Geography and the present conjuncture

Abstract

Anthropogenic global heating is accelerating, with dramatic implications for the long-term prospects of humans and many other species, underwritten by the logics of Euro-centric capitalism compounded by the colonialism, racism, patriarchy, and commodification of nature that has accompanied it. Nationalism is re-emerging, as are socio-cultural divisions within national societal assemblages. Global capitalism faces a series of crises stemming from the consequences of these relations. Critics are quick to argue that non-capitalist alternatives can advance socio-ecological justice, but how? Geography is ideally suited to making sense of this conjuncture, critiquing the processes facilitating its emergence, and realizing alternatives. Yet we are far from achieving our potential, caught up in our own philosophical, ideological, and substantive silos. I argue that five priorities must be taken up if geographical thinking is to be suited for the present moment. We must be more historical in our thinking (integrating the temporal with the spatial). We must pay more attention to the macro-scale: to how local events are complexly bound-up in spatially differentiated planetary processes? We must be socio-ecological: incentivizing productive collaboration across earth science, social science, and humanities sub-fields. We must deconstruct our disabling quantitative–qualitative methodological divide, incentivizing training in multi-methods. We must work harder to diversify the perspectives and socio-spatial positionalities incorporated into geographical thinking to decenter White male, Anglophone, and settler geographies. Excitingly, the potential for all this exists within Geography today.

Rebuilding Geography for the 21st century through disciplinary reunification and social engagement

“…Besides, Geography should play a role in enhancing mutual understandings of regions around the globe to make a better and sustainable world. In other words, we see region as the spatial-discursive-material context for taking up Geography's priorities as outlined by Sheppard (2022), in order to achieve its potential for the 'present conjuncture'. Finally, it must be pointed out that our reflection of and worry about the development of Geography is largely based our observation and understanding of Geography as a discipline in China, although our experiences in studying and working abroad also have a role.…”

Interpreting spatial struggles in the historical record: Indigenous urbanism and erasure in 20th-century Mexico

“…Given the colonial project to erase Indigenous people from cities and notions of urbanity, examining historical socio-spatial struggles in Latin America is of relevance both to studies of Indigenous urbanism and to historicize debates and action aiming to promote a right to the city. With this task at hand, and mindful of the call for deeper historicization in geographical research (Sheppard, 2022), this article considers both the possibilities and limits of using media held in state archives in Mexico to understand how Indigenous peoples have claimed a right to the city historically, and how, in turn, they have reshaped the terrain on which subsequent claims could be made. Grounded in an intense and drawn-out struggle over the production of urban space in Oaxaca City in the 1970s, it describes an interpretive strategy for uncovering the racial dynamics of these socio-spatial struggles using state archives in Mexico during a period for which racial identifiers are largely absent from historical documents.…”

Lost (in) space for dialogue: On the (abandoned) need for working papers in human geography

“…First, and drawing on a critical debate recently assembled in a Special Issue in Environment and Planning F (Castree et al, 2022), the ongoing search for geographers’ disciplinary identity and self-image has suggested widespread cultural ‘internal divisions’ (Sheppard, 2022: 14), which were especially influenced by the particular trajectory of Anglophone Geography and the ‘resorting to English as the lingua franca for global scholarship’ (Sheppard, 2022: 20; cf. Aalbers, 2004; Garcia-Ramon, 2003).…”