-graphy: The Remains of a British Discipline

Abstract

Within Britain, geography as a discipline has been criticized recently for failing either to add to or teach knowledge about the world at large. Instead it has concentrated first at university and then in schools on spatial social science, with examples drawn overwhelmingly from the white Western world. The recent history of geography is reviewed to see why this should be the case. The end of regional integration, the end of the idiographic, and the divorce of physical and human geography are lamented. The ignorance of current students regarding world affairs is demonstrated. Wider influences on these trends such as the end of empire are discussed. The plight of other academic attempts to understand overseas cultures, such as area studies, is also examined. The paper concludes that for the sake of our social responsibility to education in its broadest sense, as much as for the sake of our disciplinary vested interests, we have to reinvest in integrating physical and human geography in regional settings, as our part of academe's response to the threat to area studies.

Keywords:

• UK geography
• uniqueness
• lawfulness
• regionalism
• area studies
• geographical facts

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Professor Stig Toft Madsen, International Development Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark, for collegial comments and suggestions, and for administering the quiz in Denmark.

Notes

¹ I was taught by Peter Haggett but I also met Dudley Stamp (1898–1966). I was on holiday in Cornwall with my family between school and university. My father, a professional philatelic journalist, took me to see Dudley Stamp who lived nearby, as he was, somewhat eponymously, a philatelist too. The highest scoring person so far on my quiz by a large margin is my father, who flattened all others in his 93rd year.