History and philosophy of geography III: The haunted, the reviled, and the plural

Abstract

This report takes a new English-language translation of Friedrich Ratzel’s infamous essay Der Lebensraum (1901) as a prompt to consider the ethical questions that are raised by revisiting geography’s dangerous ideas and discredited practitioners. Attending to a series of recent interventions that offer new readings of Ratzel and his essay, I consider how historiographical practice and moral obligation intersect in the process of making sense of, and coming to terms with, disciplinary pasts that haunt the present. The report concludes by considering the future of the series of which it forms part and argues that the task of narrating progress in the history and philosophy of geography should be assumed by a more diverse range of authors than has heretofore been the case.

Territory incognita

“…A conservative bias was soon evident in these emerging fields, and a preoccupation with state interests (Bassin, 2003;Claval, 2006). Indeed, what united these early geographers, Ratzel, Mackinder and Semple, was not only their unique materialist analysis of territory but a shared commitment to imperialism, lending it a peculiarly scientific, ecological veneer (Cowen and Smith, 2009;Farinelli, 2000 (Keighren, 2018).…”

“…Certainly, by the end of the twentieth century, many of the darker elements of political geography had been expunged by geographers seeking to reclaim geopolitics from realism (Mamadouh, 1999). Interest in Ratzel has also increased, initiating a hesitant reappraisal and rehabilitation of this neglected geographer (Bassin 1997;Halas, 2014;Keighren, 2018;Klinke, 2018;Klinke and Bassin, 2018;Verne, 2017). Nevertheless, as it will now be demonstrated, subsequent theorization of territory has consistently overlooked, indeed, actively circumvented, the earth itself to avoid this realist yoke, leading to shift in territorial theorization from materialism to idealism, environment to space.…”

“…The geographical theory of Ratzel and Mackinder was combined as a ‘weapon’ for conservative forces, most notoriously in the ideology of National Socialism via Karl Haushofer and Rudolf Kjellén. Ratzel’s concept of Lebensraum [‘living space’] became the most potent of geographical concepts mobilized by the Nazi regime (Keighren, 2018).…”

History and philosophy of geography I: Decolonising the discipline, diversifying archives and historicising radicalism

“…I start this series of three reports from the point where the previous report writer author, Innes Keighren, had finished. He called for plurality and inclusiveness in the field: ‘Just as we have a moral obligation to narrate plurality in Geography’s past, so we must encourage that plurality in the telling of our disciplinary present’ (Keighren, 2018: 7). Taking inspiration from this centrality of ethics expressed by Keighren, I make the case for fostering the inclusion of different views into the production of geographical knowledge.…”

Reappraising David Livingstone'sThe Geographical Tradition: A quarter of a century on

“…And so we are forced to confront the limits, omissions, and exclusions inherent in the contextual reading offered in The Geographical Tradition . Below, each of Craggs (), Ferretti (), Maddrell () (who builds on a key feminist critique of The Geographical Tradition by Rose, , that also appeared in Transactions ) and Van Meeteren () identify absent figures, texts, and voices – adding to those identified in previous engagements – which in their view skew the narrative developed in the book, a wider issue for histories of geography, that is perhaps more often reiterated as a problem than resolved (Keighren, ). Similarly, Scott Kirsch (in Keighren et al., , p. 255) notes how The Geographical Tradition had “served to open the subject” and had been “personally radicalizing in some ways,” but how “today, to a more diverse and international graduate student population, and with situated histories of science becoming more or less mainstream, The Geographical Tradition seems helplessly Euro‐centric.” Indeed.…”