Geographers and the theory and practice of return fieldwork

Fieldwork, especially in "foreign" lands, is one of the time-honored hallmarks of professional geography, yet as Felix Driver (2000, p. 267) and others have noted, "little attention has been paid to the specifically geographical dimensions of field-work [sic] or to its history within the discipline." In this article I will explore pieces of this history through the practice of return visitation to particular places, with an emphasis on the record of North American geographers' engagement with Latin America. In turn, Carl Sauer's Mexican research, together with that of some of his students and others inspired by his example, appears to be the most tightly woven net of repeat visitation. Here, one finds multiple strands of crisscrossing lines of reconnaissance and research, and complicated proxy relations involving individuals from later generations pursuing topics initiated by individuals from earlier ones. Space here does not permit more than sketching the outlines of this history, but it does illustrate some of the salient aspects of repeat visitation, and points to a neglected topic in the history of geography. Viewed from the broad perspective of geography's historical record, the practice of return or repeat visits appears to be a more recent development than a time-honored tradition. Various factors can be proposed as contributing to this apparent trend toward repetition. Perhaps the foremost is geography's shift from a spatial-descriptive exploratory enterprise to a modern scientific discipline with a premium placed on deriving generalizations through replicable results. Although few of the human geographers in the past century engaging in foreign area research have been self-conscious devotees of approaches involving nomothetic, spatial analytical science, the ascendancy of a "scientific" human geography in the post-WWII period can be implicated in the decline of chorology and geographic description for its own sake. A second impetus also might be seen as more influence from outside geography than from within. Along with the rise of a more analytic, "scientific" human geography, geographers began to interact more with other social scientists, and borrow from their theory and practice. For field-oriented geographers working abroad, especially cultural geographers, the paths most often crossed or followed were anthropological. Increasingly archaeologists and ethnologists were digging in and making long investments in discrete study sites, rather than mounting wide-ranging surveys and broad collecting ventures. A variant of this development, especially for geographers, is repeat visit research at intervals to measure change (or lack of it) in places, landscapes, or regions (Vale and Vale 1983; Works and Hadley 2000; Walker and Leib 2002; McSweeny 2008; Brady 2009). Elements of the mobility and transience of the older survey and collection mode is carried forward, but with an emphasis on demonstrating familiarity rather than novelty. A fourth influence that began to emerge by the 1960s and was accelerated by that decade's ferment, involved ethical questions and issues. Anthropologists, followed by other social scientists including geographers, generally came to see and accept that not only their research had varying impacts on their "subjects," but also that forms of reciprocity might be part of a researcher's protocol and practice. Among other modes, this has taken the form of extended ties to individuals or communities, often spanning decades since the initial research was conducted (Richardson 1998). In varying degrees, all of these underlying factors may play a part in the decisions and the designs that have led geographers to return at intervals, often multiple times, to favored sites, landscapes, or regions. I suspect, however, that most returnees would simply say that the main rationale or attraction is that they have come to identify strongly with their adopted site or region and feel a need or obligation to return. …