History, Geography, and Historical Geography

In 1986, 585 out of 5,686 members of the Association of American Geographers declared their allegiance to the Historical Geography Specialty Group; among 50 AAG specialty groups, the historical geographers ranked 7th. Yet one prominent human geographer regards historical geography as “overdetermined,” an “empty concept” conveying “few (if any) significant analytical distinctions” (Dear 1988: 270). Dear’s argument is that, by definition, all geography should be historical, since “the central object in human geography is to understand the simultaneity of time and space in structuring social process.” So the only subdisciplines of human geography which have any intellectual coherence are those focused on distinct processes—political, economic, social. To me, even this distinction is unrealistic and impracticable for research purposes. But Dear does not go so far as to argue that historical geography or other “overdetermined,” “multidimensional,” or “peripheral” subdisciplines are wrong, merely that they are incidental to geography’s “intellectual identity.”