Introduction: Making Sense of Environmental Geography - A Companion to Environmental Geography - page 2

Economic Geog

Geomorphology

Political Geog

Hydrology

PHYSICAL HUMAN

Environmental
Geography

Social Geog

Ecology

GEOGRAPHY GEOGRAPHY

Cultural Geog

Quaternary

Historical Geog

Climatology

Figure 1.1 Environmental geography as disciplinary 'middle ground'.

(or what has sometimes also been called the 'human-environment' or 'man-land'
traditions of geography'). By whatever name, environmental geography occupies
the fertile 'borderlands' where geography's various traditions of scholarship - not
only human and physical, but also regional and GIS - come together and connect
with each other and with cognate traditions of environmental work outside geog-
raphy (fi gure 1.1).
Though the term is perhaps less familiar than are 'human' and 'physical' geog-
raphy, environmental geography deserves greater recognition both within and
beyond the discipline. As this Companion is designed to show, environmental geog-
raphy is much more than simply the residual intersection of geography's two halves.
Environmental geography is a large, diverse and vibrant fi eld of knowledge with
few, if any, equivalents elsewhere in the conventional academic division of labour.
The 32 chapters of this topic will, we hope, offer readers both an incisive and acces-
sible introduction to this fi eld and set the agenda for its future development.
What makes this topic distinctive is its catholic vision for environmental geog-
raphy. There are now myriad texts focusing on human or physical geography
respectively or some subfi eld thereof, including several previous Companions (see,
for instance, Agnew et al., 2001). There are also now numerous volumes focusing
on some specifi c approach to, or branch of, the study of human-environment rela-
tions, such as 'political ecology' (see, for instance, Robbins, 2004) or 'hazards
geography' (see, for instance, Pelling, 2003). What is long overdue is a topic that
demonstrates the size, breadth and multiplicity of geographical work at the people-
environment interface. In short, the Companion casts its net far wider than most
recent texts about one or other subfi eld of geography has been prepared to do. As
a result, the topic is not beholden to the now conventional view - among many
geographers at least - that geography comprises two 'halves' and only a vanishing
centre.
The volume has four parts: 'Concepts', 'Approaches', 'Practices' and 'Topics'.
They comprise epistemic 'cuts' into the body of environmental geography, four ways