To Claim the High Ground: Geography for the End of the Century

Geography as an integral branch of knowledge has suffered by an increasing division both between physical and human geography and between specialisms within each. It is argued that neither physical nor human geography has a viable independent existence, but in the absence of a unified geography will disintegrate into component specialisms at risk of absorption by neighbouring disciplines. The case is made for a unified geography, derived from Forster and reinforced by the social commitment of Kropotkin, and the argument is illustrated by a consideration of population, resources and environmental hazard in coastal Bangladesh, the geography of which cannot be comprehended without a simultaneous consideration of both physical and human conditions. The nature of a unified and committed geography provides criteria for the selection of significant and critical problems for research, in place of the trivia too often studied, and thus supplies an agenda for the future.