The Public Relevance of Geography: Why Academic Geographers Should Engage Beyond Academia
Read the new intervention on public scholarship published in Political Geography, written by Reece Jones, Austin Kocher, Farhana Sultana, Deondre Smiles, Kendra McSweeney, and Petra Molnar.
In a new article published by the journal Political Geography, I joined several of my colleagues in discussing how and why we engage in public scholarship as academic geographers.
Given the sad state of K-12 geography education in the United States, I am not surprised when people ask me what I do as a geographer. Geography is a fascinating and valuable social science that focuses on big-picture questions of space and place, particularly as they relate to power.
My focus on immigration enforcement stems from my training as a political geographer, since immigration enforcement allows me to ask larger questions about themes such as how law enforcement agencies use space to police racial and ethnic immigrant minorities. See my previous post on this topic:
Since geography is such an important discipline, I believe that we also have a responsibility to ensure that our work impacts public discourse, materially benefits marginalized people, and, if possible, shapes public policy without getting co-opted.
This is part of what we mean by the term “public scholarship.” But public scholarship means different things to different people. For some scholars, it might mean giving an occasional lecture in the community, publishing an op-ed from time to time, or posting their articles on Twitter. Others may engage more dynamically by having an active and vocal presence online, becoming directly involved in policy reforms, or hosting a blog (like this one) where they share research findings on a regular basis.
Many of us did not necessarily get training on how to do this or how to it well. So we cobble together an approach that works for us the best way we know how: through trial and error. But as the opportunities for public scholarship continue to grow, especially in the vast and now quite fragmented digital media landscape, we really need to have more conversations about this work.
Thanks to the coordinating efforts of Dr. Reece Jones, that’s exactly what we did at the annual geography conference earlier this year: we held a panel discussion on what it means for each of us to do public geography. Then, to ensure that we captured our thinking, we also published an intervention-style article in Political Geography that, I’m pleased to say, was published recently. (My gratitude to the journal’s editors, including my OSU grad colleague, Kevin Grove, for the quick turn-around on this.)
You can scroll down below to get the full article. But in case you don’t have time to read it, I thought it might be helpful for me to pull out some of the main quotes from each of the contributions, and also provide a link to each of the contributor’s work online.
What do you think about the importance of academics doing more to engage the broader public? Which of these excerpts below resonate with you the most? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
Excerpts from the article by order of appearance
Introduction – Reece Jones
The changing media landscape means that there are many opportunities to show what geographers can contribute to the public debate in ways that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago. Instead, the question is how to do public geography more effectively. How can geographers place their work in the right venues? How can they avoid being coopted by malevolent actors who seek to manipulate serious academic research for partisan gains? What are the risks and pitfalls of engaging in public geography? How can public work be done in a reciprocal manner? Should geographers do public geography at all? What follows are the reflections of some of geography's leading public intellectuals in North America on how to navigate this new world and do public geography effectively.
Public scholarship as interdisciplinary praxis: a collaborative approach to working with journalists – Austin Kocher
When I started getting involved in media-facing outreach, I did not understand the professional skills and methods of reporters, nor did I appreciate the unique challenges that immigration reporters face, including online harassment and a dearth of reliable sources who can clearly and accurately explain the convoluted immigration system to a general audience. By working with reporters behind the scenes, I saw the innovative methods that many reporters use to write well-researched stories, often on timelines that would leave most academics' heads spinning. To be clear, there are many friction points when trying to work with reporters: different timelines, different types of expertise, different incentive structures, different audiences, different levels of editorial autonomy, and so on. But I have come to view these differences as strengths, and I now view these partnerships more as interdisciplinary projects with co-equals rather than opportunities to instrumentalize reporters as my personal messengers.
Public geographies, or why radical public scholarship matters – Farhana Sultana
Public engagement is rarely value-neutral. It goes beyond communicating research findings; it involves actively shaking up public opinion and challenging oppressive systems. Engaging in this work can be transformative and impactful, but requires emotional resilience, stamina, and courage to navigate potential backlash. It is crucial to find allies in disrupting the norms of white supremacy, capitalist ethnocide, racist genocide, toxic masculinity, anti-intellectualism, environmental determinism, and sacrifice zones.
Public engagement as truth-telling – Deondre Smiles
To me, public engagement in a variety of venues outside traditional academic outlets represents one way of pushing back against our stories being told without us. Although I can hardly claim to represent all Indigenous peoples or even the entirety of my own community, public- facing work allows me to share Indigenous worldviews and geographical thoughts in a way that can be accessible to all. If these ideas are accessible to all, it is much harder for harmful narratives to spread regarding us and our relationships to space, place, and environment, in keeping with one of our Seven Grandfather Teachings in Ojibwe culture, debwewin (truth). That is not to say, of course, that peer-reviewed works are not truthful. What I am saying here is that doing work in the public sphere can allow truth and meaningful, helpful work to spread more quickly and make the most impact.
Doing public geography: sticking with the mess(age) – Kendra McSweeney
It is impossible to inoculate all research from misrepresentation or from being harnessed to potentially harmful ends. But looking back on it, I see that there were several ways that my actions made our message more vulnerable to those outcomes. One was to agree to the "narco-" prefix in our title. Another is that I should have been more careful in talking with the press. I have since learned that unless the journalist (and their editor) can guarantee to acknowledge that it is drug prohibition that actually creates the narcos they love to write about, I will practice my "right of refusal" and decline to continue the conversation. Not surprisingly, I now do many fewer interviews. Finally, in the Science piece and in subsequent public-facing work, I also think I might have been better prepared to acknowledge, and distinguish, the proximate causes of deforestation from its ultimate drivers. By failing to anticipate the need to do this, the public narrative around our work devolved into a "simple idea" about the problem (narcos) and the solution (more drug war).
“Nothing about us without us:” participatory methods and surveillance storytelling – Petra Molnar
Ultimately, one way to practice our commitment to public scholarship is to cede space, redistribute resources, and support affected communities to be in the driver's seat to tell their own stories. A real and critical engagement with the suddenly now-in-vogue decolonial methodologies requires an iterative understanding of these framings, a process which is never complete. By decentering so-called Global North narratives and refusing to tokenize people with lived experience as research subjects or afterthoughts, researchers can create opportunities that recognize their privilege and access to resources. Then, researchers can redistribute those resources through meaningful participation, creating an environment for people to tell their own stories.
Rashad Shabazz could not join us for the article, but you should totally check out his amazing work here, too. His comments at the panel were 🔥.
How to read the full article?
The article online is behind a paywall here, but my understanding is that the journal has promised to make the article publicly available. For now, you can use my author link below to read the article. It is preferable that you download it from the journal website so that the journal can understand how many readers the article attracts. But if you run into issues, you can also email me and I’ll share the article directly.
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