Whither physical geography Redux: Revisiting the place of physical geography in the United States

Abstract

The differentiation of human and physical geography is a fundamental distinction in Geography. This commentary examines the past, present, and possible future places of physical geography within Geography, focusing on the situation in the United States. Physical geography played a major role in the establishment of Geography as an academic discipline, but became marginalized soon thereafter. For the past 80 years, Geography in the United States has largely been a social science that has uneasily accommodated a natural-science component within it. Although somewhat healthy during the latter part of the 20th century, physical geography appears to be on the decline. In part, this situation reflects the social-science identity of Geography, a lack of adequate training of physical geographers in basic science and mathematics, as well as growing emphasis on research in geomorphology, climatology, and biogeography, the major subfields of physical geography, by cognate disciplines. The future of physical geography is in doubt: it could keep struggling to compete with better-trained scientists in cognate disciplines, evolve into a geospatial methods branch of the earth and environmental sciences, or pursue integrated research with human geographers to address Anthropocene concerns. Any of these paths forward has important implications for trying to sustain the process approach to inquiry that has underpinned research in physical geography since the 1950s. Regardless of how physical geography evolves, it needs to seriously address issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Doing so will only enhance whatever it becomes.

Where are we heading? The example of generational change in British academic Geography

“…If you are a North American geographer, you may lament the removal of elements of natural science or mathematics from the curricula and how little Physical Geography is studied by most undergraduates today (Rhoads, 2022). Similar laments to that of Rhoads (2022) are often heard from physical geographers in British Geography departments. However, in both North America and Britain, you may also believe that you are currently seeing a sea-change because of the record number of academic searches specifically for Indigenous and Black geography faculty; members of communities who are understood to be at structural, historical, disadvantages.…”

“…This is not just a question for British geographers. If you are a North American geographer, you may lament the removal of elements of natural science or mathematics from the curricula and how little Physical Geography is studied by most undergraduates today (Rhoads, 2022). Similar laments to that of Rhoads (2022) are often heard from physical geographers in British Geography departments.…”

Geography needs science, science needs Geography

“…In their analysis of the state of geography departments, these authors noted a loss of administrative autonomy of geography in many parts of the Anglophone world. One trend, observable in the United Kingdom and elsewhere (Rhoads, 2022, discusses this in the United States), has been the agglomeration of Geography into larger units or schools that comprise a range of other disciplines, both in the social and the natural sciences.…”

“…Given the interminably complex internal wiring of Geography, and its tendency to remake circuits on a fairly regular basis (see also Rhoads, 2022, for an account of this process in the United States), it can be argued that the discipline has always been well-primed for restructuring or repositioning, whether at the whim of academic administrators or for more philosophical and internally mandated reasons. While some have seen some of the structural changes that have occurred in HEIs as threats to the discipline’s autonomy and even existence, they may also represent, or in some cases have pre-empted a wider reality: the ‘desiloing’ of research enquiry reflecting wider interdisciplinary or even post-disciplinary trends (Emmel, 2021).…”

“…No more are the regular physical geography sessions at the RGS (formerly IBG) annual conferences in the United Kingdom, where once biogeography, climatology and geomorphology sessions held sway. Although representation is a little stronger at the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers, the decline in allegiances to physical speciality groups is marked (Rhoads, 2022). Instead, the annual, giant, American Geophysical Union (AGU) and European Geoscience Union (EGU) meetings are the places to be, magnets for physical geographers not only in integrative sessions but at sessions that have themes that look suspiciously like geomorphology, climatology and biogeography.…”