, and gave occasional lectures. Post-retirement publications included three books: Progress of Discovery: Johann Georg Kohl auf den Spuren der Entdecker (1993), Images of the World: The Atlas Through History (with Ron Grim, 1996), and The Napoleonic War in the Dutch Indies: An Essay and Cartobibliography of the Minto Collection (1999).

Wolter leaves behind his wife of 59 years, Joan, and their four sons, Mark, Thomas, Matthew and David.

See All Memorials
    Share