Preconceptions of the 2007 AAG Conference

It is almost time again for the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. I went to this conference last year for the first time and thought that I might share some thoughts on what I expect for this years conference, before I get there. Sometimes I think this is a dangerous thing to do. Usually I try not to preconceive too much because it seems like most of the time if it is a negative preconception, it is only verified. Then all you are left with is your conscious telling you “I told you so.” And if you have an overly positive preconception, sometimes you get let down. But I want to write this because of my feelings toward the academic world. And I want to get this out there so that after the conference I can either refute my own comments on here, or at least say that I saw it coming.

Last years AAG was a lot of fun. I went on the eve of the election for Student Government Association Officers, of which I was running for President. So while I was in Chicago, all my friends were busy running my campaign back home (I voted Absentee ballot). I got to Chicago on Tuesday and on Wednesday night, I heard the results. After the highest voter turnout in over a decade at UNA, I had been defeated by 6 votes. But that is another story and I don’t want to talk about that for now. I mainly want to talk about the AAG. The AAG was founded under the leadership of William Morris Davis in 1904. Davis is often referred to as the ‘Father of American Geography.’ I’m going to bounce off of this point more in a little while.

So I learned a lot at the AAG last year. I have to admit, I had heard some positives and negatives about the conference even before I attended. The obvious positive is that it is one of the largest academic gatherings of geographers in the world. This was somewhat surreal to me when I got there because I realized that there were indeed so many people that shared the same academic interest as I had, or did they? I sat through several lectures and presentations, and also visited a few poster sessions. In fact, I myself presented a poster during the economic geography session titled “Spatial and Demographic Patterns of Population.” This poster was mainly about development and characterizations of development in developed, developing, and underdeveloped nations. I am presenting a poster this year on “Visualizing Yesterday’s Maps with Today’s Technology” (I digress again…)

The negative things I heard about the AAG mainly revolved around the obscurity of much of the research presented (and allowed) at the AAG. Although I had heard about all of this stuff, I guess I just had to see it for myself. I will now share with you some of the more ‘eccentric’ topics presented: under the heading of “The Politics of Public Washroom Spaces II” ‘Our Toilets: access dilemmas in UK public washrooms’, ‘Looking Straight: location, gender and the dynamics of public sex’, ‘The Contested Boundaries Between Public and Private Space: Mapping the Gay Male World’. Under the title of “Sexual Constructions” ‘Are Gays Staying within Their Enclaves to Work? A Comparison of Commute Times’, ‘The moral geographies of gay life in Taiwan’, and ‘Where the Girls are: Lesbian Territories in Chicago’.

Now I am the first person to start defending geography by stating that all things exist in space and therefore can be studied geographically. But a thought just keeps resonating in my head, “Was this the picture William Morris Davis had when he helped to found this organization?” Davis was a geomorphologist, a physical geographer if you will. What has changed? I just don’t like all of this new obscurity that has perverted our science. This is an opinion and one that I feel I have every right to have.

I also know that I have a choice when I go to the AAG. There are so many presentations going on that it is physically impossible to attend even the ones that you would like to hear, much less all of them. So I just choose not to attend these that I deem obscure and impractical. But what I would like to see is for all geographers to step back and look at their work and make a practical application of what they are capable of researching.

This is one of the reasons that I don’t like academics. Not all academics at least. I feel very close to many of my college professors but the major difference from them to the ones I have previously discussed is that most of their research has a practical justification. As a geographer, I was taught to look at real world phenomena and try to solve real world problems. I just don’t see where some of this research fits into either of those categories. Another problem that I have with academia is that they just get so caught up in doing their research that they completely forget the big picture. And I don’t think geographers can afford to forget the big picture. The concept of keeping the ‘big picture’ in mind is the foundation of our discipline. We often times complain that geographic education is floundering and that American children are geographically illiterate, but would you really want me going into a classroom trying to convince people to take geography seriously when my research is about using toilets in the UK? I mean, give me a break!!!

So I have talked about several important topics that I will probably talk more about later on here but I want to get back to the AAG. The title states that I want to discuss preconceived notions of this years AAG conference. So I already have established my opinion of the organization (it is out of touch with the world (the big picture)). But now I want to say what I expect at this years conference. In order to do that, I decided to do a few simple searches on the AAG’s pre-conference schedule. Here are some of the interesting things I found (not really interest, actually quite disturbing): ‘Bear Bottoms and Hairy Chests: Nudity, the Woods, and a Creation of a Gay Male Subculture’, ‘Locating Queer Key West: Between the Closet, the Resort, and the Bridge’, ‘Animal Husbandry: Bestiality and the Making of the Human Animal’….I could go on and on but I just don’t feel like typing all of the many very disturbing presentations that will take place this year.

So it looks like yet again, those of us that just want to see the practical applications of geography will be thrown into the melting pot of research by individuals that obviously interpret the meaning of geography very differently from me. I will probably learn a lot but I also predict that I will get so frustrated with all of those so called “Doctors of Philosophy” that I would like to strangle some of them. I guess that is just one of those things one has to live with in life. But I think if we are to sustain the field of geography and promote its relevance in society, we must get back to the roots. Read about William Morris Davis and I think you will understand what I am talking about. I personally think the ESRI User Conference is a much better choice for those who want to see the practical applications of geography (but then again, I do work for ESRI). If I ever decide to get on some obscure quest for knowledge and begin researching some of the (excuse me…) CRAP, then please slap me around until I get back to what the real world needs….problem solving and practical applications of ‘space’, (the way WM Davis meant for it to be…).