Institutions and disciplinary fortunes: two moments in the history of UK geography in the 1960s I: geography in the ‘plateglass universities’

Abstract

Geography grew rapidly within British universities during the 1950s and 1960s. At the beginning of the latter decade, however, the discipline was excluded from most of the new universities established to meet expanding student demand. This first essay in a pair looks at why such an ostensibly successful discipline was not incorporated in the plans for those new institutions, focusing on the external view of geography at the time and on its lack of effective champions in the highest ‘corridors of power’, notably its learned societies.

Editorial

“…10 As for describing what it is like in the myriad different places on the earth's surface, others compete to do this through media such as TV, videos and popular magazines that provide rich and entertaining vistas of geographical subject matter, along with a great deal else that lies beyond the boundaries of the contemporary academic discipline. Geography as subject matter has been appropriated by others, who are being more successful than the academic discipline, which is too often seen as outdated and intellectually second-rate (see Johnston, 2003Johnston, , 2004.…”

History and philosophy of geography 2003-2004: geography's modern histories? - international dimensions, national stories, personal accounts

“…Where some have been debating the nature of geography' hybridity (Whatmore, 2002), and debating the notion ofposthumanism within geographyby opening 'to formal scrutiny the question of whether posthumanist discourse should engage the critical energies of those geographers who wish to make human geography less human' (Castreee andNash, 2004: 1343), others (again in the context of an international meetingin London in 2003) have been exercised by the connections between human and physical geography (Harrison et a., 2004; see also Johnston, 2003;OSullivan, 2004). Where some have been debating the nature of geography' hybridity (Whatmore, 2002), and debating the notion ofposthumanism within geographyby opening 'to formal scrutiny the question of whether posthumanist discourse should engage the critical energies of those geographers who wish to make human geography less human' (Castreee andNash, 2004: 1343), others (again in the context of an international meetingin London in 2003) have been exercised by the connections between human and physical geography (Harrison et a., 2004; see also Johnston, 2003;OSullivan, 2004).…”

“…Her account-of women authors, women in the field and as teaching and research staff-reveals many more women geographers than were formally recognized, either by the Association of American geographers or by US universities. Where Monk's story is one of geography, gender and exclusion in the USA, Johnston's is of geography's 'disciplinary fortunes' in Britain in the 1960s (Johnston, 2004a;2004b). Readers with interests in such matters for other times and places in the USA will find further reward elsewhere (Koelsch, 2003;Bierly and Gatrell, 2004;Clarke and Baumgart, 2004).…”

“…It is a story supplemented for later periods by extracts from interviews with now-established women geographers recalling their experiences (often belittling) as graduate students. As for the United States, geography grew rapidly within British universities in the 1950s and 196Os, but it did not do so equally in all of the 'new' universities then appearing (Johnston, 2004a). The particular strength of Monk's account rests among other things in the connections it makes between individuals lives and the role of different sorts of institutions, formal or otherwise, which gave space for women geographers or, as in the case of some 'elite' universities, did not.…”

Boundary spanning in social and cultural geography

“…The post-Second World War relationship between geography and public planning was quite close in West Germany (Schelhaas & Hönsch, 2001) but less so in Britain (e.g. Ward, 2005;Woods & Gardner, 2011), partly because of a lack of collective action for the promotion of British geography in policy circles on the side of the learned societies and the subject's leading scholars in the 1950s and 1960s (Johnston, 2004) and 'the mutual disengagement of "New Right" Conservative government and left-leaning geographers' in the 1980s (Woods & Gardner, 2011, p. 199). In West Germany, Walter Christaller, Paul Gauss and Emil Meynen founded the Association of German Professional Geographers in 1950 -and thus only shortly after the American Society of Professional Geographers had merged with the Association of American Geographers in 1948 (Martin, 2015) -to promote the goals of applied geography (Wardenga, Henniges, Brogiato, & Scheelhaas, 2011).…”