29th March 2018 marks the launch of CIGE’s Archive Afterlives project.
35 years since the launch of Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education (CIGE), a journal of the Association for Curriculum in Development in Geography (ACDG), this postdoctoral project takes up where my doctoral research and previous academic writing (Norcup 2015) left. It considers how CIGE’s material artefacts and correspondence archives might serve to inform contemporary discussions across geography and education. Through feminist and intersectional approaches akin to those anticipated in the pages of CIGE itself, Archive Afterlives considers the geographies of precarity, access, education, and knowledge making. It considers these in relation to recovering historiographies of dissenting makers of geographical knowledge, and how re-engaging with their ideas allows for new interdisciplinary ways of making both geographical education and educational geographies (Norcup 2016, Rabbits Road Institute / AlternativeSchoolofEconomics).
The first stage of this has been the digitising of the complete run of CIGE’s journals.
That the journals had been ‘lost’ from the recent past in the history of geographical education and from the historiography of Anglo-American Geography and the recent historiographies of radical and critical geography gives impetus for asking questions about how and why they became ‘lost’ and what caused them to be. It asks the question of who makes geographical knowledge and for what purposes and outcomes; of who is present and, more importantly, who is absent from this process. It asks questions of the geographies of power in the processes of geographical knowledge-making. Recovery and re-engagement with the essays and ideas contained within CIGE troubles the idea of geographical knowledge and the geographies of power that underwrite how the world is understood and engaged with. This is a prescient thing to do. Many of the essays in the theme issues, while contextually specific, nevertheless have strong resonances 35 years on: Geographies of race and racism, post-colonialism, global capitalism, Apartheid capitalism, global media and geographies of knowledge and power, war and peace, ecological crisis, geographies of gender, anarchism and making new geographies indicate that there are longer traditions of dissenting and alternative geographical knowledges than might otherwise be recorded, and these have a bearing on the way geographical knowledge is made, represented and produced. CIGE is part of that dissenting historiography of the discipline of Geography.
The original copies were made available to me by series editors Ian G Cook and Dawn Gill. Scanning and uploading them marks the first part of a short series of CIGE afterlives projects. It was decided that as the work was initially given for free to CIGE, this should be passed on and circulated for free in turn. Every issue of CIGE can be found below.
Over the next two years, projects will be updated via Geography Workshop site, and include:
- E-resources / e-pamphlets containing contemporary 21st century reflections on chosen essays from the series with accompanying teaching resource materials and wider reading and further links;
- a series of limited edition publications reproducing selected essays from the original series with commentaries from original authors and contemporary writers/artists/thinkers;
- Limited edition Art book on the aesthetics of CIGE;
- Online exhibition of selected digitised aspects of the CIGE archive.
This work is currently being funded by GeographyWorkshopProductionsLtd as a memorial to Dawn Gill (1949 – 2017).
Contemporary Issues in Geography and Education (CIGE): The Digitised Journals.
The PDF of each original issue can be found below the photo and summary of contributors.
Issue 1.1: Geography and Education for a Multicultural Society: Part 1.
Includes launch issue editorial about CIGE as well as other contributions by Dawn Gill, Ian G Cook, David Wright, Frances Slater.
Issue 1.2 Geography and Education for a Multicultural Society: Part 2
Includes contributions by Ian G Cook, William Bunge, Gwendolyn Warren, Anne Simpson, John Fein, Dawn Gill, ILEA Centre for Anti-racist education.
Issue 1.3: The Global Economy: Trade, Aid, and Multinationals.
Contributions by Anne Simpson, Geoff Mulgan (personal capacity), Hilary Scannell, John Huckle, Nancy Murray, Dawn Gill, Ian Cook, Mike Morrissey, Alan Sinclair, Linda Peake.
Issue 2.1 South Africa: Apartheid Capitalism.
Contributions by Dawn Gill, Deborah Potts, Carol Brickley, Phil O’Keefe, Barry Munslow, Barbara Rogers, Beverly Naidoo, Jora Sol, Ali Uc’ar, Martin Legassick, Chris Laidlaw, Bierce Gawaras, Freedom Mkhwanazi, Peter Kennard (artwork)
Issue 2.2: Confronting the Ecological Crisis
Contributions by John Huckle, Paul Keleman, Barbara Dinham, Charles Naylor, Julian Agyeman, David Pepper, Greg Richards, Andrew Sayer, Miriam Boyle, Michael Robinson, Stephen Sterling, David Hicks, Gill Rutter, Tim O’Riordan.
Issue 2.3: War and Peace
Contributions by Ian Cook, David Pepper, John Boaler, Arnold Westing, William Bunge, Sandra Winn, Jackie Lewis, Andrew P Hull, George Wallace, Brenda Spandler, Stan Openshaw, Peter Kennard (Artworks).
Issue 3.1: Gender and Geography
Contributions by members of the Women and Geography Study Group (WGSG) including Sarah Whatmore and Jo Little (theme editors), Sophie Bowlby, Liz Bondi, Linda Peake, Rachel Dixey, Jo Foord, Nichola Franchi, Kate Oliver, Maggie Pearson, Brekke Larson.
Issue 3.2: Anarchism and Geography
Contributions by Ian G Cook, David Pepper, Janis Newman, Dennis Hardy, Andrew Ward, Colin Ward, Myrna Breitbart, Michael Duane, Penny Newsmen, Jackie Lewis.