3
Fragmentation or Napoleonic Hand? Author(s): K. J. Lea Source: Area, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1975), pp. 78-79 Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000960 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Area. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:52:47 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Fragmentation or Napoleonic Hand?

Fragmentation or Napoleonic Hand?Author(s): K. J. LeaSource: Area, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1975), pp. 78-79Published by: The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20000960 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:52

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) is collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Area.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:52:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Fragmentation or Napoleonic Hand?

78 Busy throughout . . .

for intra-regional communication."I Within each region, it is hoped that all geography departments where research is being undertaken will be represented on an organizing committee, which might attempt to organize a one-day meeting of all geography postgraduates in their area.

In terms of the relationship of the group to the IBG, the Geographical Contact Group will attempt to supplement rather than duplicate the Institute. It will not be setting out to establish student members as a special subset of the Institute. The aim is rather to remove distinctions and barriers to communication. However, the Geo graphical Contact Group is likely to maintain an independent identity especially under the present IBG constitution.

The group has gratefully accepted the offer of facilities to run a Graduate Forum at Lanchester, where the theme will be ' The problems of research strategies'. This theme provides a very real focus for the activities of regional contact groups and the hope is that it will not only encourage many postgraduates to attend the conference, but also lead them to take over Geographical Contact and make it responsive to their needs. They will almost certainly be different from ours.

Peter Clarke, London School of Economics Ian Cook, Liverpool Polytechnic

Notes

1. P. Clarke, I. Cook and M. Cooper, 'And on the fourth day man created geography', Area 6 (1974), 1, 59-60

2. Sets of abstracts were circulated to all those who returned one 3. Four issues of Geographical Contact were produced by Pete Clarke (LSE), Ian Cook,

Steve Crighton (LSE) and Chris Elbo (UCL). They acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Mr Peter Masters and his assistant Mr Christopher Jackson, technicians in the Oxford School of Geography

4. Conference of Heads of Departments of Geography in Universities of the British Isles, List of theses in preparation 1973/4 and of theses completed during 1973 (1974)

5. UK Office for Scientific and Technical Information, Scientific research in British universities and colleges. Vol. 3: Social sciences (1974). (The social science volume has a pink cover)

6. SSRC Newsletter 21 (1974), 17-24. Supplement on research registers, available free from the Information Officer, SSRC, State House, High Holborn, London WC1 4TH

7. See, for example, the ' Developing Areas Study Group register of members ' research interests' (Nov. 1974) compiled by Alan Gilbert

8. Geographical Contact No. 3 issued at Oxford 9. Including part-time students and those working for higher degrees in polytechnics.

10. Produced in the first instance from the Geography Department, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE (01-405 7686, X 730)

11. The organization of London Geographical Contact is described on p. 32 of this issue

...and reflections afterwards

Fragmentation or Napoleonic hand?

or, Reflections on the revolution in Geography and on the proceedings in a certain society in Oxford relative to that event.

The more literary reader will immediately recognize in the title a reference to a brilliant conservative essay written in response to one of the most well-known revolutions in

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Page 3: Fragmentation or Napoleonic Hand?

... and reflections afterwards 79

history.' This shorter and no doubt less brilliant essay is prompted by a conservative reaction to some recent revolutionary tendencies in the meetings of the Institute of

British Geographers, epitomized in the recent Conference at Oxford. It is written with the intention of stimulating discussion in the columns of Area and elsewhere, on a

matter of no little importance for the future of the Institute and geography in Britain. Few would argue with the contention that at the Oxford meeting the paper sessions

suffered from an excess of set speeches and a dearth of discussion time. It surely must be possible to strike, by means of fewer and less long-winded individual contributions, a better balance between the proportion of an average individual's time which is spent in passive, and that which is spent in active, participation during the paper sessions.

The revolutionary trend which reached a peak at Oxford and which motivates this essay, however, is the increasing domination of the programme of the Annual Confer ence by Study Group interests. The development of the Study Groups is clearly both an inevitable and wholly desirable trend, encouraging both the teaching and research interests of geographers, or to be more accurate, those geographers who can clearly identify with the interests of one or more of the Study Groups. And therein lies the

objection. The Study Groups do have other opportunities to meet and discuss their interests, the Annual Conference ought surely to cater at least in part for the more catholic geographer and for some of the areas of geographical interest not yet focused, and perhaps not capable of being focused by a Study Group caucus. An informed outsider browsing through the Conference programme would undoubtedly be puzzled to find, for example, neither a single wide-ranging paper session with a regional focus

nor any evidence of the interest of British geography in the important fields of industry and energy. It is not satisfactory to justify these and other gaps on the grounds of lack of submitted papers of the required standard. The present organization of the

Conference does not encourage the submission of papers in certain fields while it does, on the other hand, allow the presentation of some papers of a standard which adds little to the prestige of either the Institute or British geography as a whole.

If the Annual Conference is to be largely organized on an individual Study Group basis in the future, without even the thematic focus given at Norwich, then a part of these objections might be met by a more rigid timetabling of the sessions. This would allow the more catholic geographer to move from a paper in one session to a paper in another session with greater confidence and accuracy. It may well be, however, as

Burke foresaw in his larger and more important essay, that the alternatives for the future lie between increasing fragmentation into non-communicating factions and a

Napoleonic hand creating a strong order out of impressive but dissipated energy. K. J. Lea

University of Strathclyde

Note

1. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the revolution in France and on the proceedings in certain

societies in London relative to that event (1790)

The reports of Study Groups for 1974 will appear in Area 7 (1975), 2.

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:52:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions