Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
If, in even only a general sense, the idea of a knowledge society holds good, then
it obliges us to look again at the functions of the university as well as the wider
context in which it now operates. Historically, as Bjorn Wittrock (1985) has argued,
there are three models of the university operative in the West (archetypes if you
will), and in all cases the university held a virtual social monopoly on the creation
and dissemination of canonical as well as new formalised knowledge. In the British
model, the post-medieval university aimed to create the 'well-rounded' or 'whole'
person; in the French model, higher education was, as per Napoleon I's intentions,
geared to the national interest; fi nally, in the German, Humboldtian model, universi-
ties are geared to the pursuit of pure understanding. In the late 20th century, there
is plenty of evidence to suggest that Western universities have, en masse, moved
closer to the archetypal French model. They have, according to one line of criticism,
become 'corporatised' and very mindful of their contributions to 'national competi-
tiveness' and 'the public interest'. At the same time, it is clear that the near monopoly
that universities once held on the creation and dissemination of canonical, as well
as new, formalised knowledge has been challenged. Today, research and teaching
at a high level goes on, variously, in think tanks, foundations, non-governmental
organisations, charitable bodies, colleges funded by benefactors, large fi rms and
so on.
What has all this got to do with environmental geography? A good deal. Because
of its intellectual breadth, environmental geography - like its parent discipline - has,
historically, been able to meet the demands of
all three
models of the university.
Importantly, its inability to be disciplined by the demands of any one of these models
explains why, along with some other university subjects, it has been able to resist
current pressures to make universities 'relevant' in a fairly instrumental sense. The
knowledge that geographers produce, teach and disseminate outside the university
remains suffi ciently diverse that, while the latter pressures can be accommodated,
they do not 'skew' the discipline unduly.
Skewing presents real dangers to any fi eld. If, through fi nancial or other levers,
a discipline is steered heavily by outside interests, then there is the strong possibil-
ity exists for a reduction in epistemic diversity and the rise of new paradigms in
Kuhn's original, subject-wide sense. The possibilities are already evident in so-called
'big science', where huge resources are being channelled into certain lines of inquiry
but not others courtesy of biotechnology, biomedical, energy and pharmaceutical
fi rms - sometimes aided by national governments. But similar pressures are also
on the horizon (perhaps already here) for those disciplines that study human-
environment relations. The sort of 'land change science' discussed in Billie Lee
Turner's chapter is exciting, as are the closely related fi elds of 'earth system science'
and 'sustainability science'. (Similarly, the growing focus on payments for envi-
ronmental services, which engages many physical geographers in the measurement
of such services, can too easily become the servant of a naïve market environmen-
talism.) But they could, in time, become the focus of enormous intellectual and
fi scal inputs as societies become increasingly alarmed about global environmental
change. In the USA, we have already seen the Global Change Research Program
(created in 1990) become one of the largest ever foci of public research funds in
American history. As currently constituted, environmental geography's plurality
can make it a player in such grand endeavours yet without sacrifi cing its capacity
to offer multiple insights and perspectives on human-environment relations. Indeed,
environmental geographers were key players in the creation of the current 'global
