Awkward geographies? An historical and cultural geography of the journal Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education (CIGE) (1983-1991)

Norcup, Joanne (2015) Awkward geographies? An historical and cultural geography of the journal Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education (CIGE) (1983-1991). PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis concerns itself with the excavation of the historical and cultural geographies of the production, circulation, and reception of a grassroots-initiated geography education journal, and of the lives of the people and movement that contributed to its existence. Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education (CIGE) was the journal of the Association of Curriculum Development in Geography (ACDG): a pan-institutional collective of school geography teachers, authors, artists, activists and academics who desired a vision of school geography informed from the political Left, to enable the voices of those excluded from power to be explored and heard, and to offer up an alternative version of disciplinary geographical knowledge-making. Between the publication of its launch issue in 1983 and 1991 when it ceased publishing CIGE produced eight theme issues covering universally significant and highly contentious themes (racism, multinational trade, apartheid capitalism, war and peace, gender, ecological crisis and anarchism) from a humanist and critical perspective, offering critical analyses of the geographies therein and educational resources to utilise in educational training across schools, universities and staff education resource centres. CIGE questioned the spaces though which geographical education perpetuating social inequalities might be encountered (children’s TV through to national press criticism, publishers, subject associations, examination boards and academia). Well enough known during its publishing life and subscribed to nationally and internationally across a range of organisations, many of its contributors subsequently forged significant careers as human geographers within the Anglo-American academy, yet limited reference has been made to the journal post-1991. Recovering the stories of the journal and the people whose lives made the series, brings forth controversies and in turn awkward geographies in recovering how and why the journal series ceased publishing and why there appears to be such omission in historiographic accounts. Employing conceptual ideas pertaining to themes of archival activism, activist archives, navigating the recent past, disciplinary identity-making and geobiography, the thesis illustrates the strengths of ‘slow methodologies’ and the adoption of longitudinal research methods to enable the recovery and corroboration of primary sources, while signposting how mechanisms of contemporary academia (giving seminar workshop and conference papers on national and international scales, writing papers and co-authoring book chapters) through can reactivate engagement with the recovered archives and agitate for further materials to be revealed.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Geography, education, Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education
• Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General)
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Supervisor's Name: Philo, Professor Christopher
• Date of Award: 2015
• Depositing User: JOANNE NORCUP
• Unique ID: glathesis:2015-6849
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 09 Nov 2015 15:00
• Last Modified: 17 Nov 2015 08:28
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6849