The Dictionary of Human Geography

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Anglo-American and non-Anglo-American

writers. Notwithstanding an increased sensitiv-

ity tosituated knowledgein contemporary

geography, these practices, connected to an im-

plicitlysupposedneutralityofconceptsandcat-

egories, tend to conceal the partiality and local

character of Anglo-American theoretical pro-

ductionandreproduceit as‘unlimited’, ‘univer-

sal’ or at least ‘transferable’. The ‘master-

subject’ of geographical theory is constructed

as Anglo-American, with more inferior subject-

positions left open to writers from ‘other’

places. Contributions from outside the Anglo-

phone world are at one level welcome, but

the authors tend to be seen, not as theory-

producing subjects, but rather as providers of

‘case-studies-from-another-place’. The non-

Anglo-American writer is constructed as a me-

diator or translator, often in a double sense; on

the one hand ‘translating’ travelling Anglo-

American theory and putting it into use in

‘other’ contexts, and on the other one ‘translat-

ing’theunknownandexotic‘other’andmaking

it accessible to the powerful knower in the

centre.

Geographical writings based infeminismand

post-colonialismhave in many ways identified

and challenged this power–knowledge system.

Even they, however, are not immune from

the charges made in the debate. Like any

dominantdiscourse, they have difficulties

destabilizing their own power position. But

the very existence of the debate can be seen

as a promising opening; in particular, to the

extent that it is based on common recognition

and works against the hegemony from ‘inside’

and ‘outside’ alike. ks

Suggested reading

Gregson, Simonsen and Vaiou (2003); Paasi

(2005).

animals Once of marginal concern to geog-

raphy, animals, their places, welfare, relation-

ships and spatialities have recently become

areas of debate and innovation. Attention has

been buoyed by growing social concerns for

animals and the, albeit problematic, growth in

animal rights literature. Moreover, develop-

ments insocial theorythat have (a) decon-

structed the human, exposing the indistinct

character of the divides between humans and

animals (Agamben, 2002), and (b) recon-

structed animals, affording them active roles

in constituting their environments, bodies and

relationships (see actor-network theory,

non-representational theory), have started

to unsettle the human ofhuman geography.

While antecedents of this new animal geog-

raphy certainly existed incultural ecology

and studies ofdomestication(Tuan, 1984),

the most important shift in the place of animals

in geography occurred in the 1990s, through a

series of innovative papers that aimed to bring

the animals back in (Wolch and Emel, 1995,

1998; Philo and Wilbert, 2000). This work

covered a range of topics focusing on spaces

of exclusion of, and human cohabitation with,

animals. One difficulty in this work was

to devise means of talking about animals them-

selves, rather than reducing non-human ani-

mals to having bit parts in human history (and

thereby inadvertently reproducing the

Cartesian and Kantian notions of non-human

animals as automata, and as means to human

ends). It is here that the work of a whole range

of approaches that share something withpost-

structuralism has been most productive

in affording animals their own histories and

geographies. The work of anthropologists, par-

ticularly that of Tim Ingold, highlighted the

similarities between human and non-human

animals’ dwelling practices (Ingold, 2000).de-

constructionof the terms ‘human’ and ‘ani-

mal’ afforded insights into the role that the

singular noun ‘the animal’ has played in what

Jacques Derrida has called the sacrificial struc-

ture of human supremacy (Derrida, 2003).

Finally, work informed by understandings and

tracings of the material and cultural associ-

ations of human and non-human animals has

demonstrated complex histories and geograph-

ies of sharing (molecules, viruses, flesh), ac-

commodating, adapting, hostilities and

hospitalities (Haraway, 2003). The resulting

hybridforms are multiple, leading not to

some undifferentiated human/non-human

amalgam, but to worlds wherein non-human

and human animals differentiate themselves at

the same time as they form close relationships

(Whatmore, 2002a). sjh

Suggested reading

Wolch and Emel (1998); Wolfe (2003).

Annales School An interdisciplinary school

of French historians established by Lucien

Febvre and Marc Bloch, co-founders in 1929

of the journalAnnales d’histoire e ́conomique

et sociale(nowAnnales. E ́conomies. Socie ́te ́s.

Civilisations). TheAnnalistes, originally based

in Strasbourg (a German city from 1871

to 1918) developed an integrative, synthe-

sizing and distinctively French style of ‘total

history’, in opposition to German historical

methods. Drawing ideas from sociology,

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ANNALES SCHOOL