Between Regions: Science, Militarism, and American Geography from World War to Cold War

Abstract

Histories of American geographic thought and practice have sketched, but not critically explored, the relationship between war, intellectual change, and the production of spatial knowledge. This article sheds light on a crucial period, the middle decades of the twentieth century, when new modes of understanding and representing geography were being formulated at a variety of sites across the nation‐state, from Princeton to the University of Washington. In particular, there emerged an altered conception of region, not as a descriptive but as a theoretical unit. This intellectual transformation, driven by an invigorated scientific imperative, was closely wedded to broader geopolitical conditions of war and militarism—to the demands for synthetic regional intelligence and new collectives of research that could adequately address complex technical and social challenges consistent with global influence. Moving from the formative hub of the Office of Strategic Services to the more diffuse but no less powerful structures of Cold War funding, we chart the emergence of a new regional model, inextricably linked and concurrent with the solidification of a world of strategic regions open to the exertion of American power, but also part of a remarkable emergent technoscientific complex at home.

The IGY and the ice sheet: surveying Antarctica

“…Barnes and Farish have noted that during the 1940s and 1950s 'the entire Earth became a generalized space of American military strategy' and that science and social science were central to that strategy. 83 The IGY presented one such opportunity to use the sciences and social sciences 84 to gather geo-strategic information on areas of the world otherwise inaccessible to the USA. 85 It is in this context that we should understand American and Soviet support for the IGY and its principle of free exchange of movement and unimpeded access.…”

The Software-Simulated Airworld: Anticipatory Code and Affective Aeromobilities

“…'By metaphorically re-describing geographical things in terms of physical models, they found they could use statistical models, make predictions, publish in scientific journals, speak authoritatively about scientific explanation and more besides' (Barnes 2001: 158 (Shackley and Wynne 1996); the complexity of human mobility in crowds; or the multimodal event of an urban evacuation (Barnes and Farish 2006). As models and simulations move into the public domain their inherent uncertainties and qualifications may be forgotten and the public seduced into accepting their 'crystal ball' like assumptions (Kerr 1994;Shackley and Darier 1998;Shackley, Young et al 1998).…”

Have the human geographical can(n)ons fallen silent; or were they never primed?

“…Geography has changed too much for such authority to be claimed, especially in the last half-century, with many of its earlier classics having been created during the discipline's exceptionalist tradition that is of little relevance to contemporary social science. 114 Many texts have been stimuli for additions to the geographical corpus e either substantive, or methodological, or both. They have achieved classic status e but usually only for a relatively short time.…”