Ellen Churchill Semple

                In “Geographical Location as a Factor of History,” and “Pirate Costs of the Mediterranean,” Semple greatly oversimplifies many differences in cultures and history by reducing them to differences in geography. Her theories are very alluring, but eventually come up short in many respects - mostly by ignoring a multitude of equally important factors besides geography. She makes many interesting points about the forces that cultures/nation states are subject to, and how they are factors of geography, but she takes them too far. She talks about how places that are off the beaten path geographically, and separated from their neighbors by (for example) seas, are guarded from “outside interference and infusion of foreign blood,” and that these “more secluded nooks… make for a temporary halt or permanent rest” where humanity is “held still and it crystallizes into a nation.” But, as far as Europe goes, there are not many places more peripheral than the British Isles, and they have had their gene pool contributed to, throughout their history, by any group of people within 500 miles that owned a boat. In addition to that they are the opposite of crystallized as a nation. There are two or three countries on each of the main islands that have been warring in one sense or another since forever, and each one of those is divided again into many different groups who see themselves as distinct from the others. The English language itself is a good example of a cultural stew. Here it is obvious how Semple ignores, to a great degree, other factors like technology (boats) and religion when explaining cultural differences. Obviously we cannot have expected Semple predict the future history of technology, but to me that is where her shortcomings are most obvious. The cultural impact that places like New York and Hollywood have through the use of communications technology has allowed the United States to project “our values” around the world. In this case technology has totally eclipsed the spatial component to cultural influence that Semple presents, and instead introduced one where material wealth and technological access takes over. She also tends to look at the world (which in these papers doesn’t really extend past places where there is a significant European history/influence) as if the motivations of the nation state are universal, as if all actors have in mind the same goals. And, she cleverly discounts any examples that don’t conform to her ideas by saying that the society in question is not “mature and historically significant” or something to that affect. If her theories were accurate and you were to impose them on a hypothetical world where all people shared one, similar geography you would expect to find one largely uniform culture. I think we can all agree that that would not be that case though.              

Semple also says in “Pirate Coasts…” that some pirating was due to impoverished hinterlands and an unfertile littoral that forced its malnourished population into piracy, but I have read about Polynesian and neighboring cultures, where according to Semple pirating should be a way of life, that stresses on the food supply were dealt with, much of the time, through exploration, population control, and cultural structures that promoted trading, not warfare. 

Reclus

When I started reading Reclus’ A Journey to New Orleans I thought it was just going to be a straight forward example of the descriptive style of regional geography since it opens with beautiful accounts of the natural physical environment of New Orleans, the man-made environment, and the way the two are intertwined. His writing was great and he was really able to create in my mind a very vivid picture of the city. (I found that looking at New Orleans on Google Earth really added to this.) It’s no wonder his work was so successful outside of academia. As I kept reading though, the focus shifted much more towards social description – and not a passionless, sterile version of what he saw, but with a leaning toward an evaluation and judgment of it. His account of slave auctions had me cringing the entire time. It was like some scene in a movie that is too terrible to watch. I’m sure that many New Orleanians at the time of this writing would have disagreed with his portrayal of the city, with its drunkenness, pervasive crime, extreme violence, and political buffoonery. It still paints a scary picture though, even if only half of it was accurate. What it really made me think of was how far we’ve come in some respects, and how all the people who speak of returning to “the way things were” would feel if they’d read this account of the way things really were (at least to one person). On the other hand it made me realize that we really haven’t come that far in so many respects. His portrait of politics, religion, how “hatred separates factions and races”, and parochialism could just as easily be applied to what is going on today in this country, and around the world. His view of the spirit of America at that time reminded me of how we, in the west, often tend view adolescent males - as “young upstarts,” immature, full of vice, volatile, violent, dangerous, opportunistic, disrespectful of authority/tradition (how he says that for Americans, ”Present-day life is too active and tempestuous for the traditions of the past to dominate the soul.”) I thought it was interesting to contrast that quote, and his view with one American’s view of the spirit of the same times. In Walt Whitman’s Pioneers, O Pioneers, the same sort of attitudes are seen in a kind of glorious way. He says:

                Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

                All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

It may be a bit of a stretch, but, even though Reclus isn’t speaking directly about westward expansion and Manifest Destiny, I think that that same spirit had a profound influence on American attitudes in this period, and on a lot of what he describes. When reading the first half of this paper I kept asking myself, how does this fit into a book called Critical Geography?, but now it seems like maybe this piece is a good example of the transition between the old descriptive style of geography and a newer, more critical one. 

What is Geography?

What is geography? If I had been asked this two weeks ago I would have said something like "It's the study of where things are and why they're there." Then the person who asked me would make a funny face while they tried to think of something worthwhile to say in reply. It's not the easiest thing to explain succinctly. Also, most people aren't exposed to geography as anything more than naming places on a map, and asking them to wrap their heads around what it means to think spatially on the spot can produce some interesting exchanges. I think that's why you get replies like "What kind of job can you get with that?" People just don't know what else to say. And then if I had to explain to them what GIS is? Oh boy!

Anyway, geography obviously goes much deeper than that. It's also the study of the spatial relationships between phenomena, how people conceptualize space/place, how they see themselves in spaces/places, how they project that, etc... But what I got to thinking about when doing this weeks reading was a number of different things about the nature of the discipline of geography.

First, the idea popped into my head that one of the things that makes geography stand out (and one of the reasons I've loved it and found it so interesting) is that it might no be a "subject" in the classical sense. You don't have to focus on one area of interest. Instead, it's more like a point of view, a way of interpreting things, or a lens through which you can look, really, at just about any field of study. I mean, how many other disciplines do that? One other aspect of geography that helps set it apart from, and strengthens it in relation to most other academic disciplines, is it's integrative approach. For example, a GI Scientist may be analyzing the spread of some non-native invasive species by running statistics on the location of it's populations in relation to other natural factors like soils, slope aspect, elevation, etc... but at the end of their research, even if they were able to come up with a pretty accurate habitat model, they still may not have a complete picture of what's going on. Why? Because the spread of an invasive species may have a lot to do with how the people in the study area think of where they live. In San Diego people get mad when you remove palm trees from canyons, even though they are not native, because the palm tree is a symbol of Southern California. It being a symbol, people want to see them around, so they plant them. It makes them feel more Californian. There is a cultural/human factor that someone focused solely on natural ones might miss. I love that geography encourages the integration of different perspectives like that.

Lastly, let me say that I have not done an exhaustive survey of the boundaries of other academic disciplines. I'm just kind of shooting from the hip.