excavating geography's hidden spaces

Excavating Geography's Hidden SpacesAuthor(s): Hayden Lorimer and Nick SpeddingSource: Area, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 294-302Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of BritishGeographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20004246 .

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Area (2002) 34.3, 294-302

Excavating geography's hidden spaces

Hayden Lorimer and Nick Spedding Department of Geography and Environment, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen AB24 3UF

Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]

Revised manuscript received 5 June 2002

This paper considers alternative ways to approach teaching and researching the history and philosophy of geography. While exploring the geography department as a previously marginalized space in accounts of disciplinary change, three different types of source are identified: first, less formal kinds of documentation; second, material sites; and third, a

bodily archive of action, gesture and movement. In combination, these are shown to open up new possibilities for localized, grass-roots versions of geography's pasts and presents.

Key words: Aberdeen, history of geography, story-telling, local studies, practice, education

A whole history remains to be written of spaces - which would at the same time be the history of powers ... from the great strategies of geopolitics to the little tactics of the habitats. ('Questions on geography', Foucault 1980, 149)

Introduction

In this paper, we wish to set out some of our ideas on the relationships between the history, philosophy and practice of geography, as they are worked out in the everyday sites inhabited by its practitioners. Our point of entry, and continuing terms of reference, are both personal and pedagogic. They stem from our experience as participants in a senior under graduate Honours course devoted to the history and philosophy of geography. This paper is in part born out of frustration: we find that many of our student audience do not share our own enthusiasm for these aspects of the discipline. To start our thinking at the local and personal level may give the impression that

we are not directly concerned with 'flagship research

activity'; however, we do envisage a wider purpose for our project as a means to rethink traditional approaches to the study of geography's historiogra phy. In what follows, we work through a series of ideas, punctuated by two empirical excursions, that

we believe offer the potential to construct meaning ful and accessible versions of disciplinary pasts and presents that might otherwise go unnoticed - or

what we like to think of as excavating geography's hidden spaces.

The course that we teach, 'Critical Approaches to Geography',' is similar in scope and nature to those on the history and philosophy of geography taught elsewhere in the United Kingdom (Phillips and Healey 1996). It is a compulsory core course, historically presented because a knowledge of such matters was widely thought of as an essential part of an undergraduate's education, and more recently sanctioned by the Quality Assurance Agency's Benchmark statement (Geography Benchmarking Group 2000). In 12 lectures and two tutorials, we attempt to trace the development of geography and its key ideas over the course of the last 200 years or so.2 Whereas established academics tend to take this stuff in their stride (or ignore it!), most students,

when confronted with the intricacies of geography's past, fail to show much in the way of interest or confidence.

Interrogation in the geography reading room

On trips to Aberdeen University's Queen Mother Library, we often encounter students asking: 'What's the best thing to read for this course?' They are confronted with an often bewildering array of ideas.

We are put on the spot. Understandably, we seek communal security in a 'set' textbook. The usual

ISSN 0004-0894 ?) Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2002



Excavating geography's hidden spaces 295

suspects loom large in our recommendations: Johnston (1997), Gregory (2000), Livingstone (1992) and Stoddart (1986). The collective influence of this canonical quartet on the learning trajectories of successive waves of undergraduate geographers

must be remarkable.3 And yet, in our experience, students frequently find it difficult to come to terms

with the scholarly content of these texts. This is apparently a problem in many British departments of geography (Phillips 1994; Phillips and Healey 1996). How is it that textbooks, representing what passes for geography, can fail to enlighten or enthuse a large number of their undergraduate readers? Weaker students, unimaginative teaching and the difficulty of the subject matter might all figure in any answer to this question. So too must the style in which text books are written - but we are not convinced by those who argue that obfuscatory language per se acts as the major barrier to student understanding (cf. Phillips and Healey 1996, 232 and 238). We think linguistic reform can, at best, provide a limited solution: it needs more than just shorter, more familiar words to make geography's stories accessi ble to a wide audience.

How, then, is The Geographical Tradition, or, indeed, the geographical tradition, to be accessed by, or made accessible to, the student wishing (or required) to learn more? Livingstone's text, now entering its second decade, offers a popular point of entry for staff and students alike, as a result of which it has been subject to wide-ranging critique.4 Livingstone's work focuses on a geography formu lated through grand academic debate, set against a

backdrop of major world events and social change. Most critiques have identified particular absences in his self-consciously selective history of the discipline (e.g. Werrity and Reid 1995). It is not our intention to pursue these arguments here; rather we wish to identify a very different type of absence, and move on to suggest an alternative approach to the history and philosophy of geography.

Pacing the same old corridors

So then, what of the familiar day-to-day sites, events and actions that have constituted geography's more quotidian history? It appears somewhat odd that reflexive research practice has rarely extended to the very spaces of academia in which we assume the status of professional geographers with greatest regularity and comfort: those centred on the depart

ment.5 This reluctance is in part understandable. All

the better, some might say, given the length of time we spend incarcerated in these buildings. Yet there is an in-built caution too. Current processes of professionalization ensure that the personal is also political, and so discourage the airing of 'dirty wash ing in public' (cf. Passmore 1998). Geography's 'official' histories are now inextricably bound into

a new, burgeoning bureaucratic file containing the likes of Research Assessment Exercise ratings,

Quality Assurance Agency subject benchmark statements and Teaching Quality Assessment scores. These 'whiter than white' accounts disallow defi ance, and threaten to bleach local colour and particularism.

So, what we propose here is to divert course from the charting of grand intellectual campaigns to tell the stories of the countless multitudes commonly left out of the mainstream. To locate these activities we need not turn solely to weighty tomes, containing the 'black-boxed' wisdom of establishment profes sors. Instead, we must undertake a grassroots archaeology that sets out to interweave existing accounts of intellectual dialogue with more

mundane and modest practice. Our comments here explore the potential offered by three different types of source: first, informal documents and in-house texts; second, material sites; and third, a bodily archive of action, gesture and movement.

At this point, perhaps we should make it clear that we in no way wish to argue for a geography stripped of its central history and theoretical engagements. It is because we want to understand these more fully, and wish our students to see themselves as active participants in the making of the discipline, that we promote a complementary strategy. As we hope our opening quotation demonstrates, if we are to tell geography's stories, both small and large, we must shuttle successively between contrasting, if not con tradictory, worlds. To refine Foucault's assertion, 'great strategies' succeed 'on the ground' precisely

because of the 'little tactics' of the habitats. What could easily be construed as piffing and playful, perhaps even inappropriate, takes on a more pro found aspect. We need to think in terms of common experience: common in that it integrates, not separates, staff and students; common in that it bridges temporal divides; and common in that it revolves around everyday experience. How are ideas taken up, translated, transformed and transferred, or subverted, resisted, even rejected?

How and where might we start upon this project? Biography certainly figures in this nascent scheme.



296 Lorimer and Spedding

There is an important difference between an indi vidual's narrative of geography's history and one that tells of that history from within the material sites of its own making.6 For example, the territories of the quantitative revolution, as explored by a series of notable geographers during their formative years, are reconstructed in entertaining and illuminating fashion in a volume of short autobiographical notes edited by Billinge et al. (1983).7 Personal 'recollections' such as these, however, still rely on the sagacity of Great Men. Similar, if more prosaic, remembrances of times past have recently resur faced in Progress in Human Geography's new feature, 'Textbooks which moved generations'. The enlargement of past audience implied by the switch from 'classic' research paper to textbook represents a welcome innovation, helpful to our agenda here.

While the focus might still fall on text, this can be neatly allied with the placed context of its reception. As Michael Wise's (2001) evocative account of life in Birmingham University demonstrates, 'space, culture and identity' were not alien to the student's under standing of geography. This can continue to be the case, as long as we are prepared to turn our con cepts of locality back upon ourselves, and our own histories.

Something nasty in the basement

As indicated earlier, we now switch to the sort of empirical encounter that can be used to illustrate these arguments. As part of its quality assurance procedures, our institution requires us to distribute Student Course Evaluation Forms (SCEFs) at the end of each taught undergraduate course. This is a simple questionnaire: students are invited to agree or disagree with various statements and are also given the opportunity to append written comments.

Course staff are required to analyze, respond to and, if necessary, act upon this information. For staff and students alike, this form-filling can be just a tiresome diversion. Then, with bureaucratic expectations satisfied, the forms are packed up in box-files and consigned to a cramped storeroom in the basement of our department. However, this process and its

seemingly prosaic products merit alternative interpretation. The simple ticks and scribbled com

mentaries also offer us a window into the everyday world of the student, communicating a range of experience, meaning and disciplinary understanding.

In the past four years, we have taught 'Critical Approaches' to over 300 Honours students. The

experience has not always been a happy one; both for us and for them. Perhaps, then, we should be content to bury the evidence? But, as we stated in our introduction, we can find the collective reaction to what we teach troubling; sufficiently so to prompt us to revisit the basement. Retrieval of the SCEFs requires a thick skin. After all, these forms are about us. Having been given the chance to throw a few anonymous barbs in our direction, students can respond with a disconcerting enthusiasm. Given the forms' official purpose, it may seem that their exhumation simply stands to confirm approbation or opprobrium of what we do. However, it is also an act of rescue that mobilizes new meaning. We find in the trappings of formal 'hoop-jumping' a surprisingly rich history. Read with a critical eye, the forms say little about us, at least as isolated individuals. They tell us about the students, the department and their authors' localized understanding of what makes the discipline. The inglorious dusty scramble necessary to retrieve the relevant boxes converts storeroom into archive.

Feedback: signal or noise? Traditional treatments of geography's history and philosophy incorporate students only as a passive audience. In contrast, the SCEFs provide an annual snapshot of how the discipline at Aberdeen is under stood, enacted and remade. The set questions probe seemingly mundane activities (e.g. teaching and computing facilities) and audit the competence of teaching staff (e.g. preparedness and supportive ness). Such matters are of value if we are to attempt to capture the social and spatial life of the depart

ment and, in small part, the discipline. Still more informative are those 'Further comments' that follow the tick-box responses. These student 'soundbites' bring together material, corporeal and intellectual themes to advance a localized disciplinary dialogue. Important aspects of this dialogue focus on the boundaries, content, relevance and level of difficulty of the subject. From it emerges a strong sense of the students as activists, simultaneously striving to define personal identities and shape their own academic space.

In its quest for feedback, the University anticipates that the students will signal whether or not they like the course. However, it is significant that the noise of student comment subverts the forms' official purpose: it is neither the course, nor the staff, but the identity of the discipline that is subject to the most intense scrutiny. So here goes...'




... Going into 3rd year I was pleased that finally I could

pick the courses I wanted to do and was initially interested in this course as it was required. However,

while several of HL's lectures were interesting, on the whole I have found the course confusing, very, very difficult and quite unnecessary with my other degree courses. Despite working, I believe that a lower mark in this course will not help my degree effort which other

wise is going well. In future make this course a choice, not a requirement.

I often felt that it is just a course justifying Haden and Nick's jobs ...

Have you got 4-5 more sheets!!!! This course is an example of what human geographers have called the jargonification-catatonia effect in which words such as spatial, culture, identity etc., induce catatonia in the student. This was a course for the sake of a course - roll

on next year!!

. . . the content of the course was very complex, and the

philosophy involved could be regarded as unnecessary to a degree in geography...

Critical Approaches was a thoroughly abstract and confusing course. Although lecturers seemed well pre pared, I felt no more knowledgeable at the end of

course. Most of the course seemed 'utter bullshit' (excuse the language!) I appreciate the importance of learning the development of geographical thought and the progress made to current paradigms (yes I did pay attention!) I also did a lot of outside reading but felt I still

couldn't fit the pieces to complete the jigsaw. I just hope I make some headway before the exam! How this course is critical to our understanding I'm not sure! Oh

- and 'The Geographical Tradition' would be better described as a 'bloody dull read'! (sorry, Hayden!)

Often felt that I was studying philosophy or sociology not geography.

A rather dry course - is it really necessary? I think by 3rd year, we're a bit beyond these 'theory' courses and just want to get our teeth into what we're interested in.

Very interesting and thought-provoking, good back ground for understanding. Comparatively little on physi cal geography - no paradigms at all?

The lectures were too monotonous and this was repre sented by the constant decline in numbers attending.

I felt that not only was the course unnecessary it was

also excessively boring and complicated. The idea that

'you cannot do geography without this course' is com pletely factuous. A waste of time - and of absolutely no

interest to me whatsoever either personally or within a degree course programme.

The point of this course is really questionable. The concepts are so vague and the reading material e.g. Johnstons HG since 1945 are so badly written that this has been one of the hardest courses to get a grip of I have ever done.

Did not enjoy the course - felt the workload was disproportionate to the overall value this course will give me post-university. Very dubious to any benefit this course will give me in a later career.

Grassroots voices such as these may force us to confront a 'mass of malevolent opinion' (Lyotard, cited by Phillips 1994), but it's not all bad ...

I have really enjoyed the challenge and the course has been an eye-opener.

... a very enlightening course, that brought up new ideas and ways of looking at geography.

... of all courses this term, this was the most challeng ing, but also the most rewarding as well as directly relevant to other courses.

I really found the course very interesting, as it give me knowledge on things, ideas and people which I had no prior knowledge.

What the SCEF responses demonstrate for the case of Aberdeen is a divided community of student geographers. This itself is not unusual (e.g. Bradbeer 1997). If the prevailing tone is negative, it is import ant for us as academics not to reject student criticism ('Tough - it's good for you!'), or to explain it away as a failure of teaching practice ('Innovate, and they'll appreciate it!'). It's all too easy to dismiss the student body as apathetic or ill-informed, but - as the above evidence demonstrates - this is disingenuous. It is clear to us that many of our students are far from apathetic, and are keen to offer their personal opinions on the state of the discipline. These asser tive voices are not ignorant, although they do not always speak from the same position of knowledge conventionally held by the 'academy' (cf. McDowell 1994). Our example of the SCEFs presented here illustrates the type of resource we can use to trace the making of geography as it shuffles along at the local level of the department.

Taking a closer look

There are other ways of tracking this modest geogra phy, and its history. Comparable remnants, ripe for




'excavation', include student magazines and under graduate dissertations (Philo 1998; see also Withers 2002) or departmental ephemera (Crang 1998) - all examples of the unorthodox resources that can be called upon to ground such storytelling. The photo graphs of grinning fleece-clad individuals that Crang identifies as emblematic of physical geography sug gest a wider treasure chest of resources. These are informative precisely because of their informal, even clandestine, origins. There must be samizdat accounts of grassroots activities circulating in many geography departments, or perhaps tucked away in the footnotes of published works.9 Area, of course, has a fine tradition of publishing artful material -

spoofs, satire, doggerel, even cartoons - that might otherwise have only reached a common-room audience. While Crang rightly identifies the possibili ties contained within such a material culture of research and learning 'products', both more and less conventional, it is equally important that we do not overlook the intermediary drafts that these practices can throw up (e.g. jottings, sketches, assignments). The journey between lecture notes and degree scroll, or between fieldwork diary and published paper, is always subject to unexpected diversions and translations. Technologies, whether cutting-edge or obsolete, themselves retain stories. Those parts of our basement not given over to the storage of old forms and exam scripts are a graveyard of monitors, keyboards and mice; and our survey store is home to regimental rows of faithful tripods, eased into an honourable retirement in favour of GPS. These artefacts are meaningful, indeed essential, to the reproduction of the subject, yet are so easily over looked. The slip between materials and the spaces they occupy is here, at least, deliberate.

Crang's choice of artefact from 'the field' is illuminating, if a tad predictable. Geography's current enthusiasm to explore the cultures of the field is

entirely welcome (Driver 2000; see Powell 2002). However, such projects must avoid treating these varied sites as enticing, but geographically and

epistemologically isolated, systems of action and endeavour. Inquiries that set out to shed light on 'the field' should instead echo between hillsides, retail parks and classrooms. Furthermore, we recognize the field's allure as a (sometimes) glamorous projec tion of the department, but should also remember that for many geographers at school or university, time in the field might amount to only two to three

weeks across a period of three to four years. The vast majority of a geographer's time is spent in the more

prosaic spaces of the department. Crang's tentative steps, as a human geographer, into his department's labs frame these spaces of 'hard science' as personal terra incognita, but arguably, as far as the history of geography goes, the labs are terra incognita, full stop. Yet, if we conceive of lecture theatres, seminar rooms, libraries, meeting rooms, social spaces and

GIS laboratories as geography's domestic environ ment - and as its teaching 'chalkface' - then they exist as sites in which localized, embedded cultures of the subject have evolved and where specific interpretations of its key epistemological debates have been translated for successive undergraduate audiences. Here we are mindful of a recent poly phonous review piece detailing two decades of geography at Oxford Brookes University (Jenkins and Ward 2001). This staff-based account of student centred learning demonstrates how bespoke - rather than 'off-the-peg' - versions of national curricula

were designed to fit students out with their own geographical education. Jenkins and Ward use oral history to resurrect oral culture, but it is also a technique that provides the opportunity to re-enact the wider comings and goings within these spaces of practice.

Once again Livingstone (1995) offers us a useful point of departure. While conversing with his critics, he suggests that the lens of inquiry might zoom in on local sites to recover more of geography's significant pasts. And yet there is a certain wariness in his treatment of ordinary people: their presence is shadowy, their actions ossified. The 'body', subject object of so much recent theorizing, when animated, offers a more intimate and obviously corporeal aspect to our histories, and widens the spectrum of scales (Simonsen 2000). In material sites, we encounter a succession of relevant micro practices: surveying, digging, sieving, pipetting, titrating, calculating, computing, gossiping, drinking coffee etc. These situated performances (see Naylor and Dewsbury 2002) of geography can be read as ethnographic moments in which doing is what mat ters. In similar vein, the display of gendered, racial ized and sexualized identities through everyday dis ciplinary acts (Bee et al. 1998; Delph-Janiurek 2000) also opens out new discursive spaces for a more inclusive history of geography. This alternative focus on process rather than product challenges our con ventional understanding of the archive as a static store of documentation. It is in this spirit that Withers (2002) reassesses the nature of the archive, indicat ing the ways in which we can extend the sweep of its




material resources to create a radical catalogue of

past actions. But this scheme requires more than records and documents. Gestures, movements, sounds, etc. define a non-representational realm that promises to resuscitate method in geography (Thrift 1997; Thrift and Dewsbury 2000), so providing us

with new tools to motivate fresh investigation of its history and philosophy.

The triumvirate of themes outlined here - materi als, sites, bodies - helps us conceive of relationships 'between thought and social setting', and so cultivate a form of localized study sensitive to variations in the conditions of our knowledge 'according to our placement in social and physical space' (Ophir and Shapin 1991, 9). This schema allows us to unpack the mysteries of the 'black-boxed' ideas set out in the

mainstream texts that guide us through the quasi mythical spaces of 'the academy'.'? By way of illustration, we would like you to join us on a short tour of one of our department's most notable spaces, where all three themes intersect ...

Welcome to Map Control

This second empirical excursion takes us into what the university prosaically labels 'St Mary's G1 8' - or the room that all Aberdeen geographers know as 'Map Control'. Perhaps more than any other space,

Map Control gathers up the variety of stories, per sonalities and activities that define the department's history. Taken together, these provide a filter through which we can observe the evolution of the wider discipline at the local level.

The entrance to Map Control is guarded by a set of double doors. A shiny brass plaque reassures doubtful visitors as to their location. The term itself conjures up a time in geography's past when this room was the fulcrum of departmental activity and intellectual endeavour. Here the centrality of the cartographic (im)pulse determined the regular rhythm of scholarship. The assertive label 'Control' preserves the once privileged nature of the space, and the disciplinary procedure of maps checked in and checked out by the Map Technician.

The tale of the map's demise is familiar to most

geographers (Martin 2000) - but it is usually ascribed to philosophical or technical change, or both. The practical and physical manifestations of this are sometimes overlooked. The department's original collection has been scattered. Large holdings are now deposited in the ever-resourceful basement, as well as the toilet cloakrooms. New maps (mostly

those purchased on subscription from the Ordnance Survey) displace the old. The new sheets are given slots in the various drawers, shelves and cabinets built, and installed, piecemeal over the years, by technicians in the downstairs workshop (now closed down). Other shelves host the ramshackle remnants of the department's library. Piles of miscellaneous teaching materials testify to the growing demands of student-centred learning and quality assurance pro cedures. Sequestered in locked cupboards are all the Honours dissertations written since 1928. These provide a continuous archive of the department. The formal record of past student activity draws a con temporary student audience. The anxieties attached to framing and writing up the thesis connect under graduates across the years. Clusters of students trawl the dog-eared index for comparable studies and leaf through the texts in search of inspiration ...

So much for the formalized, scholarly use of Map Control. It serves also as a social area - increasingly so in recent years, as institutional pressures on space have become more acute. Staff regulars enter by the back door, tucked away at the end of the professorial corridor. Here eight chairs of geography monitor the various comings and goings: five from framed photographs on the wall, two from their offices, and one from both. Cohabitation is uncomfortable, so unwritten conventions are observed. With the arrival of the staff, students concede sole occupancy of the space, and seek temporary refuge in the Central Refectory over the road.

The social life of Map Control revolves around its spartan catering facilities. A termly fee of f1 0 buys

membership of the 'coffee club'. The daily routine of topical debate and gossip is animated by contri butions from different geographical genera tions. Assorted newspapers and magazines (the THES, Scottish Geographical Journal, OK, Hello...) reinforce the common-room atmosphere. A curricu lum map once taped to the central workbench, postcards charting the destinations of fieldworkers and graduates, and odd copies of the Geogsoc's magazine, The Orb, add to the clutter. Remnants such as these reflect past chapters in the depart

ment's history: a source of myths, anecdotes and memories that, by blending function and nostalgia, recreate a localized tradition of geography.

In this short sketch, we have set out some aspects of what a fuller (if unauthorized) biography of Map Control might include. Its history is rich in geogra phy, infused with the different philosophies and actions that have shaped the changing landscapes of




university teaching, learning and research. We hope that our ideas prompt others to think differently of the quotidian spaces and practices of their own departments, as a means to uncover smaller, hidden histories. We are aware too that such excavations require delicacy: the discipline's everyday localities can, and do, include certain individuals or groups at the expense of others. However, if we fight shy of the micro-politics of the department, we stand to divorce its intellectual output from both the material and ideological contexts of knowledge production and consumption.

Conclusion

What we have covered here takes some inspiration from literature in science studies and the history of science. Important aspects of this work that we find useful include: the shift in emphasis from philosophy to sociology, with a greater empirical attention paid to practice as opposed to linguistic abstraction; a closer awareness of relations between locality and

wider context; and a sharpened reflexivity stimulated by this reduction in scale (e.g. Golinski 1998; Smith and Agar 1998). Reflexivity, as it is usually under stood, highlights the embeddedness of the individual in his or her research practice. On top of this, we

wish to argue for a disciplinary reflexivity. Geogra phers, it seems, have been reluctant to use their own methods to scrutinize the very conditions of their own making - but see Livingstone's (2000) instruc tive account of the possibilities available to us if we choose to 'make space for [our] science'.

However, we also identify important differences between accounts from the history of science and the history of geography, and the kind of story that

we propose. Existing work tends toward elitism. We do not wish to disparage or ignore tales of privileged individuals (the Newtons, the von Humboldts, the

Darwins and the Mackinders) researching in privi leged spaces of primary knowledge production (principally the laboratory or the field). We do, however, want to reveal modest geographical practice: the labours and leisures of the everyday people (students, lecturers, cartographers, techni cians, porters etc.) who act out the department's different routines. The discipline's reproduction depends, in part, on these circulatory processes of translation, transformation, resistance and consumption.

We are not just exploring new avenues of research; we also believe that this approach suggests

new pedagogic resources. Linguistic barriers can - and do - disrupt the teaching of the history and philosophy of geography (Phillips and Healey 1996), while a perceived profusion of jargon can give rise to accusations of abstraction and irrelevance. As staff

we find ourselves, however reluctantly, on the other side of the fence to our students, and forced by our status and training to defend what we see as an artificial and unnecessary sub-disciplinary stance.

Why strengthen a barrier that is illusory? We can all identify with lectures (preparation or attendance), the writing and marking of essays, fieldwork, bureaucracy, coffee breaks, and the frustrations of finding that all-important book missing from the library. The small stories we wish to tell can help students make better sense of big words or strange and distant deeds.

Acknowledgements Thanks to our friends, colleagues and students (categories that we trust are not mutually exclusive) for their (often unwitting) help and inspiration. We are indebted to David Livingstone and Charles Withers who stimulated our enthusiasm for this project through conversation and critique.

Notes

1 Within the department, it tends to go by the pithy label 'CRAP' - shorthand that was not foreseen at the inception of the course.

2 Should you wish to look, our website can be found at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk:8900/public/GG3020.

3 The first edition of Johnston's Geography and Geogra phers was published in 1979, whereas K. J. Gregory's recent book updates and adds to his 1985 treatise on The Nature of Physical Geography.

4 In the interests of parity, we should make it clear that all four textbooks cited in the previous paragraph, and their authors, have been the subject of trenchant criticism, in Aberdeen, and elsewhere.

5 At this point, we are happy to acknowledge the wealth of articles on staff and students' everyday experience of teaching and learning published in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education over the last two decades. The cumulative contribution of this research is diverse and important, but its immediate emphasis is on teaching and learning for its own sake, and only a

small percentage of papers deal directly with the history and philosophy of geography. Even those which are pedagogically reflexive tend not to self-consciously articulate a sense of the ongoing dialogue between philosophy, geography and the spaces that these inhabit. Thus, from the perspective of this article, we see the content of the JGHE as potential 'raw materials'




for further study, rather than making an established contribution to the debate.

6 Livingstone, for instance, concedes that The Geographi cal Tradition is a personal and selective account of 'contested episodes' in the discipline's history; it is also

an account in which the author does not (or cannot)

inhabit the spaces in which knowledge is produced. If we are to follow geography in action, then the mutually constitutive conditions in which spaces and agencies unfold require more grounded inquiry.

7 Disappointingly, Recollections of a Revolution has only been taken out of our library seven times in the last ten years (twice by Nick). Perhaps this reflects the formidable content of the first chapter - a rather arid treatise on Kuhn, his critics, and the relevance of paradigms to geography. We suspect that the browser will have this book back on the shelf before he or she gets onto the personal material that follows.

8 The students' comments are reproduced here as originally written out on the SCEFs. Our use of these quotations has been the subject of some debate. A final decision favouring their inclusion was based on several considerations. The students are themselves aware that their comments will be taken further and subject to open discussion within the University. Furthermore, as teaching staff we are obliged to respond publicly to

matters arising from any written commentary. Finally, and most importantly, we think it vital that the students' concerns be presented to a wider geographical community.

9 Stoddart's On Geography provides some choice examples. Matless (1995, 407), shares our enjoyment of the unorthodox, suggesting that '[we should] recog nise the presence and power of the comic as a driving force within the events of history and to be aware of its potentials for our own styles and strategies'. Ironically, he also warns that we beware of regarding the comic

elements of history as marginal material, fit only for footnoting, and so reinforcing the boundaries between serious and non-serious enquiry.

10 When we mention 'The Academy' in class, most of our students think of the all too tangible bar-festooned shopping centre in Aberdeen that goes by this title.

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