Past‐president's address: is geography (the discipline) sustainable without geography (the subject)?

We commonly define geography as the ‘integrative’ discipline, but there is more rhetoric than reality in the notion that our discipline has a coherent view of the world. Academic geography is dominated by increasingly esoteric topical specialties, and too often practiced as if it didn't exist outside the universities. By ignoring the popular conception of what geography is, we foster a dangerous opposition between geography as a popular subject and geography as a discipline. I argue that the survival of the discipline requires a collective rediscovery of a common core, which could be built around ‘regional’ geography—not the outmoded capes, bays and main export regional geography of the past, but one informed by modern theory, and attending to causal structures rooted in current realities. Our introductory courses are the best place to demonstrate a renewed commitment to a holistic geography grounded in an understanding of the world. Eclectic, curiosity‐driven research is also essential to the survival of the discipline, but disciplinary diversity is a strength only if it is grounded in an identifiable core. Excessive pluralism and intellectual arrogance may lead to ‘disciplinocide’.