On a number of recent occasions I've been asked just exactly what it is that I'm studying. I get these wonderfully puzzled looks when I tell people I'm studying geography--what is it, they want to know, that one does in a graduate geography program? It's about making maps, right? Their looks become more puzzled still when I tell them, well, yes and no--and then I try to explain.
A few weeks ago my department gave its comprehensive exam for the MA program. In hindsight, it occurred to me that the entire exam could have been built around the question what is geography?
Many of the times that I've been asked about this, I hit a stumbling block. My areas of interest converge around the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of geography--aspects that are as much theoretical as practical, abstract as concrete, and intangible as mappable. I'll mention something I'm reading and inevitably the response will be, "Isn't that really sociology [or anthropology, or philosophy, etc.]?" Yes, but...
I came to geography from a trail of other disciplines: archaeology and anthropology, criminology, psychology. I've always loved the potential for cross-pollenation, the inspiration that one field can take from another. To me, geography has provided the perfect synthesis of all these fields and more, all tied together by the thread of place. It all makes perfect sense to me--but explaining this on the spot to someone of the conviction that all social sciences should fall into discrete boxes is a challenge. And really, I'm not so good at off-the-cuff kinds of things.
In the end, I usually return to what has become sort of a mantra for me: If you can use the words space, place, landscape, or topography, chances are a geographer is interested in it. And that's what I plan on talking about here. Pigeonholes be damned.
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