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Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
The Geographies of Knowledge |
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The theme for the
RGS-IBG Annual International Conference in 2009, chaired by Professor Stuart
Lane, is Geography, Knowledge and Society. In his Chair’s introduction,
Professor Lane expands on this theme to explain, ‘debates in Geography
largely centre upon what constitutes admissible ways of knowing the world,
whether through theory, observation or experience’. Whilst looking forward
to the response of the community to this theme, it is timely to look back at
the diversity of work published in the Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, which takes relations between geography, knowledge
and society as its central focus. |
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Over the last 10-15
years, there has been a growing engagement between scholars in geography and
those in cognate disciplines interested in the sociology of scientific
knowledge, the nature of knowledge controversies, and the diversity of
knowledge practices. Significant parts of this exchange have been featured
and developed in papers in Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers. This engagement draws attention to the importance of place
in the production of scientific knowledge, adding to a ‘spatial turn’ in
Science and Technology Studies through insights into concepts of place, and
geographical concerns with fieldwork and other mobile knowledge practices.
Attention to the production of knowledge and knowledge controversies has
enlivened traditional geographical concerns, such as those around work and
gender, ethnicity and identity, materiality and nature conservation, and the
governance of environmental issues. Finally, informed by these debates,
there has been renewed attention to understanding episodes from geography’s
past, whether telling disciplinary histories of institutional geography,
listening to oral histories from geographical pioneers, or recounting the
small stories making up geography’s diverse history and practices.
The ten articles forming the main contents of this virtual issue are chosen
to illustrate work addressing these three themes. Each section is followed
by links to further articles published in Transactions, which develop our understanding of the relations between geography, knowledge and
society.
We invite you to read the papers in the virtual issue, to
recommend them to colleagues and students, and to bring your thoughts to the
conference in 2009.
With best wishes,
Gail Davies
Editorial Board, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers |
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