I’ve just finished reading through Danny Dorling and Carl Lee’s book, ‘Geography’.

I’ve been on a bit of a Geography tip lately – which is odd for me as I usually prefer to stay clear of academic-type stuff when I am trying to get into holiday-mode.   I had read through Prisoners of Geography and it seemed the logical next step to return to this book.

I had bought and started the book a few years ago but I drifted away from it and it has sat on my ‘things I need to read’ shelf for a couple of years and I kept picking up the books to the left and right of it instead.   Having completed my geography degree over 25 years ago and then proceeding to teach it since then – I wasn’t sure that I actually needed to be told what Geography is.

My reading of Tim Marshall’s book and now this has actually made me realise that I do indeed need to realign my understanding of what geography is all about.

Dorling and Lee divide their chapters up into five themes – Tradition, Globalisation, Equality, Sustainability and Mapping the Future.   At first I was a little perplexed by the winding narrative through each chapter.   I like order.  I like sub-headings.  I like things to be broken down for me into bite sized chunks. When you’ve been teaching for 25 years and this is what you do day and daily – it sometimes smarts a bit when you have to do the thinking and make the connections for yourself.

They described the pursuit for geography as where,  “Geographical questions are never stand-alone ones. All the questions we ask lead to other questions. Geography is about joining up the dots that help make up the big picture. Connections are everywhere.”

Though, that definition is refined and supplemented through the discussion of each topic.   At the end of each chapter the reader is immersed in an attempt to consolidate the linkages that have been discussed and the definition of how geography fits in with this is further stretched.

Towards the end of the book – in a sort of conclusion they note the following,

“Geography is the big picture.   It is the subject that studies the accumulation of the deep fertile soils that feed billions.  It is about the philosophies we apply to try and understand the world we live in and the people we share it with.  It is the inquisitiveness we have in common about our world that matters to all of us.

In a world of dense connectedness – of which we may know an increasing amount – geography enables us to better grasp the complexities and place them within the fundamental framework of our planet – the biosphere that is our ultimate enabler.  Geography makes the complex comprehensible, and it provides a context.  Geography forces us to look forwards, down the road and into the future.  But it looks forward while also realising that so much that is geographical cannot be understood without looking back.”

The book ends,

“Geography is, literally, the study of the world. Geo is ‘earth’ and graphy is ‘writing:  geography is ‘earth-writing’.  The word is old as the Greek language, and its modern use is as new as the ink on these pages or the pixels that make up the letters you are reading from the screen.  Most subjects start with a definition.  geography ends with one: to write about the earth is to write about almost everything we know, everywhere we live and all that we cherish most.”

For too long I think I have held a particularly linear view of what geography is.  I’ve always favoured the more ‘human’ aspects of geography and within that I have always described myself as being a ‘historical geographer’.  (Not a hysterical geographer, I should add).  But, I still have been constricted with a too-shallow and not broad enough interpretation of what geography is all about.   I have been exploring the geo-political aspect of geography a lot more recently.  Neither Tim Marshall or Danny Dorling would have imagined the crisis that COVID-19 has brought to our planet and how the basic reaction to this is to close down links between countries, between counties and between communities.  We have lost a sense of connection (and control).  We are fearful of what happens next and how we can, if ever, get back to a sense of normality.   Normal is a long way off.   We have put everything on hold.   Climate Change is maybe not the crisis it once was.   Brexit is not the crisis it once was.   Geopolitical relations are not what they once were.  The global financial system is not what it once was.   Priorities have shifted and it is up to the geographers to start redrawing the lines to see how we map out a new, more conciliatory future.

Tim Marshall’s book Prisoners of Geography: ten maps that tell you everything you need to know about global politics has sat on my bookshelf for a number of years.   Originally written in 2015 (though the version I read had been updated since), it deals with issues relating to one of my favourite topics  – Geopolitics.

The wikipedia entry on the book describes the book in one sentence.

Prisoners of Geography describes the impact geography can have on international affairs, offering an explanation for such geopolitical events as Russia’s annexation of Crimea based on Russia’s need to retain access to warm-water ports and China’s actions in Tibet to enforce its border with India.^[3]

Firstly, a confession.  Although I am a Geographer and a geography teacher by profession, and have written 10 geography text books/ revision guides.   I have recently found it difficult to read books about geography.   I have read every other genre of book – novels, history, religious books but every time that I go to read a book related to geography I just could not get into it.   Through the COVID lockdown I found it really difficult to read (or concentrate on) anything.   However, I managed to force my way through one of my favourite books by Stephen Ambrose on D-Day and this helped get me back into a habit for reading.

I quite enjoyed a review that a fellow geographer had left on the amazon.co.uk site

As a geographer in education, I was intrigued by the title of this book. It seemed to suggest some form of geographical determinism on political events. Indeed in some ways the author indicates that in many ways the policies of those in power in various governments are, if not determined, at least circumscribed by geography. By geography the author means physical features, geology, climate, and the general disposition of land and sea. Although he recognises the role that technological development plays in humans’ attempt to overcome the limitations imposed by geography, he is ambivalent as to how far this is successful.
Much of the book, however, is a description and interpretation of world political events, especially in the post World-War II period, providing a useful reminder of events which may have slipped from our memory. This description in my view, shows the importance of political ideology and nationalism, rather than geography in influencing these events.

I had bought Marshall’s book a few years ago and I had tried starting it a couple of times before but I kept getting about 15 pages in and then giving up.   The title bothered me.   Ten maps that tell you everything you need to know  . . .  My issue was that he spent little time actually talking about the maps.  He just used the maps as a means to an end – to be able to devote a chapter for each geographical world region and then talk about the geopolitical linkages that either worked historically or politically to create conflict or peace among the nations.

Prisoners of geography?  Maybe.

Is it the physical geography that determines how geopolitics works in an area?  Sometime this is true.   I have often struggled to teach some 12 year old students in geography why Europe came to dominate so much of the world. In the future I am sure that the current wave of revisionist geography and history will edit the impact of colonisation in such a way that is racially explosive and devastating to the growth of less advanced areas.  Which it was.   Marshall argues that the advantages of geography played their part.   Or maybe it was just that these were the first people to harness fossil fuels for industry.

Prisoners of geography?  Maybe not.

The story told in Marshall’s book is one of connections.   The book is about how one country works with or does not work with other countries (and sometimes about the divisions that exist within the country) and how they have been able to come to terms with these divisons.   How then can people (and nations) be prisoners, constrained by their geography, if they are looking to connect for trade, or to conquer other areas?  I think the reality is that sometimes nations slip these shackles easily in the search for what they might see as ‘the greater good’.

I maybe expected more about projections, areas and well mapping.  I felt this is what was suggested by the title and it took me a while to swallow hard and get over this.

But I am glad that I did.   Finally, I started again and tried to look at the book differently – as the commentary on globally politick that it was.   I also found that some of my A Level geography students were also trying to read through it too – so it was good to be able to try and help them see some of the big picture stuff that will form part of their A Level course when we return to school in September.

I like the way that Marshall writes.   It is concise, yet informative.   It is informed yet not overly academic.  It can be balanced, witty and there is odd sentence where you are left in no doubt about the personal inclinations of the author.   I enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more of Marshall’s work (these are sitting on my bookcase already – though maybe I wont wait as long next time  . . . .

I suppose in some ways I was hoping for a few 2 page -spread that I could use with my A Level geography students – but that’s not really what I got.  Instead – I see a book that I will likely dip in and out of consistently as I try to explain the basics of conflict around the world.   However, I liked the reminder that often the boundaries that we see on globes and atlases are only temporal. They are often drawn on the whim of a map maker – a straight line drawn with a ruler but ignoring both the physical, human and cultural dimensions that might have bent those lines just a bit.

A few days ago my daughter was surprised to get the news that she had been accepted to study Geography at my old alma mater – Queen’s University, Belfast.   Its a good 5 weeks until her final A Level results are released but the university have already guaranteed her place – but then, everything is a bit crazy in these COVID times!

This got me thinking about how I might have influenced my 2 kids over the last 18 years.   Parenting is a fairly odd process – you never really know or can measure the depth of the influence that you have on your kids until the damage is well and truly done.   Both my kids have always been naturally gifted at Geography.  Its not like we sit around of an evening and discuss urban theories or having drawing practice to see who can draw the best annotated diagram of a waterfall eroding.   Its just one of those things that they must have picked up over the years.

Equally, I have always been fascinated when one of my students continues on with Geography at university and beyond.   I always remember that in my previous school there was one class that Mike Bennett and I taught where all 9 of the students in the class went on to do a geography degree (and of those – 2 have attained PhDs in Geography and 2 are Geography teachers).   I should also add there was one young lad in this class who did leave school to do a History degree but found it did not suit him and he started on a course in geography the year after.   I can’t work it out for sure but I know of at least 10 former students who now teach Geography and have actually taught alongside two of them!

Equally, some of my friends who are also very talented geography teachers have kids who have not gone into the field of geography.   So – what is it that stimulates someone to take on their ‘geographical mind’ and to pursue that as a course at university and into the world of work?    What is it that makes some people engage with the study of geography and others well  . . .  not?

I came across an article online by Prof Doreen Massey called  ‘The geographical mind’  which got me thinking about this.  However, the article was not necessarily what I was thinking it might be.   Massey argues that a ‘lot of our geography is in the mind’ and she argues that ‘we carry around with us mental images, of the world. of the country in which we live, of the street next door.’

I’m not quite sure that she goes far enough.

A proper sense of geography is a way of thinking.   It’s a deep sense of questioning.  It’s seeing a landform and trying to work out where it came from.  It’s looking out a window and trying to imagine what it might look like with all the vegetation and soil stripped away.   It’s looking at what could be.  It’s looking at what has been in the past.  It’s looking for the crack, the changes, the things that seem to be out of place.   It’s looking for connections.   It’s looking for answers to things that don’t make sense.  It’s looking at how people live in a non-judgmental manner and trying to understand the processes that led them to be like that.   It’s looking for the complicated answers – beyond the simple, beyond the stereotypical.   It’s about discovery.  It’s about wide-eyed wonder – but from getting a sense of fulfilment as much from a strange smooth rock on a beach as from solving a complex challenge.  It’s about interactions.  It’s about people.

It’s a process.  It’s about always looking down, and round and up.  It’s about a fascination with our world and trying to make sense of it.

What are the amazing things about Geography for you?   What are the things that make you a ‘natural’ geographer?   What do you do to try and get people to engage with geography . . . what are your geographical secrets?