Abstract. The relationship between “national” geographical schools and an increasingly
globalized geographical theory-building under the logics of Anglophone
hegemony has generated critical debate within geography. This paper aims to
contribute to current discussions on the development of differential,
language-based “schools of thought” in geography and how these are mobilized
and de- and recontextualized when they travel beyond their origins. However,
it does not focus on the period of Anglophone hegemony but intends to shed a
new, historically informed light on the politics of geographical knowledge
production. Against this backdrop, we study why, how and with what
consequences German geographical knowledge traveled to Argentina in the
1940s – the end of the “German hegemony” – following the employment by the
National University of Tucumán (UNT) of the four German geography
professors Wilhelm Rohmeder, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, Fritz Machatschek and
Willi Czajka, all of whom had been institutionally and ideologically
entwined with National Socialism. Firstly, we show that the epistemic
differences between “national” schools of geographical thought – skillfully
juggled by the geographers we analyze here – can provide an opportunity for
the successful de- and recontextualization of theory. Secondly, we argue
that boundary spanning and the traveling of theory beyond their geographical
origins – largely (implicitly) viewed as progressive – should always be
put in context(s) and assessed more cautiously from a normative point of
view.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.