President's Column

Toward a More Healthy Discipline

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Mona DomoshIf one googles the word ‘stigma’ the definition that appears first on your screen (“a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person”) is followed, as most definitions are, by a phrase showing how that word is commonly used; in this case the phrase that google uses is “the stigma of mental disorder.” I know that I shouldn’t be surprised by this, particularly given the recent publicity about Robin Williams and his secret battles with depression, but I was. I had assumed (obviously incorrectly) that in popular parlance a mental disorder was no longer considered a character flaw or mark of disgrace, but rather an illness that afflicts certain people and families and that is treated (like any illness) therapeutically. I have had several bouts of depression that have left me drained and feeling vulnerable, and anxiety is something I’ve come to live with but only after years of therapy and different forms of treatment. I haven’t felt ashamed of this, but then again I don’t make a habit of talking about my illness or mental health in general. But prompted by some wonderful colleagues who are proposing a new AAG committee on mental health in the discipline, that’s exactly what I want to do in this column.

For many of us October represents the midpoint of fall term when one can literally feel the anxiety level within our classrooms and hallways begin to rise. According to the American College Health Association’s 2013 survey[i], over 51% of undergraduate students felt overwhelming anxiety during the past twelve months, and almost 32 % felt so depressed that it was difficult to function (with a notable gender difference; in both cases higher numbers for women). Eight percent had seriously considered suicide. In the U.K., a study undertaken by the National Union of Students showed that one in five students reported that they had a mental health illness. And in geography we often encounter the additional challenge of requiring fieldwork for many of our courses and research, creating situations that may exacerbate mental health conditions.[ii] It’s a stark reality we face, and few of us know how to manage it. Academic leaders in Canada are ahead of the curve. Some Canadian universities are considering ways to reduce anxiety during peak, end-of-term periods by reworking exam schedules while others are training student leaders in mental health awareness in order to reach out to their peers. But for most faculty members, awareness of our students’ mental health comes in bits and pieces; notes from a disability office/health clinic, overheard anecdotes, or the student who is willing to share their illness. The big picture – the scope of the problem that has been referred to in some circles as having reached crisis proportions – has certainly eluded me and I suspect many faculty, with the effect that discussions about how to handle the situation are muted if at all present.

And it’s not just undergraduate students who are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression (and other mental disorders). I highlighted in my column last month the important work that graduate students do for our discipline and academic institutions, noting that they often conduct this labor in conditions that are not of their own choosing and certainly not well remunerated. Those conditions in addition to the uncertainties graduate students face in the academic job market create highly stressful situations that can often lead to anxiety disorders, depression and in rare instances suicidal behavior. Recent online news media have brought these issues to the fore, offering suggestions about how graduate programs can offer support for students’ mental health issues that range from openly acknowledging the problem to providing training for faculty teaching in these programs about how to recognize and address mental health issues.

In my case, it was only after I left graduate school that my mental health became a concern. Unmoored from the networks of friends and colleagues from graduate school and living through the constant insecurities of one-year positions, my taken-for-granted coping strategies disintegrated and eventually disappeared, leaving me in a very dark world of despair. It literally was a struggle each day to make it through my classes and meetings without breaking down into tears, while at home I found it impossible to sleep (thus further deteriorating my mental health). I of course told no one, exacerbating my feelings of loneliness and estrangement and plunging me deeper into depression. Apparently my story is a fairly common one; a recent study has documented some of the factors that can lead to anxiety disorders and depression among contingent faculty, with the stress of non-permanent positions ranking high. The authors look to institutional change in order to combat some of these concerns, particularly since their findings suggest that it is the contingent faculty who are the most committed to their institution who suffer the most negative consequences in terms of feelings of anxiety and depression.

I wonder, however, what we as an association and discipline can do to help. I finally recovered from depression by reaching out to some very good friends who encouraged me to find professional treatment. But I know that if I had been able to talk about what was happening with my colleagues without feeling shame that I would have recovered much sooner. I also realize that if I had received training about how to recognize and deal with clinical depression and anxiety disorders I would have (hopefully) recognized those symptoms in myself and been more equipped to handle them. This (among other things) is exactly what the proposed new AAG committee will take on as its mission. Spearheaded by Beverley Mullings, Kate Parizeau, and Linda Peake, a group of geographers organized a series of sessions at last year’s AAG meeting on mental health issues, established a listserv (MHGEOG-L [at] lists [dot] queensu [dot] ca), and are now proposing to establish a standing committee of the AAG. The proposed Committee on the Status of Mental Health in Geography will conduct research into the scope of the problem and assess the policies of other organization and institutions, provide professional guidance to the Council, the AAG, and geography departments in terms of protocols and ethical issues related to mental health, and engage in advocacy and awareness-raising within the AAG and academic institutions. I think this is a very important and long-overdue step that we need to take. The word “stigma” should not be a presumed outcome of “mental disorder.” I welcome your thoughts.

DOI: 10.14433/2014.0018

[i] See American College Health Association, American College Health Association-National College Health Assessment II: Reference Group Undergraduates Executive Summary Spring 2013, Hanover, MD: American College Health Association, 2013.

[ii] See Jacky Birnie and Annie Grant, Providing Learning Support for Students with Mental Health Difficulties Undertaking Fieldwork and Related Activities, Gloucestershire, U.K.: Geography Discipline Network and Geography and Environmental Research Unit, University of Gloucestershire, 2001

    Share
Changing Human Populations Qualitative Data and Analyses Spatial Narratives
Mona Domosh
Mona Domosh

Hans-Georg Bohle

AAG member Hans-Georg Bohle has passed away at the age of 66. Relevant in the field of human geography, he will be remembered by all that he taught, advised, and worked alongside. Hans attended the University of Göttingen and received his PhD in 1979, doing research on the Green Revolution in the Cauvery River Delta of southern India.

Hans held various academic positions including professor of cultural geography at the University of Freiburg (1989-1995), professor of geography of South Asia at the University of Heidelberg (1995-2004), and chair and professor of cultural geography and development geography at Bonn University (2004-2013). He retired in 2013.

He has published a variety of work, twelve monographs, eighty scientific journal articles, and sixty book chapters. He was also on the Steering Committee of Global Environmental Change  and Human Security (GECHS) and was on the International Scientific Advisory Board of Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS), as well as a member of Academia Europaea and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

His research was focused on social vulnerability, specifically of people in critical regions. Interested primarily in food, water, and health, Hans sought to find explanations of the socio-spatial production of poverty and exclusion in the Global South and to identify people’s potentialities for human security and a life of self-determination, freedom, and dignity. He has been a fundamental contributor to risk and hazard research and has done work in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Chad, Sudan, Ghana, and Egypt. He will be remembered.

See All Memorials
    Share
New Books for Geographers

New Books: September 2014

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.

September, 2014
    Share
Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Living within Ecosystems
AAG Staff
AAG Staff
President's Column

Recognizing the Work of Graduate Students

Mona Domosh

It was a pleasure to open our Spring 2014 AAG council meeting by welcoming our new and first graduate student representative to the table. The council had agreed last year to support the idea of a graduate student representative to council; after all, graduate students comprise around 40% of the AAG membership and so having someone on our governing council that represents their interests seemed a no-brainer. And indeed even in the first few hours (yes, to those uninitiated, council meetings go on, literally, for days!) we began to realize the importance of having the voice of graduate students heard within the not-so-hallow halls of the AAG. The representative raised the important issue of AAG funding for dissertation research, querying our policy of limiting awards to $500; by the end of the meeting, we had agreed to raise that amount to $1000 for a three-year trial period, good news all around. In this column I want to highlight the crucial role that graduate students play in our association, discuss the important academic labor they perform in our departments, universities and discipline, and raise the question of how best to recognize and support that work.

I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I snuck into my first AAG conference. I was a first-year graduate student, and, like many of my fellow grad students (I suspect!) I was not yet a member of the association and wasn’t presenting a paper (see Julie Winkler’s column about the importance of AAG membership, “Why We Join the AAG”). So I simply walked into the conference site and promiscuously wandered through a series of sessions for two days. At the time it wasn’t considered necessary for graduate students to be presenting at our annual conference each year. Flash forward, 30 years later, and the situation for graduate students is decidedly different; most are expected to not only present their research, but publish it, and therefore the importance of giving talks at annual meetings and participating in our association well before their first job letter of application is written is much clearer: networking, professional development, research collaborations, etc. Graduate students are vital to our conference and discipline, totaling approximately 40% of our registrants. They also do an inordinate amount of work in terms of organizing sessions, chairing panels, and helping to run specialty groups. We rely on graduate students’ energy and curiosity, their novel approaches to theory, methods and empirics, and their challenges to the status quo; in turn the conference and the association hopefully provides them an academic home for intellectual and professional development. But I wonder given the multitude of demands on their daily lives and their many contributions to our discipline whether we are doing enough.

The increasing pressures on academic work and workplaces that have accompanied the neoliberalization of the academy are nowhere more apparent than in the lives of graduate students (see Eric Sheppard’s column on the issue of the neoliberal academy, “Geography and the Neoliberalizing Academy”). They must complete rigorous coursework, theses and dissertations; they work as teachers, teaching assistants, research assistants and staff assistants; they must learn how to professionally present their research and publish it; and they have to figure out how to network and organize their professional lives. They also occupy an in-between, or perhaps better stated, a double status: they are students and teachers, apprentices and workers, mentors and advisees. This is a heavy burden, compounded by the fact that most graduate students work under less than ideal conditions: their wages are often barely livable, many have no or limited health coverage and few if any other benefits, and they rarely have a say in the running of their workplace. It is these pressures and conditions that have led many graduate students to unionize; there are now more than 25 universities in the U.S. with unions representing graduate students, including universities with some of the top geography programs.

It was within this context of students struggling to attain more of a voice in the running of academic institutions, particularly around issues of academic labor, that the Graduate Student Affinity Group (GSAG) of the AAG was formed in the late 1990s. According to the co-founders, geography graduate students working to unionize at their own institutions began to realize that having a platform for voicing their concerns within the AAG was an important step in recognizing and confronting graduate student issues; forming an affinity group seemed the logical move. Two graduate students from the University of Washington filed the papers to form GSAG in 2001, and today the group has over 1,000 members. GSAG organizes plenaries and panels related to student issues, provides travel and research grants, and co-hosts the “Welcome to the AAG” panel, a wonderful gateway for those attending their first national geography conference. Members of the group have also worked closely with AAG staff on projects to support graduate education and training programs like EDGE and GFDA, and they are currently compiling an international directory of all geography graduate student groups. Even with some unique challenges (e.g. their membership pretty much turns over every four years), the affinity group does important work for the discipline, but it is also of course another “job” for graduate students.

It was GSAG members (spurred on by an AAG councilor’s mention that some regional divisions had student members on their board) who asked for representation on the AAG council, and at the Spring 2013 meeting the council voted to approve a non-voting graduate student representative to the council. We might want to consider involving the representative more fully and making them a full-fledged councilor: this would require a vote of the members, but is certainly do-able and perhaps advisable. For now, I’m very happy that we have a graduate student sitting at that big table for those three days, voicing her concerns, providing what are often novel perspectives on the issues in front of us, and raising new issues all together.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the importance of graduate student representation on the council, on whether we can do more as an association to recognize and support the work they do for us in our departments and universities, and on other matters pertaining to the importance of graduate students to our association, our discipline, and our intellectual and professional lives.

— Mona Domosh

DOI: 10.14433/2014.0016

    Share
Changing Human Populations Networks and Connections Spatial Narratives
Mona Domosh
Mona Domosh

David Huff

David Huff, Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Geography at the University of Texas at Austin, and giant in the field of applied geography, passed away on August 15, 2014, aged 83.

David L. Huff was born in 1931 in McMinnville, TN, then spent an idyllic boyhood on Lake Oswego, OR. At first he struggled to find a college or career that held his interest, trying many jobs and five undergraduate universities, plus a stint in the Army.

His academic motivation and interest was finally sparked at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, at a time when quantitative geography was just emerging. Throughout the time of his MBA and PhD, he was strongly influenced by early analytical economic geographers and early quantitative sociologists, game theorists and rational choice theorists. He emerged from this exciting time in graduate school as a holistic quantitative social scientist. His doctoral thesis work from 1959 to 1962 in modeling trips to shopping centers and stores was published in 1963.

Huff’s first teaching position was at UCLA where he was very quickly promoted to tenure as a business and marketing professor because of his early accomplishments. It was here in 1964 that he developed the Huff Model to forecast market share and retail attractiveness. It is based on the premise that when a person is confronted with a set of alternatives, the probability that any particular item will be selected is directly proportional to the perceived utility of each alternative.

The model is an excellent example of a bridge between geography and business. It soon entered the textbooks and was used by academicians and practitioners throughout the world. Its popularity and longevity can be attributed to its conceptual appeal, relative ease of use, and applicability to a wide range of problems, of which predicting consumer spatial behavior is the most commonly known.

For the last 50 years the Huff Model has been taught in courses across marketing, economic geography, economics, retail research, urban planning and decision theory. It has been widely used by market analysts and planners to locate convenience stores, shopping malls, and other types retail establishments. It continues to be the standard model for the industry and is now incorporated into GIS systems.

Among Huff’s other academic contributions were the application of multivariate graphic displays to market analysis, the formulation of objective measures for delineating market areas, the development of computerized systems to monitor economic activities geographically, and the derivation of planning regions for the geographic delivery of health care and economic services.

After UCLA Huff took a Fulbright Lectureship at the Université d’Aix-Marseille in France which started a life-long love of French culture. He then moved to the University of Kansas as Director of the Center for Regional Studies but this position did not allow him the time he needed to do basic research so he readily accepted an offer from the University of Texas to become Century Club Centennial Professor of Business Administration where he remained until retirement.

In addition to his work in academia, Huff consulted for dozens of agencies including the U.S. Department of Transportation, Resources for the Future, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Bureau of the Census, and National Endowment for the Arts, as well as for numerous state and regional offices. He has advised hundreds of business firms on various aspects of market area analysis. In 2003 he was invited by Esri to become a technical advisor, using his expertise to develop advanced predictive models and review existing analysis capability in Esri’s business analysis products and services.

During his academic career, Huff received numerous teaching awards and much prestigious professional recognition. For example, the AAG awarded him the James R. Anderson Medal in Applied Geography in 1988, and he was the recipient of the Distinguished Mentor Award from the National Council for Geographic Education in 1998 in recognition of his long history of successful mentoring of master’s and doctoral students.

David had remarkable standing in the profession. He was a man who loved his work, was always full of enthusiasm, and generous with his time and talent. He will be missed by many, not only colleagues and friends, but also business professionals and the whole applied geography industry.

He leaves behind his wife of 61 years, Suzanne, his children Nancy, Karen and David, as well as 10 grandchildren and a growing brood of great-grandchildren.

See All Memorials
    Share
President's Column

The More-Than-Conference Conference

Mona Domosh

Courtesy of the Great Lakes Feminist Collective.
Front and back of the postcards distributed by the Great Lakes Feminist Collective at the 2014 AAG conference in Tampa, FL. Courtesy of the Great Lakes Feminist Collective.

I was surprised to see the line snaking around the entrance to the Past President’s Plenary at this year’s AAG conference in Tampa. Of course folks wanted to hear Eric Sheppard’s address, I thought, but honestly the only lines I had seen at the conference ended at a ‘free drinks’ bar. Things became clearer as I approached: there were people standing at the entrance to the room handing out postcards, and so fellow geographers were lining up to get one; not wanting to miss anything I took all three. As it turned out, they made excellent reading material (see figs. 1-6). Each card provided verbal and visual information about aspects of the discipline and the academy in general that the Great Lakes Feminist Geography Collective found wanting. Just the day before I had attended a session of what is called the subconference where we had talked through related issues facing junior scholars working in the academy: lack of support for social reproduction, increasing use of contingent faculty, the enduring impacts of the great recession, and so on. There were I realized many different confer-ings going on at the conference, all in some way related to it but differing in type and scope.

Almost all conferences exceed what is listed on the program; social interactions among groups of people are never fully scripted. And what is commonly referred to as “the AAG” — a deceptively short and unassuming name for what often exceeds definition — is certainly no exception. Even the full title — the Annual Conference of the Association of American Geographers — just doesn’t seem adequate to describe the excitingly and dauntingly large, diverse, social, performative, professional and personal gathering that happens once a year in a large American city. Those of us who have attended “the AAG” know that it is much more than the 5,000 or so papers, posters and plenaries that are presented. There are workshops, field trips, receptions, preconferences, parties, meetings, in-the-hallway-chats, dinners, and drinks that merge our professional and personal lives. And there are “other” events too, those meant to provoke, protest, initiate, and investigate. Given that these activities often take place in the interstitial spaces of the conference and are not visible to everyone, I highlight them here because I believe they are important signs of the liveliness and dynamism of our discipline.

Figure 7. Broadsheets distributed by the Geography Guerilla Girls at the 1996 AAG conference in Charlotte, NC. Courtesy of the Geography Guerilla Girls.
Figure 8. Broadsheets distributed by the Geography Guerilla Girls at the 1996 AAG conference in Charlotte, NC. Courtesy of the Geography Guerilla Girls.

Like most political interventions, the idea of the postcard “drop” (as the Collective calls it) wasn’t born anew. From what I’ve gathered from my own memory and that of fellow geographers (I sent out a message on several listservs that reached about 4,000 geographers, asking for information about “other” activities that have occurred at our conferences; thanks to all of those who responded) there have been several instances in the past when individuals and groups have distributed protest literature. One geographer remembered Bill Bunge handing out anti-nuclear flyers at the door of a plenary session at the Detroit conference in 1985, and no doubt there have been similar interventions since then. The Collective’s website traces the “drop” to the action taken by a group of Canadian feminist geographers at the 2002 AAG conference. The group compiled statistics about the number of women in geography, printed the information on pink sheets, and distributed them throughout the conference, keeping the authorship anonymous. Reactions were mixed, they write, but the act of compiling information that vividly depicts inequities and distributing it widely had multiple effects. Six years before that, a similar intervention occurred at the Charlotte AAG conference, when an anonymous group called the Geography Guerrilla Girls distributed two broadsheets that documented the paltry number of women faculty in geography departments in the United States (see figs. 7, 8). So the Collective’s postcards drew on and were contributing to an interesting historical geography of the politics of Geography. At the same time, another contribution to that historical geography was being enacted in Tampa. Graduate students from the University of North Carolina — inspired they say partly by Antipode and the critical geographic inquiry it represents — had put together a zine on Black Geographies called The Whirlwind that they handed out to geographers attending related sessions on geography and race/racism, an important and lively addition to the discipline’s history of protest literature.

The subconference too draws on an historical geography of the politics of the discipline as geographers have sought alternative ways to gather and discuss issues not usually encountered in the official hallways and meeting rooms. For example, GPOW (Geographic Perspectives on Women specialty group) has organized a reception coincident with the AAG celebrating recently published feminist geography books at a local bookstore each year since 2005, creating alternative spaces for networking and collaboration close to the conference site but not in it. The idea of the subconference has its roots in several sets of discussions held at various venues, and took form for the first time in 2010 at the D.C. conference. Since then it has evolved into a series of sessions listed on the program but organized specifically not to follow the template of ‘regular’ sessions; instead, facilitators lead discussions geared to issues not often addressed (though certainly talked about) formally at conferences: work-life balance, child care, mental health, disabilities, contingent faculty, impacts of the recession, the neoliberalization of the academy. And word is out that about the need for this type of intervention: a group of MLA (Modern Language Association) members organized a subconference at their last meeting (make sure to read down the page to see the nice shout out to the subconference of the AAG!). A similar attempt to open alternative spaces for new types of conversations within the discipline was apparent in a set of sessions geared toward mental health issues, and in past years, a set of sessions on “deaf geographies.”

Figure 9. Photograph of an on-site maze constructed at the AAG conference in Tampa Fl. Courtesy of Lance Howard.

Other complementary sites that revolve around “the AAG” are geared toward opening the conference to different forms of expression. I have memories of past AAG hallways lined with carefully curated photographs, but I can’t seem to find information about who or what organized these exhibitions. In Los Angeles a group of geographers organized an art exhibition called “Curating the Cosmos” that accompanied a series of sessions with the same title, making important interventions into understanding what the geohumanities might look like, while another geographer created an on-site maze as a form of impromptu landscape art (see fig. 9). And for the past three years a group of geographers have coordinated a four-hour map-a-thon mash-up that is held in conjunction with the AAG but at a different site, thus encouraging creative digital cartographic expression and inventing new arenas for networking and community building.

No doubt this is a partial and selective accounting of the many “other” activities that coincide with our annual conference (and I would love to hear about more). I hope that highlighting these few interventions suggests the importance of the more-than-conference aspect of our conference, of the ways that “the AAG” provides a platform for self-critique and creative intervention, and of how these provocations and investigations keep the discipline dynamic and create space for changing its contours. These are signs of the liveliness of our discipline, of people and communities who care enough to prod and poke us. I look forward to hearing about other interventions and experiencing them in Chicago and beyond.

— Mona Domosh

DOI: 10.14433/2014.0014

    Share
Changing Human Populations Sharing Knowledge
Mona Domosh
Mona Domosh
President's Column

Strategic Essentialism and Radical Intra-Disciplinarity

Mona DomoshI’ve been an Anglophile ever since I was a postdoc at Loughborough University in the late 1980s. As you might have guessed, it wasn’t the food or weather that convinced me to love all things British; it was its geography, or, rather I should say, the fact that it had Geography. What I mean of course is that geography as an academic discipline is a fundamental part of the United Kingdom’s K-12 curriculum, and so it lingers on in peoples’ minds, as a field of inquiry, as a type of career, as something. So when I was chatting with the two British women sitting next to me on the flight to London and I nervously answered their questions about what I was going to be doing in Loughborough for a year, I was totally and wonderfully surprised by their reaction, which was, for an American, a non-reaction. They didn’t look puzzled or confused, they didn’t ask me to recite capitals, nor did they think my interests made me an historian or a sociologist. The idea itself — the study of geography — meant something without explanation. What a relief.

As geographers living and traveling in the United States we almost always are put into the situation of explaining who and what we are and do. I have become quite practiced at discussing my work and my interests to people on an airplane or over coffee and explaining why what I do is called geography. I also have become fluent in the language of the academy, and have worked vociferously to promote the importance of geography as integral to a liberal education and a key component of research agendas. In my deans’ offices I offer key insights into the ways in which geography as a discipline is critical to solving many of the world’s great challenges: the impacts of climate change, the uneven effects of economic globalization, the increasing inequalities that destabilize power. Borrowing from the postcolonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, I use the term strategic essentialism to describe these important interventions into the academy and into popular culture. Spivak developed the term to suggest how particular groups of people — often minorities or subalterns — may choose to represent their identity as stable and fixed in order to strategically use that identity to promote their interests and/or intervene in a political debate. So when asked by a dean to justify the hire of an additional geographer, I am quick to point to the importance of “essential” geography (and of course depending on the specific case, that “essence” could be geospatial analysis, or human-environment expertise, or landscape studies). But like Spivak, I am not promoting essentialism — that there is somehow an innate set of principles that define geography — but instead suggesting that simplifying geography’s and geographers’ quite complex and at times contradictory ways of seeing the world is often necessary to achieve certain ends.

What is particularly interesting and ironic about my almost daily invocation of some form of geography essentialism is my full-hearted belief that what is so intellectually exciting about geography in the United States today is its tolerance for and support of divergent and at times opposing ways of analyzing and seeing the world; its anti-essentialism. Under the banner “geography” we perform regression analyses, conduct in-depth interviews, run computer simulations, undertake archival research, collect soil samples, georectify data, and organize focus groups (to name just some of our methods). We use and contribute to the making of theories, perspectives, and technologies as diverse as Lacanian psychoanalysis and Germanium detectors. We are a promiscuous discipline, what some might call an un-disciplined discipline. And it is in part this very intra-disciplinarity that makes geography at this moment so vital. Not all of us are equipped to work across the divides that can separate physical geography, geospatial science, and human geography, but because we inhabit the same space — this thing called geography — we often know each others’ habits, respect each others’ ways of knowing, and understand enough about each other to speak and be heard. And these are the skills required for twenty-first century knowledge-making and problem-solving, skills that Eric Sheppard has referred to as engaged pluralism. The most pressing challenges today, whether related to global climate change, socio-economic inequalities, or on-going territorial conflicts, can only be understood through diverse tool kits, methods, theories and ways of knowing. That diversity exists (and often thrives) within geography. While brainstorming with fellow geographers and friends we came up with the term radical intra-disciplinarity to describe geography’s intellectual contributions. We added the descriptor “radical” to signal that geography’s intra-disciplinarity is not a passing fad but rather is at the root of, and fundamental to, geographical practices, and to highlight the ways in which those un-disciplined practices can lead to important transformations.

I’m already working on a Presidential Plenary for the Chicago AAG 2015 that will highlight and celebrate the creative and radical possibilities of our discipline being so un-disciplined, and I hope that it will form one of the main themes of the conference. More about that later, but for now I would like to hear your comments and thoughts about how and why (and whether) we need to be strategically essentialist, and the possibilities of our radical intra-disciplinarity.

I’m still of course an Anglophile; my world of geography and geographers in the U.K. is robust and enriching. And I still find it annoying to be always explaining geography when returning home, but I think that’s a relatively small price to pay in order to be part of the intellectual community that we’ve created and inhabit in this thing called geography.

DOI: 10.14433/2014.0012

Mona Domosh

    Share
Changing Human Populations Sharing Knowledge
Mona Domosh
Mona Domosh
President's Column

The Future of Physical Geography

Winkler_JulieFor my last column as AAG President, I explore further the role and status of physical geography within the AAG.  I  share with you some of the input received from AAG members on this topic, and outline some initial steps to capitalize on that input, as well as address concerns that have been raised. My thanks to everyone who spoke to me personally, emailed their thoughts, responded to earlier columns, and/or participated in the well-attended Conversation on the Future of Physical Geography special session at the AAG annual meeting in Tampa. Your input is greatly appreciated. Special thanks go to Frank Magilligan and Kim Medley who joined me at the Tampa special session in providing opening remarks, many of which are captured below, and to Ken Foote, chair of the AAG’s Long Range Planning Committee, for kindly moderating the discussion that followed. The major issues that emerged from these multiple sources of input include: participation in the AAG annual meeting, competitiveness of physical geography graduates for academic positions, the AAG journal suite as an outlet for the research conducted by physical geographers, and the potential for greater outreach. The discussion below is organized around these issues.

The message from members

Last fall, while attending the AAG regional meetings, several early career physical geographers relayed to me their concerns that an unanticipated consequence of the explosive growth in the AAG annual meeting is relatively light attendance at some of the many concurrent sessions, making it more difficult for their research to receive the visibility within the discipline needed to help build their careers. Several other AAG members expressed their concern that the growing attraction of meetings of other scholarly societies, especially if these meetings provide or are perceived to provide greater visibility, further draws attendance away from individual sessions at the AAG annual meeting. These concerns were also repeatedly raised during the special session in Tampa. However, the importance of the AAG annual meeting to the viability of physical geography was also highlighted, along with the need to promote attendance at the annual meeting. Essential intellectual and social networks are disrupted when physical geographers do not participate in the annual meeting. Attendees of the special session expressed considerable support for experimenting with alternative formats to help increase the visibility of individual oral and poster presentations. Of particular interest is a format similar to that of the popular Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), with a modest number of themed oral sessions accompanied by large poster sessions. Several attendees further argued that, if themed sessions were to be adopted, keynote speakers for these sessions should be drawn from multiple disciplines, not only geography, to help attract more non-geographers to the annual meeting, and that the presentations should be peer-oriented and science intensive. Arguments made for large poster sessions include a greater potential for networking compared to an oral or poster presentation in one of multiple concurrent sessions.

The training of physical geographers is an important, ongoing issue that received considerable attention at the Tampa special session. Physical geographers interested in academic positions often compete with graduates from other disciplines, especially when the advertised position is in a merged or a broad geosciences department. Consequently, geography graduates need to have publication records and opportunities for professional development comparable to those of other disciplines. A move to publication-based dissertations, where each chapter is a publishable manuscript, is one approach to placing our graduates in a poised position for advancing their publication records at the time when they are applying for faculty positions. The need for more post-doctoral opportunities for physical geography graduates was also raised, and the AAG was encouraged to take the lead in approaching public and private funding agencies to establish prestigious post-doctoral positions explicitly for physical geography.

The topic for which I have received the most input over the past year has been publishing in the AAG journals. Recently, the AAG Council approved a new AAG-sponsored interdisciplinary journal, Geohumanities, whose two-member editorial team will be drawn from geography and from another humanities discipline. Around the same time, the small number of submissions to the Environmental Sciences section of the Annals, in spite of heroic efforts by current and past editors to solicit manuscripts, led to an issue without an Environmental Sciences section. The confluence of these two events prompted me to propose in my October column that the AAG sponsor a second interdisciplinary journal of interest to physical geographers. This journal would supplement and complement the current AAG journals, and provide an outlet with the AAG imprimatur for those authors wishing to reach a more interdisciplinary audience. The reaction to this proposal has been mixed, with fairly strong opinions on both sides. Several physical geographers have shared their concern that the currently large number of journals, especially in the areas of environmental science and global change, may limit opportunities for a new journal. Others have warned of the considerable resources and effort needed to develop a new journal and nurture it to success. On the other hand, a number physical geographers have expressed support for a new journal.  They would like to support the AAG and its journals, but because their research is interdisciplinary in character, they do not consider the current AAG journals with their primarily disciplinary readership to be viable outlets. Some members, including senior physical geographers, told me that they have never published in an AAG journal. Other members recommended that one way to “jump start” a new journal is to acquire, and build upon, an existing journal. Arguments were made at the Tampa session that a new journal, if adopted, should be an outlet for interdisciplinary physical science, not only for interdisciplinary research on global change and natural-human systems. A new journal would need to be highly visible, attract authors from multiple disciplines, and appeal to an interdisciplinary readership. Members also supported further strengthening of the AAG’s current journals, and several shared their recent positive experiences with the review process.

Several attendees at the special session in Tampa advocated that the AAG and its members reach out to other societies, such as AGU, and have a more visible presence at their meetings to promote the disciplinary-relatedness of geography. To quote an attendee, “the AAG should bring geography to other disciplines.” One potential avenue would be for professional societies to jointly organize sessions at each other’s meetings. Active recruitment of physical scientists, whose primary membership is in another scholarly society, could also be worthwhile. Additionally, outreach within geography itself is recognized as important. Physical geographers need to be involved in structuring the discipline of geography and guiding its future.

Actionable steps

What can be done to implement some of the recommendations from physical geography members of the AAG? Experimenting with alternative formats for physical geography sessions at the AAG annual meeting seems an obvious next step given its strong support. To help move this forward, Past Presidents Richard Marston, Carol Harden and I are working with the AAG central office to spearhead the introduction of “AGU-like” sessions for the upcoming annual meeting in Chicago. We are planning two themed sessions on “Environmental Reconstruction: A Nexus of Biogeography, Climatology and Geomorphology”, followed by two large poster session. “Environmental reconstruction” refers to both the study of past climates, landscapes, and biological systems, and to the reclamation of damaged environments. The rationale for this theme is that it captures the breadth of physical geography, and, in addition, complements the climate change theme of the recent AAG meeting in Tampa. These sessions represent an initial foray to evaluate the impact of this format and to work out logistics, such as costs and implications for other components of the annual meeting. Invited speakers for the themed sessions will include geographers and non-geographers, and I encourage you to become involved in planning these sessions, and, in particular, to nominate potential speakers. The oral and poster sessions will be scheduled to minimize conflicts with concurrent sessions. If there is continued support for this type of format, the intent is to develop protocols for requesting and evaluating proposals for future themed sessions.

Some initial steps are also being taken to offer career development support for physical geography students and recent graduates. A career session customized for physical geographers is under discussion for the annual meeting in Chicago. In addition, openings for post-doctoral scholars can now be posted in Jobs in Geography, hopefully making students more aware of these opportunities. These are modest initiatives, but I hope that AAG members, including student members, will step up with additional suggestions and proposals.

Progress has also been made on outreach to other scholarly societies. In February, the AAG hosted a booth at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), an organization that regularly exhibits at our meeting. The booth was well visited and helped to create broader awareness of the AAG and of geography. As one AMS member who visited the booth tweeted under the #AMS2014 hashtag, “Did not realize there was a big climate community there [AAG]”. This was a relatively new endeavor for the AAG, and the lessons learned from the AMS meeting exhibit will be useful for future exhibits at the meetings of other relevant scholarly societies.

That a substantial portion of the physical geography membership does not regularly publish in Association journals presents a potential long-term vulnerability for the AAG, and a wide range of initiatives, including an expanded publication suite, need to be considered. That said, the reservations that have been expressed also need to be acknowledged and considered. Next steps include involvement of the AAG Publications Committee and Long-Range Planning Committee to help assess feasibility, and a survey of the publishing preferences and history of AAG members.

Finally, a Conversation on the Future of Physical Geography II is planned for the Chicago annual meeting to continue the thoughtful discussion from Tampa, and especially to hear more from early career scholars on how to enhance physical geography within the AAG. Please watch the AAG Geogram for information on location and time, and send along suggestions for discussion topics.

All geographers, speak up!

A scholarly society is continually evolving, and input from members is needed to make certain that it evolves to meet member needs. In an inherently integrative discipline such as ours, it is critical that all of our sub-disciplinary voices remain under the larger disciplinary umbrella and join the discussion of our future. It is essential that all geographers, including physical geographers, speak up within our larger community rather than turn inward and become apart. It is only through continued dialog that the AAG can undertake thoughtful and proactive initiatives that enhance and promote geography.

And a personal “thank you”

As noted above, this is my last presidential column — whew! Thank you for providing me with the opportunity to serve as AAG President and for the support you have shown. It has been a privilege and an honor. This year was a wonderful and memorable experience.

Julie Winkler

DOI: 10.14433/2014.0009

    Share
Changing Human Populations Governance and Policy Spatial Narratives
Julie Winkler
Julie Winkler
Post

MyCOE / SERVIR Capstone Fellows Describe Their Experiences

[/media-credit] Joel Kowsky, NASA
In the spring, 14 students traveled from all over the world to Washington, D.C., to discuss their efforts using satellite data and mapping technologies to address climate change issues in their regions. The efforts are part of the My Community, Our Earth (MyCOE) / SERVIR Fellowship Program. The student-led projects address a range of issues including agricultural productivity, water resources, sea level change, food safety, forest conservation, and natural disaster planning.

The event was a culmination of a global program carried out over the past two years, with representative student-led projects highlighting how youth around the world are using remote sensing, GIS, GPS, and geospatial data to address climate change issues in their regions. The 14 students were selected from the 120 participants who were nominated by instructors and staff of the MyCOE Program and SERVIR hubs and chosen by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and NASA.

View the inspiring testimonials from these fellows:

Khin Seint Seint Aye, Impact of famous floating gardens on the environment and livelihoods of a unique Inle lake in Central Myanmar

Susan Malaso, Application of GIS and RS Techniques in Frost Risk Mapping for Mitigating Agricultural Losses in Kenya

Lhakpa, Linking Traditional Beliefs on Climate Change to Scientific Understanding: A Case Study in Eastern Bhutan

Tsedenya Abebe Mengiste, Assessment of Flood Frequency and Local Adaptation Practices in Dilu-Meda, Upper Awash, Ethiopia

Prasamsa Thapa, Surface Area Variation and Climatology of Tsho Rolpa Glacial Lake using Remote Sensing and GIS, Dolakha District, Nepal

Jirawat Panpeng, Vulnerability of Rural Coastal to Potential Sea Level Change: Case of Laemsing District, Chanthaburi Province, Thailand

Roseline Nijh Egra Batcha, Participatory Learning and Gender Partnerships in Climate Change and Food Security: Mfoundi-Yaounde Cameroon

Joyeeta Poddar, Assessment of Glacier Health as a Response to Climate Change in Western Himalayas, India

Khoa Nguyen, Changes of paddy rice extent and its possible effect on the environment in Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Seble Dejene, Carbon Stock Estimation in Wof-Washa Natural Forest: Carbon Finance Options & Climate Change Mitigation, Ethiopia

Pramila Paudyal, Climate Change Vulnerability in Mountain Agriculture: A Case Study Of Susma Chhemawati VDC, Dolakha District, Nepal

Wasiu Alimi, Assessment of the Climatic and Socio-Economic Impacts of Illegal Logging in a Rainforest: The Role of Women, Nigeria

Lateefah Oyinlola, Assessment of vulnerabilities of fresh cut produce to climate change in South Western Nigeria

Tran Thi Mai Anh, Application of GIS and Remote Sensing in Administering Payment For Forest Environmental Services at Huong Son Hydroelectric Power Plant’s Watershed, Vietnam

The MyCOE / SERVIR program supports long-term training of young, emerging scholars in the use of Earth observations, geography, and geospatial technologies to address climate change issues in developing regions. The public-private partnered program provides the mentorship, networking, and professional development necessary to transform innovators into scholars, with the skills to connect their research results to the public and decision makers. It is sponsored by NASA, USAID, and AAG, with the AAG also administering the program. SERVIR, an acronym meaning “to serve” in Spanish, is a joint venture between NASA and USAID. SERVIR works in partnership with leading regional organizations around the globe to help developing countries use information provided by Earth-observing satellites and geospatial technologies to better manage climate risks and sustainability of natural resources.

To learn more about the full My Community, Our Earth / SERVIR program, contact Project Director Dr. Patricia Solís at psolis [at] aag [dot] org. Or, visit https://www.aag.org/mycoe.servir. Read more detailed information on the NASA event.

    Share
Changing Human Populations Living within Ecosystems Networks and Connections
AAG Staff
AAG Staff
Post

Two Geographers Awarded 2014 Guggenheim Fellowships

Anthony Bebbington, professor and director of Clark University’s Graduate School of Geography, and Diana Liverman, professor at the University of Arizona, were recently awarded a 2014 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. They were among the 178 scientists, artists and scholars from the almost 3,000 applicants from the United States and Canada to receive an award this year.

Bebbington’s award was in support of his forthcoming book, “Natural resource extraction in Latin America: transforming the human-environment, challenging social science.” His research addresses the political ecology of rural change, with a particular focus on extractive industries and socio-environmental conflicts, social movements, and indigenous organizations and livelihoods.

Starting in late summer, Liverman will use her one-year fellowship to write a book on poverty and climate change in the Americas. She plans to outline policies that work with communities to reduce climate risks through a variety of programs, such as small-scale irrigation and water conservation, shade, mobility and warning systems. Her goal is to identify solutions that eliminate poverty, reduce emissions and help people adapt to climate change.

Established in 1925 by former U.S. Senator and Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, the foundation has sought from its inception to “add to the educational, literary, artistic, and scientific power of this country, and also to provide for the cause of better international understanding. The foundation has granted more than $315 million in Fellowships to almost 17,700 individuals, including scores of Nobel laureates and poets laureate, as well as winners of Pulitzer Prizes, Fields Medals, and other important, internationally recognized honors.

    Share
Changing Human Populations Networks and Connections Planning and Development
AAG Staff
AAG Staff