Abstract
Over the past five years or so, Anglo-American hegemony in human geography has been widely debated. This debate has highlighted the obstacles put in the way of the building of a more international geographical discipline. In this paper, we reflect on the possibilities and also the limitations of Europe as a context for the experimentation with a more cross-national discipline. In doing so, we notice on the one hand the increasing attention towards the Europeanisation of human geography, particularly at an institutional level, but on the other hand we also notice the lack of some basic forms and tools of communication and exchange that might facilitate the mobilisation of scholars around the ‘European project’. The paper tries to offer a contribution to this issue by discussing the ways in which a European journal of human geography might be conceived and also concretely organised. In this respect the paper takes into account issues of language, access to scientific knowledge and recognition of cultural and academic diversities.
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Notes
Eugeo is the network of European geographical societies, associations and institutes, started in 1994 and formally constituted in 1996 in order “to improve—as stated in the website (http://www.eugeo.org)—communication and exchange of ideas between member institutions and to act as a lobbying body for geography in Europe, to act to improve synchronisation of geographical research at a Pan-European level, and to identify new scientific and educational responsibilities for geography within Europe so as to position geography more fully within the centre of the European debate”. Eugeo is the organiser of the first European geographical conference which will be held in Amsterdam in 2007 (http://www.eugeo2007.org)
There are, however, already significant manifestations of the growing demand for a European writing space within human geography. See, in particular, the on-line, multi-lingual Cybergeo: Revue Européenne de Géographie/European Journal of Geography (www.cybergeo.presse.fr), and the special issue recently dedicated to ‘Geography in Europe’ by Belgeo, the Belgian Journal of Geography (nr. 1, 2004), within the framework of the Eugeo initiative (see the previous footnote)
There are many fields of research in the social and human sciences where French-speaking (and writing) scholars and English-speaking (and writing) scholars work in a parallel way that sometimes finds a point of convergence and confrontation, producing peculiar phenomena of circulation of knowledge (Bourdieu, 2002). The most famous product of these phenomena of knowledge circulation is the so-called ‘French Theory’ (Cusset, 2003).
Although there is a growing number of authors who, in copyright transfers to publishers, have been reserving the right to keep the preprints posted on the Internet (e.g. Odlyzko, 2001).
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the 4th International Conference of Critical Geography, Mexico City, January 2005, in the session “Geographical concepts in action: critical perspectives and histories”. The authors thank participants in the conference for their encouraging and stimulating observations. The paper has enormously benefited from suggestions and comments made by Sheila Hones on various early drafts. The authors would like also to acknowledge the comments of Justus Uitermark. Usual disclaimers apply.
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Aalbers, M.B., Rossi, U. Beyond the Anglo-American hegemony in human geography: a European perspective. GeoJournal 67, 137–147 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-007-9041-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-007-9041-8