Of social construction, politics and biology: population geographies in the Pacific

Abstract

Sustained challenges by third world, black and feminist scholars have unsettled the established agenda of the social sciences in the 1990s. Unfortunately, population geographies in the Pacific have failed to engage with these debates. By avoiding the metaphysical challenges posed by contemporary theoretical debates, often by people from previously marginalised groups, population geographies have failed to provide the spark necessary for the dynamic expansion of ideas. However, an analysis of population geographies in the Pacific, almost all of which are mobility studies, reveals important contributions for advancing a more critical population geography. This paper begins with a critical review of population geography in general then looks more specifically at population geographies, mostly mobility studies, in the Pacific. It advances the argument that the humanist geographers Chapman and Bonnemaison have made critical contributions in reconceptualising population mobility. Further advances would benefit from an engagement with feminist geography and post‐structural discourse analysis.

Talking population geographies and a ‘love letter’ to the journal

“…Indeed, elsewhere she underlines what she draws, positively, from the work of population geographers of the Pacific such as Murray Chapman (e.g., Chapman & Prothero, 1985) and also the anthropologist-geographer Joël Bonnemaison (e.g., Bonnemaison, 1985;also Waddell, 1999). Her 2001a paper should be read alongside several others by her (e.g., Underhill-Sem, 1999, 2001b, 2003a, 2003b. It would also be compelling to run Underhill-Sem's writings alongside investigations of 'placental geographies', 'uterine geographies' and 'menopausal geographies' (DeLyser & Shaw, 2013;Fannin, 2014;Lewis, 2018).…”

Maternities in ‘out‐of‐the‐way’ places: epistemological possibilities for retheorising population geography

“…R ecently, in the process of having a paper published in a regional geography journal (Underhill-Sem, 1999), one reviewer said I had made an emotive argument with little substantive contribution to population geography. The reviewer said it was aǹ empty polemic' and that it was`sad' that feminist scholars have so little to offer and that I needed more case study context.…”

“…Within population geography, I join a growing list of people critically analysing the dif®culties of introducing broader understandings of knowledge acquisition (Findlay and Graham, 1991;Halfacree and Boyle, 1993;White and Jackson, 1995;Graham, 1999Graham, , 2000Underhill-Sem, 1999).`The Paci®c is off the map' was the response by an esteemed population geographer in reply to my question seeking his views on the politics of knowledge in the subdiscipline at a recent geography conference. Perhaps said in jest, but I suggest this also shows the lack of engagement in contemporary social theory that still exists in population geography.…”