President's Column

The End(s) of Geography?

Serving as your President is a singular honor, but also one that is more than a little daunting. My trepidation arises from three sources. First, with the honor of being elected President comes the responsibility to ably serve the aspirations of a wonderful, but large and highly diverse membership. Second, our past Presidents have set a very high bar of achievements against which new incumbents are sure to be measured. These are big shoes to fill. So, before I move on to my third point, allow me to thank the Members of the AAG for their confidence. I also thank our immediate past Presidents Sarah Bednarz, Mona Domash and Julie Winkler for the inspiration and warm friendship they have provided. In the end, all I can promise is that I will do my very best to serve all our Members and further the legacy of our past Presidents. What I would ask in return is that you share your ideas and experience with me. Be sure to let me know if I miss an important concern or stray off course in addressing such issues. I am very teachable.

Now, allow me to address the third reason why I feel a particularly strong sense of obligation in serving as President of the AAG at this juncture in the history of the Association. This revolves around the value and health of the discipline of Geography, and the very geographical perspectives it engenders. I suppose this existential question might be boiled down to — are we at “the end of geography’? In 1970 Alvin Toffler wrote explicitly about the “Demise of Geography” at the conclusion to Chapter 5 in his book Future Shock. His argument being that geography was losing any importance as people tended to move rapidly from place to place and correlations between societal diversity and place were disappearing. In the four decades since then, the continued ease of transporting people, goods and services over great distance, the explosive rise in information and communication technologies (ITC) and the myriad other phenomena encapsulated in the term globalization have prompted many others to proclaim the demise of geography, or at least wonder about the decreasing importance of space and place as significant forces in driving economic and social differences. The catch phrase ‘geography is dead’ has become a facile cliché in some corners of the ITC and globalization worlds. Works such as The World Is Flat: by Thomas Friedman (2005) and Geography is Dead: How America Lost its Sense of Direction by Brian McCabe (2012) and The End of Geography: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law (2014) by Sir Daniel Bethlehem provide more nuanced and thought provoking perspectives on certain aspects of this proposition.

In the same vein one might consider the health of Geography as an academic discipline. From the dissolution of the Geography departments at Harvard, Chicago and UC Davis, the last century saw some notable losses to academic geography. In such circumstances a strong professional academic association is invaluable to unite geographers and champion the discipline. Yet we are facing a general climate of flat or declining membership in many such associations. As Denise Lee Yohn wrote recently in the Harvard Business Review (2016), professional association membership is in widespread decline in part because ICT provides online informal social and professional networking opportunities and access to content such as journal articles that negate the necessity of formal association membership. She also notes that Millennials are generally less inclined to value formal networking and organizations than earlier generations.

However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the death of geography have been greatly exaggerated. In physical geography and across human geography from economic to cultural perspectives, geographers have demonstrated the power that space and place retain in shaping the world. Indeed, the deeper we look the more we find that many aspects of our own perceptions of the world and resulting actions are formed by our experiences of place and space. We also see how gender, race, economic status and other attributes color how we perceive and respond to differences in space and place. Some discussions and illustrative examples of the importance of geography in the context of globalization may be found in works such as Imagining Globalization by Doreen Massey (1999), The Exaggerated Death of Geography by Kevin Morgan (2004), Geographers and Globalization by Yehua Wei (2006) and Is Geography ‘Dead’ or ‘Destiny’ in a Globalizing World by Anthony Howell (2013). Realization of the critical importance of geography is currently extending well beyond the discipline. This florescence is driven by the scholarly insights provided by geographers and others working from geographical perspectives and by the geographically orientated manifestations of the ITC phenomenon in the form of Geographic Information Sciences and the proliferation of remote sensing, mapping and other spatial based applications that are delivered to us on our computers and smart phones at the flick of a finger. Academic geography programs still face challenges on some campuses, but we are arguably not in the dire straits one might have expected in the latter decades of the last century. Of note here is the fact that in 2005 Harvard established the Center for Geographic Analysis. Two years later Villanova established a new Department of Geography and the Environment. I recently spoke at the annual seminar series held by the Geography Graduate Group at UC Davis. There I met an exciting group of faculty and graduate students, from diverse academic backgrounds, but all drawn together by shared interest in geography and the perspectives it offers. I also see on my own campus and beyond the reach of geographical perspectives and techniques in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Although admittedly idiosyncratic, from my perspective, interest in geography and geographical perspectives and techniques is very much on the rise in many corners of the academy. Finally, the AAG is certainly not in decline. We now have almost 12,000 members and drew some 9,000 to the recent Annual Meeting in San Francisco. We also see that a large proportion of those members are undergraduate and graduate students representing the critical Millennial generation. About 30% of our membership is drawn from outside the United States and this coupled with the variety of our annual meeting sessions and range of our affinity groups represent a staggering diversity of scholarly perspectives and pursuits.

So, my trepidation in taking up the Presidency is not about the end of geography, but rather how terribly important I feel geography and the AAG is in tackling the critical societal and environmental problems the world faces today. These challenges and the importance of geography in addressing them is driven in part by the very forces of globalization and ICT that others have assumed would lead to the end of geography. The reach of our actions extends globally as too can the actions of actors in the remotest corners of the globe. Actions from far away can reverberate directly to us wherever we are. Geographical differences in economy, culture, environment, etc., strongly influence these interactions. The more geographers look the more we find a geographically complex world. This is as true for biophysical attributes such as the genetic structure of species or micro-climatic differences as it is for cultural or economic diversity. Therefore, as geographers we know the world is not flat. Rather we recognize that we confront a world that is comprised of a dizzying array of bumps, peaks, hollows and chasms. This diverse human and environmental topography confounds easy answers to critical questions such as how we will feed a world of nine billion?; how will we support an urban population that will comprise 75% of that nine billion?; how will this population impact the environment, including the earth’s climate and how will that environment impact us?; how will all these factors as well as globalization affect human cultures?; how do we study and cope with all these challenges in an increasingly post-factual world in which the capacity and desire to embrace and support reasoned thought and rational actions is often under attack?

Perhaps nothing illustrates the opportunities and challenges we face better than circumstances during my writing of this column. At present I have the benefit of writing on a computer designed in the United States and assembled in China. The computer is networked via fiber optics to the UCLA library system. I am, however, 400 miles away from UCLA at an elevation of just over 8,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada of California. Thanks to a small satellite dish I have been able to watch the BBC News from London while I work. What I have been watching is the vote by the United Kingdom to try and turn back the tide of globalization by exiting the European Union. Almost instantly stock markets around the world, including the Dow, plummeted in response to the potential economic and political implications. A truly globalized experience. However, within the UK the vote was strongly geographically structured with Scotland, Northern Ireland and London being against the exit. Scotland is now considering a second referendum on independence from the rest of the United Kingdom. This could split the nation along clear geographic lines. The strong exit vote in England and Wales was driven by a geographically prescribed sense of British (English largely) identity, a reaction against elites and intellectuals, disdain for increasing EU regulations, including environmental ones and fears about an influx of refugees from civil war, the depravations of ISIS, and lack of food and water in Syria and adjacent refugee camps some 2,500 miles away. None of this is understandable or will be manageable without consideration of geography. It demonstrates the forces of both global connectedness and global geographic diversity operating on multiple scales.

Rather, than asking is this the end of geography, given the plethora of issues facing the world which are intrinsically tied to space and place, the real question for our discipline and our association must be – what are the ends of geography? By this I mean what are the issues that geographers have a special opportunity and responsibility to study? How can we formulate and translate our work to produce and disseminate results that are policy relevant, actionable and accessible to wider audiences both inside and outside academia? How do we recruit and educate new generations of geographers who can take up these responsibilities in the future?  How, given the diversity of issues confronting us and the diversity within our discipline, do we generate coherence and build synergies in our departments and in the AAG? These are the questions I hope to address in the remaining 11 Presidential columns. There are no easy answers, but given the challenges we face and the responsibility we have as individual geographers and an association, they are questions we must tackle together. I look forward to a year of sharing my thoughts and benefiting from yours.

Join the conversation and share your views on Twitter #PresidentAAG

— Glen M. MacDonald

DOI: 10.14433/2016.0011

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Bradley T. Cullen

Brad Cullen, professor emeritus in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico, passed away unexpectedly on June 4, 2016 at the age of 65.

Bradley Thomas Cullen was born on February 8, 1951 and raised in Portola, northern California. He studied for his bachelor’s degree at Chico State University, California, then for his master’s degree at Miami University, Ohio.

Next he moved to Michigan State University for a PhD in geography. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1980, was entitled “Wood products plants in northwestern California: changes in location and size” and examined the forestry industry.

Cullen moved to Albuquerque in 1979 to take up an assistant professor post in the Department of Geography at the University of New Mexico (UNM) where he was to stay until retirement in 2014. During his career at UNM, he served as department chair and was instrumental at one point in advocating for the department when its closure was under consideration. Without his major contributions, the important department of today would be significantly poorer and may not even exist.

Cullen’s work spanned social and economic geography, with his primary research interests being industrial geography and problems related to the environment and energy consumption.Among his many publications was a notable book Sustainable Development and Geographical Space: Issues of Population, Environment, Globalization and Education in Marginal Regions co-authored with Heikki Jussila and Roser Majoral (Ashgate 2002).

He became a member of the American Association of Geographers in 1979 and was actively involved in the Southwest Division, including serving as the Chair in 1992. In addition, he was a strong supporter of the Applied Geography Conferences, serving on the Board of Directors for many years and helping to organize numerous paper sessions. He was also involved in the International Geographical Union including serving on the Steering Committee of its Commission on Marginalization, Globalization and Regional and Local Response. Other service included being a member of the editorial board for the Scottish Geographical Journal.

Cullen had been teaching geography on a part-time basis at Sierra College, CA, since January this year. He had also recently gained certification to teach English as a second language, and had been preparing to serve with the Peace Corps in Mongolia until his health required a change in plans.

Away from his professional life, Cullen enjoyed performances of the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra and the Santa Fe Opera. He was an excellent cook reputed for his desserts but also loved eating out locally in Albuquerque. In addition, he loved dogs and was always seen driving around town in his Mini Cooper.

Cullen will be remembered as a consistently supportive and friendly colleague. Thousands of students he taught over the years will also remember his dry and wonderful classroom humor. He is survived by his older brother John, and sister-in-law Lorraine, and his beloved nephews and their families.

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Wither “Traditional” Geography?

Everyone who has taken a basic geography course know its Greek etymology as coined by Eratosthenes: geo, meaning “earth” and graphe, meaning to “describe.” For many centuries after, geography was synonymous with exploration and discovery, both of the physical/natural and cultural/human/social landscapes. While geographers past may have noted differences between the landscape dichotomy they practiced geography without worry of infringing on (now-prevalent) disciplinary boundaries. It wasn’t until the discipline’s so-called Quantitative Revolution in the mid-twentieth century that a visceral fracturing between geography’s physical and human spheres came to the forefront. Of course, as we have nowadays, each geographer past also had their own expertise area, but the difference between then and now is, they still continued to explore both physical and human aspects of the Earth, despite any potential inclination to one or the other.

Today, even while inter- multi- cross- and transdisciplinary “Centers” are created to teach students how to handle grand questions, specialization has become the norm in Academia. No longer can a doctoral dissertation study “Sweden’s Lapland” broadly speaking, for example. It must be more tightly focused. And not just on a specific region or topic, such as “Sweden’s Northern Mining Towns” or “Sweden’s Domestic Reindeer”. No. It must be almost hyper-specialized to something like “The Biogeographical Consequences of mining on a Southern Exposure Rhizoplaca Geographicum: a Case Study along the Southern Shoreline of Luossajärvi, Kiruna, Sweden”. Why? Even if much research has already been conducted in a region or on a topic, there’s often more that can be gleaned, learned, and analyzed without hyper-specializing. Sure, the researcher may have to bring-in or ask other colleagues for help on certain components, but a project centering on Sweden’s Lapland would still be worthy of a PhD.

A few decades ago, Hart (1982) argued in an AAG presidential address that regional geography was a geographer’s Highest Art. He made some very salient points that resonate with many graduate students even today, and especially with those who were initially drawn to geography because of its breadth. Yet Hart’s sentiments seem to have fallen on deaf ears, as Regional Geographers are in short supply (and demand), even in a time where geo-wizardry abounds and makes formidable weapons for regional geography. I will admit to being one of those students many years ago. And I still make my students (undergrads even) read Hart’s article every chance possible. It spoke to me as a student, and continues to provide guidance for me now, even as I progress through the ranks of the Academy, where I work hard to bridge the oft-too-apparent gap of physical and human geography.

But the road is long, the path arduous, and plagued with bandits who seem bent on robbing our wonderful discipline of its valuable catholic human-physical perspective. Sure, there are plenty of research opportunities focusing on the so-called Human-Environment Interface (HEI) and Sustainability – areas geographers have studied for centuries, but under our own heading, “Geography”, not some buzz-word. Why relegate a broad-reaching discipline such as geography to the minutiae of hyper-specialization? Why castigate those (students included) who want to be “Geographers” in the traditional/romantic/classical sense – those that are willing to and can work across perceived divides?

Some may see this as an old, antiquated view of the discipline, but I believe otherwise. This Traditional Geography remains a vibrant light for the field. It has merit. It has power. I have seen it excite students, colleagues, and even myself. Indeed, its importance has been echoed by many great geographers other than Hart – both physical- and human-focused folks – both past and present (AGS 1915, Harrison et al. 2004, Inkpen and Wilson 2013), including Harden’s (2012) recent Presidential Address.

Geography’s ability to reach across its own apparent disciplinary divide should be embraced, touted, and held high for others to see, instead of relegating its hopeful practitioner to hyper-specialization, discrimination by colleagues for not being specifically-focused in one “camp” or the other, and/or being penalized when it comes to research opportunities, recognition of achievements, and advancement up the ranks. No other discipline claims to describe the Earth, and this facet of Geography’s original character should be something for which the discipline is once again known, something for which it should keep being known. Otherwise we, as Geographers, may lose our foundation, even our very identity. Embracing your origination, your roots so to speak, can enhance not only who you are, but what you do. Even if you decide its path is not for you, or can’t fathom why someone would want to follow that approach, accept the Traditional Geographer. Understand that they will make valuable contributions to the discipline. And for those that want to attempt tackling Geography in the traditional manner, be bold and persevere. Though it may take some time, you will eventually find your place. Geographers are good at that.

Casey D. Allen
Associate Professor
University of Colorado Denver
Fulbright Scholar, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (2015-16)
casey [dot] allen [at] ucdenver [dot] edu
Twitter: @caseallen

References

AGS. 1915. Memorial Volume of the Transcontinental Excursion of 1912 of the American Geographical Society of New York. New York, NY: The American Geographical Society of New York.

Harden, C. P. (2012) Framing and reframing questions of human–environment interactions. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102, 737-747.

Harrison, S., D. Massey, K. Richards, F. J. Magilligan, N. Thrift & B. Bender (2004) Thinking across the divide: perspectives on the conversations between physical and human geography. Area, 36, 435-442.

Hart, J. F. (1982) The Highest Form Of The Geographer’s Art. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 72, 1-29.

Inkpen, R. J. & G. Wilson. 2013. Science, Philosphy, and Physical Geography. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Member News

Scott Carlin of LIU Post to Co-Chair UN Conference

Dr. Scott Carlin, an associate professor of geography at Long Island University Post, has been named Co-Chair of the 66th United Nations Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organization Conference to be held in the city of Gyeongju, Republic of Korea from May 30 – June 1, 2016. The theme of this year’s conference is “Education for Global Citizenship: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals Together.” This will be the first UN DPI/NGO Conference held in Asia.

The Conference will take place in the first year of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations Member States in September 2015 to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure human rights and prosperous and fulfilling lives for all, as part of a new sustainable development agenda to be achieved by 2030.

About his Co-Chair responsibilities, Dr. Carlin feels that his lifelong work in education, with a focus on geography and climate change, has prepared him to serve: “My sense of this conference is that we have reached a critical threshold, where global citizenship has transitioned from something we might do as individuals to something that we must do as individuals. In this new era of climate change what happens to one, happens to all. The SDGs are a natural extension of this new perspective. With the SDGs, the world affirms that we are all safer and more prosperous when we attend to the wellbeing of all citizens and the planet. The Republic of Korea, the conference setting, highly values education and its transformative impact on individuals, communities and sustainable development. While in 1945, the literacy rate in ROK was 22%, today it is 98%. Education has played a vital role in creating economic development and stability in this country. Education partnered with global citizenship offers the clearest path toward a world of greater economic equality, gender empowerment, sustainability and the peaceful resolution of conflicts.”

Dr. Carlin added: “This Conference will provide an opportunity for non-governmental organizations, governments, educational institutions, business leaders and lay institutions to come together to develop partnerships and more sustainable institutions. Education is a human right, a shared global value, one that we can all improve to help create a world that is more prosperous, peaceful and sustainable, where everyone can fulfill his or her dreams of education.”

Dr. Carlin was chosen as Conference Co-Chair through a global online nomination process. He teaches at LIU Post’s new master’s program in environmental sustainability and coordinates their Campus Sustainability Committee. He has been active in civil society initiatives at the UN for nearly a decade. For the past two decades, Dr. Carlin has worked on a variety of sustainable development projects on Long Island, including breast cancer and environmental mapping, green buildings, wastewater management, climate change and renewable energy. Dr. Carlin is also national advisor to the Graduation Pledge Alliance (of Social and Environmental Responsibility) which is offered at colleges and universities around the world.

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Awardees

2015 AAG Book Awards

The AAG’s three annual book awards recognize outstanding works written by geographers and published by during the previous year. 

The Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography goes to a volume that makes an unusually important contribution to advancing the science and art of geography. This year’s winner is Concrete Revolution: Large Dams, Cold War Geopolitics, and US Bureau of Reclamation by Christopher Sneddon. It was published in 2015 by the University of Chicago Press.

The story of the Bureau of Reclamation and the damming of America’s rivers has been told before, but never from the fresh and provocative perspective found in Concrete Revolution. As told by Sneddon, this is a story that transcends the United States and led to the redesign of drainage systems across the developing world, as American dam building became an instrument of Cold War rivalry for the affection of peoples in the emerging economies of the non-aligned world.  It is also a story that takes us to the philosophical heart of modernity and its radical reimagining of human relations with the natural world.  All of this Sneddon does in a style that is accessible and engaging, but also serious and masterly.

The Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography is for a book that conveys most powerfully the nature and importance of geography to the non-academic world. This year’s winner is the Historical Atlas of Maine, edited by Stephen J. Hornsby and Richard W. Judd, with the Cartographic Design by Michael J. Hermann. It was published by the University of Maine Press in 2015.

This is one of the most significant atlases to appear in the United States in recent decades. It covers the period from the end of the last ice age to AD 2000, telling the history of Native peoples, European exploration and settlement, the American Revolution, Maine statehood, industrial development, and the rise of tourism and environmental awareness. Almost every plate in the atlas is based on new research. The creation of the atlas, which took 18 years from conception to publication, was envisioned as an outreach project from the University of Maine to the state’s residents, visitors, and the general public. The result is not only a unique interpretation of Maine, but also a splendid visual record of the state’s history.

The John Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize is awarded to a serious but popular book about the human geography of the contemporary United States that conveys the insights of professional geography in language that is interesting and attractive to a lay audience.

This year’s winner is Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity since the Eighteenth Century by Andrew Sluyter, Case Watkins, James P. Chaney, and Annie M. Gibson. It was published in 2015 by Louisiana State University Press.

The four authors of this book seamlessly combined their expertise and varied perspectives to produce a well-written account of a little-known aspect of New Orleans’ cultural and historical geography. Thanks to their careful study of census records, archival research, interviews, and other sources, we now know that Hispanic and Latino individuals and communities have been part of the city throughout its history. Previous assumptions about the basic similarities of Latino and Hispanic immigrants become much more nuanced in this study, as the authors explain the diversity of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico, Latin America, South America, and the Caribbean – people who made distinct impressions on their respective neighborhoods and contributions to the city’s rich culture. These immigrants’ experiences also varied significantly depending on many factors, not least when they came. The book also contributes to the emerging literature on Hispanics in the South and the cultural diversity of Hispanic and Latino immigration from the period of early European contact up to the present.

The AAG congratulates each of the winners and would like to thank the three book award committees who considered this year’s nominations.

The AAG Book Awards will be conferred during the AAG Awards Luncheon on April 2, 2016, at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.

Brinckerhoff Jackson Prize, Globe Book Award, Meridian Book Award
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A New Rx for the Food Movement in San Francisco

With large-scale demand and a mission to protect public health, hospitals are emerging as the next frontier of the sustainable food movement. Health care institutions spend $12 billion in the food and beverage sector each year,1 and a single hospital can have an annual food budget of $1–7 million or more.2 Even small shifts in foodservice budgets can create new markets for alternative foods.

To date, the darlings of the food movement have been farmers’ markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs, and urban farms that connect eaters directly with the source of their food. These models appear to have boosted the number of small farmers in the U.S. after decades of freefall,3 but research shows that we now have an increasingly bifurcated system that favors small-scale direct markets and large-scale commodity markets. What’s more, experts believe that direct market models are reaching a saturation point even though they’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of the agricultural status quo. Local food sales account for less than two percent of total farm gross, and the goods exchanging hands at some 7,800 farmers’ markets nationwide represent less than one percent of total U.S. agricultural production.4

Meanwhile, mid-sized family farmers are being squeezed out by the march of consolidation within the food system, as are independent middlemen that aggregate, process, and distribute food regionally.5 This agriculture of the middle, meaning mid-sized family farmers and mid-level food system intermediaries, represents the most threatened set of entities in the agricultural sector. Direct market models hold little sway in solving this problem, they are too small to support mid-sized farmers, and they purposefully cut out middlemen.

Leading-edge food system advocates are looking to institutional buyers like hospitals, schools, and universities to help rebuild this missing middle ground because they buy in large volumes and they rely on the wholesalers, processors, and distributors that make up the functional infrastructure of the U.S. food system. But the leap in scale from an individual buying three onions at a farmers’ market to a hospital buying three hundred cases is not simply one of numbers, it presents an entirely different set of challenges, opportunities, and relationships. When you’re making soup for six hundred, changing your grocery list quickly gets complicated.

A team of San Francisco Bay Area hospitals have been at the vanguard of this institutional food revolution since 2005. Leaders including Kaiser Permanente, University of California at San Francisco Medical Center, John Muir Health, and the San Francisco VA Medical Center, gathered at the FoodMed Conference in Oakland, California that year. A non-profit organization called Health Care Without Harm convened leaders from the sustainable agriculture, environmental health, public health, and health care sectors to discuss their overlapping concerns and goals. Together, they articulated a systemic environmental nutrition approach to healthy food, going beyond counting calories and balancing food groups to address the many ways the food system impacts public health.

Since then, over 550 hospitals nationwide, they have signed a Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge generated by the nonprofit coalition Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) which states that “for the consumers who eat it, the workers who produce it and the ecosystems that sustain us, healthy food must be defined not only by nutritional quality, but equally by a food system that is economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and supportive of human dignity and justice.”

Hospitals are putting this vision into practice by serving local produce when it’s in season, switching to rBGH-free dairy products, and sourcing seafood from community-based fisheries. They are buying fair trade coffee, cage-free eggs, and organic salad greens. Some are reducing meat servings to lower their greenhouse gas footprint and are using the cost savings to buy grass-fed beef and free-range chicken raised without antibiotics or added hormones.

“Local, organic chicken was a real challenge” says one leading Bay Area Hospital Food and Nutrition Services Director.   Under the current system, he can place an order on his food distributor’s website, and the next day hundreds of uniform 4-ounce chicken breasts show up on his loading dock, shrink-wrapped and stacked by the case. Procuring local, organic chicken first required weeks of working through bureaucratic purchasing and legal systems to set up a new vendor relationship. When the hospital finally received its first delivery, it was an ice-packed box of whole chickens with the heads and feet still on.   “My cooks almost died,” he reports. Having to chop off chicken heads is a far cry from lining up a row of boneless, skinless meat parts in the griller. Most institutional kitchens no longer have the equipment or staff with the knowledge necessary to deal with whole foods.

The pallets of uniform poultry parts that come through national distributors like Sysco and US Foods also help hospitals to meet strict federal dietary guidelines, as each cut arrives within a fraction of the weight ordered. In contrast, locally-sourced chicken breasts, even if they arrive pre-processed, might come in a four to eight ounce range, forcing staff to slice and individually weigh servings. With tight budgets, paying staff to mete out perfect portions may not be time that a hospital foodservice department can afford.

Efficiency has been a dirty word in some food movement circles, but a little efficiency goes a long way when you’re serving hundreds to thousands of meals every day. Equally blasphemous has been middlemen. But buying food at the institutional scale means relying on certain industrial-style standards and relationships. Hospitals are a microcosm of the challenges that face the alternative food movement as it seeks to scale up — they need to balance their sustainable food goals with their need for efficiency and affordability.

Initiatives like the Farm Fresh Healthcare Project offer insight into how leading hospitals are working with distributors to retrofit existing supply chains to become shorter, more flexible, and more transparent. Since 2011, a team of hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area have partnered with Health Care Without Harm and Community Alliance with Family Farmers to source more local and organic produce from family farmers.

Beyond purchasing power, hospitals can leverage another form of currency in support of organic agriculture – moral authority. Polls consistently show that health professionals rank as some of the most trusted experts in the United States. [1] They can “tell stories about great farmers,” as Luis Vargas, Procurement Manager for Nutrition and Food Services at University of San Francisco Medical Center says, “People look to us for this leadership, and we should be showing the way.” Like the first hospitals to ban smoking on their grounds, which led to greater public awareness and smoking restrictions in other locations,6 those that are leading the environmental nutrition movement are enacting changes that will have ripple effects throughout society.

—Kendra Klein

DOI: 10.14433/2016.0004

Citations

  1. Harvie. in Designing the 21st Century Hospital Vol. September   (Hackensack, NJ, 2006).
  2. FSD. 2011 Hospital Census, <https://www.foodservicedirector.com/sites/default/files/FSD%20Hospital%20Census%202011.pdf> (2011).
  3. Kirschenmann, F., Stevenson, S., Buttel, F., Lyson, T. & Duffy, M. Why worry about agriculture of the middle? , (MIT Press, 2008). DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262122993.001.0001
  4. Barham, J. et al.   (ed USDA) (Agricultural Marketing Service, 2012).
  5. Lyson, T. A., Stevenson, G. W. & Welsh, R. Food and the mid-level farm: Renewing an agriculture of the middle. (The MIT Press, 2008).
  6. Cohen, L. & Mikkelson, L.     (Prevention Institute, Oakland, CA, 2004).

[1] Gallup 2014. Honesty/Ethics in Professions 2013. Available online: https://www.gallup.com/poll/1654/honesty-ethics-professions.aspx.

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Journals

‘Annals of the AAG’ Welcomes Two New Editors

McCarthy
Heynen

Our flagship journal, the Annals of the  American Association of Geographers, begins the new year with a change of editorship.

Bruce Braun and Richard Wright have completed their four year terms as editors of the Nature and Society, and People, Place and Region sections respectively. Their successors are James McCarthy and Nik Heynen.

James McCarthy is a Professor in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. He is perfectly placed to edit the Nature and Society section of the Annals as his own research interests center around nature-society relations including political ecology, environmental policy and social movements, environmental history, and environmental politics.

McCarthy has considerable editorial experience in the field of nature-society geography including as editor of two major volumes – The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology (June 2015) and Neoliberal Environments (Routledge, 2007) – and three special issues of journals (Environment and Planning A, Geoforum and Antipode). He has also served on the Editorial Board of the Annals since 2008.

James is looking forward to leading this pivotal section of the Annals: “I consider nature-society research to be an absolutely essential area of scholarship for geography and for society, and the Annals to be the discipline’s leading journal in this critical domain. I am honored to have the opportunity to help recruit, develop, and publish the very best of geographic nature-society scholarship in the Annals.”

Nik Heynen is a Professor in the Department of Geography at University of Georgia. He has diverse interests including urban geography, urban political ecology, environmental justice, politics of race, urban social movements, and science and technology studies, which are well-suited to managing the breadth of manuscripts received in the People, Place and Region section of the Annals.

Heynen has considerable editorial experience including seven years in various editorial capacities at Antipode and was founding editor of the Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Book Series at the University of Georgia Press, which to date has published 25 books with another 20 in process.

Nik is particularly excited about his new role: “At this point in my career, because of active research I have underway, I do not think there are many journals I would be as interested in editing as the Annals due to both the important disciplinary role it plays but also because of the diverse range of research results it publishes at such a high-quality.”

The AAG, the Publications Committee, and the rest of the Annals editorial team would like to express their heartfelt thanks to Bruce Braun and Richard Wright for their hard work over the last four years. They have presided over thriving sections, managing a heavy workload of manuscripts while ensuring that high quality and rigor was maintained.

The Annals of the AAG publishes six times a year (January, March, May, July, September and November) with one issue per year being a special themed issue. The upcoming March 2016 Special Issue is on Geographies of Mobility. See the contents of the latest issue or browse all past issues. If you are interested in submitting a paper to the Annals, please refer to the information for authors.

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Leading Geography Historian and AAG Archivist Geoffrey Martin To Speak at Library of Congress

Dr. Geoffrey Martin, a prominent historian of American geography, will discuss “On the History of the Book — American Geography and Geographers: Toward Geographical Science” at 7 p.m. on Thursday, January 21, 2016, at the Library of Congress. This special event, which is free and open to the public, will focus on Martin’s most recent major work, and will include a display of related rare maps and atlases from the collections of the library’s Geography and Map Division. Opening remarks will be delivered by Ralph Ehrenberg, Chief of the Geography and Map Division, and Douglas Richardson, Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers (AAG).

Ronald Abler, immediate past president of the International Geographical Union, cited Martin’s book as “unparalleled in the scope and depth of its research and in its meticulous exposition of the evolution of geography in the United States through the 1970s.”

The late Harm de Blij characterized Martin’s book as “a monumental and magisterial work, exhaustively researched and documented, judiciously presented and extremely important as evidence of the foundation from which the discipline arose and evolved. Like Hartshorne’s Nature of Geography many decades ago, this will become a milestone in the record of the field, and it will engender productive debate for decades to come.”

The official AAG archivist for nearly 30 years, Martin received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of London (London School of Economics). He is the author of The Mark Jefferson Paris Peace Conference Diary, as well as other books on Mark S. W. Jefferson, Ellsworth Huntington and Isaiah Bowman. Martin and P.E. James co-wrote All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas. Martin and James also produced The Association of American Geographers: The First Seventy-Five Years, 1904-1979.

He has been the recipient of numerous national and international honors, including East German Visiting Scientist, visiting scientist to Cambridge University, visiting scholar at Yale University and National Science Foundation grant recipient in 1984, 1989 and 2010. Professional awards include both AAG’s Honors and the J.K. Wright Award. In addition, Martin has presented at more than 30 major universities in the U.S., U.K., Denmark, the former East Germany, India, Japan, Serbia and Sweden.

Martin’s talk will be held in the Library of Congress’ Geography and Map Division on Floor B of the Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave. SE in Washington, D.C. The most convenient way to reach the Library of Congress is via public transportation, specifically the subway. The closest Metro station is Capitol South (Blue/Orange/Silver Line), which is located across the street from the Madison Building. Please allow adequate time to pass through the security checkpoint at the Library’s Independence Avenue entrance in time to be seated for the start of the event. The rare maps display will be available for viewing prior to and after the presentation.

American Geography and Geographers: Toward Geographical Science, Geoffrey Martin, Library of Congress
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New Books for Geographers

New Books: December 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.

December, 2015

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President Obama Signs New K-12 Law, Includes Key Geography Provisions

This morning, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law (the photo shown here was taken by John Wertman, the AAG’s Senior Program Manager for Government Relations, who attended the event). The ESSA is the given name for the new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the primary federal law dealing with K-12 education policy which had been known as No Child Left Behind.

The President was introduced at the signing ceremony by Antonio Martin, an 8th-grade student at Kenmore Middle School in Arlington, VA, who specifically mentioned his world geography class during his remarks. Martin also said after the event that he loves the cultural aspects of studying geography!

The ESSA takes effect immediately, but it will take several months for the U.S. Department of Education to fully implement the new programs established in the law. As you are well aware, we have been monitoring the Congressional reauthorization debate through 2015 and we are pleased with several programs in the law that advance K-12 geography:

  • A new history/civics/geography grant program is created as part of a larger series of grant programs that includes teacher incentive grants and literacy education funding.
  • States are authorized to use certain funds to support local education agencies (LEAs) in “well-rounded education” activities, which includes geography.
  • LEAs, in turn, are required to use some grant funds to be used for “well-rounded educational opportunities,” and geography is one of the subject specified for purposes of these expenditures.
  • Grants to magnet schools must be related to a series of activities, including “improving student knowledge of” various subjects, one of which is geography.
  • Grants to aid in the “educational needs of educationally-disadvantaged” Native American students are focused on raising achievement in various subjects, one of which is geography.
  • A “well-rounded education” for K-12 students is defined and includes instruction in a number of subjects, one of which is geography. Our discipline is also again included as a “core academic subject” under the law.

Right before he signed the bill, President Obama said, “Now the hard work begins.” As the federal government works to enact the law and states and localities adjust to the new flexibility they have been granted, it will be incumbent upon our community to engage with educational leaders across the nation to stress the importance of geography as a STEM discipline critical to job growth. The recent GAO report and the AAG Resolution Supporting K-12 Geography Education will help us in conveying this message.

As always, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns. John Wertman, the AAG’s Senior Program Manager for Government Relations, can be reached at jwertman [at] aag [dot] org, and Doug Richardson, AAG Executive Director, at drichardson [at] aag [dot] org.

ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act
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