Globalizing geography before Anglophone hegemony: (buried) theories, (non-)traveling concepts, and “cosmopolitan geographers” in San Miguel de Tucumán (Argentina)

Abstract

Abstract. The relationship between “national” geographical schools and an increasingly globalized geographical theory-building under the logics of Anglophone hegemony has generated critical debate within geography. This paper aims to contribute to current discussions on the development of differential, language-based “schools of thought” in geography and how these are mobilized and de- and recontextualized when they travel beyond their origins. However, it does not focus on the period of Anglophone hegemony but intends to shed a new, historically informed light on the politics of geographical knowledge production. Against this backdrop, we study why, how and with what consequences German geographical knowledge traveled to Argentina in the 1940s – the end of the “German hegemony” – following the employment by the National University of Tucumán (UNT) of the four German geography professors Wilhelm Rohmeder, Gustav Fochler-Hauke, Fritz Machatschek and Willi Czajka, all of whom had been institutionally and ideologically entwined with National Socialism. Firstly, we show that the epistemic differences between “national” schools of geographical thought – skillfully juggled by the geographers we analyze here – can provide an opportunity for the successful de- and recontextualization of theory. Secondly, we argue that boundary spanning and the traveling of theory beyond their geographical origins – largely (implicitly) viewed as progressive – should always be put in context(s) and assessed more cautiously from a normative point of view.

History and philosophy of geography I: Heterodox progress, critical scepticism and intellectual voluminosity

“…This line of argumentation has been expanded by offering other interesting examples in immediate post-war period, either on the large discrepancy that existed about the scientists' commitment to the Nazi state and their classification as ‘fellow travellers’, as it surfaced during the denazification of the geography institutes (Dudek and Rainer, 2022); or on how German geography (Wilhelm Rohmeder and Willi Czajka are added to the list here) travelled to Argentina in the 1940s (Rainer and Dudek, 2002b).…”