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between the parties who might stand to gain through an epistemic encounter.
Though environmental geographers, like geographers writ large, would fi nd it far
easier to continue with business as usual, it would nonetheless be far more possible
(and desirable) to create an 'epistemic republicanism' within a generation than it
would be to create the sort of 'strong' intellectual unity and 'symmetrical' environ-
mental geography we have already discussed. Quite how one does this practically
speaking remains uncertain. It would doubtlessly require a small number of respected
intellectual leaders to set an example, along with a strong steer from professional
associations like the Association of American Geographers and from academic
journal editors too. It would also likely occur most readily by otherwise different
researchers communicating about shared and specifi c topical concerns or problem-
sets, such as water management, animal conservation and climate change.
Fortunately, we are not entirely bereft of precedents and current examples of
critical engagements between various strands of environmental geography. The
sheer diversity of environmental geography has presented researchers and teachers
with the possibility (if not the obligation) of becoming critical and creative synthe-
sisers. Contrast this with a discipline like economics, where intellectual plurality is
not tolerated nearly so much. In other words, the plain lack of orthodoxy in envi-
ronmental geography as a whole has arguably made it easier for certain individuals
to avoid encampment in one of other of its subfi elds. Think of Third World political
ecology, which is a critical synthesis and application of a plethora of otherwise dif-
ferent concepts, methods and approaches. Think of 'new resource geography',
which often combines neo-Marxist, institutionalist and Foucauldian concepts to
make sense of modern mining or forestry.
Environmental Geography in the 'Knowledge Society'
Most environmental geography, as this topic's contents attest, is produced in uni-
versities by professional academics. While the discipline and discourse of environ-
mental geography are not entirely academic - (researchers and) non-academics in
the environmental movement, for example, contribute richly to the discourse (see
Porritt [2005], for instance) - they are largely so. Though a seemingly banal obser-
vation, it actually strikes us as being quite important. To understand why, we need
to consider the meaning of the now-familiar term 'the knowledge society'.
As Fuller (2002) wryly notes, '...saying that we live in a 'knowledge society'
would seem to be no more informative than saying that we live in a 'power society'
or a 'money society'...' (p. 2). However, the term has a more precise meaning
that is associated variously with commentators like Peter Drucker, Daniel Bell and
Manuel Castells. In this more specifi c sense, the term denotes two distinct but related
shifts in knowledge that were initially characteristic of the advanced capitalist
economies but which are now more widespread. The fi rst is a deliberate move to
increase the range and volume of
formal
(as opposed to tacit) knowledge, something
coincident with its intensifi ed modularisation (as in the proliferation of software
systems that can perform specifi c functions; as in the profusion of different data-
bases, and so on). Second, 'the knowledge society' refers to an equally deliberate
move to
put this knowledge to work
in a variety of ways as a means, an end or
both - not the least of which is to make money ('commodifi ed knowledge', such as
patented gene codes). In this second sense, knowledge is not a goal in itself but,
instead, a medium for realising particular ends and an instrument for action.
