New Books for Geographers

New Books: January 2013

January 15, 2013

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.

January 2013

Landscapes Beyond Land: Routes Aesthetics, Narratives. Árnason, Arnar, Nicolas Ellison, Jo Vergunst and Andrew Whitehouse, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $65.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857456717).
Migration and Development. Bakewell, Oliver, ed. Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Publishing 2012. $490.00 (ISBN 978-1-84980-970-2).
Immigration Dialectic: Imagining Community, Economy, and Nation. Bauder, Harald. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press 2011. $35.00 (ISBN 978-1-442-61076-7).
Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800–1940. Bosma, Ulbe, Juan A. Giusti-Cordero, and G. Roger Knight, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2007. $29.95 Paper (ISBN 9781845457846).
Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Brightman, Marc, Vanessa Elisa Grotti, and Olga Ulturgasheva, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $90.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857454683).
Roots of Brazil. Buarque de Holanda, Sergio. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2012. $28.00 (ISBN 978-0-268-02613-4).
Writing Food History: A Global Perspective. Claflin, Kyri W. and Scholliers, Peter, eds. New York, NY: Berg 2012. $39.95 (ISBN 978-1-84788-808-2).
A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola. Cortes, Ricardo. New York, NY: Akashic Books 2012. $17.95 (ISBN 978-1-61775-134-9).
The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977. Dathan, Wendy. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press 2012. $51.95 (ISBN 978-1-55238-586-9).
The Locavore’s Dilema: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet. Desrochers, Pierra and Shimizu, Hiroko. New York, NY: Public Affairs 2012. $26.99 (ISBN 978-1-28648-940-3).
The Population of the UK. Dorling, Daniel and Henning, Benjamin. London, England: Sage 2013. $45.00 (ISBN 978-1-4462-5297-0).
Signifying Europe. Fornäs, Johan. Bristol, England: Intellect Books 2013. $40.00 Paper (ISBN 9781841505213).
The Humn Shore: Seacoasts in History. Gillis, John R. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2012. $27.50 (ISBN 9780-226-92223-2).
Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historic Perspective. Gissibl, Bernhard, Sabine Höhler, and Patrick Kupper eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $95.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857455253).
Dictionary of American Regional English: Contrastive Maps, Index to Entry Labels, Questionnaire, and Fieldwork Data. Hall, Joan Houston and von Schneidemesser, Luanne, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2013. $85.00 (ISBN 9780-67406-653-3).
Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914–1960. Harris, Richard. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2012. $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-226-31766-3).
Medieval Maps of the Holy Land. Harvey, P.D.A. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2013. $75.00 (ISBN 978-0-7123-5824-8).
The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Eclides da Cunha. Hecht, Susanna B. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2013. $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-226-32281-0).
The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. Howard, Peter, Ian Thompson, and Emma Waterton. New York, NY: Routledge 2013. $205.00 (ISBN 978-0-415-68460-6).
Ecologies and Politics of Health. King, Brian and Kelley A. Crews, eds. New York, NY: Routledge 2013. $160.00 (ISBN 978-0-415-59066-2).
Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. Kluiving, Sjoerd and Erika Guttmann-Bond. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press 2013. $69.95 (ISBN 978-90-8964-418-3).
The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. New York, NY: Berg 2005. $35.95 (ISBN 978-1-84520-061-9).
The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Lambert, Peter and Andrew Nickson, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2013. $27.95 (ISBN 978-0-8223-5249-5).
Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles. Latta, Alex, and Hannah Wittman, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $70.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857457479).
Slipping Away: Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean. Moberg, Mark. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2008. $32.95 Paper (ISBN 9781845451974).
Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel. Orenstein, Daniel E., Alon Tal, and Char Miller, eds. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press 2013. $27.95 Paper (ISBN 978-0-8229-6222-9).
Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler’s Journey Through the Soul of the South. Puckett, Susan. London, England: Yale University Press 2013. $24.95 (ISBN 978-0-8203-4425-6).
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition. Sachs, Aaron. London, England: Yale University Press 2013. $35.00 (ISBN 978-0-300-17640-7).
The Disappearing South: Studies in Regional Change and Continuity. Steed, Robert P., Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker, eds. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press 2012. $29.95 Paper (ISBN 9780817357450).
Africa South of the Sahara: a Geographical Interpretation, 3rd Edition. Stock, Robert. New York, NY: Guilford Press 2012. $75.00 (ISBN 978-1-60623-992-6).

John B. Rehder

John B. Rehder of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) has died at the age of 68. He was a cherished teacher and colleague in the UTK geography department and a well-known figure on the UTK campus, where he had taught since 1967. Rehder earned both a master’s degree (1965) and a Ph.D. from Louisiana State University (1971) and a bachelor’s degree from East Carolina University (1964).

A historical and cultural geographer, Rehder’s research focused on material folk culture as reflected in traditional architecture in the American South. A distinguished author, two of his books received prestigious awards. Delta Sugar: Louisiana’s Vanishing Plantation Landscape (1999) received the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Award in 2000. Rehder was later presented with the Pioneer America Society’s Fred B. Kniffen Book Award for Appalachian Folkways (2004), a detailed account of southern Appalachia and its cultural milieu. Both books were published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Tennessee Log Buildings: A Folk Tradition is due to be published by the University of Tennessee Press in November of 2012.

John B. Rehder (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(7): 30.

See All Memorials

W. Rhoads Murphey III

W. Rhoads Murphey III, died of pneumonia on December 20, 2012, at his home in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 93. A professor emeritus of the University of Michigan’s Department of History, Murphey arrived in 1964 as a professor of Asian studies and geography. He retired in 1990, but continued to write, teach and advise undergraduate students. He stayed as the director the university’s Asian studies program until it was reorganized in 1996.

Murphey was a four-time graduate of Harvard University, receiving his A.B. in history magna cum laude in 1941 and his M.A. in history in 1942. After World War II, he earned an M.A. in international and regional studies in 1948 and his Ph.D. in Far Eastern history and geography in 1950.

He enlisted during the war as a conscientious objector and served with the British Friends Ambulance Unit in China from 1942 to 1946. Although not a Quaker, Murphey attended a Friends School in his hometown of Philadelphia. That environment shaped his belief that “killing wouldn’t solve anything.” He resolved, however, to assist against the threat of the Axis powers. In the ambulance unit, Murphey and an international group of men drove old, charcoal-powered Chevrolet trucks throughout southwest China with medical supplies.

In traveling to such places as Kunming, Chunking, Yenan, Hanoi, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Murphey met Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse-Tung. Hong Kong was just an “outpost of colonialism,” Murphey recalled, and nothing like the huge metropolis that it became in post-war history.

After finishing his doctorate, Murphey joined the department of geography at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1952. He departed for the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, but returned the following year to the University of Washington. He remained there until heading to Michigan.

Murphey wrote more than 84 works in 218 publications, with translations into seven languages. He concentrated on history and geography drawn from his experiences in China and South Asia. His books included Shanghai: Key to Modern China (1953) and The Outsiders: Westerners in India and China (1977), the latter of which won a best book of the year award from the University of Michigan Press.

The University of Michigan gave Murphey its highest honor, the Distinguished Service Award, in 1974. Murphey also accepted AAG Honors in 1980.

See All Memorials

New Books for Geographers

New Books: December 2012

December 15, 2012

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.

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

January 2013

Landscapes Beyond Land: Routes Aesthetics, Narratives. Árnason, Arnar, Nicolas Ellison, Jo Vergunst and Andrew Whitehouse, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $65.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857456717).
Migration and Development. Bakewell, Oliver, ed. Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Publishing 2012. $490.00 (ISBN 978-1-84980-970-2).
Immigration Dialectic: Imagining Community, Economy, and Nation. Bauder, Harald. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press 2011. $35.00 (ISBN 978-1-442-61076-7).
Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800–1940. Bosma, Ulbe, Juan A. Giusti-Cordero, and G. Roger Knight, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2007. $29.95 Paper (ISBN 9781845457846).
Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Brightman, Marc, Vanessa Elisa Grotti, and Olga Ulturgasheva, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $90.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857454683).
Roots of Brazil. Buarque de Holanda, Sergio. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2012. $28.00 (ISBN 978-0-268-02613-4).
Writing Food History: A Global Perspective. Claflin, Kyri W. and Scholliers, Peter, eds. New York, NY: Berg 2012. $39.95 (ISBN 978-1-84788-808-2).
A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola. Cortes, Ricardo. New York, NY: Akashic Books 2012. $17.95 (ISBN 978-1-61775-134-9).
The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977. Dathan, Wendy. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press 2012. $51.95 (ISBN 978-1-55238-586-9).
The Locavore’s Dilema: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet. Desrochers, Pierra and Shimizu, Hiroko. New York, NY: Public Affairs 2012. $26.99 (ISBN 978-1-28648-940-3).
The Population of the UK. Dorling, Daniel and Henning, Benjamin. London, England: Sage 2013. $45.00 (ISBN 978-1-4462-5297-0).
Signifying Europe. Fornäs, Johan. Bristol, England: Intellect Books 2013. $40.00 Paper (ISBN 9781841505213).
The Humn Shore: Seacoasts in History. Gillis, John R. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2012. $27.50 (ISBN 9780-226-92223-2).
Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historic Perspective. Gissibl, Bernhard, Sabine Höhler, and Patrick Kupper eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $95.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857455253).
Dictionary of American Regional English: Contrastive Maps, Index to Entry Labels, Questionnaire, and Fieldwork Data. Hall, Joan Houston and von Schneidemesser, Luanne, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2013. $85.00 (ISBN 9780-67406-653-3).
Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914–1960. Harris, Richard. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2012. $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-226-31766-3).
Medieval Maps of the Holy Land. Harvey, P.D.A. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2013. $75.00 (ISBN 978-0-7123-5824-8).
The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Eclides da Cunha. Hecht, Susanna B. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2013. $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-226-32281-0).
The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. Howard, Peter, Ian Thompson, and Emma Waterton. New York, NY: Routledge 2013. $205.00 (ISBN 978-0-415-68460-6).
Ecologies and Politics of Health. King, Brian and Kelley A. Crews, eds. New York, NY: Routledge 2013. $160.00 (ISBN 978-0-415-59066-2).
Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. Kluiving, Sjoerd and Erika Guttmann-Bond. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press 2013. $69.95 (ISBN 978-90-8964-418-3).
The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. New York, NY: Berg 2005. $35.95 (ISBN 978-1-84520-061-9).
The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Lambert, Peter and Andrew Nickson, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2013. $27.95 (ISBN 978-0-8223-5249-5).
Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles. Latta, Alex, and Hannah Wittman, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $70.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857457479).
Slipping Away: Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean. Moberg, Mark. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2008. $32.95 Paper (ISBN 9781845451974).
Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel. Orenstein, Daniel E., Alon Tal, and Char Miller, eds. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press 2013. $27.95 Paper (ISBN 978-0-8229-6222-9).
Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler’s Journey Through the Soul of the South. Puckett, Susan. London, England: Yale University Press 2013. $24.95 (ISBN 978-0-8203-4425-6).
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition. Sachs, Aaron. London, England: Yale University Press 2013. $35.00 (ISBN 978-0-300-17640-7).
The Disappearing South: Studies in Regional Change and Continuity. Steed, Robert P., Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker, eds. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press 2012. $29.95 Paper (ISBN 9780817357450).
Africa South of the Sahara: a Geographical Interpretation, 3rd Edition. Stock, Robert. New York, NY: Guilford Press 2012. $75.00 (ISBN 978-1-60623-992-6).

Ashok Wadwani

Ashok and Ishu Wadwani came to the U.S. in 1970 with two bags and $200. Today, the couple own and operate Applied Field Data Systems (AFDS), a company specializing in field-based GPS, GIS, and mapping services, consulting, and training.

After obtaining his master’s degree in physics from the University of Lucknow in 1963, Ashok landed his first jobs in marketing at the Indian partner offices of U.S. companies such as Perkin Elmer, Hewlett-Packard and Honeywell. After he and his wife got visas based on their educational backgrounds and obtained green cards, they relocated to Chicago, where Ashok was employed at Central Scientific, a company specializing in lab equipment. While working full-time, both Ashok and Ishu continued to attend school. After Ashok obtained his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, he moved among locations and jobs for several years, finally ending up in Houston. By 1984, he had started his own business designing handheld computers for the forestry industry – one of the forerunners of modern GPS.

Because GPS technology was still in its infancy in the mid-1980s, Ashok’s entrance into the field came by complete accident. “Early on, I had no clue what GPS even was,” he says. Provisions of the Clean Air Act moved him into the realm of fugitive emissions monitoring by 1986, when his company began supplying rugged handheld computers to refineries and petrochemical companies. His clients soon began requesting geospatial information for their emissions data points. “It was a customer-driven process,” he explains. “GPS technology was developed elsewhere, but AFDS developed the interface not only for petrochemical industries but others.” As the company grew, Ishu decided to join the business, giving up her lucrative job in the health care industry.

Ashok and Ishu stress that their success did not come easily. While they were able to find jobs quickly upon their arrival to the U.S., Ashok notes that the transition can pose a challenge to immigrants not accustomed to American culture. “Asian and European cultures are quite different from American culture, although Americans tend to regard all cultures as similar,” he observes.

In 27 years of running their own business, Ashok and Ishu take pride in the fact that they never had to fire a single employee and have remained debt-free. They strongly believe in encouraging and mentoring students and new graduates, and they continue to hire student interns and offer them flex time so they are able to attend classes. Perhaps most importantly, Ashok and Ishu look for people they can trust. Because running a small business means that often both of them are traveling and are frequently away from the office, they must be able to trust employees to get the job done under minimal supervision.

Small businesses operate with fewer financial resources than a large company, and the burden of accountability ultimately rests on the owners’ shoulders. However, there is also a great deal of personal freedom and flexibility. “You’re the boss – you make a commitment, and that’s it,” Ashok says. For anyone hoping to start his or her own business, he offers some advice: be open to working many hours, be prepared for failures and financial hardships, and be prepared to do odd jobs or “wear different hats” within the company. “We firmly believe there are skills we can teach,” say Ashok and Ishu, “but we can’t teach attitude.”

See All Profiles

New Books for Geographers

New Books: November 2012

November 15, 2012

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.

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

January 2013

Landscapes Beyond Land: Routes Aesthetics, Narratives. Árnason, Arnar, Nicolas Ellison, Jo Vergunst and Andrew Whitehouse, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $65.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857456717).
Migration and Development. Bakewell, Oliver, ed. Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar Publishing 2012. $490.00 (ISBN 978-1-84980-970-2).
Immigration Dialectic: Imagining Community, Economy, and Nation. Bauder, Harald. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press 2011. $35.00 (ISBN 978-1-442-61076-7).
Sugarlandia Revisited: Sugar and Colonialism in Asia and the Americas, 1800–1940. Bosma, Ulbe, Juan A. Giusti-Cordero, and G. Roger Knight, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2007. $29.95 Paper (ISBN 9781845457846).
Animism in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. Brightman, Marc, Vanessa Elisa Grotti, and Olga Ulturgasheva, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $90.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857454683).
Roots of Brazil. Buarque de Holanda, Sergio. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 2012. $28.00 (ISBN 978-0-268-02613-4).
Writing Food History: A Global Perspective. Claflin, Kyri W. and Scholliers, Peter, eds. New York, NY: Berg 2012. $39.95 (ISBN 978-1-84788-808-2).
A Secret History of Coffee, Coca & Cola. Cortes, Ricardo. New York, NY: Akashic Books 2012. $17.95 (ISBN 978-1-61775-134-9).
The Reindeer Botanist: Alf Erling Porsild, 1901–1977. Dathan, Wendy. Calgary, Canada: University of Calgary Press 2012. $51.95 (ISBN 978-1-55238-586-9).
The Locavore’s Dilema: In Praise of the 10,000-Mile Diet. Desrochers, Pierra and Shimizu, Hiroko. New York, NY: Public Affairs 2012. $26.99 (ISBN 978-1-28648-940-3).
The Population of the UK. Dorling, Daniel and Henning, Benjamin. London, England: Sage 2013. $45.00 (ISBN 978-1-4462-5297-0).
Signifying Europe. Fornäs, Johan. Bristol, England: Intellect Books 2013. $40.00 Paper (ISBN 9781841505213).
The Humn Shore: Seacoasts in History. Gillis, John R. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2012. $27.50 (ISBN 9780-226-92223-2).
Civilizing Nature: National Parks in Global Historic Perspective. Gissibl, Bernhard, Sabine Höhler, and Patrick Kupper eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $95.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857455253).
Dictionary of American Regional English: Contrastive Maps, Index to Entry Labels, Questionnaire, and Fieldwork Data. Hall, Joan Houston and von Schneidemesser, Luanne, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2013. $85.00 (ISBN 9780-67406-653-3).
Building a Market: The Rise of the Home Improvement Industry, 1914–1960. Harris, Richard. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2012. $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-226-31766-3).
Medieval Maps of the Holy Land. Harvey, P.D.A. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2013. $75.00 (ISBN 978-0-7123-5824-8).
The Scramble for the Amazon and the Lost Paradise of Eclides da Cunha. Hecht, Susanna B. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press 2013. $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-226-32281-0).
The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. Howard, Peter, Ian Thompson, and Emma Waterton. New York, NY: Routledge 2013. $205.00 (ISBN 978-0-415-68460-6).
Ecologies and Politics of Health. King, Brian and Kelley A. Crews, eds. New York, NY: Routledge 2013. $160.00 (ISBN 978-0-415-59066-2).
Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science: From a Multi- to an Interdisciplinary Approach. Kluiving, Sjoerd and Erika Guttmann-Bond. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press 2013. $69.95 (ISBN 978-90-8964-418-3).
The Taste Culture Reader: Experiencing Food and Drink. Korsmeyer, Carolyn. New York, NY: Berg 2005. $35.95 (ISBN 978-1-84520-061-9).
The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Lambert, Peter and Andrew Nickson, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press 2013. $27.95 (ISBN 978-0-8223-5249-5).
Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles. Latta, Alex, and Hannah Wittman, eds. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2012. $70.00 Cloth (ISBN 9780857457479).
Slipping Away: Banana Politics and Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean. Moberg, Mark. New York, NY: Berghahn Books 2008. $32.95 Paper (ISBN 9781845451974).
Between Ruin and Restoration: An Environmental History of Israel. Orenstein, Daniel E., Alon Tal, and Char Miller, eds. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press 2013. $27.95 Paper (ISBN 978-0-8229-6222-9).
Eat Drink Delta: A Hungry Traveler’s Journey Through the Soul of the South. Puckett, Susan. London, England: Yale University Press 2013. $24.95 (ISBN 978-0-8203-4425-6).
Arcadian America: The Death and Life of an Environmental Tradition. Sachs, Aaron. London, England: Yale University Press 2013. $35.00 (ISBN 978-0-300-17640-7).
The Disappearing South: Studies in Regional Change and Continuity. Steed, Robert P., Laurence W. Moreland, and Tod A. Baker, eds. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press 2012. $29.95 Paper (ISBN 9780817357450).
Africa South of the Sahara: a Geographical Interpretation, 3rd Edition. Stock, Robert. New York, NY: Guilford Press 2012. $75.00 (ISBN 978-1-60623-992-6).

Martin R. Kaatz

Martin Richard Kaatz, a long-time geography professor at Central Washington University, died on November 24, 2012, from complications following heart surgery. He was 88.

Following service in U.S. Army Signal Corps from 1943-46 in the Phillippines and Japan, Kaatz earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in geography from the University of Michigan. In 1952, he joined the faculty at Central Washington University where his career spanned more than 40 years. He was a 1965-66 Fulbright scholar while teaching at Trinity College in Dublin. Kaatz served 15 years as chair of CWU’s Geography and Land Studies Department.

In addition to his academic service, Kaatz was involved in several organizations, boards, and committees, helping shape land use planning in Ellensburg, Wash., Kittitas County, and the Yakima River Basin. CWU honored him for his service naming him a Distinguished University Professor of Public Service in 1980. The Cascade Land Conservancy recognized his lifetime achievements in conservation in 2006. In 2011, He was honored by the City of Ellensburg for his many years of service to the city.

A memorial service was held on Mar. 23 in Ellensburg, Wash., at the Hal Holmes Center. The Martin Kaatz Geography Scholarship Fund has been established in his honor.

See All Memorials

President's Column

Geography’s Cultures of Publication

November 1, 2012

Eric Sheppard

In many ways, Geography mirrors the western academy as a whole, which is why we often seem like misfits within the disciplinary boxes used to organize this academy. How we publish is one of those ways. Our cultures of scholarly publication range from multi-authored highly abbreviated articles summarizing scientific results (particularly physical geographers), to conference proceedings (particularly in GIScience), longer sole- or joint-authored articles, and books of various kinds. Each approach makes perfect sense for the sub-culture involved, also as a way to communicate geographical scholarship effectively to cognate disciplinary clusters (physical science, computer science, social sciences and humanities). Yet what seems natural to some of us puzzles others. Further, geographers’ choices of how to publish are shaped and incentivized by a multitude of forces over which we have limited control. This can pose problems for individual geographers, and the discipline

Consider, for example, the National Research Council’s (NRC) decision about what constitutes geographical scholarship, when it ranked U.S. graduate Geography programs in 2010. The only geographical publications that counted for the NRC were refereed journal articles for which Web of Science citation data are collected—and for which each author gained full credit on every co-authored article. Of course this favored departments with a multi-authored journal publishing culture, ceteris paribus, disadvantaging departments with a more cultural focus. (These controversial rankings were revised, but this decision was not.) Behind this was not only a blinkered view of the nature of Geography (as an earth and social science), but also the limitations of Web of Science as the selected publications database. Only recently has ISI Thomson extended their database to include books and conference proceedings, and their rules about what to include differ from others such as Scopus and Google Scholar.

The publishing industry has its own priorities, incentivizing publication cultures in other ways. New journals have proliferated, as journals with modest circulation numbers are now profitable. Publishers also offer inducements to edit survey books, encyclopedias, companions, handbooks, etc., also currently deemed profitable. Geography thus has put significant effort into boutique journals (great for energizing a newly emergent scholarly community, albeit at the risk of balkanizing larger-scale communications networks), and state-of-the-art edited collections (helpful for students, but sapping scholarly energy from original research and often duplicating one another). Yet scholarly monographs, particularly by less well-known and marketable geographers, are increasingly difficult to publish. University presses, under market-oriented pressure to become financially self-sufficient, increasingly find themselves thinking and acting like the for-profit industry.

Such pressures concatenate through departmental and disciplinary cultures, as we try and game the ranking systems we increasingly are subjected to and evaluated by. I hear from faculty about chairs suggesting they desist from publishing books, and from authors with papers under review in a journal where the editor asks them to add more citations to that journal (boosting its ISI-defined “impact factor”).

The popularity of journal articles aligns with a contemporary merit evaluation culture that incentivizes short-termism: “fast” scholarship (more frequent, shorter publications, in journals with high citation counts) rather than the “slow geography” of major monographs. The Annals has followed this trend. Its book review editor Kent Mathewson calculates that the number of books reviewed annually in the Annals has fallen from 60 to 25 since 2008, as the backlog of accepted articles lengthened.

Book publishing must remain central to maintaining the diversity of scholarly excellence that is Geography’s hallmark. Indeed, those geographers who have had the greatest impact beyond the discipline frequently achieved this through their books. Within the contemporary academy, much is made of the fact that journals utilize double-blind reviews to ensure quality control. Yet the refereeing process is far from perfect, as some spectacular faux pas in the sciences remind us, and the different vetting process for books can be just as effective. Book editors, with their reputations at stake, can be more exacting than an over-worked journal reviewer. Academic publishers, before investing in a scholarly monograph, solicit multiple anonymous reviews from top scholars prior to issuing a contract (ten in all, for my recent book prospectus).

The AAG is undertaking a new initiative to reinvigorate Geography’s book publishing culture. Working with Taylor & Francis, in spring 2013 the Association plans to begin publishing the quarterly AAG Review of Books (ARB), an online journal free to members. Like Contemporary Sociology and Reviews in Anthropology, the ARB will be devoted to reviewing and debating books of interest to geographers and fellow-travellers. If geographers can induce the NRC to value the diversity of publishing essential to our discipline, bring more attention to geographical monographs from in and beyond the discipline, push the citation counting industry to broaden its remit, and reinvigorate respect for academic book publishing in all areas of Geography, these will be steps in the right direction.

Let me know what you think.

Eric Sheppard

DOI: 10.14433/2012.0004

Neil Smith

Neil Smith died of liver and kidney failure at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on September 29, 2012, at the age of 58. He was Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), where he founded and for a number of years directed the interdisciplinary Center for Place, Culture, and Politics.

Smith was born and raised in Leith, Edinburgh, Scotland. He attended the University of St. Andrews (with a year spent at the University of Pennsylvania, 1974-1975), taking a B.Sc. degree in 1977, to be followed by a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1982, where his advisor was David Harvey. He taught in the geography department at Columbia University from 1982-90 before moving to Rutgers.

Smith was a revolutionary force in the academic discipline of geography and beyond. A polarizing figure, his sharp wit and direct style could be taken harshly by those whose work was the aim of his critiques, while others recognized him as a role model for politically committed scholars. He influenced a generation of critical geographers and was one of the early organizers of the International Critical Geography Group. Smith’s work was widely read outside the discipline of geography, including in such fields as sociology, urban studies, anthropology and cultural studies and contributed to the “spatial turn” in the social sciences and humanities.

Entering a field often considered an intellectual backwater, Smith’s insightful scholarship and cogent arguments would imbue geography with an intellectual – and political – importance it had rarely before possessed. Originally on track to become a glacial geomorphologist (based on his love of Scottish landscapes), Smith’s interests gravitated toward the dynamics of urban change under the influence of St. Andrews lecturer Joe Doherty. Smith’s widely accepted “rent-gap” thesis, first published in a landmark article in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 1979 (based on his undergraduate thesis at St. Andrews), made clear that gentrification was a new strategy of capital accumulation actively restructuring urban space. Extended study of gentrification in New York City led to Smith’s influential book, The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City (1982), in which he argued that the dynamics of gentrification was rooted as much in culture (“revanchism” or class revenge, as the bourgeoisie sought to take back “their” city) as it was in economics. He linked the rise of zero-tolerance policing and the other “quality of life” initiatives of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to social changes taking place around the globe, jumping scales from a “localized urban anomaly” to a globalized “urban strategy.”

Smith’s arguments about gentrification were part of a much larger project examining the production of both nature and geographical space within capitalism. In Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (1984), Smith shows that nature is not simply transformed but actually produced, an insight foundational for the whole field of political ecology. He argued that to understand the workings of capitalism, we have to understand the way capitalism produces the very spaces that make its existence possible, a concept now central to much geographical work. Together his theories of the production of nature, space, and scale can be said to add up to a new, remarkably cogent theory of uneven capitalist development.

Smith’s later work examined powerful mid-twentieth century American geographer, university president, and advisor to presidents, Isaiah Bowman (a primary architect of Woodrow Wilson’s positions that led to the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations), and led eventually to the publication of American Empire: Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization (2003), for which he received the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography in 2004 and the AAG’s Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography, also in 2004. Drawing together his various insights and a lifetime of Marxist scholarship, his final book was The Endgame of Globalization (2005).

Smith was also very active in organizing or co-organizing conferences and symposia, especially those of CUNY. He was frequently invited to give lectures both in the U.S. and abroad. He recently served as Visiting Professor at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), and in August 2012 he gave the keynote address, “For (Political) Climate Change” at the Geographing the Future Conference, hosted by the National University of Ireland, Galway. Smith was co-editor of the influential journal Society and Space and served on the editorial boards of Social Text and Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, among others.

Neil Smith received distinguished scholarship honors from the AAG in 2000.

Neil Smith (Necrology). 2012. AAG Newsletter 47(10): 22.

See All Memorials

Gary Peters

Gary Peters was born in Marysville, California on March 20, 1941. After serving as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy he attended Yuba Junior College and then transferred to Chico State University, where he majored in Geography. He then obtained his Master’s Degree and PhD in Geography from Pennsylvania State University. Following the completion of his studies, Gary taught in the geography department at California State University Long Beach before finishing his career at Chico State University. Throughout his career Gary published ten books—including Population Geography: Problems, Concepts, and Prospects and American Winescapes: The Cultural Landscapes of America’s Wine Country—and numerous academic articles.

See All Memorials