Geographers

Biobibliographical Studies, Volume 37

Elizabeth Baigent, André Reyes Novaes, Elizabeth Baigent, André Reyes Novaes

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781350085510
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, Volume 37 explores the concept of distinction in geography. Through the lives of six geographers working in Brazil, North America, Europe and Réunion, it investigates what distinction consists of, how we identify and celebrate it and how it relates to quotidian practices in the discipline. The volume highlights the continuing importance of biography and the International Geographical Union in recording and assessing distinction. It also considers the relevance of personal networks for the circulation and translation of distinguished geographical knowledge, and how this knowledge can underpin applied projects and critical appraisal of geographical scholarship, both at a national and sub-national level. Gendered notions of distinction are also addressed, particularly through June Sheppard, who found limited recognition for her work as a result of gendered expectations within the discipline and society at large. By reflecting on how we locate distinguished geographers and tell their histories, Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, Volume 37 makes an important contribution to fostering less canonical work in historical geography.

1

Distinguished geographers: How are they made and how do we identify and celebrate them?

Elizabeth Baigent and André Reyes Novaes

We are pleased to present the second volume of Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies under our editorship – the first where the subjects owe more to our work and less (although still much) to the valued work of our predecessors. We are delighted in this volume to include two winners of the Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud, or Vautrin Lud Prize, the highest award in the field of geography. Milton Santos won the prize in 1994 and Anne Buttimer in 2014; Peter Hall, the winner in 2001, was in the previous volume; and Ron Johnston, the winner in 1999, contributed to both this volume and the last. The prize, the ‘Nobel Prize for geography’, was established in 1991 and modelled on the Nobel awards. The prize is named after the French scholar Vautrin Lud (1448–1527), who is credited with naming the New World ‘America’ after Amerigo Vespucci. The award is given in the autumn of each year at the International Geography Festival in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (the home town of Vautrin Lud), France, and on the recommendation of a five-person international jury.

The following table shows all prizewinners with their country of origin as identified by the awarding body (http://www.fig.saint-die-des-vosges.fr/geographie/prix-vautrin-lud).

Those in bold have been noticed in Geographers. Many recipients, especially the more recent ones, are happily still alive and thus ineligible for inclusion in Geographers; but some are eligible and it would be particularly pleasing if contributors would come forward to ensure that these important geographers were memorialized in the discipline’s own record.

1991	Peter Haggett	UK
1992	Torsten Hägerstrand and Gilbert F. White	Sweden/US
1993	Peter Gould	US
1994	Milton Santos	Brazil
1995	David Harvey	UK
1996	Roger Brunet and Paul Claval	France
1997	Jean-Bernard Racine	Switzerland
1998	Doreen Massey	UK
1999	Ron J. Johnston	UK
2000	Yves Lacoste	France
2001	Peter Hall	UK
2002	Bruno Messerli	Switzerland
2003	Allen J. Scott	US
2004	Philippe Pinchemel	France
2005	Brian J. L. Berry	US
2006	Heinz Wanner	Switzerland
2007	Mike Goodchild	UK
2008	Horacio Capel Sáez	Spain
2009	Terry McGee	Canada
2010	Denise Pumain	France
2011	Antoine Bailly	Switzerland
2012	Yi-Fu Tuan	China/US
2013	Michael Batty	UK
2014	Anne Buttimer	Ireland
2015	Edward Soja	US
2016	Maria Dolors Garcia Ramon	Spain
2017	Akin Mabogunje	Nigeria

Geographical coverage of honorands is similar to the coverage of Geographers, as discussed in our last editorial (Baigent and Reyes Novaes 2017). Of the twenty-nine honorands, fifteen are or were native speakers of English and are or were active in Anglophone countries, or sixteen if we include Akin Mabogunje, who is from Nigeria where English is widely used and who was educated in London. Indeed the very strong showing of the United Kingdom (the single-best-represented nation with seven prizewinners) provoked a joyful editor’s announcement in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers for 1999: ‘Another British geographer is awarded the Vautrin Lud International Geography Prize’ (vol 24, 392, italics editorial). Those who are or were native speakers of French and are or were active in Francophone countries make up seven of the remaining honorands, or nine if the two Swiss recipients with German names are included. Europe in general (with nineteen honorands) and Switzerland and Spain (with four and two respectively) are more heavily represented among prizewinners than in GBS, while North America (seven) is less strongly represented but still an important presence.

The overlap between honorands and those noticed in Geographers suggests that, although the serial has undoubtedly missed important geographers, there is a real internation al bias in what is recognized as geographical activity and distinction. Of course, this argument is circular. It is easier to forge an international reputation if one is working in a well-established centre for geography, with all its attendant university departments, learned societies, research institutes and programmes, opportunities for exchanges or visits abroad, libraries and journals. It is also easier to forge a distinguished reputation in a prosperous country where research, fieldwork and conference attendance are more readily funded. The apparent exceptions to this observation in some ways in fact support it. This volume’s memoir of Milton Santos – of African descent, and from an impoverished part of Brazil, a country in the Global South – shows him apparently going against the trend, and yet for much of his career he worked in the Global North where he worked in well-resourced institutions. This fact in no way diminishes his achievements, but it does support the trend that distinction is easier to attain in well-established and well-funded centres. The memorialist of Jean Defos du Rau in this volume is reticent about his subject’s distinction precisely because of his work in an area far from those well-resourced centres, but in fact his work sits comfortably within the Geographers mould. But it is clear that, if Geographers is to capture a wide range of geographical activity, it must be flexible in what is considered a ‘distinguished geographer’ worthy of notice. The gender, geographical and cultural shaping of ‘distinction’ are clear, but so too is the institutional: the prizewinners listed above come largely from things called ‘geography departments’ in things called ‘universities’. Distinction, however, is attainable outside such institutions, though is less widely recognized: what of those whose textbooks were inspirational in establishing geography in schools; whose publishing houses contributed to geographical knowledge; who set up or maintained geographical institutions in inauspicious circumstances, providing geographical education to students who would otherwise lack it, or cultural cohesion to a geographical region; who helped to shape the economic or social geography of a country; who did the behind-the-scenes work in a learned society; who worked in the field; who brought a geographical perspective to institutions which bore a label other than ‘geography’? And what of those who were not stars, but, in Oscar parlance, were best supporting actresses and actors: the people who kept departments going; who funded geographical projects; who built up or maintained distinguished geographical libraries, museums and other collections and who put their collections at the disposal of distinguished geographers; who edited geographical works; who mapped or analysed what the geographers had found in the field; who did the drudge work behind the scenes without which the stars would not have shone. We must also not let inherent glamour or lack of it affect our judgement of distinction: the geographer working on sewage may be no less noteworthy than one working on creative industries or space. There is room in Geographers for many geographers.

It has been pleasing that recent articles have pointed the way in giving more than a passing reference to professional colleagues or student contemporaries of the subject being memorialized. In this volume, the coverage of Percy Crowe in the article on Stan Gregory is a good example. Crowe was a seminal influence on Gregory but has thus far been largely unsung in the geographical press – as indeed has Gregory. Perhaps the fact that they both worked on less than glamorous bits of the discipline is part of the reason. The discussion of Crowe is most welcome, but the Geographers indexing system means that such figures, sitting in someone else’s article, are hard to search for. It is something to which more thought needs to be given if the serial is to be as useful a resource as possible.

From this year’s volume come several other matters of importance to the history of geography and to which we can draw attention here.

First, we see the importance of biography in recording geography’s history and purpose, and the importance of the International Geographical Union (IGU) in fostering that biographical methodology. The memoir of Anne B...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• List of contributors
• 1 Distinguished geographers: How are they made and how do we identify and celebrate them? Elizabeth Baigent and André Reyes Novaes
• 2 Anne Buttimer (1938–2017) Federico Ferretti and Alun Jones
• 3 Milton Almeida dos Santos (1926–2001) Pedro de Almeida Vasconcelos
• 4 Stanley Gregory (1926–2016) Ron Johnston
• 5 Paul Veyret (1912–88) and Germaine Veyret-Verner (1913–73) Hugh Clout
• 6 Jean Defos du Rau (1914–94) Christian Germanaz
• 7 June Alice Sheppard (1928–2016) Robin A. Butlin
• Index
• Copyright