Commentary: Disrupting and destabilizing Anglo-American and English-language hegemony in geography1

1 This paper was originally published in Catalan as Kitchin, R. (2003) Disrupting and destabilizing Anglo-American and English-language hegemony in geography, Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica 42: 17–36. It is translated and reproduced with permission.

Abstract

This commentary considers the perceived hegemonic status of Anglo-American Geography and the role of the English language as the lingua franca of academia. The first half of the paper outlines in brief the hegemonic status of Anglo-American Geography, the structures and practices of the global knowledge economy and Anglo-American Geography itself that help sustain and reproduce its hegemony, and the disciplining effects of this hegemonic status on geography practised elsewhere. The second half examines how Anglo-American norms and the hegemonic status of English as a global lingua franca are being, and might be further, challenged, resisted, subverted and re-shaped through discursive and practical interventions aimed at disrupting and destabilizing them. By focusing on how the history of the discipline is constructed, and the protocols of publishing and organizing conferences, how geography can be transformed to open it up to a plurality of (non-Anglo-American) voices, different ways of ‘doing’ geography, and alternative ways of valuing forms of geographical enterprise, are considered.

Keywords:

• Anglo-American hegemony
• English language
• publishing
• conferences
• theory

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the delegates at the International Critical Geography Conference Békéscsaba, Hungary, 25–30 June 2002 for thoughtful conversations and Sheila Hones, Duncan Fuller and Caitriona NiLaoire for very helpful comments on an initial draft of this paper.

Notes

1 This paper was originally published in Catalan as Kitchin, R. (2003) Disrupting and destabilizing Anglo-American and English-language hegemony in geography, Documents d'Anàlisi Geogràfica 42: 17–36. It is translated and reproduced with permission.

2 It should be noted that the hegemonic status of Anglo-American Geography is by no means complete. For example, it exerts little influence over French geography which has its own tradition. Similarly, other countries have their own traditions (and their own institutional structures), though increasingly it seems they are aligning their theories and praxis with that of Anglo-American Geography.

3 I am aware that the division between Anglo-America and elsewhere adopted in this paper is not solidly fixed and that boundaries between the two are porous and blurred. For example, the transnational migration of scholars between posts and training in different countries means that many academics do not easily identify as Anglo-American or ‘Other’. I, for example, trained in the UK and have worked in Ireland for the past eight years, and this paper is written from the reflexive perspective of an Anglo-American scholar located on the periphery of that hegemony.

4 Several former colleges of education in the UK have sought and achieved university status by altering their outputs and inputs. Waterford Institute of Technology in Ireland is presently employing a strategy of increasing tangible research outputs and chasing public and private research monies in order to try to gain university status.

5 Admittedly, many of the key journals for a particular topic are not ‘international’ in scope by their nature. For example, the Japanese Journal of American Studies is the journal for academics working on American Studies in Japan. Its readership, however, is decidedly not international.

6 This is also the case for many scholars schooled in different geographic traditions within Anglo-American Geography, let alone for those for whom English is a second language.

7 The creation of such a project is presently being explored that would link geographers in several European countries.

8 The publishers insisted that the journal have an editor based in the USA.

9 While this might be read as tokenism, this was in fact a deliberate strategy to try to decentre the journal. Admittedly, those chosen to sit on the editorial board were selected on the basis of their already established connections to Anglo-American Geography.

10 Here I mean conferences aimed at international audiences, not necessarily conferences that have international delegates but are in fact national conferences such as Association of American Geographers or Royal Geographical Society meetings.

11 Some countries, such as Japan, have very hierarchical seniority structures that dictate personal interaction.