From mosaic to network: social and cultural geography in Switzerland

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Rob Kitchin for giving me such an impossible task … and to all the Swiss geographers who kindly alleviated the burden by sending me recent references.

Notes

 1 This is about to change though with a federal law in preparation aimed at implementing a more centralized educational system.

 2 A list of the websites of Swiss geography departments is to be found at < http://www.swissgeography.ch/fr/about/index.php>.

 3 The Laboratoire Chôros, founded by the French geographer Jacques Lévy.

 4 This is a personal impression, which does not build on surveys but on numerous informal conversations over the years. This popular perception is important in a country where theory and abstraction is regarded with suspicion.

 5 See < http://www.geo.unige.ch/Recherche/collecter/news_old.php>.

 6 It has counted as regular members: Gunnar Olsson, Allan Pred, Franco Farinelli, Ole Michael Jensen, Enzo Guarrasi, Dagmar Reichert and Ola Söderström.

 7 But also because nature preservation movements and the natural sciences in the universities have always been strong in Switzerland.

 8 See < http://www.unige.ch/ses/geo/Recherches/EquipeMontagnes.html>.

 9 The first issue came out in 2005.

10 See < www.migration-population.ch>.

11 Its Alleingang (solitary path) as a Sonderfall (exception), to use German words very commonly used in the public debate to qualify the country's political singularity.

12 See < http://sotomo.geo.unizh.ch/research/>.

13 See < http://www2.unine.ch/geographie/page9971.html>.

14 For instance, 13 per cent in Lausanne.

15 More and more young postdoctoral students are now spending a few years in British and North American departments where there is a strong tradition in social and cultural geography.