The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 13 (2002)

Another Closing Frontier?:
Observations on Geography
in American Academe
Simon R. POTTERI INTRODUCTION
The academic discipline of geography focuses on terrestrial space andis properly associated with its expression on maps. Via this medium it ispossible to gain insights into this world as well as to locate places andother things. Throughout most of the twentieth century geography ﬂourished in American schools, colleges, and universities, although the lasttwenty years have seen its existence at the universities questioned.
Linked to this is the perennial question of what “geography” is and how
contemporary geographers are to ﬁt in within the academic community.
For most people in America something along the lines of “the study of
the world” would sufﬁce for a deﬁnition, but geographers and other
scholars seem to feel that many geographers have been only marginallyengaged in such an activity. Hence, in a thick survey of American geography at the end of the uneasy decade of the 1980s, the editors were
sufﬁciently comfortable to say that an “easily articulated deﬁnition of
Geography, consistent with the traditional notions about how the pursuitof knowledge should be compartmentalized, simply does not exist–nor
should it.”1 This may be reduced logically to “geography does not exist,
nor should it,” and a recent president of the Association of American
Copyright © 2002 Simon R. Potter. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.
131

SIMON R. POTTER

132

Geographers (AAG) has noted “the possibility of having the discipline
die a natural death,”2 mainly because of disciplinary inertia.
Such pessimism might seem curious to readers of an interdisciplinary
journal that focuses on a geographical region. Geography has a usefulrole in explaining North America to Japanese students and scholars, andgeographers teach things about it that other scholars do not, while twoof the non-Japanese and at least one of the Japanese editors to haveworked on this journal have meaningful associations with the discipline.
Those readers who are familiar with geography in Japan know that it
continues to ﬂourish here, while in Britain, for example, it seems to be
doing well with only minor distractions. Perhaps it is the adversarial culture of the United States that has magniﬁed the problems of geography
there, yet the discipline does face some fundamental problems that haveplaced geographers in America on the defensive. The present essay
therefore discusses these, generally as identiﬁed in recent editions of the
AAG Newsletter, and then gives some examples of maps and models thatare questionable as useful interpretations of terrestrial space and could
be seen to contribute to geography’s chronic slide toward the endangered
list within the American academy.
IISYNOPSIS OF GEOGRAPHY IN THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Geography in the United States shares the same intellectual heritage
as that in Europe. Although it can be traced to the ancient Greeks andinclude scholastic Christians, it was the great European voyages, expeditions, and concurrent discoveries from the last quarter of the ﬁfteenth
century until around the end of the nineteenth that established the objectives for and expectations of modern geography. Information and ideas
about the various parts of the world drifted in to such intellectual centers as Amsterdam, Paris, and London, where governments and businesses manipulated them in their competitive ways. Centripetal were thecartographers who worked the information and ideas into visual impressions of the world and its parts, and in the process they tackled technical problems and quite often supplemented their maps with written
passages and even other visual materials. This work, which at its best
accommodated contemporary artistic style and conveyed appropriatescientiﬁc information, was “geography” as the word came to be understood by intellectuals in the nineteenth century and, it would seem, by
most people then and throughout the twentieth.

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

133

As part of a British empire and since independence, Americans engaged in such geography to learn about their territory, especially as it
expanded to the west. Throughout the nineteenth century in particular,
territories and states needed to be deﬁned geometrically, and information on them recorded for a variety of reasons, and by the end of the century this interest had expanded to Alaska and overseas, to the Hawaiian,
Micronesian, and Philippine islands in the Paciﬁc and to some of the
Antilles and the Panamanian isthmus to the south. The strong connections that were maintained with Europe throughout the century—thecultural heritage, most of the immigrants to the United States, and governmental and commercial relations—supplemented such information
with that from elsewhere throughout the world, and it would seem that
Britons and Germans were the principal external agents of inﬂuence.
During this time geography also came to be considered important for
educating teenagers, being “commonly taught in America’s schools” and“one of the ﬁrst new ﬁelds to be required for college entrance.”3
The last two decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of academic geography in the United States. At ﬁrst it was closely associated with geology, the study of the Earth from a purely naturaland generally past-tense perspective, but it gradually diversiﬁed to incorporate elements from other natural sciences, the social sciences, and history. Integrating whatever might overlap with other subjects or ﬁelds ofinquiry was how humanity functioned within its habitats, and by the timethat the Second World War had broken out, the vanguard of American
geography was entertaining itself with theoretical debates about this relationship. This began with the geomorphologist William Morris Davis
who perceived “man and his works as part of the landscape, not separate
from it,” and who importantly “attempted to rescue the teaching of geography from too much attention to factual knowledge and not enough use
of general concepts around which to organize the facts” and was the key
ﬁgure in organizing the AAG (established in 1904) as “a professionalsociety in which members could present their ideas.” While the AAG
became the main forum for intellectual exchange, his students were
instrumental in getting geography established in American universities,
and one of them, Ellsworth Huntington, promoted the idea that climate
inﬂuenced human behavior (1915). Such environmental determinism
was however challenged, notably through the work of Ellen Churchill
Semple who argued “that the environment does not control humanaction” (1911), and between the two world wars various trains of thought

134

SIMON R. POTTER

focusing on such concepts as regions and cultures came into existence,something to have been expected as geography lessened its dependence
on the natural sciences.4
As specialization set in after the Second World War, it became common for academic geographers to be either a human geographer or aphysical geographer and seemingly to demonstrate greater commitment
to narrow research themes than to a disciplinary core that would unify
the two major branches. Certainly by the 1980s academics were identifying themselves according to their specialties, and it seemed that an economic or a social geographer was not expected to know much about, say,climates and soils, while a geomorphologist or a biogeographer (humans
excluded from this “bio”) was similarly presumed ignorant of the likesof political or urban geography. At this juncture, it is possible that the
problem was that no great, broadsweeping theories were in the ofﬁng,
and since a tremendous lot was already known and/or interpreted about
the world, the main direction of cutting-edge scholarship lay in suchnarrowness. To a large extent because of this, and perhaps stagnant
careerism inside the discipline, the decision in 1981 to discontinue thedepartment of geography at the University of Michigan seems to havetriggered profound anxiety among geographers in the United States. It
seems to have been reasoned that if nongeographers could not see thepoint of a discipline with weak cohesion and no apparent mission, geography would eventually be eliminated from the mainstream academy.
Two developments threw a lifeline to geography by the mid 1980s, one
being the growing popular concern over environmental issues and theother being advances in computerized mapping, but geography has not
managed to take sufﬁcient advantage of either.
What seems to be missing from this unfavorable picture is the fact thatgeographers have produced useful, interesting work—not all narrow—in the last three or four decades, and that there is still plenty to be done.
Within the academic community, perhaps, little value might be placedon general educational materials and books about countries, parts of theworld, and the various topical components of geography, but it is clearthat other communities do detect value. Among these are the militaryand intelligence agencies, NASA and companies which put satellites into
orbit or use them, governments and other institutions with a need to compile and use diverse information about areas or regions, schools and individuals engaged in education, and the makers of maps and atlases.
Instead of producing exciting intellectual theories and outstandingANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

135

inventions, the common thread of geography inside and outside theAmerican academy is one of discreet utility.
III GEOGRAPHY BESIEGED?
In an introductory textbook Harm de Blij and Peter Muller claim that
there are “ten-thousand-plus professional geographers [in] North
America,” and the AAG membership as of May 2000 was “about 6,500,”
practically all of whom were Americans and/or working in the UnitedStates.5 The latter ﬁgure has suggested to Reginald Golledge, a recent
president of the AAG, that “Geography is a small discipline” and, whencombined with other numbers, faces a crisis in population.6 Yet, 6500 or
10,000-plus need not be “small” numbers, and they certainly cannot reﬂect the true number of people in the United States who are engaged inwork that draws on geographical training or knowledge, and nor need
they indicate much in regard to popular geographical interest.7
The perception of crisis extends more signiﬁcantly into the quality andconstitution of the discipline, almost exclusively in academic contexts.
These run through a spectrum of problems that include disharmony
between the physical and human subdivisions, esoteric specialization,
disdain for teaching, inappropriate training, practical irrelevance, andeven bad attitudes. Certainly apparent by 1980, they are sufﬁciently germane again today to warrant anxious commentary by the AAG leadership, who, along with others, seem to be determined to rescue geography.
Perusal of commentaries, mainly by AAG presidents, in the monthly
AAG Newsletter for 1999 and 2000 reveals signiﬁcant consternation on
the part of the Association’s leadership, and it may fairly be assumed
that this anxiety is widespread and based in reality. Here, some selectedstatements are arbitrarily compartmentalized and remarked upon.
Judging from comments that indicate a perception of marginality andan image that is not ﬁrst-class, it is not difﬁcult to detect that geographers in America suffer from an inferiority complex. This must be sufﬁciently pervasive for Golledge to have entitled his ﬁnal presidential
column “Never Be Ashamed of Being a Geographer,” which includes
this insightful passage:
Over the years, I have seen a great deal of denial of disciplinary roots by geographers. Some just refuse to call themselves “geographers” and use titles
like “earth scientist,” “statistician,” or “environmental engineer.” Some

136

SIMON R. POTTER

refuse to acknowledge their departmental home on their publications, instead
citing research units or other institutional bases. Some feel that geography is
so poorly regarded by other disciplines that they cannot compete equally for
fellowships, scholarships, and research grants and contracts if they identify
as geographers.8

Behind this would be a perception of diminished prestige, no doubt bolstered by a “lack of formal geography (courses, an undergraduate minor,
major, or graduate study) in many of the most prestigious universities in
the nation.”9 For this to have happened, the work of geographers musthave come to be seen as insufﬁciently unique, creative, or intellectually
demanding, but it might not be out of place to wonder if the words “geography” and “geographer” do suffer from an uncharitable image. Important is the suspicion that “graphy” (= writing, drawing) is not as
intellectually appealing as “logy” (= science, theory, study; associatedwith “logic”) and “sophy” (= knowledge, thought, wisdom), and that“writing about and drawing the Earth” (“graphy” plus “geo”) in America
today does not evoke the impression of strenuous intellectual effort.
Related is the allegedly widespread belief that geography is a subject
involving “the study of city names and sizes, capitals, and products”10—
to which might be added countries, states, mountains, rivers, and the like,as well as maps—and associated with memorization, as if it were in thesame category as learning the times table and how to spell. This would
seem to be a cruel exaggeration, but perceptions can assume the guiseof reality.
Several comments in the AAG Newsletter support a sense of geography being at best second-rate within the American academic community. Broadly assessed, they appear to be arguing that this “dysfunctional
discipline” needs “to convince other disciplines that [it has] much tooffer” and “to improve its image among peer disciplines, business, government, educational institutions, and the general public.”11 Golledge isconcerned that “representatives of other disciplines disparage geography,” although “frequently based on ignorance,”12 but it would seem that
this ignorance is a source of power which geographers unwittingly caterto. Will Graf’s assertion, for instance, that physical geographers are “spatial specialists who complement other scientists”13 smacks of acknowledging an inferior status, it not being unreasonable to suppose that thecomplementor ﬁlls in the gaps after the important work has been done.
Although this need not have been meant to be inferred, it is possible thatgeographers have come to see their discipline in this light, rather than

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

137

the other disciplines as complements to geography, and to accept a belief
that other disciplines are better.
How this perception of inferiority came about is probably best explained by the longstanding trend toward specialization and its concurrent major (physical/human) and minor subdivisions within thediscipline. The resulting hyphenated status (although hyphens are generally not used) of geographers puts them somewhere between two disciplines (e.g. biology and geography, sociology and geography, history
and geography) and would seem to contribute to a geographer feelingspecial among, if not superior to, other geographers yet inferior to scholars in an allied discipline. In theory, this is supposed to be compensatedfor by an ability to synthesize information into a spatial context—“Spatial analysis . . . has offered a unique contribution that . . . formalizes theidea that geography makes a unique contribution to scientiﬁc knowledge”14—yet this can be frustrated if the mosaic of information is toocomplicated to comprehend entirely, if geographers are not keen to put
aside narrow research to contribute to something more general, or if
scholars in other disciplines can do it anyway. Since “it can be argued
that a deﬁnite weakness of specialization has been the loss of human/
physical synthesis,” “that specialization has pitted segments of the discipline against each other,” and that many geographers “work at the margins of geography, practicing our craft in consultation with cognate
disciplines,”15 it would be fair to assume that work of an integrative
nature is not particularly sought after and that “geographers” would prefer to be something else.
Accompanying the centrifugality of specialization is the tendency ofgeographers to internalize their affairs. By notably aiming their discourse
at each other, geographers exacerbate their problems by distancing themselves from other scholars inside the academy (which implies that they
are not well connected with cognate disciplines as critics of specialization seem to suggest) as well as from the general public. Graf, for example and in good intent, wrote
One of the most important things geographers offer to society, government,
and other sciences is our perspective on the world. We emphasize space andplace, location, patterns, networks, systems with locational characteristics,
and the spatial perceptions and behavior of people. We contribute a better
understanding of the present world and improved predictions for a future one.
We offer clues that other disciplines overlook.16

138

SIMON R. POTTER

A curious point in this passage is the use of the word “our” in the ﬁrst
sentence, suggesting that whatever “perspective on the world” geographers do have is not shared by nongeographers. If this perspective isbroadly deﬁned by the second sentence, it would come as no surprise if
it were pointed out that the likes of location, patterns, networks, and associations thereof are not exclusively in the domain of geography. The
unique perspective, it would seem, must be deﬁned rather by how geographers categorize such things among themselves than by the fact thatthey put an emphasis on them. Whether geography does provide “a better understanding of the present” and “clues that other disciplines overlook” surely is debatable, while it is not clear that geography need be theforce behind “improved predictions” (e.g. satellites in orbit around theworld have contributed more to better weather forecasts than has the ability of meteorologists to reason) or necessarily be able to predict any
better than other disciplines (e.g. for earthquakes, agrarian land use,organizing settlements, determining a country’s role in stategic affairs).
Two other exemplary points from the newsletter suggest an unhealthy
inwardness. One, in a set of criticisms, asks “How many times do wehave to . . . decipher jargon-laden presentations using special language
clearly intended only for the ‘in crowd?’ ”17 Although this speciﬁcallycomplained about presentations at national conferences, it could be
extended to include other meetings, publications, and teaching, and it isobviously linked to specialization and attempted exclusivity. The second example, in an essay wondering why geographers have not been
involved in recent high-proﬁle projects, argues that geographers haveisolated themselves through their gamesmanship in publications:for too long the discipline has looked inward rather than outward. We tend
to publish most of our scholarship in geographical journals . . . , but many ofthese outlets are not widely read outside the discipline. So . . . few non-geographers know about it. The reverse is also true—if you publish exclusively
outside the discipline, few of your geographical colleagues know about yourcontributions.18

While this does not consider that scholars in other disciplines might bedoing exactly the same thing, it does reinforce the idea that geographers
have isolated themselves from the rest of the academic community. Thiscan be extended to affairs inside the discipline since geographers tend to
separate themselves from other geographers by publishing in journals
and books devoted to specialties.

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

139

Another area of concern is the training of geographers, especially inregard to the intellectual core of knowledge and skills. The greatest
indictment in the AAG Newsletter, Graf’s “Not Clueless, Just Skill-less,”
includes several remarks which acknowledge existing problems andtheir potential to be dragged into the future. These include insufﬁcientknowledge of allied disciplines and relevant techniques for conducting
research, as well as insufﬁcient training in analytical skills, writing, andpublic speaking. Responsibility for improving the quality of geographers
is assigned to “the education community,” which evidently has been
neglecting its duties, and physical geographers are to have “at least [an]introductory knowledge of basic physics, chemistry, and mathematics,”
while human geographers require the same of “mathematics, statistics,
survey research, and the fundamental ideas in related ﬁelds,” and experts
in geographic information systems (GIS, computerized mapping) “needto delve more deeply into the underpinnings of spatial analysis.”19 Thisis a tall order, in which a well-rounded geographer might be imaginedleaving an American undergraduate institution with a substantial increase in general education courses. It is not clear what current academic geographers are supposed to do about their deﬁciencies, whether froma disciplinary-wide perspective or simply from that of either physicalgeography or human geography, but Graf’s message appears to be thatgeographers ought to start learning more.
In the domain of skills, a lot of recent attention has focused on GIS,
which by now is sufﬁciently mainstream to be speciﬁed as a preferenceor even a requirement for many entry-level academic positions. Not surprisingly, then, GIS has cropped up in the AAG Newsletter as terribly
important, there being some merit to Golledge’s noting “that Edward
Taaffe, former AAG President . . . , has suggested that all geographers
should be exposed to GIS as part of a disciplinary effort to make ourselves and our products more competitive in future job markets and more
visible in the worlds of academe, government, and business.”20 Althoughwell-intentioned, this is as valid as asserting that all geographers muststudy Russian or Chinese, the languages of America’s main rivals, sothat they might be more able to contribute to surveillance and even topotential war-making, an enterprise that geography is well suited for.
Regardless, the important point behind Taaffe’s remark is that GIS hasa sizeable niche—“The number of professionals in the United Statesusing GIS as a part of their jobs is approaching 500,000,” of whom possibly “50,000 are doing GIS full time”—but some disturbing statistics
indicate that GIS is not necessarily identiﬁed with geography:21

140

SIMON R. POTTERCurrently there are perhaps 50,000 students at universities in the UnitedStates getting at least one course in GIS each year, of whom about a third aretaking GIS in a geography department. At the bachelors and masters level,
geography appears to dominate the delivery of GIS courses, but at the twoyear college level geographers provide only about ten percent of the GIS
offerings.

Two thirds of those who study GIS do so outside geography, and society at large has clearly placed GIS within the domain of applied computerscience, including to the point that a “growing demand for certiﬁcation
programs to undertake GIS training without any ‘academic baggage’ ”
exists and that this demand is being met signiﬁcantly by “private technical colleges, . . . community colleges, and . . . fee-paid training programs run by private businesses.”22 Perhaps Taaffe’s “exposure” was notintended to mean the technical competence achieved through such programs, but a reasonable ability to manipulate geographic information
onto computerized maps implies sufﬁcient training in computer science,basic cartography, GIS itself, and possibly remote sensing.23
Such concerns over knowledge and skills, and how to improve them,suggest a reaction to specialization and a desire for geographers to become latter-day “Renaissance People,” familiar with many subjects, andto be able to manipulate data spatially, especially onto maps and preferably by computer. In a sense, this would be a return to the true spirit ofgeography, but the upper-crust academy is clearly prejudiced against
intellectual handymen and geographers themselves have generally not
been inclined to demand such breadth from their postgraduates and colleagues for a rather long time. This has made it necessary for the AAG
leadership to ﬂoat ideas about the purpose, goals, and aims of geography in contemporary academe and for the general public. Important elements include improving the image of geography, its role in education,and its relevance to environmental science and a more integrated world
than in the past.
Improving the image of geography seems to be paramount. This has
essentially taken on the spirit of self-promotion, and some of the requests
for community service are proving to be controversial. It appears that
there is substantial anxiety over geography being identiﬁed with placenames and map locations, hence a need to emphasize spatial analysis andto outline “a vision (or visions) of geography’s future,”24 as well as to
publicize them, has been recognized. A set of “key concepts that help
differentiate geographic research from other disciplinary emphases,”ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

141

listed and explained by Golledge, gives a good insight into what ideas
are likely to be used to promote a better image: geography as an integrating science, spatial analysis, spatial representation, spatially explicit theory and models, place-based analysis, a unique way of combining
knowledge and policy, place-based search, and scale.25 The key words
here are science, analysis, space, and place, and the target of this message appears to be the academic community since it is the most likely to
be attracted by the words “science” and “analysis.”
In regard to the public at large, geography has been promoted primarily through its role in education. Included are a Geography Awareness Week, Geography Alliances, and geography competitions, while a
National Geography Learning Network which uses advanced technologies has been proposed.26 Geography Awareness Week is a form of“community outreach” in which geographers can explain the discipline
and their research to children in school, and the Alliances are mostly
statewide set-ups that enable geographers in higher education “to workwith local school teachers to plan ways in which they could help improve
geography instruction.”27 These seem to be steps in the right direction
for improving the image of geography, from memorized place-names
and map exercises to a subject that investigates and integrates a broad
spectrum of topics, but it is difﬁcult to say what effect geography competitions are having. The best known is the annual Geography Bee forschoolchildren, which is modeled on the knock-out spelling competitions that Americans are familiar with and which ends with a ﬁnal roundat the National Geographic Society in the city of Washington. Five ofthe questions answered by the champion for 1995 were:28
1. Russia’s primary space-launch facility, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, is in
the desert of which former Soviet republic?
2. In 1993 Tansu Ciller became the ﬁrst female prime minister of what
Muslim-majority NATO country?
3. Porto-Novo is the commercial center of which African nation?
4. The Equator and prime meridian intersect in what gulf?
5. Pashtu and Dari are the ofﬁcial languages of which landlocked country incentral Asia?

Clearly and unfortunately, this is a trivia quiz which reinforces the perception of geography as a subject of memorization, of mainly linking
things to places on maps and globes, and of general knowledge linked
to countries. To improve the image of geography, it would seem that

142

SIMON R. POTTER

such a high-proﬁle event should be redirected towards explanation, as in“why do the Russians maintain their primary space-launch facility in
Kazakstan?” or “how is it that the equator and prime meridian intersect
in the Gulf of Guinea?”
One issue that geography has exploited to create such programs is“geographic illiteracy” among the general public:
A concern was developing [by the early 1980s] throughout the United Statesthat the citizenry and especially the school-age group were growing up withlittle knowledge of the country or the world in which they lived. Studies were
published revealing the extent of American ignorance regarding the locationof places and countries. . . .
Geographic illiteracy extended beyond not knowing the location of places.
People, now largely removed from the land, had little knowledge of the physical environment.29

Needless to say, the “ignorance” was not and is not limited to geography, and nor need it be as important as geographers might fancy it to be.
Ignorance is in the eye of the beholder, and for practical purposes
Americans seem to be sufﬁciently aware of the likes of space, place, andlocation, and can “analyze” them in their own way. De Blij, well known
for promoting geography, even referred to “the geographic-illiteracy
ﬁasco . . . in the 1980s,”30 indicating that the ﬁrst attempt to educate theill-informed masses failed, yet Golledge for one continues to envision
geographic illiteracy as a disciplinary savior at the turn of the century:31
The geographic illiteracy of the US population generally is an establishedfact. It is also recognized that this illiteracy can be traced to the minor position that geography has played in the K[indergarten]-12[th grade] curriculum over the last 50 years or so.
An information age will require a geographically literate public and the educational system to support it.
Changing the image of geography and increasing the awareness of thenation’s population regarding geography is . . . the ﬁrst step in what should
be a massive attack on geographic illiteracy.

Admirable and certainly useful for promotional purposes, attempting to
reduce geographic illiteracy on a “massive” scale does however imply awillingness to exaggerate a problem in the hope that appropriate sympathy will be imparted on geographers.
Another issue that geographers have tried to exploit, within common
reason but apparently not as successfully as could have been hoped, isthe widespread concern over the natural environment. This started in the

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

143

1970s and picked up throughout the 1980s, especially as it became politicized ﬁrst in Europe and gradually by the two powerful parties in
America.32 Outstanding problems by now include the number of people
in the world, threats to and losses of animal and plant species, various
forms of pollution, deforestation, desertiﬁcation, depletion of ozone in
the stratosphere, and warming of the lower atmosphere, and conventional wisdom would identify such problems with geography, although
not exclusively. Given that the United States has been a major contributor to pollution, especially through massive emission of gases whichhave been identiﬁed with ozone depletion and atmospheric warming, it
would seem that American geographers had been offered a blessing in
disguise. Susan Cutter, however, has pointed out that they did not respond accordingly:
Almost thirty years ago [ca. 1970], geography was in a position to lead a newinterdisciplinary effort called environmental studies. With one of our core
traditions focused on nature-society interactions, it seemed like a natural ﬁt
and a perfect role for the discipline. Unfortunately, we failed to become theintellectual driving force behind environmental studies as new centers, institutes, and programs were being established in colleges and universities
throughout the nation in the 1970s. Unfortunately, many geography programs
were weakened . . . in favor of environmental studies. This was not true everywhere, but for the most part, geography missed the environmental studies
bandwagon.33

How this came to be is not terribly difﬁcult to imagine. If they choose towork on such problems, geographers can collect relevant data, analyze
them spatially, compile some maps, offer explanations, make some criticisms, and suggest solutions, but they are not in a position to actually
solve an environmental problem. That has to be done by governments,
businesses, inventors (associated with the natural sciences and engineering), users of things that contribute to pollution, and makers ofbabies, and the general thrust of solving environmental problems throughimproved technology, legal enforcement, and persuasion is not the business of geography. The fact that scholars in other disciplines can and docollect and analyze appropriate data (including spatially), and can prepare relevant maps or have cartographers or GIS technicians do them,furthermore places geographers on a tangent.
Alongside environmental issues, liberalized international commerce
and a lot of new-wave machinery are supposed to encourage global awareness, giving geographers another reason to promote their discipline.

144

SIMON R. POTTER

Notably, communications technology has made instantaneous or very
quick transmission of “information” possible, and transportation technology has reduced the amount of time required for shipping and travel, including to places that differ considerably in regard to nature and/or
culture. Therefore, the reasoning would go, “Geographical knowledge
is more important than ever in an increasingly . . . interconnectedworld,”34 yet the reality for most people is that “globalization” does notincite such curiosity or even require much geographical knowledge.
Many Americans, for example, might notice labels that say “Made in
China” or “Made in USA,” but these do little for stimulating geographical interest and certainly contain no information about the place(s) oforigin and workmanship. The Internet, as another example, seems to leadto a far greater acquaintance with a computer than it does, say, with distant environments to and from which e-mail messages are dispatched.
Most passengers in ﬂight seldom, if at all, look out of an airplane window, and even less give much thought to what might be seen, while it isdoubtful that most travelers tend to take an intellectual interest in theplaces they visit. Basic maps and guidebooks can give most computerusers and travelers whatever geographic information they need, anduseful guidebooks in particular need not be the work of professional geographers. Those people who do, however, have a peculiar need for orinterest in such information can certainly learn from geographers, butthey can also learn from other sources.
IV OBSERVATIONS ON ILLUSTRATED SPATIAL ANALYSIS
There is actually nothing wrong with geography itself: it is a usefulsubject, stimulating for some people but not everybody, and there aremany ways to apply knowledge and skills that may be acquired fromstudying geography. It might not seem as adventurous or as prestigious
as it might have been in some romanticized past, but information about
the world is still required, even if it is mainly updated rather than purely novel, and American society quietly appreciates the maps that comewith it. The problem is not the subject of geography, but the “geographers” who do not seem to understand that their discipline is the studyof this world, that the practical knowledge and skills to be gained throughthe study of geography are far more important than searching about fora memorable theory or stretched generalization, and that maps (not esoteric mathematics) are the principal language of geography. That geog-

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

145

raphers in America might despair about the future of their discipline,
worry about its being disparaged by academic peers, and get themselves
trimmed out of universities is a clear message that geographers knowthat their work has marginalized geography and that they are to blamefor its troubles.
America is a worker’s society that admires utility, and its universities
value breadth of study and social experience at the undergraduate levelfar more than do their counterparts in Europe. Although these factors are
conducive to encouraging the study of geography, geographers seem toshy away from them, perhaps under the assumption that breadth and utility do not quite suit the image of a sophisticated scholar. To a large extent,
this image has been fostered by specialization, the general trend in bothresearch and university teaching throughout most of the last half century, so geographers need not be faulted for doing what everybody else has
been doing. Their alleged tendency, however, to drift from the spirit of
their discipline might be stronger than in other disciplines, and this has
made it difﬁcult for geographers to recognize what their own craft is.
By virtue of having made geography an interdisciplinary hybrid, geographers might very well have created the impression that it is a relatively naive, insufﬁciently deep subject. It might be insightful to notethat the basic material covered in introductory geography courses at
American universities coincides with what is covered in Japanese secondary schools. This does not mean that the material need be “easy,” but
it is tempting to wonder if opponents of geography and geographersthemselves unfairly view such collegiate courses as below the dignity ofuniversity instruction. It is also possible to argue that plenty of the information in introductory human geography courses might be picked up
from courses in other subjects, where it might be presented more deeply,
and that basic cartography seems to be generally dismissed as insufﬁciently academic (and it is a conservative guess that more than 75% of
the geographers at American universities have never taught such acourse). When it comes down to identifying a common denominator for
the “spatial analysis” that geographers are likely to agree is what ties thedisparate threads of the discipline together, it is of course maps thatspring to mind, although they are supplemented by other abstract diagrams often called “models.” In this context, then, a brief discussion
about maps and models which might commonly be used in introductory geography courses, the principal form of exposure to the discipline
for most Americans who have been to college or university, reveals how

146

SIMON R. POTTER

basic results of “spatial analysis” might not be very appetizing to thebroader academic community, or even how geographers might feel thatthey have made geography appear naive or unsatisfactory.
Physical geography relies on maps and diagrams to explain things.
Among these are illustrations to show the Earth going through its seasons, the atmosphere and its temperature gradients, atmospheric pressure cells, types of clouds, air masses and fronts, the hydrologic cycle,
the inside of the Earth, mountain arcs and trenches that delimit tectonic
plates, various landforms and processes behind them, stream patterns
and dynamics of their ﬂow, waves and their effects along coasts, soil textures and horizons, energy ﬂows in an ecosystem, and ecological succession. Added to these are maps and diagrams to explain predominantly
worldwide distributions of weather patterns, climates, landforms, soils,
and vegetation. Although they can be overly generalized, including to
the point of creating an “idealized continent,” such illustrations are genuinely informative and contribute to an understanding of the world as aunit. An excellent textbook to include such diagrams, relevant maps, andconcise explanations is Modern Physical Geography by Alan and Arthur
Strahler,35 a recent revision of a similar introduction compiled by the latter in 1965. Anybody consulting this book would appreciate the fact thatits illustrations and texts apply to the entire world or in various places
throughout it in the case of scattered phenomena, and it is doubtful thatsuch an integrative work focusing clearly on the Earth can be confusedwith that of another discipline.
If critics of geography were required to complete a challenging introductory course in physical geography with an A or B, and if all “geographers” had to teach physical geography properly and satisfactorily, a
lot of misunderstandings about the discipline might start to vanish. The
problem is that physical geography is often too difﬁcult or not interesting for students and scholars without a natural-science bent, and it would
be no exaggeration to say that most people in the academic community,
as well as in the general public, are content to know, for example, that
Russia is cold but are not bothered to ﬁnd out why. Instead, they are more
keen to learn about what people do, the essence of human geography and(usually more so than is physical geography) “world regional” geography. It would be reasonable to believe that most people who have taken
a geography course at an American college or university took one in
introductory human geography, which by virtue of this exposure most
likely has shaped opinions of the entire discipline within the academicANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

147

environment. Also, it is important to note that human geography accounts for most of the geographers in American universities36 and thatgeography is generally treated as a liberal arts subject, meaning that most
extradisciplinary contact with geography is likely to come from students
and scholars in the social sciences and humanities. When juxtaposedwith basic information from such cognate ﬁelds, chapters or sections inintroductory human geography textbooks can give the impression ofnaivety or irrelevance, and the same can be said of materials for world
regional geography courses. A few examples illustrate that it is easy to
see through the veil of the catchy expression “spatial analysis” and to
wonder what valid academic contribution human geography and world
regional geography have to offer.
Without the accompanying maps, introductory human geography
overlaps several other disciplines, notably anthropology, sociology,
political science, economics, linguistics, and history. The maps are therefore crucial to avoid insinuating that human geography is a catch-all survey of several ﬁelds of study, something that is not lost in such recent
textbooks as The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human Geography by James Rubenstein and Human Geography: Culture, Society,and Space by Harm de Blij and Alexander Murphy.37 Although many ofthe maps in these books are devoted to the world, a comparison of themwith the maps of the world in Modern Physical Geography reveals that,
unlike physical geography which focuses on purely natural patterns
throughout the world, the fundamental unit for human geography is thecountry. The logic here is that human geography is not exactly a studyof the world as it is, but a collation of generalized information aboutcountries, with the result that the spatial distribution of the subordinated topical information need not be shown reasonably correctly or usefully.
The Cultural Landscape, for example, shows Canada, the UnitedStates, all of Europe and Russia, Japan, South Africa, Australia, and New
Zealand as the “more developed areas” in the world, while the othercountries are “less developed,” “development” being “the process ofimproving the material conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology.”38 While some of the “more developed” countries
might do a reasonably good job of improving material conditions within
the entirety of their borders (e.g. Japan, Sweden, Britain), it is questionable that they all do. Some parts of South Africa and Russia, for instance,might be “more developed,” but huge chunks are not, something that is

148

SIMON R. POTTER

lost in the map. Similarly, parts of coastal China, the island of Taiwan,
parts of Mediterranean Africa and southwest Asia, and cultural centersin “Latin America,” for example, are questionably classiﬁed as “lessdeveloped,” so it is very difﬁcult to get a reasonably accurate global
impression of “development.”
Other examples from The Cultural Landscape include maps of population density by total land area and by arable land. Despite pockets ofrelatively high densities as in the Moscow region, the southern Urals,
and the Kuzbass of southwestern Siberia, Russia is shown as one unit
and in the lowest category for both. China and the United States are eachshown as discrete units while Europe west of Russia, of similar size, isbroken up into 33 units with varying densities. Were China, the provincesof which are equivalent to countries in Europe, and the United States
similarly broken up, some parts would show higher densities in theireastern thirds, while the western half of China and the bulk of theAmerican West would resemble such low density countries as Mongolia
and Chad.39
Similar examples from maps of the world can be found in Human
Geography,40 but the problem should be clear. Whereas in many cases
the maps might be interesting or insightful in a way, far too often they
are naive comparisons made by coloring in entire countries from readily accessible, general statistics. Needless to say, textbooks on physicalgeography could not get away with this: if, for example, Modern Physical Geography were littered with world maps of precipitation, climate,landforms, soils, and biomes categorized by statistical averages for countries, nobody would use it. As with this difference in maps, a notable difference exists in the applicability of diagrams or models that appear in
textbooks for human geography and physical geography. Those for thelatter are designed to explain phenomena and can be applied throughout
the world, examples being illustrations of weather fronts, landforms, andsoil proﬁles. In human geography, this is less likely to be true, as demonstrated by the following examples which have inﬂuenced the way geographers are supposed to think.
Perhaps the most notorious model is that named after Johann vonThünen to explain the distribution of land-related activities around a settlement. Human Geography shows it with four concentric rings of, atincreasing distance from the settlement, market gardening and dairying,
forest, increasingly extensive ﬁeld crops and grains, and ranching andlivestock, while in The Cultural Landscape there are six, being horti-

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

149

culture and dairying, forestry, crop rotation, enclosed ﬁelds alternating
between crops and pasture, three-ﬁeld agriculture, and grazing; beyond
the last ring, as noted in the former, is wilderness.41 The boundaries of
the rings are determined by such factors as perishability, bulk, and distance from the settlement that affect costs for transportation, and themodel assumes uniformity in regard to topography (ﬂat), climate, andsoil. Although the area around the German city of Rostock, studied by
von Thünen in the ﬁrst quarter of the nineteenth century, came close tomeeting these requirements, generations of geographers have known
good and well that the model does little toward explaining reality, hence
the ﬁrst protective step in justifying its use is to throw in a river, thereby distorting the rings until they are broken into elongated zones runningalong either side of the river. Another step or two toward physiographic reality might sufﬁce to dismiss the model as not particularly relevant,and it hardly explains patterns of agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry distributed throughout most of the world.
Three models are famously used to explain the internal structure ofcities: concentric zones, sectors, and multiple nuclei. The ﬁrst two daterespectively to 1923 and 1939 and are essentially interpretations of a
modiﬁed Chicago, while the third dates to 1945 and takes into accountthe early inﬂuence of suburbanization and locating heavy industry on theoutskirts of American cities. Common features of all three are a central
business district (in the absolute center for the ﬁrst two, not far from itin the third) and residential sequences of the poor, middle-income, andwealthy, with the last class the furthest from the central business district
and areas devoted to industry, although the sector model has part of it
touching on the central business district.42 The concentric model hassome validity because data can be manipulated to give the impressionthat some settlements conform to it, but as with the von Thünen model,
the more that factors from the real world are introduced, the less concentricity resembles reality. Also, even when it is assumed that the partsof the sector and multiple-nuclei models can be rearranged to suit circumstance, it is difﬁcult to see them as true models because both natural and cultural factors easily upset the patterns. Furthermore, all threemodels are attempts to explain American cities and are very difﬁcult toapply throughout the world.
Other models in human geography can also distract from understanding the realities of this world. Megalopolises (coalescing conurbations),
for example, are discovered in such places as peninsular Florida and from

150

SIMON R. POTTER

Chicago to Pittsburgh, regardless of the huge chunks of rural countryside within them.43 Central-place theory, involving overlapping patternsof hexagons and complicated logical patterns based on mathematicalformulas and a homogeneous plane,44 for example, is certainly sophisticated and arguably valid in some areas, yet it cannot explain most spatial patterns of settlement or why cities such as New York, London,
Shanghai, and Singapore are very important. People respond to such avariety of conditions (notably topography, climate, soils, wildlife, andexisting human-created factors) that perfect-world scenarios contributelittle to understanding the reality of human activity throughout the world.
Similar to country-based world maps, however, such models look
good, are reasonably comprehensible, and are easy to make, but they are
little more than intellectual distractions. Critics surely can see this andmight rightly wonder what value human geography has for educationand practical use if it depends on misleading country-based maps and relatively simple, idealized models, both of which might easily be falsiﬁed
by real-world analysis that ignores the boundaries of countries. If cultivating knowledge about the world were to be the purpose of introductory human geography courses, and even those on “world regional”
geography, replacing nearly all of the country-based maps with mapsthat are reasonable approximations of real-world human and/or cultural
distributions would seem to be an urgent enterprise, as would eliminating the naive models which have no universal applicability. “Spatial
analysis” might be a catchy phrase to identify the unique character ofgeography, but it cannot help promote the cause of geography when asigniﬁcant portion of its easily accessible results, used for general education, might not withstand probing questions in regard to fact and validity.
V

SUMMARY REMARKS

Judging from recent comments in the AAG Newsletter, it is possible
to detect several critical, persistent problems that afﬂict the discipline ofgeography in America. These might be generalized as internal fragmentation through specialization into two major subdivisions (physical andhuman) and several minor ones, insufﬁcient training across the disciplinary board and within a major and even a minor subdivision, an inability to exploit opportunities advantageously (environmental issues,
globalization, GIS), and a willingness to emphasize what is not terribly

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

151

important (geographic illiteracy). Behind this is an identity crisis which
has led to calls for improving the image of geography, identifying its
unique position among the sciences, and promoting its importance ingeneral education.
To do all this, geographers in America sense a need to emphasize “spatial analysis” as the key concept to claim a place for their discipline in
the academy. Primarily this translates as organizing information into
visual impressions known as maps, with relevant verbal and numericevidence and explanations accompanying them. The long heritage ofEuropean geography, to which that in America is an extension, demonstrates this, and it takes no great leap of the imagination to believe thatthat is what the general public as well as the academic community
expects today. Although there is a need for such analysis at the regional and smaller levels, all geographers by deﬁnition ought to be able to
do it for the world as a whole, physical and human. Introductory university courses are the best measure of this, partly because their scope isworldwide and partly because they provide the greatest exposure to thediscipline in an advanced academic setting, and physical geography doesa reasonably good job of explaining the world as it is. Human geography, however, tends to cheat by subordinating its spatial analyses to thelevel of countries and by using models that, while made logical, cannot
truly explain phenomena throughout the entire world.
There appears to be a consensus that because of specialization, geographers do not communicate with each other across the physical-humandivide, and possibly across the minor subdivisions, and that many havelost contact with the core of their discipline. This is the fault of geographers themselves, and there is an easy solution to this within theAmerican colleges and universities, most of which combine general education with advanced, somewhat specialized study, an approach that is
likely to be continued into the foreseeable future. General education
courses such as introductory physical geography and human geography
are the “meat and potatoes” that contribute to a broadly educated student
body, an important goal in most American institutions for higher education since it not only expands individual awareness, considered to besocially and personally good, but also contributes to a rather large (economic) demand for educational services beyond the secondary schools.
It is through teaching overviews of both physical geography and humangeography that geographers can consolidate the integrative essence of
their discipline and the knowledge that used to be expected of them.

152

SIMON R. POTTER

Physical geography is the strength of the discipline because its content is very difﬁcult to confuse with that of other subjects, and knowledge in this area is where geographers are most likely to impress theirwould-be detractors. Explaining the problems of Russia, as an example,
in terms of its natural conditions (location on the terrestrial globe, topography, climates and weather patterns, soils, ﬂora and fauna) yields arather comprehensive understanding of that country since they provide
the framework within which its peoples have ﬂourished. Similarly, as
another example, to understand desertiﬁcation, it is very important toknow the natural conditions that created deserts, semideserts, andsteppes where they are, and this is also within the domain of physicalgeography. Being able to do these sorts of things would seem to be something to be expected of a geographer by other academics and most people within society at large. If geographers do not demonstrate an ability
to handle their discipline in such a special way, opting instead to concentrate their teaching within the same major and minor subdivisions as
their narrow research, especially when it assumes the coloration of otherdisciplines as can a lot within the domain of human geography in particular, it is quite possible that geography will eventually be considered
redundant and treated accordingly.
Whereas it is important to conduct research so that knowledge might
be expanded incrementally and updated, it is also important to recycle
whatever useful knowledge already exists. General society and the academic community might wonder if there is something wrong when thebrains of a discipline shy away from this latter responsibility, whichsome might consider to be the case with geography. In this regard it
would seem reasonable to require every geographer in tertiary education
to teach, in rotation, introductory physical geography, introductory
human geography, a survey of environmental science or ecology, basic
cartography, and world regional geography, the ﬁrst four being semester-length courses and the last yearlong. This three-year cycle, repeateduntil retirement, would sufﬁce to keep geographers familiar with thebreadth of their discipline and to create better bonds with its core.
Assuming that the typical geographer would teach ﬁve or six courses a
year, this sequence would still allow for each geographer to handle threeor four other courses devoted to topics and regions of expertise or interest, which must continue lest geography stagnate.
Specialization within geography is not itself a problem, but it would
seem appropriate to honor the word “geography” and to write about andANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

153

to draw the world and its parts—to show its complicated spatial relationships—in ways that are thoroughly realistic as well as comprehensible for all geographers and, importantly, nongeographers. There is as
much dignity to geography as there is to any other subject, and if anxious geographers in America were to consider the existential questions
and shortcomings of other disciplines, they might discover some ammunition with which to defend themselves. Inside the American academy
it is clear that specialization is more prestigious than general knowledge,that scholars within a discipline seldom interact closely with each other,that images attributable to the general public often do not correspondwith insider perceptions of a discipline, and that the question of practical relevance tends to hover as an unwanted specter.
NOTES
1Gary L. Gaile and Cort J. Willmott, “Foundations of Modern American Geography,”in Gaile and Willmott, eds., Geography in America (Columbus etc.: Merrill, 1989), xxv.
2
Reginald G. Golledge, “What Will the Discipline of Geography Be Like in 50
Years?,” AAG Newsletter 35, 3 (2000): 6.
3
A. David Hill and Lisa A. LaPrairie, “Geography in American Education,” in Gaileand Willmott, Geography in America, 2.
4
Geoffrey J. Martin and Preston E. James, All Possible Worlds: A History of
Geographical Ideas (New York etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 305, 311, and 317(Davis), and 331 (Semple). Chapters 15–17 (pp. 302–86) provide a comprehensive introduction to geography in America from ca. 1880 to the 1990s.
5Harm J. de Blij and Peter O. Muller, Geography: Regions and Concepts (New York
etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 1988), 48; Reginald G. Golledge, “Moving On Up to ‘The Big
Time’?,” AAG Newsletter 35, 5 (2000): 3 (“6,500”); Will Graf, “Who We Are, and Are
Not,” AAG Newsletter 34, 3 (1999): 2: “A little more than 1% of our members are fromoutside the United States.”
6
Golledge, “Moving On Up,” 3. Also, Golledge, “What Will the Discipline Be
Like?,” 3: “the average geography enrollment over the period 1970–73 was 750,000 students, whereas in 1993–96 the average was 550,000. In 1970–73 there were 1,225 programs and 3,600 faculty; in 1993–96 there were 625 programs and 2,400 faculty. Thisdisciplinary-wide loss is serious. And now, in 1999–2000, our AAG membership is
declining again after a steady rise in the ﬁrst half of the nineties.”
7
Important examples would be geography teachers in the schools, urban planners,
military personnel, and mapmakers. There is also the larger, nonacademic National
Geographic Society, and literally millions of Americans make good use of maps eachyear.
8Reginald G. Golledge, “NEVER Be Ashamed of Being a Geographer,” AAG
Newsletter 35, 6 (2000): 3.
9
Susan L. Cutter, “Bring Geography Back to Harvard and Yale and . . . ,” AAG
Newsletter 35, 10 (2000): 3.
10
Golledge, “Moving On Up,” 3.
11Will Graf, “Three Impertinent Questions about Pertinent Issues,” AAG Newsletter

154

SIMON R. POTTER

34, 6 (1999): 2 (“dysfunctional”); Golledge, “NEVER Be Ashamed,” 12 (“much tooffer”); Reginald G. Golledge, untitled “President’s Column,” AAG Newsletter 34, 7(1999): 1 (“improve its image”).
12
Golledge, “NEVER Be Ashamed,” 3.
13Will Graf, “Not Clueless, Just Skill-less,” AAG Newsletter 34, 1 (1999): 1.
14
Reginald G. Golledge, untitled “President’s Column,” AAG Newsletter 34, 9 (1999):
2.
15
Reginald G. Golledge, “Reuniting the Field of Geography: No Core, No Periphery,”
AAG Newsletter 35, 2 (2000): 3 (ﬁrst two citations); Susan Cutter, “Why Didn’t Geographers Map the Human Genome?,” AAG Newsletter 35, 9 (2000): 3 (last citation).
16
Graf, “Not Clueless,” 1.
17Will Graf, “At the Circus: AAG Annual Meetings,” AAG Newsletter 34, 2 (1999):
2–3.
18
Cutter, “Why Didn’t Geographers Map the Human Genome?,” 3.
19
Graf, “Not Clueless,” 1 and (for the citations) 2.
20
Golledge, untitled (in 34, 9), 2. “All” is emphasized in the original.
21
The quotations are from Michael Phoenix, “Geography and the Demand for GIS
Education,” AAG Newsletter 35, 6 (2000): 13.
22
Reginald G. Golledge, “Geography’s Future: Professional or Academic?,” AAG
Newsletter 35, 4 (2000): 3.
23
A useful monograph intended to direct GIS users toward proper cartography (andthus toward geography) is Alan M. MacEachren, Some Truth with Maps: A Primer on
Symbolization & Design (Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1994).
This was published in response to professionally inferior maps being produced via computers, but it might be considered an attempt by the AAG to limit damage by reminding people that geography is useful for making maps. Whether the general public agrees
remains to be seen. The following “real-world” advertisement, for example, acknowledges some link to general cartography and clearly indicates that an academic degree,
let alone one in geography, is not required:
Associate’s degree [= two years of general study] in GIS related studies or 2 years
work experience using GIS . . . . Working knowledge of . . . software, computerized
ﬁle management, map design, map projection, GIS principles and applications.
Knowledge of computer programming, web page development, and other GIS related ﬁelds such as remote sensing, photogrammetry GPS, and census data would be
useful.
See The Daily Times [Farmington, New Mexico], March 21, 2001, C5.
24
Susan L. Cutter, “Strategic Planning and Plastic Pink Flamingos,” AAG Newsletter
35, 7 (2000): 3.
25
Golledge, “NEVER Be Ashamed,” 3 and 12.
26
For the National Geography Learning Network, see Golledge, untitled (in 34, 7),
1–2 and 10–11.
27
The experience of one department in Geography Awareness Week is discussed inReginald G. Golledge, “Community Outreach,” AAG Newsletter 34, 10 (1999): 1–2 and9; for the Alliances (one in each state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, andCanada), see Chester Smolski, “A Report on the Geography Alliances at the Half-Way
Mark,” AAG Newsletter 35, 3 (2000): 13 (including the citation) and 20, as well as thebriefs on individual Alliance activities that are printed in the newsletters.
28“Behind the Scenes,” National Geographic 188, 4 (1995): no page number.
29
Martin and James, All Possible Worlds, 379.
30
Harm J. de Blij in Will Graf, “Three Readers Write Back,” AAG Newsletter 34, 5(1999): 2.

ANOTHER CLOSING FRONTIER?

155

31
Golledge, “Community Outreach,” 1 (“The geographic . . .”); untitled (in 34, 9), 8(“An information . . .”); and “Community Outreach,” 9 (“Changing . . .”).
32
The recent presidential candidate Al Gore, at the time a United States Senator, published Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit (Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifﬂin, 1992) as an attempt to bring environmental problems into the political mainstream.
33
Cutter, “Why Didn’t Geographers Map the Human Genome?,” 3.
34
Cutter, “Bring Geography Back,” 3.
35
Alan H. Strahler and Arthur N. Strahler, Modern Physical Geography (New York
etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 1992).
36
To give an idea, a count based on the topical proﬁciencies listed by AAG members
who appeared to teach at the collegiate level in America in 1996 revealed the ratio to begreater than 2:1 in favor of human geography (approximately 1075 human and 420 physical, while about 60 fell into both and another 70 into environmental science). Although
this is not an accurate assessment for all such geographers in America, or even among
all those who are in the AAG since many did not list topical proﬁciencies, it is perhaps
a far better statistical sample (1625 of the 2400 mentioned in note 6) than is often thecase. For the sample, see Guide to Programs in Geography in the United States andCanada 1996–97/AAG Handbook and Directory of Geographers (Washington: Association of American Geographers, 1996), 510–782.
37
James M. Rubenstein, The Cultural Landscape: An Introduction to Human
Geography (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1996); H.J. de Blij and Alexander
B. Murphy, Human Geography: Culture, Society, and Space (New York etc.: John Wiley& Sons, 1999).
38
Rubenstein, The Cultural Landscape, 349 (map) and 350 (deﬁnition).
39
Rubenstein, The Cultural Landscape, 66–67.
40
Maps of the world with information recorded by country only do not explain, as
examples, regional variations of population growth and level of economy in China,
where refugees are concentrated in India or Sudan, or whether there are areas inside
North Korea and Ethiopia where caloric intake is at least adequate; see de Blij andMurphy, Human Geography, 66–67, 286–87, 88–89, and 388–89.
41
De Blij and Murphy, Human Geography, 200; Rubenstein, The Cultural Landscape,408.
42
Rubenstein, The Cultural Landscape, 542–44; de Blij and Murphy, Human Geography, 261.
43
De Blij and Murphy, Human Geography, 267; H.J. de Blij and Peter O. Muller,
Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts (New York etc.: John Wiley & Sons, 1997),
169.
44
Rubenstein, The Cultural Landscape, 504–05; de Blij and Murphy, Human Geography, 258–59.

Also: a companion essay has been published as Simon R. Potter, “Geography in theAmerican Academy: A Microcosm in Search of a Role That Already Exists,” The
Journal of American and Canadian Studies [published by Sophia University in Tokyo]
19 (2001).