Tradition and Paternity: Same Difference?

plinary practice, both theoretical and institutional, is produced. The writing of certain kinds of pasts is legitimated by, and legitimates, only certain kinds of presents. In particular, I am interested in the ways in which the construction of geographical traditions is, at the same time, the construction of sameness and difference. Even more specifically, this essay concentrates on the ways gendered sameness and difference is constituted through some recent accounts of geographical traditions. Traditions are constructed: written, spoken, visualized, taught, lived. Traditions are representations of a past and the specific aspect of this complex process of representation I want to consider is the way in which the construction of a particular tradition is also always a practice of inclusion and exclusion. In terms of geographical traditionalizing, certain people or kinds of people are included as relevant to the tradition under construction and others are deemed irrelevant. In Stoddart's (1991) account, for example, only those who conformed to his notion of modem scientific research -