Rediscovering other geographical traditions

Abstract

In the last few years, a vibrant interdisciplinary and international literature is rediscovering those sectors of the geographical tradition whose exponents did not match the classical stereotype of the Western academic geographer directly or indirectly contributing to colonialism, warfare, and social conservatism. Ongoing research on primary sources has shown that early progressive, dissident, and unorthodox tendencies in the history of the discipline were more pervasive and influential than what has been believed. In this paper, I define this movement as the rediscovery of “Other Geographical Traditions” (OGTs) arguing that this notion can enlarge our understanding of geography as a plural and contested field. While a great deal of this literature is constituted by studies on early anarchist and critical geographies, I argue that this concept should be extended to scholarly production from the Global South in languages other than English, which is likewise providing important contributions to the discovery of different geographical traditions, politically and culturally. For that, I address the case of recent Latin American scholarship, in Spanish and Portuguese, on the history and philosophy of critical geographies. Moreover, the fact that these “Southern” scholars are rereading and translating classical figures of “Northern” geographers constitutes a reversal of the former colonial gaze from the North–South to the South–North direction. This suggests that the study of OGTs should also consider different cultural and linguistic traditions, challenging monolingualism in both literature reviews and sources' selection.

Parrhesia and female leadership: radical women in Brazilian geography against dictatorship and academic conservatism

“…While transnationalism is a lens that can help understanding the exile and the circulation of critical geographies (Ferretti 2019), rediscovering geographies produced from migrant, working-class and non-Anglophone backgrounds should be a powerful drive for enhancing future research in feminist, critical and radical geographies at a global scale.…”

“…This research also corrects the prevailing emphasis on some 'big men' such as Milton Santos and Josué de Castro, which characterises the recent rediscovery of Brazilian critical geographies (Melgaço 2017;Davies 2019a). While archival collections of some eminent male geographers have been opened in Brazil (Ferretti 2019), few institutional archives document women's leadership in critical geographical scholarship.…”

Coleção de Areia

“…36 Para darmos continuidade à exposição de nossa coleção, que, tal como uma coleção de areia, expõe numa mesma vitrine amostras com conteúdo tão variado, é necessário apresentar a seção Resenhas da Terra Brasilis 13. Gonzalo Lus Bietti, em sua resenha do livro organizado por Andrés Nuñez, Enrique Aliste e Raúl Molina (2019), três pesquisadores chilenos, convoca-nos a dar continuidade a esse movimento de redescoberta de outras tradições geográficas (Ferretti, 2019). Nós escrevemos, ainda no editorial da Terra Brasilis 12 (publicada em dezembro de 2019), o tripé que dá sustentação à noção de outras tradições geográficas, apresentada ao público geográfico por Ferretti (2019): 1) "reconhecimento das histórias de produção de geografias críticas, radicais, feministas, heterodoxas e anarquistas antes que tais definições fossem incorporadas aos cânones profissionais e disciplinares da ciência geográfica"; 2) "a inclusão de geografias do Sul Global, que, sem dúvida, apresentam desafios linguísticos e culturais à estrutura convencional (e dominante) da produção acadêmica anglofônica"; 3) "o florescimento de histórias da geografia escritas por estudiosos do Sul Global sobre intelectuais clássicos do Norte Global" (Gomes, 2019: s/p).…”

Decentralisation of historical geography in China 2006–2020

“…In a recent paper, Federico Ferretti coined the term ‘Other Geographical Traditions’ (OGTs) and pointed out that ‘OGTs works which were not labelled as geography or lied at the margins of the discipline at a certain moment can further complicate these canons, emphasising the plural and networked nature of geographical traditions’ (Ferretti, 2019a, p. 3). Few fields of study are similar to historical geography, which is faced with an existential question while swinging like a pendulum over the disciplinary divide between history and geography (Baker, 2003).…”