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Theme
Debates in Geography largely centre upon what constitutes admissible ways of knowing the world, whether through theory, observation or experience.
On the one hand, we have a richness of geographical enquiry, one that enables geographical engagement in both social and natural worlds in new and exciting ways. On the other, we are a discipline that has structured itself around divisions that are as much about what we allow to be admissible knowledge as they are about what it is we are trying to comprehend.
The 150th anniversary of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is a timely reminder of how new types of knowledge can unsettle, reshape and reformulate our understanding of the world around us, but only if we allow it to do so.
The 2009 Conference of the RGS-IBG will take questions surrounding admissible knowledge as a fulcrum for challenging the assumptions, presumptions, beliefs central to the practice of geographical enquiry. Whilst retaining its role as a stimulus for presenting all kinds of geographical knowledge, the conference will specifically adopt a number of entry points for thinking through this question of admissible knowledge.
The first will be concerned with the framings that our knowledge brings to the world within which we find ourselves; the ways in which these framings simultaneously constrain and enable new understandings; and the ways in which different framings do not add up, can not be reconciled, but can still co-exist, sometimes intersecting and, most exciting still, generate new and more radical forms of geographical explanation.
The second entry point will be the new approaches, methods and techniques that underpin the vibrancy of the subject as we know it today. The conference will show how we make new sense of the world through innovation in the kinds of knowledge we allow to be admissible to geographical explanations; ranging from new ways to survey remotely and to measure quantitatively; through to the new media, imagery, sensory perceptions and other emotions that challenge the way we think about the world. This will include the kinds of knowledge that don’t fit into conventional forms of analysis and explanation; as well as they ways in which new forms of knowledge challenge the conventional distinction between researcher and researched.
The third entry point will be the matters of geographical concern such as hazard, environmental change, vulnerability, security, well-being; where new forms of geographical practice can move beyond traditional divisions between human-physical, qualitative-quantitative; but also where Geography is increasingly exposed to the threat that comes from new interdisciplinary ways of working. These new ways of working often cross divides with little reference to the kind of soul searching that geographers have traditionally ascribed to such divides. How do we move from dialogue to practice in crossing geographical divides? What difference do such practices make? In short, in a world ever more addressed through the lenses of interdisciplinarity, why does Geography still matter?
The final entry point will be concerned with Darwin himself, his legacy upon the discipline, and the re-enchantment with Darwin’s view of the world that is so radically changing some parts of Geography today.
Professor Stuart Lane, Conference Chair, Durham University
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