Introduction: Making Sense of Environmental Geography - A Companion to Environmental Geography - page 3

of organising a wide-ranging set of contributions. In each case, authors were asked
to address some specifi c issue or aspect of this broader terrain. Consequently, each
chapter can be read alone and in no particular order since their authors were not
instructed to formally situate their 'part' within a wider 'whole'. As even a quick
glance at the chapter titles reveals, these parts together cover an enormous range of
material and perspectives. We trust that this will make the Companion a lively,
interesting and synoptic account of the fi eld. Depending on your background and
predilections, there will be material in this topic that is (variously) familiar, surpris-
ing, challenging and even unsettling. Specialists will fi nd insightful discussions of
the 'state of the art' in specifi c conceptual, methodological and topical areas. Teach-
ers should fi nd the chapters to be useful pedagogical resources, while for students
of geography and related fi elds, it offers accessible introductions to a wide range of
key ideas, methods and debates. In all cases, the Companion aims to be as intelligible
to readers with no geographic education as to those who have studied or practised
geography for years. Indeed, a key claim of the topic is that the fi eld and discourse
of environmental geography exceed the discipline of geography. At the same time,
it is important to note that although the fi eld of environmental geography is increas-
ingly international in its scope and membership, our contributors hail largely, but
by no means exclusively from the UK and North America. In part, this is a function
of our own personal and professional histories of living, studying and working on
both sides of the Atlantic. (The anglophone focus of this Companion partly refl ects
the barriers which need to be overcome to create a truly international environmental
geography, although some contributions certainly acknowledge the considerable
infl uence of non-English-speaking theorists and analysts of environment [in envi-
ronmental discourses or development theory for example] and cite important inter-
national collaborative work [in land science for example].)
Rather than trying to summarise the contents of each and every chapter, we want
instead to provide an overview of the wider landscape of research, practice and
knowledge to which they contribute. As a result, the next three sections of this
introduction are devoted to making sense of the complicated intellectual landscape
that is environmental geography. There are a number of important and interesting
issues to consider here, starting with defi nitional ones.
Defi ning Environmental Geography
The term 'environmental geography' is not one that most geographers to whom it
could reasonably apply usually use to identify themselves or their work. Instead,
geographers more typically imagine their discipline as one of two halves - human
and physical. Within those two broad churches, there are numerous subfi elds, like
economic geography or geomorphology, with which specialists identify. Although
activity and interaction between human and physical geography (e.g., by geogra-
phers of 'natural hazards' and 'natural resources') is being increasingly acknowl-
edged, through, for example, various conference sessions designed to speak across
'the divide' (e.g., Harrison et al., 2004), this dualism still dominates the organisation
of the discipline in which Progress in Physical Geography is imagined as something
separate from Progress in Human Geography (these names, for readers unfamiliar
with them, refer to two leading geography journals).
This view of things may surprise non-geographers or pre-university geography
students. After all, geography's public image is partly that of an 'integrative' disci-