Geography needs science, science needs Geography

Abstract

Physical geography continues to have complex relationships both with Geography as a whole and the natural sciences. At a time when the nature and future of physical geography and its sub-disciplines has been questioned, I explore these changing relationships and their impacts on the discipline itself and on our collective ability to understand and address environmental crises. The exploration is through the themes of disciplinary shape and institutional change, physical geography’s content and interactions, and how its practitioners badge themselves in an increasingly inter- even trans-disciplinary world. I conclude that there is now a fluidity between disciplines in which Geography holds an important place in research addressing key environmental challenges. This is evidenced by records of publication, conferences and employment mobility between the silos of academic departments. More than ever, the challenges facing environment and society today require collective, inclusive, efforts to achieve solutions that are beyond the capacity of a single discipline. Geography’s complexity and frequent rewiring position it well to be part of the research into global grand challenges that require disciplinary agility. Fears over Geography’s shape and practice can be more than offset by the need to contribute to holistic endeavours, so long as vital sub-disciplinary building blocks are not lost in desiloing endeavours.

Practising difference across geography: A transdisciplinary and Deleuzian approach to intradisciplinary thinking

“…While geography’s heterogeneity of foci and research approaches has been described as ‘vibrant’, ‘distinctive’ and well-positioned for understanding interrelated socio-environmental challenges, it is also argued that this heterogeneity presents risks (see Castree, 2015; Castree et al, 2022; Sheppard, 2022). The risks in such discussions include the low levels of internal collaboration and ‘working in silos’ associated with specialisation (see Castree, 2016; Sheppard, 2022; Thomas, 2022), as well as a lack of a strong disciplinary identity (Castree et al, 2022; Liu et al, 2022; Rhoads, 2022; Thomas, 2022) and resulting departmental precarity (Liu et al, 2022; Thomas, 2022). This article has presented an underexplored theoretical rationale for why intradisciplinary diversity is valuable: rather than interpreting the tension between collaboration and specialisation as a challenge to be overcome, this tension might be considered as a valuable part of the process of generating new understandings.…”

“…Transdisciplinarity, as deployed in this article, is based on a critical engagement with contrasts in (sub)disciplinary foci and research approach, through which it is argued that more holistic framings of research problems and research questions are generated; that is, framings that reflect more of the complexity of phenomena. As such, this article also presents an underexplored rationale for how geography’s internal diversity is valuable – a recurrently debated theme (recently in, for example, Castree et al, 2022; Grove and Rickards, 2022; Liu et al, 2022; Rhoads, 2022; Sheppard, 2022; Thomas, 2022) – beyond the thematic benefit of the discipline’s expertise in both social and biophysical processes for tackling grand socio-environmental challenges. Here, it is not just the contrast in focus between the social and the biophysical that may facilitate more holistic thinking, but differences in focus and methodological processes between any of human and physical geography’s subdisciplines.…”

Paradigma Filsafat Geografi Kontemporer: Kajian Ontologi, Epistemologi, Aksiologi, dan Keterampilan Sainstik

“…Perkembangan epistemologi yang relevan dapat dilihat pada tabel 3. sesuai data hasil analisis metode deduktif dan induktif. Metodelogi penelitian geografi memiliki peranan penting mengatasi permasalahan lingkungan yang kompleks dan berkontribusi keseluruhan pada ilmu alam (Thomas, 2022). Kapasitas dan pengalaman penelitian memberikan dampak terhadap kemampuan individu dalam memahami metodelogi secara aplikasi paradigma epistemologi.…”

Regional geographies of climate change

“…Regional geography lost gradually its key position in academic geography (Thomas 2022). This occurred partly because regions were understood as static and isolated, not historically contingent processes that were part of wider spatial dynamism and configurations.…”