SEMINAR IN GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT AND METHODS

 

GEOG 8910

Spring 2007

 

Dr. Andrew Herod

Department of Geography

209 GGS Building

542 2366

aherod@uga.edu

 

 

Meeting a friend in a corridor, Wittgenstein said: 'Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for men to assume that the sun went round the earth, rather than that the earth was rotating?'  His friend said, 'Well, obviously, because it looks as if the sun is going round the earth.'  To which the philosopher replied, 'Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth was rotating?'

 

Tom Stoppard: Jumpers

 

 

 

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

 

Albert Einstein (quoted in Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, 1975).

 

 

 

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

 

Plutarch

 

 

 

There are no facts, only interpretations.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

 

 

All truth passes through three stages.  First, it is ridiculed.  Second, it is violently opposed.  Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

 

Arthur Schopenhauer

 

 

 

To dictate definition is to wield cultural power.

 

David Livingston (1992: 304) The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise

 

Seminar Description

 

This seminar will address the development of modern scientific thought and how it has shaped the discipline of geography.  Specifically, we will focus on themes such as how space and time have been conceptualized, what we mean by the term 'science,' what are some of the different epistemologies (theories of knowledge) that have shaped the practise of geography and science, how we use 'science' to make certain claims about the world, and how we decide that certain of these claims are more valid than others –or even if we can make such a claim.  The history of scientific and geographic thought has often been presented as hagiography (in which scientific ideas are presented through an examination of the 'great minds' of the past), as developmentalism (in which the ideas of one age are presented as following from those of earlier times in a linear fashion, linking the past with the present), or as teleology (in which scientific knowledge is thought to develop out of its own internal logic).  This course, in contrast, will present a contextual approach to scientific and geographical ideas, by which is meant that it will examine how ideas developed at particular times in response to the changes and events taking place in the broader society.  Implicitly, then, the course assumes an approach to science that sees knowledge not as an independent 'thing' which, naturally, produces the 'best' understanding of the world but, rather, as a cultural product which is always partial and contested.  The production of knowledge through the doing of science is a social practise that is fraught with power relations and contradiction.  As you may perhaps guess from reading the quote by Tom Stoppard above, the goal of the seminar is to force us to think about how we think about knowledge.

 

 

Course Requirements

 

There are four requirements for this class.

 

First, each student will be expected to lead discussion in class at least once during the semester.  This involves a critical reading of materials presented for each week, together with an ability to synthesize those readings and draw out the major issues and points of contention.  This does not mean a droll recounting of the minutiae of a paper but an ability to provide critical insight into the main ideas presented, to compare and contrast them with other ideas, and to evaluate which seem to present better, more useful, or more coherent insights into what we are discussing.  Such a task will require putting together a discussion sheet that is to be distributed to other students in the class (see Appendix 1 for an example).  The student leading a particular week's discussion will email this discussion sheet to the rest of the class (including me!) no later than 5pm on the Monday before class.  This will give students time to contemplate the questions/ discussion points.  Make sure you keep a copy for yourself to which you can refer in class.

 

Second, each student will prepare a prŽcis/ summary of the main points of each week's readings, to be handed in at the beginning of each class.  This prŽcis/ summary is to be limited to NO MORE THAN 3 PAGES, typed and double-spaced, 12-point font.  This limited length will force you to be concise and precise in your writing.  You will receive either a 'Satisfactory' or an 'Unsatisfactory' for each of these summaries.

 

Third, each student will produce a 'thought piece' which compares and contrasts two epistemologies or approaches to knowledge (for example, positivism and realism, or positivism and conventionalism, or empiricism and realism, or humanism and positivism).  The piece should be about 10-12 pages, typed and double-spaced, 12-point font.  This requires you to be concise yet encompassing.  This piece is due on Tuesday March 20, 2007.

 

Fourth, each student will write a term paper that provides a critical account of how a particular concept or issue has been used in geographic thought.  By 'critical account' I do not simply mean that you should provide a descriptive history of the idea or concept.  Rather, you need to examine how your chosen idea or concept has been used within geography, what were the circumstances surrounding how its use has perhaps changed, how the way the idea or concept has been used has shaped our understanding of the world, how the idea or concept has challenged, and has been challenged by, different ways of knowing, and the like.  The piece should be about 14-16 pages, typed and double-spaced, 12-point font.  This paper is due on Friday May 4, 2007.

 

 

Topics and Readings

 

January 9: Introduction to the Class

 

 

January 16: An Overview of the Development of Geographic Thought (Part 1)

 

[This week's readings and the readings for next week will provide you with a broad overview of two things.  First, in general terms they will give you an outline to the development of Anglo-American geography as an academic discipline with regard to what have been its major intellectual trends.  Second, they will introduce you to the idea that science and knowledge production are contested activities, and that there are different ways of thinking about, and doing, science.  Also, please note that although the title of Johnston's book refers to human geography, the ideas contained within it and the concepts referred to –such as how to conceive of a region, how ideas about time and space have changed over time, what is considered to be the nature of science, etc.– apply equally to physical geography.]

 

Peet, R. (1998)  'Introduction: Geography, philosophy, and social theory.'  In R. Peet, Modern Geographical Thought.  Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1-33

 

Johnston, R.J. and Sidaway, J. D. (2004)  Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American Human Geography Since 1945 (6th Edition).  London: Arnold, Chapters 1-4.

 

Note: Peet's book Modern Geographical Thought provides a fairly detailed account of the development of thought in twentieth century geography and may be worth consulting to give a different perspective than that provided by Johnston's Geography and Geographers.  We will be drawing on several chapters from Peet's book later in the course.

 

 

January 23: An Overview of the Development of Geographic Thought (Part 2)

 

Johnston, R.J. and Sidaway, J. D. (2004)  Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American Human Geography Since 1945 (6th Edition).  London: Arnold, Chapters 5-10.

 

Richards, K. (2003)  'Geography and the physical sciences tradition.'  In Sarah Holloway, Stephen Rice, and Gill Valentine (eds.) Key Concepts in Geography, pp. 23-50.  Sage: London.

 

 

January 30: What is Science?

 

[Whereas we often think of 'science' as an 'objective' way of making claims about the world, this week's readings will outline a number of different philosophical approaches to 'science' and how each has different criteria for making valid claims about the world.  Thus, we must be cognizant of the fact that the study of physical and social phenomena implies the use of certain categories of meaning and experience.  Equally, by comparing different epistemologies, we can see that different ways of knowing the world (e.g., knowing as the result of observation versus knowing as the result of experience) lead us to make different sets of statements about the world and its knowability.  As you will see, such issues are pertinent to both human and physical geography.]

 

Longino, H.E. (1990)  'Introduction: Good science, bad science,' 'Methodology, goals, and practices,' 'Evidence and hypothesis,' 'Values and objectivity.'  In H.E. Longino, Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry.  Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 3-15; 16-37; 38-61; 62-82.

 

Keat, R. and Urry, J. (1982)  'Conceptions of science,' 'Positivist philosophy of science,' 'Realist philosophy of science,' 'Forms of conventionalism.'  In R. Keat and J. Urry, Social Theory as Science (2nd Edition).  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 3-8; 9-26; 27-45; 46-65.

 

Peet, R. (1998)  'Existentialism, phenomenology, and humanistic geography.'  In R. Peet, Modern Geographical Thought.  Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 34-66.

 

Rhoads, B.L., and Thorn, C.E. (1996)  'Toward a philosophy of geomorphology.'  In B.L. Rhoads and C.E. Thorn (eds.), The Scientific Nature of Geomorphology (Proceedings of the 27th Binghampton Symposium in Geomorphology Held 27-29 September 1996).  Chichester: Wiley and Sons, 115-143.

 

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the basics of scientific reasoning, two good books to skim through are: Chalmers, A.F. (1976) What is This Thing Called Science? An Assessment of the Nature and Status of Science and its Methods (University of Queensland Press), and Giere, R.N. (1984) Understanding Scientific Reasoning (2nd Edition) (Holt, Rinehart and Winston).  Also, T. Rockmore (1993) Before and After Hegel: A Historical Introduction to Hegel's Thought (University of California Press) provides a reasonable overview of how Kant, Hegel, and Marx thought about science and philosophy.

 

 

February 6: Knowledge, Hermeneutics, Abstraction, and Chaotic Conceptions

 

[Whenever we make statements about the world, we are inevitably moving from a very complex situation (the world) to a simpler situation (our statement about the world).  This process of making simplified statements about the world involves 'abstraction,' that is to say it involves 'bracketing off' one part of the world so that we can examine it and make statements about it.  Sayer's book argues that in so abstracting from the real world, we need to be careful that we do not use what he calls 'chaotic conceptions' (the inappropriate putting together or splitting apart for conceptual simplicity of real world events and processes that are linked together).  We also need to be aware of 'hermeneutics' (the study of meaning) and how these affect our understanding of the world.  Specifically, Sayer draws a distinction between the 'single hermeneutic' (which applies to study of the 'physical' world) and the 'double hermeneutic' (which applies to study of the 'social' world).  Thus, although the title of his book is Method in Social Science, his arguments apply also to physical science.  The articles by Richards, Rhoads, and Bassett all explore the relevance of realist epistemologies for physical geography in general, and geomorphology in particular.]

 

Sayer, A. (1984)  Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach.  London: Hutchinson (pp. 11-234).

 

 

February 13: Towards a Historical Geography of Knowledge: The Social Context of Scientific Knowledge

 

[These readings will show you how 'scientific knowledge' (that is to say, our ability to make statements about the world) is shaped by the social context within which that knowledge is produced.  This suggests that, rather than thinking about the evolution of science and scientific ideas as having their own internal logic, the production of knowledge is a social act that must be understood contextually.]

 

Bordo, S. (1987)  'The Cartesian masculinization of thought.'  In S. Harding and J.F. O'Barr (eds.), Sex and Scientific Inquiry.  Chicago: University of  Chicago Press, pp. 247-264.

 

Merchant, C. (1980)  'The mechanical order.'  In C. Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution.  San Francisco: Harper and Row, pp. 192-215.

 

Giere, R.N. (1988)  'Explaining the revolution in geology.'  In R.N. Giere, Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 227-277.

 

Thrift, N. (1996) 'Flies and germs: A geography of knowledge.'  In N. Thrift, Spatial Formations.  London: Sage, pp. 96-124.

 

Harvey, D. (1990)  'Between space and time: Reflections on the geographical imagination.'  Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80.3: 418-434.

 

Harrison, S. and Dunham, P. (1998)  'Decoherence, quantum theory and their implications for the philosophy of geomorphology.'  Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 23.4: 501-514.

 

 

February 20: Thinking about Nature

 

[This week's readings will get you to think about how we think about nature.  This is important, because how we think about nature affects how we understand both social and physical processes.]

 

Smith, N. (1990)  'The ideology of nature.'  In N. Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (2nd Edition).  Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1-31.

 

Haraway, D. (1989)  'Introduction: The persistence of vision.'  In D. Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science.  London: Routledge, pp. 1-15.

 

Haraway, D. (1989)  'Teddy bear patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936.'  In D. Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science.  London: Routledge, pp. 26-58.

 

Merchant, C. (1980)  'Introduction: Women and ecology,' 'Nature as female,' 'Dominion over nature.'  In C. Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution.  San Francisco: Harper and Row, pp. xv-xx; 1-41; 164-190.

 

Demeritt, D. (1994)  'Ecology, objectivity and critique in writings on nature and human societies.'  Journal of Historical Geography 20(1), pp. 22-37.

 

Note: Although we do not have time to read it, Clarence Glacken's (1967) Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thought From Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press) is probably the definitive work on how nature has been conceptualized in the West during the past two millennia, and well worth an extended read at some point in your graduate career.  Also, Haraway's book is a fascinating account of how modern primatology has superimposed human conceptions of social behavior to explain the behavior of gorillas and other primates.  It is well worth skimming through the rest of the book if you have time, particularly given that she spends quite a bit of time talking about Robert Yerkes, after whom the research facility at Emory University in Atlanta is named.

 

 

February 27: The Impact of Evolutionary Theory on Modern Geographic Thought

 

[Ideas about evolution have had a profound effect upon modern scientific thinking in a wide range of disciplines, not least of which has been geography.  Here we will examine how such ideas affected both human and physical geography, particularly with regard to model building to explain physical and social processes, and what was the context within which they infiltrated the discipline.]

 

Peet, R. (1985)  'The social origins of environmental determinism.'  Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 75.3: 309-333.

 

Stoddart, D.R. (1966)  'Darwin's impact on geography.'  Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 56.3: 683-698.

 

Livingstone, D.N. (1992)  'The geographical experiment: Evolution and the founding of a discipline.'  In D.N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise.  Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 177-215.

 

Coombes, P. and Barber, K. (2005)  'Environmental determinism in Holocene research: Causality or coincidence?'  Area 37.3: 303-311.

 

Note 1: Skim read the following two articles, to get a sense of how ideas about evolution permeated both physical and human geography at the beginning of the 20th century.

 

Davis, W.M. (1899)  'The geographical cycle.'  Geographical Journal 14: 481-504.

 

Huntington, E. (1924)  'Racial character and natural selection,' 'The direct effect of environment on character.'  In E. Huntington, The Character of Races as Influenced by Physical Environment, Natural Selection and Historical Development.  New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp. 1-19; 286-300.

 

Note 2: If you are not familiar with Darwin's arguments about evolution, you should consult his treatise The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life (there are numerous editions of this book, so I have not given dates and publishers).

 

March 6: No class (read!)

 

March 12-16: Spring Break.

 

March 20: Geography, Race, and Empire

[These readings, closely related to last week's, will examine issues of empire and race.  Specifically, they will look at how geography and other disciplines such as anthropology and biology were implicated in European and US imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, together with how these pursuits have affected our understanding of the world and categories that are taken to be natural and scientific, such as 'race.']

 

Smith, N. and Godlewska, A. (1994)  'Introduction: Critical histories of geography.'  In A. Godlewska and N. Smith (eds.) (1994), Geography and Empire, Oxford: Blackwell, pp.1-8.

 

Livingstone, D.N. (1992)  'A Ôsternly practical' pursuit: Geography, race and empire.'  In D.N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise.  Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 216-259.

 

Hudson, B. (1977)  'The new geography and the new imperialism: 1870-1918.'  Antipode, 9.1: 12-19.

 

Arnold, D. (2000)  'ÔIllusory riches': Representations of the tropical world, 1840-1950.'  Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 21(1): 6-18.

 

Duncan, J. (2000)  'The struggle to be temperate: Climate and ÔMoral masculinity' in mid-nineteenth century Ceylon.'  Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 21(1): 34-47.

 

Driver, F. (1992)  'Geography's empire: Histories of geographical knowledge.'  Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 10: 23-40.

 

Gould, S.J. (1996) 'Measuring heads: Paul Broca and the heyday of craniology,' 'Measuring bodies: Two case studies on the apishness of undesirables.'  In The Mismeasure of Man (revised ed.).  New York: W.W. Norton, pp. 105-141; 142-175.

 

Note: Though not required reading for this week, you might want to take a look at A. Godlewska and N. Smith (eds.) (1994), Geography and Empire, Oxford: Blackwell which includes several essays about the links between imperialism and geography as practised in imperial nations other than the US and Great Britain (i.e. France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Japan) and from periods ranging from Elizabethan England to the post-colonial era).

 

 

March 27: Thinking about space

 

[How people have thought about space has changed over time and between places.  This week's readings will get you thinking about how we think about space and what shapes our thoughts.  Both physical and human geographers need to think about how our models or world views may incorporate different notions of space and what this means for the ways in which we understand processes as they play out across physical and social landscapes.]

 

Soja, E. (1989)  'Preface and postscript,' 'History: Geography: Modernity,' 'Spatializations: Marxist geography and critical social theory.'  In E. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory.  London: Verso, pp. 1-9; 10-42; 43-75).

 

Pickles, J. (1995)  'Representations in an electronic age: Geography, GIS, and democracy' in Pickles, J. (Ed.) Ground Truth: The Social Implications of Geographic Information Systems, pp. 1-30.  New York: Guilford Press.

 

Kwan, M.-P. (2002)  'Feminist visualization: Re-envisioning GIS as a method in feminist geographic research.'  Annals of the Association of American Geographers 92.4: 645-661.

 

Curry, M.R.  (1996)  'On space and spatial practice in contemporary geography.'  In C. Earle, K. Mathewson, and M.S. Kenzer (eds.), Concepts in Human Geography.  Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 3-32.

 

Harley, J.B. (1989)  'Deconstructing the map.'  Cartographica 26.2: 1-20.

 

Brealey, K.G. (1995)  'Mapping them Ôout': Euro-Canadian cartography and the appropriation of the Nuxalk and Ts'ilhqot'in First Nations' territories, 1793-1916.'  The Canadian Geographer/ Le GŽographe canadien 39.2: 140-156.

 

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the concept of 'Modernism' and want to do some further reading, two good books to which you can turn are: M. Berman (1988) All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Penguin Books), and R. Williams (1989) The Politics of Modernism (Verso).  Also, if you are interested (and why would you not be?), take a look at W. Schivelbusch's (1986) The Railway Journey: Industrialization and the Perception of Time and Space, University of California Press which examines the way in which railway travel in the US in the 19th century changed the way in which travelers experienced time and space.

 

 

April 3: Thinking about time

 

[As with space, so, too, have people thought about time in different ways at different times and in different places.  Whereas last week's readings got you (I hope!) to think about space, this week's readings will get you thinking about how we think about time and what shapes our thoughts.  Again, both physical and human geographers need to think about how our models or world views may incorporate different notions of time and what this means for the ways in which we understand processes as they play out across physical and social landscapes.]

 

Harvey, D. (1969)  'Temporal modes of explanation in geography.'  In D. Harvey, Explanation in Geography.  New York: St Martin's Press, pp. 407-432.

 

Thrift, N. (1996) 'Vivos voco: Ringing the changes in the historical geography of time consciousness.'  In N. Thrift, Spatial Formations.  London: Sage, pp. 169-212.

 

Gould, S.J. (1987)  'The discovery of deep time.'  In S.J. Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-19.

 

Kern, S. (1983)  'Introduction,' 'The nature of time,' 'The past,' 'The present,' 'The future,' 'Speed.'  In S. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 1-9; 10-35; 36-64; 65-88; 89-108; 109-130.

 

Lawrence, N. (1972)  'Temporal passage and spatial metaphor.'  In J.T. Fraser and N. Lawrence (eds.), The Study of Time II: Proceedings of the Second Conference of the International Society for the Study of Time, Lake Yamanaka, Japan.  New York: Springer-Verlag, 196-203.

 

Note: The second half of Kern's book deals with how space was conceptualized –and how conceptualizations of space changed– at the end of the nineteenth century.  This is worth skimming if you get the opportunity.  Also, the remaining portions of Gould's book provide a fascinating account of how consciousness about geological time has developed over time.

 

 

April 10: Debates over Numbers

 

[Here we shall examine the transformation of geography that took place during the 1950s and 1960s as the discipline changed from one that focused upon regional expertise to one that focused upon systematic approaches to spatial questions and the use of mathematics to understand the world.]

 

Livingstone, D.N. (1992)  'Statistics don't bleed: Quantification and its detractors.'  In D.N. Livingstone, The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise.  Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, pp. 304-346.

 

Stewart, J.Q. (1950)  'The development of social physics.'  American Journal of Physics 18: 239-253.

 

Hilts, V.L. (1973)  'Statistics and social science.'  In R.N. Giere and R.S. Westfall (eds.), Foundations of Scientific Method: The Nineteenth Century.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 206-233.

 

Barnes, T.J. (1998)  'A history of regression: Actors, networks, machines, and numbers.'  Environment and Planning A, 30: 203-223.

 

Hepple, L. (1998)  'Context, social construction, and statistics: Regression, social science, and human geography.'  Environment and Planning A, 30: 225-234.

 

Sibley, D. (1998)  'Sensations and spatial science: Gratification and anxiety in the production of ordered landscapes.'  Environment and Planning A, 30: 235-246.

 

Note: Though not required reading for this week, you might want to take a look at Recollections of a Revolution: Geography as Spatial Science, M. Billinge, D. Gregory, and R. Martin (eds.) (1983), New York: St. Martin's Press.  This book presents the recollections of several individuals who were involved in the so-called 'quantitative revolution' in geography in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

 

April 17: Recent Critical Approaches to Knowledge: Marxism, feminism and postmodernism

 

[This final week's readings examine two significant epistemologies that have shaped contemporary thought in the social and, to a lesser but still important extent, physical sciences.  These two epistemologies are Marxism and feminism.  Although such epistemologies have perhaps been less readily apparent in the physical than in the human side of the discipline, this is not to say that they are unimportant for physical geographers to know about.  There are Marxist and feminist physical scientists who use such epistemologies to evaluate critically the ways in which scientific ideas about the world perhaps incorporate certain assumptions about social class or gender and/ or contribute to such conceptions.  As we have already seen, for example, how we think about nature has been shaped historically by the ways in which societies have developed which, of course, assumes certain class and gender relationships.  Equally, feminist theorists have questioned how social categories such as the 'objective' and the 'subjective' have developed over time and in different ways in different places.  The growth in influence of postmodernism in geography during the 1990s in some ways challenges traditional Marxist and feminist thought (particularly with regard to 'meta-narratives' which seek to explain everything through recourse to a few large social categories such as 'class' or 'gender,' and the uncritical adoption of dualistic modes of thinking) but in some ways also incorporates certain elements of these two epistemologies –David Harvey, for instance, has argued that postmodernism is merely the cultural cloak that is now worn by contemporary global capitalism and that the fascination with new conceptions of time and, especially, space that many postmodernists have are the result of real material changes in the way in which the world is organized.  If we are to take seriously the credo that we are engaged in critically questioning the world about us, then we have to critically question the theories and premises that we use to understand and make sense of that world.  Such a critical questioning of theory means we have to be cognizant of how our social structures and relationships are reflected in the ways in which we produce knowledge about the world, that is to say, the ways in which we 'do science.']

 

Peet, R. (1998)  'Feminist theory and the geography of gender.'  In R. Peet, Modern Geographical Thought.  Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 247-291.

 

Peet, R. (1998)  'Radical geography, Marxism and Marxist geography.'  In Peet, R. Modern Geographical Thought, pp. 67-111.  Oxford: Blackwell.

 

Peet, R. (1998)  'Poststructuralism, postmodernism, and postmodern geographies.'  In Peet, R. Modern Geographical Thought, pp. 194-246.  Oxford: Blackwell.

 

Martin, E. (1991)  'The egg and the sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male-female roles.'  Signs 16.3: 485-501.

 

Harding, S. (1990)  'Feminism, Science, and the anti-Enlightenment Critiques.'  In Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, L.J. New York: Routledge.

 

Note: If you are unfamiliar with the notion of 'postmodernism,' take a look at Harvey's (1989) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Blackwell) and, for the brave, J. Lyotard's (1984) The Postmodern Condition or F. Jameson's (1984) 'Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism,' New Left Review 146: 53-92.

 

April 24: No class (work on papers!)