Beyond the Anglo-American hegemony in human geography: a European perspective

Abstract

Over the past five years or so, AngloAmerican hegemony in human geography has been widely debated. This debate has highlighted the obstacles put in the way of the building of a more international geographical discipline. In this paper, we reflect on the possibilities and also the limitations of Europe as a context for the experimentation with a more cross-national discipline. In doing so, we notice on the one hand the increasing attention towards the Europeanisation of human geography, particularly at an institutional level, but on the other hand we also notice the lack of some basic forms and tools of communication and exchange that might facilitate the mobilisation of scholars around the 'European project'. The paper tries to offer a contribution to this issue by discussing the ways in which a European journal of human geography might be conceived and also concretely organised. In this respect the paper takes into account issues of language, access to scientific knowledge and recognition of cultural and academic diversities.

Fennia: positioning a peripheral but international journal under the condition of ‘academic capitalism’

“…The latter, for their part, at present seem primarily to be journals that have been accepted into the Web of Science/ISI database which has been developed and maintained by the multinational corporation Thomson Reuters. In spite of the recent efforts of geographers to seriously consider possibilities for specifically European publishing outlets as a counterweight to Anglophone journals (Gregson et al 2003;Aalbers & Rossi 2006), the harsh fact is that inclusion in the ISI database, a feature characteristic of most well-known Anglophone human geographic journals, is more often than not acknowledged around the world as a synonym for 'quality'. The academic reputation of a specific classified journal reinforces the power of this database and also modifies the prevailing understanding of what counts as relevant, high calibre science and what is not.…”

(Im)mobile Geographies

“…The discussion on how to adequately respond to this growing monolingual and monocultural dominance has been articulate and varied, and in many ways it has given an opportunity for many non-English speaking geographers, including myself, to make their voice heard and to introduce alternative and intellectually diverse perspectives (see Aalbers and Rossi, 2006;Chivallon, 2003;Claval and Staszak, 2004;Fall, 2006Fall, , 2007Fall and Rosière, 2008;Garcia-Ramon, 2003Kitchin, 2006;Minca, 2005a;Samers, 2005;Sidaway, 2008;Simonsen, 2004;Tímar, 2004;Tolia-Kelly, 2010;Vaiou, 2004). Many of these authors, however, present well-argued cases for going beyond simple binaries between Anglo and non-Anglo geographies, and suggesting that there are very different ways of doing geography in different places, often interacting in complicated ways (Fall and Minca, 2013).…”

“…This tendency is also significantly reshaping the actual geographies of the disciplinary debate, by introducing important questions about the nature of interdisciplinary research, and especially about the putative existence of many, different, national schools, but only one mainstream international literature. As a consequence, the by now well-established discussion on the putative Anglo-American hegemony in geography (see, for example, Aalbers and Rossi, 2006;Kitchin, 2006) seems to be somewhat marginalized by the growing pressure to identify adequate ways of "ranking" good research and the increasing internationalization of academic work (Paasi, 2005). In this short paper I will thus discuss how, in this respect, neoliberal agendas in place in many universities are producing different results in different contexts.…”

The invented periphery: constructing Europe in debates about "Anglo hegemony" in geography

“…On the issue of publications, there have been calls for more international contributors and editorial boards. A different suggestion has been the creation of new journals -for example a "European" geography journal (Aalbers and Rossi, 2006). Regarding the issue of languages, there have been attempts to have more multi-lingual conferences (see Minca, 2003 on the mixed success of one such attempt) and multi-lingual journals.…”

“…While the specific conditions of the European "political economy and cultural politics of academic accumulation strategies" (Berg, 2004:554), cannot be analysed here at greater detail, this forms the background for the following consideration of constructions of Europe. I analyse four contributions to the debate in chronological order, starting with Minca (2000), followed by Gregson et al (2003), Amin (2004) and Aalbers and Rossi (2006).…”