The Whithering of Geographers

This foray into that persistent and deliberately archaic query of our discipline—Whither geography?—was prompted by a recent commentary, “Whither (or Wither?) Geography?” (Finlayson 2015). A subsequent antipodean stimulus was the theme chosen by the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG) 2016 conference: “Revisiting Edward Ackermann’s seminal paper, Where is the Research Frontier?—in the light of 50 years of geographical research.” While many geographers have considered the nature, scope, and direction of geography, the following commentary is concerned only with those geographical authors who used whither in their title. Frequent attempts to address that question extend over eight decades, so this overview is arranged chronologically, followed by brief suggestions for synthesis and further geographical consideration.

Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?

—Robert Bridges (1879)

The frequent question “Whither geography?” seems to reflect a deep and persistent uncertainty about geography’s scope and methods. Is whither’s popularity perhaps related to connotations of journeying? Then why do geographers doubt our journey? Is it the unclear nature of our destination? Or its value? Long curious about geographical whither-ing, I turned to Google’s Ngram creator, which shows literary usage of the word peaking in 1808, declining slowly during the nineteenth century, and then plummeting throughout the twentieth century. Still, its use persists among geographers in the twenty-first century.

Possibly the earliest geographer to ask “Whither geography?” was EGR Taylor, who began with a first-class degree in chemistry but soon found her intellectual home in geography. In 1930, Taylor became the first woman to hold an academic chair of geography in the United Kingdom, at Birkbeck College, University of London (De Clercq 2007). She posed the whither question a few years later, when reviewing a group of fifteen recent American geography books, whose authors included Preston James, Glenn Trewartha, Ellsworth Huntington, and Isaiah Bowman. Noting the difference between geographic viewpoints (American – subjective; British – purely objective), Taylor’s incisive and sometimes trenchant evaluations are grounded in her view that the final objective of geographical study is to establish what have been the most successful or desirable adjustments between humans and earth…based on an exhaustive knowledge of the two terms of the proposition (Taylor 1937, 134). The title of her later book, The Haven-Finding Art: A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook (Taylor 1956), seems to reflect her notion of connectivity between journeying and geography.

Figure 1.

—Frequency of use of whither (Google Ngram).

Post-War Whither-ers

A geographical whither hiatus seems to have ensued till the 1950s, possibly attributable in part to World War II. In 1951, McAulay asked whither elementary school geography, presenting seventeen conclusions from his National Research Council (NRC)-funded survey of United States elementary school geography in 1928, 1938, and 1948. This had been the subject of his doctoral thesis at Stanford (McAulay 1949). He found a trend away from place geography toward global geography. The influence of psychology was noted in the shift from geographic facts to the one-world concept; geography was a separate subject, serving as a basis for social studies. The man-home-earth nexus was emphasized in interrelationships; facts were combined, related, compared, and interpreted. Current events, community, active experience, and conservation were all used in elementary geography instruction, leading McAulay to conclude that, in a complicated world, geography should be part of every child’s education (McAulay 1951).

Post-war geographers were excited by new approaches, technologies, and outlooks, but there was unease in some minds. Would traditional areas wither? Should geography be sundered? Kniffen (1954) asked, “Whither Cultural Geography?” He saw, in geographers’ studies of human-land relations, that culture is the great variable factor that reflects patterns of (human) earth occupance. He also warned geographers of false causal correlation, since values change as technology evolves, and universals in human-land relations are to be found in abstracted properties or processes, not in specific phenomena (Kniffen, 1954, 222–3).

Doug Jackson (the founder of Canadian Studies) then posed the question, “Whither Political Geography?” as he reviewed eleven books, including one French...