History and philosophy of geography II

Abstract

Prompted by recent scholarship on geographers’ role in advancing the divergent political ends of anarchism and Nazism, this report considers how disciplinary histories make space for the admirable as well as for the abominable episodes of our shared past. In addressing some of the ideological ends to which geography has been put, the report reflects on the historiographical challenge of dealing appropriately with the discipline’s stain of Nazi collusion and explores the potential that geography’s anarchist traditions have to inspire activist and critical scholarship today. In thinking more generally about practices of exclusion and marginalization in geography, the report argues for the value, and the necessity, of diversity and inclusivity in writing on the history of the discipline.