Worlding geography: From linguistic privilege to decolonial anywheres

Abstract

Geography studies the world. Our knowledge of the world, however, comes mostly from Anglophone sources. This makes Geography in urgent need of worlding – of including multiple voices and languages from around the world. Introducing the notion of linguistic privilege, the article establishes language as an important dimension of epistemic struggle, alongside gender, race, class and others. Its analysis finds the greatest linguistic privilege in the most influential positions in knowledge production – editors of handbooks and journals and authors of progress reports. Three strategies of worlding should challenge this: making gatekeepers multilingual, promoting multiple Englishes and valorising ex-centric knowledge.

A posteriori comparisons, repeated instances and urban policy mobilities: What ‘best practices’ leave behind

“…908–909). More recently, Müller has argued that the dominance of the English language in academic geography journals ‘makes knowledge produced from certain locations, mostly in Anglo-America, ostensibly more universal, and therefore more valuable, than that produced in others’ (Müller, 2021: 2). A posteriori comparisons seek to intervene in some of the limitations of theorising from cities off the urban theory map by building on the diverse language skills and local and regional expertise of different urban scholars so that they can collaboratively analyse and theorise about emergent global urban processes.…”

FROM HERE, THERE, AND EVERYWHERE: English‐language Media Outlets and Urban Planning Best Practices in the Global South

“…Less has been said, however, about how the English‐language media has affected uptake of best practices within the global South. The English‐speaking media is particularly powerful as a result of the dominance of English within professional research and scholarship circles (Müller, 2021). Best practices reported on within the English‐speaking media often reach a wide readership and circulate within both academic and practitioner research circles globally.…”

For feminist geographies of austerity

“…Geographers have paid particular interest in challenging the discourses, policies, practices, politics and imaginaries underlying austerity in the UK, embedded in these longer genealogies ( Horton, 2016 ; Werner et al, 2017 ). It is also probable that the dominance of English-speaking geographies has propelled the flourishing of work on austerity in this context, as well as in the US (see Fregonese, 2017 ; Müller, 2021 ). This paper uses this body of work as a scholarly mooring, whilst acknowledging that austerity is socially and spatially differentiated, emplaced and embraced in different ways in different places and times.…”