How international is the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers? A social network analysis perspective

Abstract

Drawing on an analysis of the geographies of interactions in paper and panel sessions during the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in 2005 and 2013, this paper seeks to complement ongoing research on (the lack of) actual international engagements in putatively ‘international’ academic geography. We use a social network analysis framework which, rather than accepting that the mere (rising) presence of international scholars points to internationalization, benchmarks the observed level of international and intra-national interactions in paper and panel sessions against a randomized model. Results show that the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers is inward looking in the sense that intra-national ties are at least twice more likely to be realized than international ties. Furthermore, in spite of being an increasingly internationally diverse conference in terms of its participants, this tendency towards being inward looking has deepened between 2005 and 2013. Human geography sessions are more inward looking than sessions focusing on modeling, methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The propensity towards intra-national interactions in sessions is found for almost all countries ‘participating’ in the conference. Results are used for a tentative interpretation of the meaning ascribed to the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our analytical framework and evaluating ongoing difficulties in the creation of more international epistemic communities.