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SUMMARY:Where natural and social science meet? Reflections on an experimen
 t in geographical practice - Professor Sarah Whatmore\, Oxford University
DTSTART:20121018T151500Z
DTEND:20121018T170000Z
UID:TALK40235@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Professor Michael Bravo
DESCRIPTION:Like archaeology and anthropology\, the range of research and 
 pedagogy undertaken in the name of geography spans subject matter and appr
 oaches to it found across the spectrum of the humanities\, social and natu
 ral sciences. Suspended between the magnetic poles of ‘human’ and ‘p
 hysical’ geography\, the diversity of the geographical project is a sour
 ce of both strength and weakness. At its best\, it equips scholars to tack
  between radically different knowledge practices\, fostering an inventive 
 inter-disciplinarity rather than a prescribed path to some transcendent in
 tegration. However\, geography’s identity as an inter-discipline that wo
 rks across the division of social and natural sciences can be argued to be
  realised more effectively today in the co-habitation of ‘physical’ an
 d ‘human’ geographers in shared buildings and curricula\, than in rese
 arch practice. As the contents of disciplinary journals and the publicatio
 n habits of those working in the two wings of the discipline attest\, both
  are commonly more conversant with work in cognate disciplines through com
 mon fields of interest (such as urban studies or glaciology) than with eac
 h other’s.  In this\, as historians of geography have argued\, geographi
 cal practice has always been exercised through different sites\, technique
 s and materials which have kept it a heterogeneous and contested enterpris
 e. Yet these features - heterogeneity and contestation - are surely charac
 teristic of all disciplines\, and would be unremarkable were it not for th
 e weight attached in the geographical tradition to integrating natural and
  social worlds.
LOCATION:Seminar Room\, Department of Geography\, Downing Site
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