We just gotta do meta! Notes on disciplinary anxieties in Geography in India

Abstract

A hundred years since its inception in college curriculum in India, geography as a discipline appears to be marked by a lack of self confidence. The persistently unenthusiastic response of Indian departments of geography to the present global health crisis over the past three years suggests that this is not a momentary loss of heart. We suggest that this is rather the result of the discipline's intertwining with post independence development policy in addition to the failure to integrate the sub disciplines of geography well with each other. As a way forward, we argue that the greatest promise in fact lies not in the universities but in networks across departments and independent research centres where geography can truly claim its place in the sun as a discipline that offers the relational approach that few other disciplines offer.

Geography in the world part 2: Editorial

“…Writing about Geography in India, Roy and Maringanti (2023) also find a conservativism that undermines the potential for change. They describe a discipline that has lost its ‘self‐confidence’, and that, in their assessment, has had little to say about key national and global concerns, including the COVID‐19 pandemic.…”