The Discomforting Rise of “Public Geographies”: A “Public” Conversation

Abstract

Duncan: I was invited to contribute to a two-day seminar on the theme of co-authorship and public geographies held on the 6 and 7 April 2006. When advertised, the call for participation noted how, "In the wake ofand alongside-Michael Burawoy's championing of a new public sociology, a variety of geographies are now emerging which call themselves 'public'". For example, Derek Gregory and Michael Dear have embarked on a very public geographies project, whose aim is to inject geographers' views on important debates into public debate; Noel Castree (2006) has been admiring the recent "public intellectual" writing of geographers David Harvey, Michael Watts and Neil Smith; and Kevin Ward (2005) has been asking what geographers can learn from debates about public sociology. A new field of "public geography" is, we believe, beginning to take shape. So, for this symposium, we have given a diverse group of speakers a simple brief: to talk on the theme of "my public geographies, our public geographies". I was asked to speak alongside Don

Getting Beyond the “God Trick”: Toward Service Research

“…Indeed, Fuller and Askins (2007) suggested that researchers need to "decolonize the self" to do the work of society as researchers and activists. The objective, scientific self that is created through affiliation with and reward from academic institutions impedes access to positions from which researchers can "see from somewhere" and especially from "below."…”

“…Generally, academics are expected to generate materials that fit economic modes of production within the increasingly neoliberal university (Castree 2000;Cloke 2002;Pain 2004;Fuller and Askins 2007;Lawson 2007;Kinpaisby 2008). Attempts to integrate activism with research and produce academic work that meets the needs of the public are often met with resistance within the university, largely due to the historical separation between knowing and doing in "science" (Haraway 1988;Harding 1991).…”

“…T he place of geographers in the production of knowledge within and outside of the academy has been the subject of recent discussion and debate within the discipline of geography (Fuller and Askins 2007;Kinpaisby 2008;Kindon and Elwood 2009). In relatively recent presidential addresses to their respective organizations, both Massey (2001) and Lawson (2007) called on geographers to inform their work with the public as researchers, teachers, and activists with alternative epistemologies and methodologies.…”

“…The calls for more "public geographies" 1 highlight the need to understand and address the production of geographic knowledge within the institutional structures of the academy (James et al 2004;Ward 2006;Fuller and Askins 2007;Lawson 2007). Generally, academics are expected to generate materials that fit economic modes of production within the increasingly neoliberal university (Castree 2000;Cloke 2002;Pain 2004;Fuller and Askins 2007;Lawson 2007;Kinpaisby 2008).…”

‘That's just what I do’: Placing emotion in academic activism

“…We are seeing increasing demands on our time, ever more pressure to perform a diverse set of roles in a range of contexts (research, teaching, administrative, marketing, departmental strategizing, widening participation, policy input -see Fuller and Askins 2007), such that finding/making time and space for emotions is increasingly unlikely. Indeed, Laurie and Bondi (2005) warn us of our own collusion, through processes of 'professionalization', within productions of neoliberal governance ... processes and productions which place any 'activist-academic' in an ambivalent relationship with our 'employers'.…”