What Happens If We Start from Nigeria? Diversifying Histories of Geography

Abstract

This article asks this question: What if, rather than starting from the United States or the United Kingdom in histories of geography, we start from Nigeria? Focusing on Nigerian geographers working in Nigeria's first university from 1948 to 1990 and drawing on archival evidence and new oral history interviews, this article argues that the view from Nigeria offers significant new perspectives on the history of geography. First, it highlights the intellectual contribution of Nigerian scholars, illustrating the partial and exclusionary nature of many traditional histories. Second, it illuminates the as yet unacknowledged impact of the Cold War on the discipline far beyond the United States and Soviet Union. Third, this new perspective makes it possible to consider afresh the contemporary Anglo-American hegemony of international geography, providing evidence of the consequences of this hegemony for scholars working beyond the West and revealing the less hierarchical alternatives that at some moments appeared possible. Fourth, by highlighting the shifting structures that facilitated and foreclosed opportunities for participation in the international geographical community, the article provides an original insight into the conditions of academic labor and considers the crucial question of what, for the work of constructing a more equal academic community in the future, we might learn from this earlier period.

Introduction: translation, decolonization and disciplinarity

“…We know who was in the audience, and we know why this speech was addressed to them. It also attests to the importance of intellectual friendship, a sometimes-overlooked aspect of the history of geographical thought (Craggs and Neate, 2019). Though the speech was later published in a journal, it is a textual artefact of an event.…”

New Zealand Geography and the International Geographical Union Part II: Audience to stage, 1956–1974

“…While this paper anticipates the IGU centennial in 2022 it does so in the context of new interest in academic mobilities (Craggs & Neate, ; Jöns, Mavroudi, & Heffernan, ), of de‐centering the Global North and English in academic geography (Craggs & Neate, ; van Meeteren, ), and on conferences and conferencing (Blumen & Bar‐Gal, ; Craggs & Mahony, ; Derudder & Liu, ). It is this latter strand of inquiry that is particularly drawn on and extended to include conference fieldtrips.…”

“In Front of the World”: Translating Beatriz Nascimento

“…As recent work in this journal and beyond has emphasised, the task of challenging, unravelling, and expanding the geographical canon remains pressing (see, for instance, Clayton and Kumar 2019; Craggs and Neate 2020; Theodore et al 2019). It therefore remains vitally important to make the voices and arguments of those historically cast as outside the hegemonic, white, male discourse of academia more prominent.…”