Must be Marxist: A Situated History of Danish Radical Geography

Abstract

Largely unrecognised in prevailing historical accounts of (radical) geography, Danish university geography from the late 1960s saw the emergence of a strong radical strand. In terms of student support, this radical geography became a dominant feature of geography at the University of Copenhagen, and was a defining element in the establishment of geography at the new Roskilde University Centre. This radical movement spawned its own journal, had a strong impact on upper‐secondary school geography, and played an important part in developing the Nordic critical geography network. As a contribution to the emerging situated histories of radical and critical geography, this article investigates the conditions of possibility for the rise of radical geography in Copenhagen and the movement’s institutionalisation during the 1970s. More briefly, the article also considers the transformative crisis of Danish radical geography in the 1980s.

History and philosophy of geography I: Heterodox progress, critical scepticism and intellectual voluminosity

“…Historical Geographies of Critical Geography (Berg et al, 2022) and Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography . Intellectual Histories and Critical Interventions (Jakobsen et al, 2022), complemented by Larsen's (2022) account of Danish Radical Geography, which prolongs the work initiated by Barnes and E Sheppard’s (2019) Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond.…”

Book review: Schwierigkeiten mit der kritischen Geographie

“…In den letzten Jahren gab es in der kritischen Geographie Bestrebungen, die historische Eigenwahrnehmung, die kritische Selbstreflexion und den intellektuellen Pluralismus innerhalb der eigenen Disziplin besser zum Ausdruck zu bringen (Keighren et al, 2013;Berg et al, 2022;Jakobsen et al, 2022;Barnes und Sheppard, 2019;Larsen, 2022;Berndt und Boeckler, 2008;Goeke, 2013;Redepenning, 2009). So wichtig diese Bestrebungen sind, sie liefern keine Antwort auf die Frage, welche Art der Reflexivität dieser Wissenschaftsbereich eigentlich bedarf (Coburn und Gormally, 2017).…”