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Article Excerpt
As geographers recently abroad, we have come to the sad realization that the United States is increasingly perceived as a mighty global power crippled by ignorance of its vast global sphere of influence. To address this problem, the American Geographical Society (AGS) is sponsoring expeditions, named in honor of former AGS Director Isaiah Bowman, who served as geographer for Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Informing the public and the U.S. government about world geography has long been a mission of the AGS, and now the Society renews this commitment.
The AGS Bowman Expeditions prototype began in Mexico in 2005 (LJWorld.com 2006; Herlihy and others 2007); other expeditions have begun to the Antilles, Colombia, and Jordan. These initial expeditions are funded by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO). Simply stated, the AGS sends a team of geographers to a selected foreign region, where, in order to increase U.S. and international understanding of that region, it gathers cultural and physical GIS data, conducts original research on a geographical topic chosen by the lead investigator, builds collaborative relationships with foreign scholars and institutions, and reports findings in scholarly journals and popular media. Most fundamentally, the concept of the AGS Bowman Expeditions is based on the belief that geographical understanding is essential for maintaining peace, resolving conflicts, and providing humanitarian assistance worldwide.
Troubled by intelligence failures, uninformed public debate, and related conflicts around the globe, AGS President Jerome Dobson "deplored the cost of geographic ignorance, measured in conflict" (2006a, 1; see also 2004, 20; 2005, 1; 2006b). He proposed the AGS Bowman Expenditions as a straightforward but ambitious plan to return geography to a more central place in higher education, science, and public policy circles. Past U.S. administrations relied on geographers in war and peace, and Dobson suggests that today's global and regional crises require new initiatives for geographical fieldwork and analysis. Regional geography and foreign-area studies are poised for a renaissance of relevance in a world fraught with intelligence failures, international misunderstandings, ethnic conflicts, terrorism, natural disasters, and other challenges to peace and prosperity.
In this report we describe the background, development, and methodology of the AGS Bowman Expedition prototype, Mexico Indigena, led by a multinational team of Latin Americanist geographers, ourselves among them. Our experience recalls the time when geography and geographers played greater roles in U.S. government affairs and demonstrates the need for a digital regional geography.
PAST FPIMSATIONS
The concept of the AGS Bowman Expeditions resurrects the early-twentieth-century notion of open access geographical intelligence, when the U.S. government worked closely with geographers to better understand the world. Forerunners in bridging the divide between academic geographers and the government, the AGS has a distinguished tradition of assisting the U.S. government in great enterprises, including Arctic exploration, the first transcontinental railroad, the first transatlantic telegraph cable, and the Panama Canal (Wright 1952). During World War I, President Wilson commissioned the AGS to run a massive analysis of wartime foreign intelligence ("the Inquiry"), and the Society was also responsible for drafting his famous Fourteen Points for peace negotiations (N. Smith 2003). In addition, the AGS sponsored significant geographical exploration, scholarship, and mapping of Latin America (Bowman 1946).
The discipline of geography entered the U.S. academy late: The first university department was not established until 1907. The fledgling discipline was thrust onto the world stage during World War I and came of age during World War II (Wright 1952; Stone 1979, 95; N. Smith 2003). In both wars, the knowledge of geographers was central in decision making. Indeed, World War II brought more than 300 geographers to Washington, D.C., en masse to work in U.S. government agencies engaged in the war effort (James and Martin 1981, 359-360).
A renowned geographer and statesman, Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950) was a stellar example of a geographer who served both academia and the government. Trained as a Latin Americanist geographer (Bowman 1909), he taught geography at Yale University from 1905 to 1915, and was director of the AGS from 1915 to 1935. He served as chief territorial adviser to President Wilson during World War I and as territorial adviser at the Department of State under President Roosevelt during World War II. His photograph graced the cover of Time magazine when he became president of the Johns Hopkins University in 1935, and he was later recognized as a key architect of the United Nations, a prolific author, and a leader in U.S. science and public policy (Wright 1952; N. Smith 2003).
The wartime corps of geographers worked in the Military Intelligence Service, Army Map Service, Office of Naval Research, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, and Department of State (Pruitt 1979; Stone 1979, 94; Barnes and Farish 2006, 815). The Office of Strategic Services (oss), established to collect and analyze information for military operations during World War II, had its own Geography Branch, organized by the geographer Richard Hartshorne. This unit became the single most important wartime institution employing U.S. geographers, and Preston James, Edward Ackerman, Edward Ullman, Chauncy Harris, Kirk Stone, and Arthur Robinson all worked there (Barnes and Farish 2006, 810, 813-814). Maps and basic geographical information were desperately needed for the war effort, so, unlike popular conceptions of espionage, a typical oss investigation might deal with every phase of geography as outlined in Carl O. Sauer's "Morphology of Landscape" (Wilson 1949, 310).
Most geographers returned to academe after World War II, ending their relationships with the federal government. Countering the disengagement, Evelyn Pruitt helped establish a novel Geography Program at the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in 1948 that funded and promoted geographical research, fulfilling the need to understand physical and cultural geography for U.S. naval operations while presenting a research model based on long-term funding of researchers, graduate students, and administrative staff, including the costs of extended travel and fieldwork overseas (ONR 1953; Pruitt 1979). It did not require that the research be applicable to military objectives, only that it contribute to geographical knowledge (Pruitt 1979, 104; Russell 1950). An Advisory Committee was set up to ensure success. Indeed, the first group supported included scholars who became some of the most accomplished twentieth-century U.S. geographers, among them Richard Russell, Walter Kollmorgen, Edward Ullman, Fred Kniffen, Robert West, John Weaver, and James Parsons (Pruitt 1979,104). These scholars set the bar high, not only for the ONR program but more broadly for the discipline.
The ONR Geography Program and research model provided foundational support for the "Berkeley School" of geography at the University of California-Berkeley. This tradition emerged under the direction of Carl Sauer during the 1930s and was historical in orientation, stressed the effects of human activities on environment, and focused on rural areas and non-Western societies (Speth 1999, 81). Sauer believed that the principal training of a geographer should come through fieldwork, and he stressed repeatedly that the greatest weakness of American geographers was their lack of experience in foreign areas (Sauer 1956; Pruitt 1979, 105; Parsons 1979, 12).
The program was the primary funding source for Sauer's Latin Americanist advisees, including luminaries Parsons and West.(1) The ONR model allowed Sauer to...
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