We could say of the study of geography, as the German Romantic philosopher and poet Novalis once said of philosophy, that it embodies a kind of homesickness; "the urge to be at home everywhere in the world". It was observations of an escalating divorce of humans from nature, our original home, which partly accounted for the emergence of Romanticism at the turn of the nineteenth century. In a recent study of the rise of the 'geographical imagination' in this period, Tang's (2008) intriguing thesis is that the origin of modern geography as it arose in the work of Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter can partly be found in the Naturphilosophie and landscape aesthetics of the early German Romantics. This rich body of thought provided much inspiration for these early geographical luminaries but most pertinent for our theme is that in their search for a "deeper, pre-reflexive unity" the Romantics "contributed, knowingly or unknowingly, to the making of the modern geographical imagination that was predicated on the fundamental unity of man and nature." (Tang, 2008, pp.12) Although theories of the close interrelationship between man and the earth can of course be found much earlier than the nineteenth century, it is arguably only in this period that such theories moved substantially beyond a rigidly deterministic stance represented in a somewhat encyclopaedic fashion. With the emergence of geographical science, this interrelationship was now seen as altogether broader and more complex. Indeed, for the most optimistic it suddenly appeared possible to
"understand mental disposition, culture, history, indeed, all aspects of the human world by explaining the spatial structures and operations of natural forces, which combine to constitute the dwelling place of humankind – the earth." (Tang, 2008, pp.42)
Of course, the notion that we are able to gain a complete and integrated understanding of this dwelling place and the interrelations between its many parts has fallen out of favour in recent times. As Alastair Bonnett (2008) asserts in his recent monograph written in response to the question 'What is Geography?' the integrative project was always "both a reflection of and a rebellion against the modern age" (Bonnett, 2008, pp.34). That is, it is a reflection of modernity in terms of its vast scale and ambition but a rebellion in its refusal to fit into neat academic boundaries. As Bonnett goes on to say, we in the modern age "have trouble making connections. It is not the modern way. Ours is an era of specialization." (Ibid, pp.87) The post-modern turn, moreover, has witnessed a bleak challenge to the very possibility of achieving objective knowledge and truth, including knowledge of nature. As Michael Bonnett explains, these influential views, at their extremes, "claim that there is nothing more to nature than its human construction; it is simply a cultural artifact." (Bonnett, 2004, pp.59) This view clearly undermines the idea that we can study the earth as a 'dwelling place' or 'home'. In fact, the very presupposition that we have a home is thrown into doubt; instead we seemed destined for a homelessness and rootlessness in which all that is solid turns to air. The consequences of post-modernism for geography education have been pointed out by Alex Standish (2008), who condemns the post-modern turn, arguing that it empties subjects such as geography of any intellectual or moral basis and opens the gates for a dehumanised and ultimately illiberal curriculum made up of 'pet political and social projects'. I tend to sympathise with Standish's viewpoint. However, his apparent alternative, a re-establishment in the curriculum of a clear-cut objective body of knowledge that must be assimilated, is too reactionary to be given serious consideration. Indeed, I would argue that such a conception of the curriculum is in fact in itself dehumanising and illiberal.
Ultimately, what the extreme post-modern view neglects in its stark condemnation of absolutes is that the search to find a home, that homesickness described earlier, has always been precisely a search, carried out with love, hope and imagination, for harmonious concord in a world that to us often seems so very discordant. Despite the unbridled confidence of the age of Enlightenment and the more reserved optimism of the Romantics, we have never been able to attain a full and complete knowledge of the world and to thereby feel totally at home on it. As Bonnett concludes, the post-modern assertion that we cannot know a reality that lies outside of our sensibility is actually otiose; of course "we can only know – or imagine – anything from within our form of sensibility” (Bonnet, 2004, pp.59). He continues as follows:
"the issue now becomes a matter not simply of whether there is 'empirically' an independent natural order that has its own properties – for us there manifestly is, this is simply unavoidably how we experience many aspects of the world – but of the meaning of this order, the quality of the space in which it presences… the value and the implications for thought and action that we attach to it, are." (Ibid, pp.60)
The urge for an earthly home, and to live in a world that has stability, meaning and value, is, I would argue, another deeply engrained part of human sensibility. The likelihood that this stability, this meaning, at least partly originates in the human imagination does not make it any less real to us. The prospect of unity, of a harmonious home in nature, serves as a lodestar towards which humanity infinitely strives. Thus, talk of an earthly home is defensible on these grounds, for how many of us really wish to be adrift, homeless and rootless? Taking this further, I believe that studying the earth and our interrelations with it can also bring us to a fuller understanding of ourselves and our place as global citizens who share this home with each other. There is no other subject on the school timetable that contains the intellectual resources to bring about this understanding more than geography does, and this, for me, is where the subject’s inestimable humanising potential comes in. It must be added here that, contra Standish, it is when learning geography takes the route of questioning, investigating and enquiring, as opposed to learning by rote, that it comes closest to fulfilling its potentiality for realising and enhancing our humanity. Although these claims of course need unpacking, examining and qualifying, it is this tendency of geography to make us appreciate and understand our shared home which it its greatest contribution to the lives of young people.
References
Bonnett, A. (2008) What is Geography? London: Sage
Bonnett, M. (2004) Retrieving nature: education for a post-humanist age. London: Wiley-Blackwell
Standish, A. (2008) Global Perspectives in the Geography Curriculum: Reviewing the Moral Case for Geography. London: Routledge.
Tang, C (2008) The Geographic Imagination of Modernity: Geography, Literature, and Philosophy in German Romanticism. California: Stanford University Press.
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