Article2006

Geography's other histories? Geography and science in the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1831–c.1933

Charles W. J. Withers · Diarmid A. Finnegan · Rebekah Higgitt

39 citations0/0 files storedTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Historical Geography and Geographical Thought History of Science and Natural History Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies

Abstract

With reference to the history of modern geography in Britain and from assessment of the archives of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), this paper examines the role of the BAAS in promoting geography from the Association's foundation in 1831 to the 1930s. Particular attention is paid to BAAS Section E (Geography) in the period after 1851. Geography's place is considered with respect to its funding, content and relationship with other sciences, to shifts in its focus – from exploration to what contemporaries termed ‘scientific’ geography and to the attendant decline in audiences at BAAS geography sessions – and to moments of ‘crisis’ in geography's epistemological status. In examining extant work on geography's role in the BAAS, a case is made for revision of the current historiographies of ‘modern’ British geography and questions are raised about the connections between geography and science and the writing of geography's ‘disciplinary’ and institutional history in the modern period.

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 39 citations exist upstream.

References

1983Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists 1999Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility on the line 2001Boundary Organizations in Environmental Policy and Science: An Introduction 2003Putting Science in Its Place 2004Knowledge in Transit 1998Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science 2001Geography militant: cultures of exploration and empire 1982Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Cited by

2021The coloniality of infrastructure: Engineering, landscape and modernity in Recife 2007The ‘Map Girls’. British women geographers’ war work, shifting gender boundaries and reflections on the history of geography 2008Becoming a geographical scientist: oral histories of Arctic fieldwork 2008Historical geographies of provincial science: themes in the setting and reception of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Britain and Ireland, 1831–c.1939 2012Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteenth‐century British geography

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.