![Sample our Geography journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5937/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Geography.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the current situation of Spanish geography in higher education. The authors show that Spanish geography has undergone a profound transformation in the new democratic era, resulting in a thriving community struggling to find its place amongst other disciplines. To assess the current health of the discipline in higher education, they discuss the two ends of the spectrum as perceived by many Spanish geographers: either geography is losing its place in Spanish academe (the worst of times, in Dickens's words), or it is starting a new golden age (the best of times). What was found is that the current situation does not necessarily involve a weighted combination of these extreme views, as one would be tempted to think: it might be that geography is actually at one of the poles. It was also found that the divide between classical physical and human geography is widening, with very different views on what geography is about, its societal role, and the future strategies to advance the discipline. In view of this diversity and the need to implicate themselves in this debate, the authors end up providing some suggestions from their own perspective. Their proposals to strengthen geography in higher education are both strategic and methodological, without forgetting that the problems geography faces in higher education are not particular to geography –but are shared by the arts and social sciences in technocratic societies.
Acknowledgements
The authors are indebted to Professor Horacio Capel for many helpful discussions on the history, epistemology and health of Spanish geography. The friends who reviewed early versions of this paper and helped its balance are also acknowledged for their sharp criticisms and witty contributions. This research was partially funded by research grants PAI06-0102-7466 (Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha), CGL2006-03611, SEJ2004-02824/GEOG (Ministry of Science and Education) and the Ramon y Cajal program.
Notes
1 The arrival of quantitative ideas in Spain well illustrates the old regime: the first international symposia on quantitative geography were secretly hosted at the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (National Geographical Institute) to avoid young participants being discovered by senior faculty from their universities, who were highly opposed to such ideas.
2 The logical conclusion is that most of Spanish geographical work remains unknown for those unable (or unwilling) to read Spanish. Masterpieces such as José Ortega's studies on Burgos's mountains, or Huguet del Villar's ‘Geo-Edafología’ passed almost unnoticed abroad, impeding foreign researchers from taking advantage of many valuable findings. Recent valuable works written in Spanish that merit being more known abroad includes ‘Morfología de las ciudades’ by Horacio Capel, in human geography; and ‘Fundamentos de Teledetección Espacial’ by Emilio Chuvieco, in physical geography.
3 The figure refers to the Eurostat tp07_1 indicator: entrants to tertiary education at theoretical starting age at ISCED level 5 (tertiary education) as a percentage of all persons in the corresponding age group.
4 It is generally believed that the best universities are those in larger cities, so the universities of Madrid and Barcelona might be able to exert some attraction.
5 Historically, the spread of universities in almost every provincial capital was a conscious attempt to make higher education available to all social classes.
6 Data from the Sociological Research Centre (CIS), December 2005.
7 We are not suggesting here that in-breeding is either ethically wrong or right, but simply assessing the fact.
8 An example of this climate is the anecdotal, albeit revealing, situation that happened at the 1974 AGE conference in Oviedo, when the AGE's first chairman, professor García-Fernández (University of Valladolid) hampered one young English geographer from presenting his work, telling the audience that “as you all know, the British have no idea about geography, and thus we will pass to the next speaker”.
9 Being consciously provocative, it would be cheaper to provide a generous grant to these 782 students for overseas study (say €20,000/student/year, = €16,000,000/year) rather than just paying the wages of their 583 tutors (say €21,000,000/year, at a conservative calculation). Fortunately, there are many other reasons to keep us in our posts.
10 Comment in the postdoc jobs section of Nature from Quirin Schiermeier: Spain aims at premier league, 22 September 2004, doi:10.1038/nj7007-488a.
11 See http://inspire.jrc.it/home.html (accessed July 2005).
12 See http://www.ieg.csic.es/age/docs_AGE/04-03-ANECA/04-03-LibroBlancoFinal.pdf (accessed June 2005).
13 GIS has been described to (quantitative) geography like the laboratory to the chemist (Tapiador et al., Citation1998). It provides a way to simulate and test theories in a very complex way, beyond qualitative argumentation. It is indeed possible to use a GIS without a positivistic point of view, just as it is possible to use the Hubble Space Telescope to print out wall posters, but the core of GIS practice is making modelling possible.
14 We are convinced that if GIS had been called Environmental Information Systems instead, Spanish geographers would not have been allowed to lecture in GIS.
15 We believe, however, that this is not the case, and that most of the GIS and remote sensing research is done from a purely instrumental point of view.
16 A typical criticism of some Spanish geographers in respect of models is that reality is too complex to be embedded in such a simple tool. Indeed, models are simpler than reality: the whole point of modelling is simplifying reality to make it tractable.
17 Capel was anything but suspicious of misgivings concerning quantitative geography: the arrival of these ideas in Spain can be traced back to his 1971 annotated translation of Schaefer's paper ‘Exceptionalism in Geography’ (Citation1953). Even with the 18-year delay after the original, the translation marked a milestone in opening Spain to new ideas on geography. In Capel's booklet, Spanish scholars found a thoughtful text on the postulates of the first wave of the quantitative revolution movement, endorsed by a senior Spanish scholar. His booklet would become enormously, albeit silently, influential in the forthcoming generations of Spanish and Latin American geographers. Capel's contribution, however, was not to start quantitative geography in Spain but to open the door from within the establishment to the new ideas (Bosque et al., Citation1983), showing the potentialities (and shortcomings) of their postulates and enabling a genuine methodological discussion in an era when debate was almost proscribed and a medieval conception of academic life was still dominant.
18 More recently, Goodchild (Citation2003, p. 27) makes a similar mistake when using the term ‘uncertainty principle’ out of context. The uncertainty principle does not state that it is impossible to measure location exactly. What it says about subatomic particles is that it is impossible to measure location and momentum exactly at the same time. Separately, any of these variables can be measured with arbitrary precision. Applying this principle to GIScience, even metaphorically, is not an easy task.
19 A less traumatic option to the same end would be a dual degree, as historian and geography Professor Josefina Gómez Mendoza has suggested in the White Book: she proposed a track for research/teaching and another to cover the demands of corporate Spain and the public administration.
20 One of the referees of this paper in draft stated that “it is interesting to note the positivist/quantitative overall emphasis of the paper, at a time when many geographers in countries such as the UK are strongly rejecting such an approach. The authors could usefully reflect on this.” The comment is highly revealing of some of the issues we raise in this paper. Assuming that it were true only for the sake of the argument, we wonder how many geographers in those countries would discuss new epistemological proposals published (in Spanish) within Spanish geographical journals. On the other hand, it would indeed be interesting to analyse whether or not those strongly rejecting positivism in the UK belong to just one side of the physical/human geography divide. It may well be that those rejecting positivism are those remaining under the ‘geography’ rubric, while others have left to continue doing geography under the ‘geomatics’ or ‘remote sensing’ labels, far away from this epistemological debate.