The Discomforts of Distance: Post-Colonialism and South African Geography

Crush, Jonathan

doi:10.1080/03736245.1993.10586406

“…As Crush (1993) has argued, geographers in South Africa have selected a range of different influences in shaping their distinctive contribution to both South African studies and geographical scholarship. Only parts of western geography have been helpful.…”

Section: South African Geographymentioning

confidence: 98%

Postcolonialising Geography: Tactics and Pitfalls

Robinson

¹

2003

Singap J Trop Geogr

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The moves within postcolonial theory to "provincialise Europe" encourage an acknowledgement of the parochial nature of much of what still passes for universal theory in the western academy. Within geography, postcolonialism has generated a strong interest in colonial histories and contemporary postcolonial politics, but this has not displaced the dominant parochial forms of theorising in the discipline. The paper argues for a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography, one whose routes through a range of intellectual traditions and contexts might encourage a broader scope to conversations about space and nature, and produce more lively and creative insights into some of the urgent political issues facing the world today. A geography whose intellectual vision is limited to the concerns and perspectives of the richest countries in the world has little hope of effectively participating in the debates that will matter in the twenty-first century. Within the frame of this long-term intellectual project, this paper will suggest some initial practical steps which researchers, writers, teachers and students in geography might take to start to decentre the predominant Euro-Americanism of the discipline. The specific sources of inspiration for this argument are drawn from comparative urbanism and Southern African geography.

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“…In the case of South African geography, similar senses of possibility and pitfalls emerge. As Crush (1993) has argued, geographers in South Africa have selected a range of different influences in shaping their distinctive contribution to both South African studies and geographical scholarship. Only parts of western geography have been helpful.…”

Section: South African Geographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Postcolonialising Geography: Tactics and Pitfalls

Robinson¹

2017

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The moves within postcolonial theory to "provincialise Europe" encourage an acknowledgement of the parochial nature of much of what still passes for universal theory in the western academy. Within geography, postcolonialism has generated a strong interest in colonial histories and contemporary postcolonial politics, but this has not displaced the dominant parochial forms of theorising in the discipline. The paper argues for a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography, one whose routes through a range of intellectual traditions and contexts might encourage a broader scope to conversations about space and nature, and produce more lively and creative insights into some of the urgent political issues facing the world today. A geography whose intellectual vision is limited to the concerns and perspectives of the richest countries in the world has little hope of effectively participating in the debates that will matter in the twenty-first century. Within the frame of this long-term intellectual project, this paper will suggest some initial practical steps which researchers, writers, teachers and students in geography might take to start to decentre the predominant Euro-Americanism of the discipline. The specific sources of inspiration for this argument are drawn from comparative urbanism and Southern African geography.

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“…One of the reasons I often revisit this encounter is that, for me, a particularly useful strand of postcolonial geography over the last few years has been the development of ideas on how Europe‐ and North America‐based scholars working on countries in the global south might postcolonialize their disciplinary geographical praxis (see Crush, 1993; McEwan, 1998; Myers, 2001; Yeung, 2001; Raju, 2002; 2006; Slater, 2002; Robinson, 2003a;Berg, 2004; Noxolo, 2006; Raghuram & Madge, 2006). Perhaps most notably, in the pages of this journal a few years ago, Jennifer Robinson (2003b) had an instructive paper that sets out a useful transformative agenda for generating a more ‘cosmopolitan theoretical project’ within the discipline of geography; as she calls it, a way of ‘postcolonialising geography’.…”

Section: Postcolonializing Geography Postcolonializing Sri Lankan Stmentioning

confidence: 99%

Awkward geographies: Spatializing academic responsibility, encountering Sri Lanka

Jazeel

¹

2007

Singap J Trop Geogr

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This paper responds to recent postcolonial geographical scholarship that sets forth transformative agendas in order to create more cosmopolitan theoretical projects within the discipline. For many geographers the challenges they face are located within not only their own disciplinary parameters, but also those of other specific research communities within which their work situates them. By bringing geography and area studies into productive conversation, this paper explores the tensions between negotiating one's academic voice, position and responsibility within geography as well as within a specific area studies community. More specifically, as a UK‐based geographer I reflect on some of my own fairly unremarkable, yet extremely awkward, encounters during the course of scholarly praxis in Sri Lanka in order to raise questions over the spatialities of responsibility and political engagement in such academic praxis. I seek to theorize the chasms that open in such awkward encounters between notionally situated ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ scholars respectively and, in particular, develop ways of engaging and reorienting those chasms in ways that might enable the production of theoretically rich, yet richly contextualized postcolonial knowledges committed to the site of one's scholarly praxis – not just to the advancement of a more cosmopolitan theoretical project within geography.

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The Discomforts of Distance: Post-Colonialism and South African Geography

Cited by 26 publications

References 94 publications

Postcolonialising Geography: Tactics and Pitfalls

Postcolonialising Geography: Tactics and Pitfalls

Postcolonialising Geography: Tactics and Pitfalls

Awkward geographies: Spatializing academic responsibility, encountering Sri Lanka

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