Federico Ferretti

This paper discusses ideas of anarchist (historical) geographies of rivers and seas. It does so by addressing works of early anarchist geographer Lev Ilich Mechnikov (mentioned here with the more known French spelling L eon Metchnikoff) (1838-1888), which lie at the origin of broader 'Mediterranean metaphors' comparing the globalising role of oceanic navigation to early Mediterranean connectedness, mainly discussed by Metchnikoff in his key book La civilisation et les grands fleuves historiques [Civilisation and Great Historical Rivers]. A close collaborator of Elis ee Reclus and Peter Kropotkin and a multifarious scholarly talent, Metchnikoff provided contributions that still need to be fully rediscovered. Based on a systematic reading of Metchnikoff's archives and works, I argue that, starting from historical rivers and the early Mediterranean, his ideas on the historical roles that can be possibly (and relationally) played by water-land assemblages can nourish current notions of more-than-wet ontologies and critical geopolitics. Eventually, these ideas provide models for understanding spatialities that are alternative to those of state borders, bounded land and terracentric territorialities, contributing to shape the open and boundless world that is currently conceived by scholarship informed to pluriversal notions of critical Mediterraneanism.

This introduction to the special issue Reflections on Histories and Philosophies of Geography discusses the context and content of nineteen articles written to mark the fortieth anniversary of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGSIBG). The group was founded in 1981, two years after the early career researchers who set up the group, Richard T. Harrison and David N. Livingstone, published jointly their first critical interventions in support of human geography's paradigmatic shift away from positivism, based on an early form of social constructivist argumentation. We argue that the subsequent proliferation of epistemic pluralism, which is discussed in the contributions to this special issue and has characterised the activities organised by the HPGRG, exemplifies the considerable value of three historiographical practices: first, engaging with the history and philosophy of geography collectively in one research group; second, situating methodologies within the history and philosophy of geography; and third, critically interrogating the discipline's evolving geographical knowledges, professional practices, and material cultures from different authorial positionalities.

This paper proposes new perspectives on anarchism, indigeneity and Afro-descendent struggles, by discussing the case of Brazilian anarchists' commitment to luta afroindígena. They mean by this term the intersection of indigenous and Afro-descendant resistances for the recognition of land, against the violence of states, agribusiness and extractivism. I argue that this case offers key insights to radical geographies, and to the broader field of decolonial scholarship, to challenge cultural and racial essentialisms by connecting different militant traditions. I also argue that, taking inspiration from indigenous thought and socio-territorial practices of broader Latin American social movements, these cases enhance decolonial bids for 'decolonising methodologies' by showing the importance of starting from practices before theory. My arguments are based on documentary work on past and present relations between anarchism and decoloniality in Latin America/Abya Yala, on personal militant work in Brazil/Pindorama and on a sample of qualitative interviews with activists.

This paper aims at calling geographers’ attention to the works of Italian historical demographer Massimo Livi Bacci, who authored fundamental texts on the indigenous genocide in the Americas, on the history of world population, on global migrations and on population’s environmental ‘sustainability’. In denouncing colonial crimes, critically questioning commonplaces of Malthusian origin and challenging sovereignist prejudices against migrations, Livi Bacci stresses the need for scholars to fully address the complex relations between space and population in both analyses of empirical cases and elaborations of broader theoretical models. He explicitly raises geopolitical matters on the potential political consequences of demographic and migratory dynamics. Yet, Livi Bacci’s huge scholarly production is highly influential among historians and demographers, but seems to have been overlooked by most geographers hitherto. For these reasons, I argue that scholars committed to critical, radical and decolonial geographies of population (past and present) should (re)discover Livi Bacci’s contributions. Re-reading Livi Bacci’s works through geographical lenses and connecting them with current geographical scholarship, I show how ‘geo-demography’ can help geographers to address demographic matters at different scales, by providing insights for a new critical geo-history of population. This interdisciplinary engagement with the relations between geopolitical matters on sustainability and the ongoing changing in global population has the potential to plurally nourish critical geographical agendas, including on global migrations and colonial legacies.

In this short paper, I contend that the history and philosophy of geography should be considered as an indispensable scholarly field to nourish both theoretical speculations about geography and ongoing scholars' political and social engagement towards critical, radical, decolonial, feminist and antiracist geographies. I argue that rediscovering 'other geographical traditions' is paramount to these scholarly and political agendas. After briefly exposing my political and theoretical references, I discuss the example of the work of anarchist, feminist and anticolonial activist Louise Michel (1830-1905) to make the case for the inclusion of new figures and ideas in the field of new decolonial, multilingual and pluralist histories of geography.

From the presentation given to the Special Session: ‘40 Years of HPGRG – Looking Back and Looking Forward’, a one-day symposium of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG/RGS-IBG), 7 September 2021.

This paper discusses the story of a generous popular mobilisation that made possible a peculiar experience of transnational cooperation since the early 1970s. That is, the campaigns in solidarity with Mozambican anticolonial resistance that made the small town of Reggio Emilia (Italy) a key place in the processes of Lusophone Africa decolonization, to the point that an oftentold anecdote reports that many Mozambican people sympathetic with anti-colonialist organisation Frelimo believed that Reggio Emilia was the 'capital' of Italy. Indeed, it was mostly from the Emilian town that concrete aid arrived from Italy to Frelimo's clandestine guerrilla bases between Tanzania and Northern Mozambique. Based on the exceptional archives surviving in Reggio, which abundantly document the Reggio-Africa solidarity experience showing that it was not limited to Mozambique, and on original interviews with surviving protagonists, this paper extends and connects for the first time literature on city diplomacy with scholarship on critical, subaltern and liminal geopolitics of decolonization. I especially argue for giving more consideration to a 'radical city diplomacy', which provides examples for constructing geopolitical challenges form below to the state and the territorial models that have dominated mainstream geopolitics hitherto.

This paper reassesses and rediscovers the intellectual legacy of French geographer Eric Dardel (1899-1967). First discovered by geographers in the 1970s and 1980s, Dardel's book L'Homme et la Terre was considered as a work predating alternatively humanistic approaches and postmodern critiques of positivism, which justifies why it passed substantially unperceived when it was first published in 1952. Yet, most of these authors have manifestly only read that book despite Dardel's production was much larger, labelling Dardel as a 'phenomenologist' in a quite reductive way. Drawing upon recent literature on material agency and on phenomenology/post-phenomenology in geography, and based on the analysis of Dardel's complete body of work, I argue that the contribution of the French geographer cannot be reduced to matters of phenomenology and subjective perception. To this end, I especially focus on Dardel's references to the nineteenth-century tradition of Naturphilosophie that argued for a consubstantiality of 'humankind' and 'nature'. Hence, I show how Dardel's willingness to take seriously the materiality and agency of 'the Earth' through his notion of géographicité [geographicity or geographicalness] can give new and original insights to current geographies dealing with materiality, affect, human-nature hybridity and relational ontologies. Questioning dualisms such as humankind/nature, subject/object and nature/culture, early geographical understandings of the planet as a complex living being can foster the relevance of geography for both the 'material turn' advocating for plural agencies and for critical debates denying the principle of human supremacy over the planet.

This paper analyses the notion of Mediterranean 'Southern Thought' discussed by Italian philosopher Franco Cassano (1943-2021), through the lenses of critical geographical and geopolitical scholarship, drawing upon the concept of 'costal indentation' as addressed by one of its main interpreters, anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus (1830-1905). Southern Thought is increasingly associated with decolonial and post-development approaches, especially with notions such as degrowth, and the 'pluriverse'. It is first and foremost understood as an antidogmatic philosophy that opposes all fanaticisms and narrow (political, cultural or ethnic) chauvinisms, including the dogmas of development, market, speed and productivity coming from (neo)colonial 'Norths' to foster pluralism and mutual listening. Connecting and putting into dialogue different strands of scholarship in critical geopolitics and decoloniality, I first contend that Southern Thought can help enlarging geographical notions of plural Souths to avoid essentialising any single notion of 'Global South', or 'Southern Theory', which would imply the risk of reproducing new dogmatisms. Then, I argue that Southern Thought can engage productively with geography, and especially with scholarship in critical geopolitics addressing global crises such as the migrant and refugees one, in learning from these plural 'Souths' (including Southern Europe and the Mediterranean) to find alternative models to that of the nation-state based on territorial sovereignty and bound to territorial 'traps'.

This paper addresses matters of anticolonialist, anti-fascist and feminist geopoetics, analysing a case that is virtually unknown to Anglophone geographical readerships, namely the transnational trajectories and literary works of Italian activist, writer and translator Joyce Lussu (1912-1998). Drawing upon recent literature on geopoetics and literary geographies that commit to produce and analyse 'hybrid texts', I extend and put in communication for the first time scholarship on antifascist transnational geographies and literature on decolonial and feminist geopoetics, by discussing Lussu's exceptional biographical and literary experience, one that first shows the importance of coherence between life and texts. Lussu practiced plural, multilingual and transnational ways to construct (feminist and radical) non-elitist knowledge by taking part in anti-fascist exile and resistance in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, she supported 'Third World' anticolonial and revolutionary movements by translating and internationally circulating poems from politically committed authors, especially from Western Asia and Lusophone Africa. Finally, I contend that Lussu's nonconformist feminism, that she understood as an inclusive antiauthoritarian notion for the construction of a renewed society by deconstructing masculine institutions such as the State, the Church and the Army, can speak powerfully to current debates on scholarly and political dissidences.

Based on new archival documents and on original interviews, this article extends recent works exploring radical and critical geographies from linguistic areas other than the Anglo-American ones. It addresses the extraordinary story of the two international meetings for the "New Geography" that took place in Salto, Uruguay, in 1973 and in Neuqu en, Argentina, in 1974, still ill-known due to the military dictatorships in the Southern Cone, which forced many of their protagonists to exile or to professional reconversion. Analyzing surviving documents and reconstructing the trajectories of these gatherings' protagonists allows the development of an original point for today's critical and radical geographies. That is, the frameworks of national academies are insufficient to develop critical approaches that need first to be constructed through practices rather than mere theories, addressing societal problems in connection with activism.

When it comes to the 'History of Geography', many still think of something descriptive and conservative, which has virtually no links with the 'future', a metaphorical place where 'progress' and 'advancements' are usually located. The existence of such feelings exposes how some lingering positivistic views still remain in parts of the discipline that claimed to have got rid of positivism. In this commentary, we contend that the history of geography can play an important role in reimagining the future of the discipline. First, drawing upon our own research experience and extending recent literature on 'geographical futures', we expose why the history of geography is making increasingly important contributions to key discussions in a plural and evolving discipline. We especially focus on the ongoing pluralistic and multilingual rediscovery of 'other geographical traditions' that is enriching critical, radical, and feminist approaches to geography. Next, we propose to enrich the field of geography and its prevailing 'Western' origin stories by engaging in pluriversal dialogues with Indigenous knowledge and practices, focusing on Latin America and on decolonial notions such as cosmohistory, which show that there are many histories of geography, and they all matter for the futures of the discipline.

This short commentary results from my enthusiastic reception of the call launched by the editors of Political Geography (PG) for the Virtual Forum 'The Geographies of Political Geography'. I was especially intrigued by their reflection on the need to consider the contexts and positionalities from which scholars write, which matches concerns that are widely assumed in fields such as historical geography and intellectual history. To understand the ways in which knowledge is produced, it is indispensable to reflect on its places, contexts and mobilities. Reflecting on the PG papers that have played a special role in informing one's research is a useful exercise for all of us to rethink our own research trajectories at certain moments in our careers in order to understand scholarship in-making. Indeed, the formal references that we usually make to the works and suggestions of other colleagues, such as citations and final acknowledgements, are not always sufficient to fully account for the multiple ways in which others can inspire our own scholarship.

Drawing upon international literature about breaking coloniality by removing its monuments that was inspired by movements such as ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’, I address what can be defined a counter-case. While confirming the reasons for contesting the symbols of oppressive powers, this case exposes an alternative tradition of monuments that were not erected by states, churches or colonial companies but by combative workers. I refer to the some of the dozens of anarchist statues and marble plaques that are disseminated in Carrara (Italy) and in the surrounding villages to keep memory of facts and figures of local workers movements and antifascist resistance. The Italian capital of marble, Carrara is also a historical stronghold of class-struggle anarchism and anarcho-syndicalist unions of marble workers. These monuments often correspond to places of popular sociability in specific squares, neighbourhoods or villages, and are still places of memorial contentions. Based on the analysis of documents from Italian anarchist archives and on numerous field visits, this paper also extends literature on the material turn in cultural and historical geography, analysing the symbolic and material relevance of Carrara marble matter for local workers. I finally call for a militant historical geography of monuments, one that can be relevant to political and societal debates by boldly and outspokenly saying which statues must fall and which must stand.

Este artigo aborda o engajamento global de alguns intelectuais africanos que lutaram pela independência da África lusófona. Para tanto, este estudo utiliza um enfoque geopolítico, baseado em arquivos recentemente disponibilizados em diversas formas e multilíngues. Ampliando a pesquisa acadêmica dedicada à geopolítica subalterna, culturas de descolonização e estudos críticos de desenvolvimento, eu demonstro a performance de diplomacias subalternas conduzida por líderes políticos como Amílcar Cabral, Mário Pinto de Andrade, Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane e Marcelino dos Santos, no sentido de chamar a atenção para as suas causas em meio a acadêmicos, ativistas e políticos de diferentes níveis (de movimentos de base a líderes de Estado e organizações internacionais) através das divisões entre os blocos da Guerra Fria e os campos do “Primeiro”, do “Segundo” e do “Terceiro” Mundos. Meu argumento é que esses esforços terminaram por abalar narrativas predominantes de desenvolvimento e ideias eurocentradas de assimilação, parcialmente devido a sua ênfase na educação e na produção de histórias e geografias subalternas que foram instrumentais para a construção nacional de novos países descolonizados oriundos da então chamada “África Portuguesa”. Na década de 1960 e no início da década de 1970, esses intelectuais usaram as armas da cultura, da comunicação pública e da formação de redes transnacionais enquanto dispositivos que foram tão importantes quanto os resultados alcançados por seus companheiros guerrilheiros em campos de batalha. Além disso, essas narrativas confirmam a importância dos arquivos para a reconstituição de redes cosmopolitas, multilíngues e diaspóricas, bem como de sua espacialidade, além de permitirem a elaboração de uma geopolítica crítica a partir de perspectivas que não sejam centradas a partir do Ocidente ou de um ponto de vista anglófono, o que leva, desse modo, à decolonização da geografia.

This paper explores the contributions of authors who worked in the first Brazilian universities-the Universidade de São Paulo, founded in 1934, and the Universidade do Distrito Federal, founded in 1935-and became internationally influential, by focusing on their acquaintance with European (and especially French) colleagues who contributed to the "University Missions" in Brazil. These scholars built anti-racist approaches to understanding Brazilian racialised and marginalised communities and developed ideas on tropicality that challenged classical European views of an alleged "inferiority" of tropical people and their lands, based on environmental determinism or scientific racism. These anti-racist views of the tropics, which I call "social tropicalism", acquired international renown thanks to the publications of Brazilian geographer Josué de Castro (1908-1973). Based on new archives and drawing upon recent literature on tropicality and post/decoloniality, I analyse Castro's early networking with other transnational scholars such as French sociologist Roger Bastide (1898-1974) and Brazilian anthropologist Artur Ramos (1903-1949). Discussing these intellectual exchanges allows for an appreciation of the Brazilian social science "hub" organized around these early universities, and the way they contributed to shape critical scholarly thinking and challenged traditional views on the South as a "tributary" of Northern theories.

Questo articolo traccia una connessione tra le tradizioni laiche, federaliste e libertarie del Risorgimento e la nascita della Federazione Italiana della Prima Internazionale. Lo fa a partire da una riflessione sulle varie geografie che durante il Risorgimento furono usate per prefigurare il nuovo modello di nazione, che dimostrano come le opzioni federaliste furono da sempre le più radicali e le più vicine alle origini del movimento socialista e libertario. Questo non solo e non tanto per l'idea di decentramento amministrativo e per l'intransigente repubblicanesimo di autori e militanti che fortemente opposero il centralismo, il militarismo e il colonialismo (interno ed esterno) della Casa Savoia artefice dell'unificazione formale dello Stato italiano, ma anche perché, come ampiamente dimostrato dalle fonti disponibili, il federalismo risorgimentale era ben lontano dal limitarsi ad una opzione amministrativa o regionalistica. Esso si associava ad una idea di decentramento decisionale, valorizzazione dell'individuo e democrazia diretta che caratterizzarono anche quei federalisti che, come Carlo Cattaneo, non si avvicinarono esplicitamente al socialismo, quanto meno non a quello autoritario, ma mantennero coerenti posizioni antiautoritarie e internazionaliste.

Cet article analyse les contributions d’auteurs qui ont travaillé dans les premières universités brésiliennes – notamment l’Universidade de São Paulo, fondée en 1934, et l’Universidade do Distrito Federal, fondée en 1935 – et qui ont acquis une influence internationale, en s’intéressant à leurs relations avec des collègues européens (et surtout français) ayant contribué aux « missions universitaires » au Brésil. Ces chercheurs ont élaboré des raisonnements antiracistes pour comprendre les communautés racialisées brésiliennes et développé des idées sur la tropicalité qui remettaient en question les conceptions classiques européennes sur une prétendue « infériorité » des peuples tropicaux et de leurs terres, fondée sur le déterminisme environnemental ou sur le racisme scientifique. Ces visions antiracistes des tropiques, que j’appelle « tropicalisme social », ont acquis une renommée internationale grâce aux publications du géographe brésilien Josué de Castro (1908-1973). Sur la base de nouvelles archives et de la littérature récente sur la tropicalité et la (post-)décolonialité, j’analyse les premiers réseaux de Castro avec d’autres chercheurs transnationaux, tels que le sociologue français Roger Bastide (1898-1974) et l’anthropologue brésilien Artur Ramos (1903-1949). Examiner ces échanges intellectuels permet d’apprécier le « hub » brésilien des sciences sociales organisé autour de ces premières universités et la façon dont celui-ci a contribué à nourrir la pensée critique et à remettre en question des visions traditionnelles du Sud en tant que simple récepteur des théories venant du Nord.

This paper addresses the ethical and scholarly relevance of notions such as anti-fascism and resistance for the field of critical and radical geographies, starting from a little-known case, that is the formation of early critical geographies in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Drawing upon ideas of civic virtue and non-domination as red by radical and anarchist traditions, I analyse the recently-opened archives of Lucio Gambi (1920-2006), which contain unpublished correspondence revealing the fearless role that this critical historical geographer played in denouncing at the same time the outdated positivistic, conservative and descriptive legacies of Italian geography and the frightful prominence of former Fascist officials in that field. Addressing works of Gambi, of his friend and fellow of the 1943-45 antifascist Resistance, geographer Giuseppe Barbieri (1923-2004) and of the collective Geografia Democratica (1974-1981), I argue for recognising the importance, for critical geographers, of fighting against authoritarianism by adopting values of civic virtue, standing proudly against academic opportunism and political conservatism within and outside campuses, past and present.

History and philosophy of geography III: Global histories of geography, statues that must fall and a radical and multilingual turn Abstract. Finishing my triennial series of reports on the increasingly vibrant (and still much neglected) field of the history and philosophy of geography (HPG), I first discuss how some trends that I identified are continuing, such as a growing drive toward internationalisation and multilingualism and an increasing engagement with decolonial themes and histories of radical activism inside and outside the academically defined field of geography. I conclude with a call to go further in fostering cosmopolitanism, multilingualism and epistemic inclusion as a way to contribute to decolonise geography starting by its amazing philosophies and histories.

Abstract: This paper discusses the relevance of radical scholarship by exploring the case of the Centre International pour le Développement (CID), founded by Brazilian geographer Josué de Castro during his exile in Paris. Drawing upon Latin American works on the Lettered City and the evolving role of intellectuals in constructing critical knowledge, I explore new archives revealing the CID’s daily (net)working. My argument is that this case suggests new interpretations of the notion of ‘Lettered City’, exposing slipperiness and potentialities of radical intellectuals’ roles in influencing politics and proposing solutions for global problems. On the one hand, despite Castro’s international renown, the CID failed in its mission of involving politicians and ‘enlightened’ businessmen during the Cold War because its purposes clashed with the interests of most of its interlocutors. On the other, the CID’s archives show that Castro performed a powerful global networking to circulate ideas that still inspire radical geographers.   

Resumo: Esse artigo discute a relevância da pesquisa radical explorando o caso do Centre International pour le Développement (CID) fundado pelo geógrafo brasileiro Josué de Castro durante seu exílio em Paris. Inspirado por trabalhos latino-americanos sobre a “Cidade das Letras” e a evolução do papel dos intelectuais na construção de saberes críticos, exploro novos arquivos que revelam as redes e o funcionamento quotidiano do CID. Defendo que esse caso sugere novas interpretações do conceito de Cidade das Letras, demonstrando as ambiguidades e potencialidades do papel dos intelectuais radicais para influenciar a política e propor soluções para problemas globais. Apesar da fama internacional de Josué, o CID falhou na sua missão de implicar políticos e empresários ‘iluminados’ durante a Guerra Fria, porque os propósitos dele contrastavam com os de seus interlocutores. Do outro lado, os arquivos do CID mostram como Josué organizou uma poderosa rede global de comunicação para difundir ideias que ainda inspiram as geografias radicais.

This paper addresses the engagement of critical geographers from Northeastern Brazil with regional planning, aiming at transforming society by acting on their region's spaces. Extending and putting in relation literature on planning theory in the Global South and geographical scholarship on decoloniality, I explore new archives showing how the planning work that these geographers performed from 1957 to 1964 was an example of the 'South' reelaborating and putting into practice notions arising from 'international' literature, such as that of 'active geography', and pioneering critical uses of instruments, such as mappings and statistics, that have often been associated with technocracy and political conservatism. Connected with peasants' struggles and with a theoretical framework that is cognisant of the colonial histories and insurgent Black and indigenous traditions in the Northeast, these geographers' works show that there is no 'Southern Theory' without a concrete engagement of scholars with social and political problems, one which is not limited to 'participation', but aims at challenging the political powers in place. Although not devoid of contradictions that are analysed here, the experiences of these Southern geographers acting in and for the South can provide precious insights into current (Northern or Southern) scholarly programmes aimed at resisting oppression.

This paper analyses the anti-colonialist commitment of a circuit of French geographers who variously criticised French colonialism or directly contributed to decolonisation movements in Africa in the central decades of the twentieth century. Based on the analysis of works and unpublished archives of these scholars and activists, I argue that their work can be considered as a specific French contribution to early critical and radical geographies, exposing the complexity and diversity which constitutes the plurality of geographical traditions, to be understood through their stories of political dissidence. I extend current scholarship analysing histories and theories around the movement of 'radical geography' as well as geographers' works on decolonisation, postcolonialism, and anticolonialism, stressing the need for diversifying geographical research's standpoints beyond Western canons. I especially call for rediscovering other critical and radical geographical traditions from outside the Anglosphere, eventually French anti-colonialist geographies, whose exponents directly collaborated with colleagues from the South, especially the Maghreb and Western Africa. Studying these traditions is indispensable to decolonise geography and make it more international, cosmopolite, and activist. This paper also extends recent contributions demonstrating that, in imperial ages, geography showed more potentiality for inspiring political dissidence than what was commonly believed. This paper analyses French anti-colonialist geographies of the mid-twentieth century and their relations with decolonisation movements, especially in the Maghreb and Western Africa. Having consulted original texts and archival sources, I reconstruct works and networks of French geographers who variously criticised colonialism or contributed to Africa's

This paper addresses the global engagement of certain African intellectuals who strove for the independence of Lusophone Africa. It does so using geopolitical lenses based on new and multilingual archives. Extending current scholarship on subaltern geopolitics, cultures of decolonisation, and critical development studies, I show the performance of the subaltern diplomacies deployed by political leaders such as Amílcar Cabral, Mário Pinto de Andrade, Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, and Marcelino dos Santos in capturing international sympathy for their cause from other scholars, activists, and politicians at different levels (from grassroots movements to state leaders and international organisations) across the divides between Cold War blocs and the fields of the 'First', 'Second', and 'Third World'. I argue that these endeavours disrupted mainstream narratives of development and Euro-centred ideas of assimilation, partly due to their emphasis on education and the production of subaltern histories and geographies that were instrumental to the national construction of new decolonised countries from so-called 'Portuguese Africa'. In the 1960s and early 1970s, these intellectuals used the weapons of culture, public communication, and transnational networking as devices that were as important as the accomplishments of their fellow guerrilla fighters in the battlefield. Additionally, these stories confirm the importance of the archive for tracing cosmopolite, multilingual, and diasporic networks and their spatiality, as well as for doing critical geopolitics from perspectives other than Anglo-or Western-centred ones, thus decolonising geography.

Publications in the field of history and philosophy of geography have shown increasing vibrancy and consistent alignments around some key foci. These are, first, a renewed engagement with biographies and autobiographies , which is part of wider rediscoveries of individuals as concrete actors in the construction of knowledge. Second, a draw towards interdisciplinarity in reassessing practices such as exploration, mapping and publishing, in connection with broader trends in intellectual history. Third, a continuing interest in topics coming from the 'margins' of mainstream Anglophone scholarship.

This paper addresses the notion of geopoetics, arguing for a decolonial rediscovery of ideas and practices associated with this concept through authors, narratives and (geo)poetical traditions from the Global South. For this purpose, I analyse a body of narrative work, poetry and archives by Brazilian geographers Mauro Mota and Josué de Castro, inserting their texts into the cultural and environmental contexts of their region, the Northeast of Brazil, which is characterised by ethnic hybridity and a history of anti-colonial insurgency from socially and racially marginalised groups. Extending and putting into relation literature on geopoetics, on the 'creative (re)turn' in geography and on the Global South as a notion associated with subaltern spaces and geographies of resistance, I argue for geopoetics as an engaged, activist, cosmopolitan, anti-racist and de-colonial field of study, one which has the potential of extending the disciplinary reach of cultural geography. The literary works of these Northeastern geographers provide important contributions for blurring the classical European epistemological divide between nature and culture by addressing ideas on more-than-human hybridity associated with Northeastern environments, as well as indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultural and ethical legacies.

This paper explores the relations to Africa and African decolonisation of three key figures in Brazilian critical geographies and development studies, Manuel Correia de Andrade (1922-2007), Josué de Castro (1908-1973) and Milton Santos (1926-2001). Based on the analysis of their works and unpublished archives, my main argument is that the radical Third World perspectives that these intellectuals expressed anticipated later critiques to ideas of development as a neocolonial device. Drawing upon current literature on decolonisation, international conferencing and anti-racist solidarity networks, I discuss these matters in relation to these authors' interest in cultural diversity and internal colonialism. Crucially, they developed this sensitivity in the Brazilian Northeast, a region especially shaped by Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cultural legacies. While supporting anti-imperialist nationalisms in the Third World, these Brazilian scholars fostered multilingual, internationalist and cosmopolite activism and scholarship. This is revealed by the study of the transnational networks that they developed during the exile and the various persecutions that many of them suffered after the 1964 military coup. I finally argue that these works can substantiate recent claims to 'decolonize' geography and development studies, at the condition that these fields of study take seriously their anti-imperial traditions and their 'voices from the South'.

This paper argues for building bridges between humanistic geographical traditions and current post-humanistic approaches destabilising the centrality and the very epistemological status of the human subject. Extending and putting in relation recent literature highlighting the possible continuities over the ruptures between these traditions and feminist scholarship arguing for the political relevancy of intimate writings and emotional geographies, I analyse an exceptional archival document recently discovered in the Anne Buttimer archives at University College Dublin: Buttimer's travel diary relating her 1965-1966 trips to France and continental Europe, when she began to build her transnational and multilingual scholarly networks. Buttimer was one of the first geographers to explore "lifeworlds", and this document simultaneously reveals the emotional experiences of discovery and the role played in that by circumstances and external agencies decentring and problematising subjective intentionality. These journeys profoundly affected Buttimer's early scholarly career, leading to her first critical questionings of the institutions in which she was inserted. Complementing recent claims for a "new humanism" taking onboard the critiques coming from scholars informed by "anti/posthumanism", I argue that the mobility, situatedness and relational nature of in-becoming subjects, at the same time acting and being acted, allows for reconsidering human

Starting from the conclusion of the previous report on the history and philosophy of geography (Keighren 2018), this report assesses the 'state of the art' of current attempts to make this field of studies more inclusive and to foster the increasing acknowledgement of geography's plural pasts. It does so by analysing scholarship published this year (including contributions from outside the Anglosphere), which rediscovers geographical traditions other than Northern ones, diversifies archives and places by including feminist, decolonial and subaltern outlooks, and addresses geographical traditions in radicalism and activism, increasingly connecting this field of studies with wider scholarly and political debates.

This paper addresses works and archives of transnational anarchist intellectual Marie-Louise Berneri (1918-1949), author of a neglected but very insightful history of utopias and of their spaces. Extending current literature on anarchist geographies, utopianism and on the relation between geography and the humanities, I argue that a distinction between authoritarian and libertarian utopias is key to understanding the political relevance of the notion of utopia, which is also a matter of space and geographical imagination. Berneri’s criticisms to utopia were eventually informed by notions of anti-colonialism and anti-authoritarianism, especially referred to her original critique of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. Then, I argue for a connection between anarchist, humanistic, cultural and historical approaches to geography, to extend the empirical and theoretical reach of the discipline and its relations with the ‘humanities’. This paper likewise contributes to recent scholarship on transnational anarchism, arguing that the anarchist tradition cannot be understood outside its transnational, cosmopolite and multilingual networks and concrete practices: therefore, only relational, contextual and space-sensitive approaches can make sense of its specificity.
Este articulo encara los trabajos y archivos de la militante anarquista transnacional Maria Luisa Berneri (1918-1949), autora de un estudio poco conocido pero muy significativo sobre las historias de las utopías y sus espacios. Contribuyendo para literatura actual sobre geografías anarquistas, utopismo y sobre la relación entre la geografía y las ‘humanidades’, afirmo que una distinción entre utopías libertarias y utopías autoritarias es esencial para comprender la importancia política del concepto de utopía, que es también un asunto de espacio y de imaginación geográfica. Las críticas de Berneri a la utopía se inspiraron de su anticolonialismo y antiautoritarismo, focalizado especialmente en su original critica de los regímenes totalitarios del siglo veinte. Enseguida, propongo una conexión entre abordajes anarquistas, humanistas, culturales e históricos de la geografía para ampliar el campo empírico y teórico de la disciplina y de sus relaciones con las humanidades. Este articulo contribuye también a las investigaciones recientes sobre el anarquismo transnacional, afirmando que la tradición anarquista no puede ser comprendida fuera de sus redes transnacionales, multilingües y cosmopolitas y de sus practicas concretas. Entonces, solo lecturas contextuales, relacionales y sensibles al espacio pueden dar censo a la especificidad del anarquismo.

This paper discusses the relation between early anarchism and republican/nationalist ideas. We will focus on the case of British-based activists grouped around the journal Freedom and their engagement with Irish nationalism during the Age of the Empire. Freedom, founded in 1886, was the most important anarchist journal of the English-speaking anarchist-communist networks at the time, and was the main editorial reference for the worldwide community of anarchist activists, mostly exiled, who resided in London at that time. Extending current interdisciplinary literature on transnational anarchism, we argue that anarchist views of nations, while rejecting the novel notion of the nation-State, were associated with anti-colonial struggles and with republican anti-monarchical and egalitarian notions. Based on primary sources, we discuss the intersections between these Britain-based anarchists and anti-colonial Irish radicals, by engaging both with their writings and their international networks of solidarity, thus exploring the complex intermingling of anarchism, anti-colonialism and republicanism.

This paper addresses an early case in critical and anarchist geopolitics by analysing a body of work from Spanish geographer Gonzalo de Reparaz Rodríguez-Báez (1860-1939). After reconstructing the complex and contradictory figure of Reparaz, a scholar and activist who oscillated between very different political positions in his especially long and productive career, we focus on the geostrategic writings he produced for the anarchist journals, CNT, Fragua Social and Solidaridad Obrera during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. Our argument is twofold: first, in the ideological wanderings of Reparaz it is possible to identify some elements of coherence around the principles of Iberism, Federalism and Africanism as produced by the Spanish culture of that time. Second, the works he produced for the anarchist press in the last part of his life can provide important insights for present-day scholarship on critical, radical and anarchist geopolitics, especially on what an " anarchist geopolitics " might look like and which ways it can contribute to the largely debated problem of exiting the " territorial trap ". The case we present contributes to these debates by showing that an anarchist engagement with " geopolitics " , a term that Reparaz used sometimes at the end of his career, might draw on challenging clashes of civilization and " pure " identities, on questioning statist and administrative frameworks of analysis and on focusing more on grassroots activism than on providing advice for state strategies.

This paper argues for a rediscovery and reassessment of the contributions that humanistic approaches can make to critical and radical geographies. Based on an exploration of the archives of Anne Buttimer (1938-2017) and drawing upon Paulo Freire's notion of conscientização (awareness of oppression accompanied by direct action for liberation), a concept that inspired the International Dialogue Project (1977-1988), I explore Buttimer's engagement with radical geographers and geographies. My main argument is that Buttimer's notions of 'dialogue' and 'catalysis', which she put into practice through international and multilingual networking, should be viewed as theory-praxes in a relational and Freirean sense. In extending and putting critically in communication literature on radical pedagogies, transnational feminism and the 'limits to dialogue', this paper discusses Buttimer's unpublished correspondence with geographers such as David Harvey, William Bunge, Myrna Breitbart, Milton Santos and others, and her engagement with radical geographical traditions like anarchism, repositioning 'humanism' vis-à-vis the fields of critical and radical geography.

Engaging in a dialogue with the other contributors to this forum on spatialities of science and the deepening of historical work on geographical thought in the last few decades, I reflect on the impact of The Geographical Tradition on geographical traditions other than the Anglo-American one, analysing its citations and receptions in scholarly publications in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.

This paper addresses the idea of geopolitics of hunger as proposed by a Brazilian geographer, Josué de Castro, whose originality and international impact in the fields of critical geography and development studies still merit fuller acknowledgment both within and beyond the discipline of geography. Drawing upon archival research on de Castro’s correspondences and scholarly networks and on the editorial history of his key book Geopolitics of Hunger, first I argue that de Castro was a forerunner of the definition of geopolitics in a critical sense, and that this nonconformist attitude has been one of the primary reasons for his persistent scholarly neglect. Second, I argue that de Castro’s anti-colonial geopolitics, based on subaltern agency, furnishes powerful arguments to present-day critics of ‘food security’, who challenge the revival of Malthusian concepts, Euro-centric views and neo-colonial recipes in development debates, a clear geopolitical matter for contemporary scholarly and political conversations. Finally, de Castro’s international networking, and his biography as a political dissident and exile, provide some useful practical examples of performing geopolitical discourses outside institutional and statist frameworks.

Historical geographers increasingly address editorial networks as an important element in contextual and situated readings of knowledge production. Recent work has shown that large publishing houses, such as Murray in Britain, Hachette in France and Perthes in Germany, played a primary role in shaping geographical knowledge. This paper's contribution is an analysis of the collaboration between Élisée Reclus (1830-1905) and Hachette over the Nouvelle Géographie universelle (NGU), a classic work in French geography that encompassed nineteen volumes between 1876 and 1894. Drawing upon archival sources, such as the published and unpublished correspondence between Reclus, his collaborators and the publishers, I argue that Reclus' negotiations with this mainstream publishing house were part of a political strategy that was deployed by early anarchist geographers to disseminate their views among broader audiences than just specialist and militant groups. This was a successful bargain for both sides, as there were approximately twenty thousand copies of each volume of the NGU printed. To understand this strategy of public communication and political influence, I examine the international group of anarchist geographers who were involved in Reclus' editorial endeavour within the wider context of Hachette's editorial networks. This involves situating the knowledge they produced in two locations: Paris, where Hachette's headquarters were established, and Clarens, the Swiss village to which Reclus was exiled, and where he worked with collaborators such as Pyotr Kropotkin and Léon Metchnikoff to establish the 'centre of calculation' for his large encyclopaedia.

This paper addresses the international networks of three Brazilian geographers who were exiled or variously persecuted after the establishment of a military dictatorship in Brazil in 1964 — Josué De Castro (1908-1973), Milton Santos (1926-2001) and Manuel Correia de Andrade (1922-2007) — whose works had an impact in the international field of critical scholarship in geography and development studies, which remains underplayed in present-day scholarship. Addressing for the first time their unpublished correspondence, whose inventory is ongoing in Brazilian archives, I reconstruct their international work, especially focusing on its constraints, to engage with recent debates on the geographies of internationalism and on international agencies problematizing the concepts of ‘international geographies’ and ‘internationality’ of scientific life. My main argument is that the study of informal networks of scientific sociability allows for an understanding of the constraints that institutions and states pose to the internationalization of knowledge, not only through political repression but also through the establishment of ‘national schools’. On the other hand, these sources suggest that the exile can play a creative role in stimulating exchanges of knowledge, a concept, on which further research is needed in political geography.

O objetivo deste texto é analisar a construção de um rumo científico pelo grupo dos geógrafos anarquistas ativos entre os séculos XIX e XX,  cujos representantes mais célebres foram Elisée Reclus e Pëtr Kropotkin. Os membros dessa rede eram no mesmo tempo intelectuais e militantes, e a originalidade da elaboração científica deles destaca-se em relação à ciência da sua época. Estando interessados também em disciplinas como a sociologia, a antropologia e a pedagogia, eles utilizam as ferramentas científicas das maiores correntes intelectuais do momento, como o positivismo, e sobretudo o evolucionismo, tentando levá-las a conclusões diferentes, que não justifiquem as desigualdades sociais, mas ao contrário sejam úteis para a construção de uma sociedade mais justa.

Cet ouvrage, issu d'une recherche archivistique ponctuelle effectuée dans le cadre d'une plus vaste thèse de doctorat sur la Nouvelle Géographie universelle, contient la première édition critique et commentée des lettres que se sont échangées Élisée Reclus (1830-1905), le célèbre géographe anarchiste, et Pierre-Jules Hetzel (1814-1886), éditeur de Jules Verne et de Victor Hugo. Le caractère exceptionnel des documents traités réside dans la nature extraordinaire des conditions d'écriture de ces lettres. En effet, la partie la plus dense de la correspondance débute en 1871, lorsque Reclus est prisonnier à Brest en raison de sa participation à la Commune de Paris, et se poursuit lorsqu'il est exilé en Suisse. Les contraintes de la distance et de l'exil obligent les correspondants à s'écrire. Nous suivons alors le travail d'un auteur et de son éditeur dans le marché éditorial de l'époque, à travers la longue fabrication de deux des ouvrages les plus connus d'Élisée Reclus : Histoire d'un ruisseau et Histoire d'une montagne. Les commentaires des deux protagonistes sur la situation politique nous donnent un aperçu original de l'histoire française au début de la Troisième République, et nous introduisent dans les débats sur la fonction pédagogique de la géographie et du paysage et sur les problèmes de l'iconographie géographique, à une époque où les livres de géographie font leur entrée dans les écoles publiques.

Em 1946, Josué de Castro publicou um livro muito celebrado internacionalmente, a Geografia da fome. 1 Logo na sua introdução, veiculou um Mapa das áreas alimentares do Brasil (Fig. 21.1), seguido do Mapa das principais carências existentes nas diferentes áreas alimentares do Brasil (Fig. 21.2), que ficaram conhecidos como os Mapas da fome. Os dois foram citados e até reproduzidos em numerosas publicações, mas não foram analisados sob a óptica da história da cartografia, como se fará a seguir, utilizando alguns conceitos da história crítica da cartografia e focalizando, ao mesmo tempo, o contexto dos mapas e as suas estratégias de comunicação visual.

This entry does not pretend exhaustivity in summarizing the bourgeoning field of current international scholarship in the history of geography. It does not even pretend to be a compendium of any possible narrative to be defined a "history of geography". Rather, it will focus on some current methods and research tools in the broadly defined area of the philosophy and history of geography. This way, it will provide the reader with the most relevant updates to understand why this "subdiscipline", which is still considered as a relatively peripheral one by several geographers, is showing special vibrancy in the last years. This renewed interest in geography's histories is based on the increasing extension of the places, periods, authors and definitions which are currently investigated by scholars, who generally use the theoretical and methodological tools of the spatial turn and of contextual readings in the history of science that successfully challenged internalism, essentialism and positivism in reading the geographical traditions. An important part of current scholarship is now committed to radicalize, internationalize and decolonize the histories of geography, by increasingly addressing the richness, complexity and diversity of a plurality of "geographical traditions" rather than one "geographical tradition".

Introduzione: ogni sera, una pillola contro la paura Cosa fare se da un giorno all'altro ti rinchiudono in casa e ti chiudono biblioteche, librerie e sale di lettura? Si può rimediare con la tecnologia, certo, ma non tutti i libri si trovano negli archivi online o sotto forma di e-book, e un libro digitale non dà lo stesso gusto di una lettura serale cartacea, specialmente se hai già passato tutta la giornata su uno schermo per fare quello che chiamano smart working. Qual è stata dunque l'idea di Gianandrea, libraio militante, autore tra le altre cose di pionieristici cataloghi tematici sull'Anarchismo, sul Sindacalismo Rivoluzionario, sul Sessantotto, sui Mazziniani, sul Movimento Federalista Europeo, sul Liberalsocialismo? Usare la tecnologia per socializzare i contenuti dei libri che per lavoro e passione aveva sottomano. Perché bisogna ricordare che questo lavoro non nasce solo in un contesto librario, ma anche in un contesto libertario. Le prime di queste "pillole" vengono inviate nel gruppo Signal dell' Area Libertaria Reggiana: ogni sera una citazione da un classico dell'anarchismo accompagnata da un breve profilo dell'autrice o dell'autore. Ben presto l'iniziativa si allarga, raggiungendo tutti quei compagni e compagne, soprattutto giovani, che avevano l'abitudine di vedersi tutti i giorni al Circolo "Berneri" di via Don Minzoni. Se ci pensiamo questa è stata la prima volta che la nostra generazione si è confrontata con il divieto formale di riunione e di manifestazione, e con degli arresti domiciliari di fatto, che per chi studia la storia dell'anarchismo e dei movimenti sociali richiama alla mente le limitazioni alla libertà sofferte sotto i regimi totalitari. Anche se per ragioni (e con modalità) molto diverse, abbiamo assaggiato un po' delle biografie da quelle nostre compagne e compagni che tra il diciannovesimo e il ventesimo secolo hanno vissuto il carcere, l'esilio, il confino, la lotta clandestina nella resistenza antifascista. Ma rispetto a loro, nel 2020 abbiamo un'arma in più: la tecnologia. Da Signal, il gruppo passa a Whatsapp e si è propagato in maniera virale (è il caso di dirlo) a più gruppi e liste, tanto che non si riesce più a sapere quanta gente direttamente o indirettamente ha ricevuto queste pillole. Chiusi in casa durante il lockdown, in momenti in cui il morale effettivamente si abbassava molto, ogni sera arrivava un messaggio con questi stralci anarchici di vita e di pensiero. Ed eravamo tutte e tutti un po' meno sole e soli.

This chapter addresses the life and works of Italian transnational anarchist and anti-fascist Camillo Berneri (1897-1937) drawing upon Berneri’s archives and original papers, never translated into English with only few exceptions. For the first time, I analyse Berneri’s work through spatial lenses, investigating the contributions that this can bring to the contemporary fields of critical, radical and subaltern geopolitics. My argument is twofold. First, I argue that the analysis of spaces of exile and transnational solidarity networks are paramount for understanding the trajectories of anarchist anti-fascism between the two world wars. Berneri is an outstanding representative of an entire generation of Italian anarchists and antifascists. He was eventually defined ‘the most expelled anarchist of Europe’ due to his innumerable travels and tribulations across the borders of Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and Spain. Second, I argue that Berneri’s writings on the geopolitical problems that the Spanish revolution had to face from 1936, such as the question of the armed defence from Franco’s troops and the Italian imperialism in the Balearic Islands, can nourish present-day perspectives in radical internationalism and stateless geopolitics. The prickliness of Berneri’s analyses, published in the journals of Italian anarchists fighting in Spain with the CNT-FAI, can also explain why he was murdered by Stalinist agents during the Bloody Week of Barcelona in May 1937, just few days after delivering a radio speech where Berneri pronounced a moved tribute to another Italian anti-fascist, Antonio Gramsci, just died in a fascist prison in Italy.

Prólogo Esta traducción del libro de Simon Springer, The Anarchist Roots of Anarchism, es de gran importancia por varias razones. Primero, es preciso acabar con el pro-blema del monolingüismo y el provincialismo en los estudios anarquistas. Des-de el siglo XIX, esta tradición se expresó en numerosos idiomas en los que han sido impresos panetos y revistas anarquistas, incluyendo (entre otros) español, italiano, francés, portugués, inglés, ruso, yiddish, alemán, así como lenguas de países como China, Japón y Corea, a donde los trabajos de los primeros geógrafos anarquistas llegaron por medio de militantes transnacionales originarios de estas regiones. Como muchos estudios recientes lo conrman, el anarquismo fue, desde sus comienzos, un movimiento político que puede considerarse intrínsecamente transnacional en sus prácticas y en la circulación de conocimien-tos. Entre las escuelas socialistas del siglo diecinueve, el anarquismo fue, sin duda, la primera en confrontarse seriamente con culturas extraeuropeas, inclusive indígenas, debido también a la movilidad transnacional y transcontinental de sus militantes, ya fuera voluntaria por razones de propaganda y proselitismo o, en la mayoría de los casos, forzada por razones económicas y persecución po-lítica. Los monolingüismos, provincialismos y monoculturalismos, en agrante contradicción con la tradición anarquista, no son solo un problema de la litera-tura anglosajona, sino de todo el mundo de la investigación: en este sentido, los estudios sobre el anarquismo tienen que jugar un papel determinante en la internacionalización, transnacionalización, cosmopolitización y descolonización de la ciencias humanas y sociales. Segundo, conviene destacar que este libro pertenece a las corrientes más ac-tualizadas de los estudios sobre guras históricas de geógrafos anarquistas como Elisée Reclus, Pyotr Kropotkin, Lev Metchniko, Charles Perron y otros, que investigan la relación entre geografía y anarquismo a través de lecturas contex-tuales, situadas y basadas en fuentes primarias que demuestran la intrínseca rela-ción entre anarquismo y geografía. Estos trabajos acabaron con interpretaciones precedentes que, basadas en lecturas más superciales de las fuentes, planteaban una especie de condición esquizofrénica entre el pensamiento geográco de los autores mencionados y sus ideas anarquistas. Si Springer claramente delinea las

This chapter investigates the relationship between the anarchist geographer Élisée Re-clus and the numerous artists he was acquainted with during his career as a scientist and a militant. It contributes to recent international research on the interplay of art and anarchism through the prism of Reclus and his scholarly and activist networks. Based on the exploration of primary sources such as correspondence and original texts by Reclus and his collaborators, my main argument is that Reclus's engagement with visual arts (especially drawing and painting) allows us to understand some fundamental points of his geography and his anarchism. Reclus's idea of beauty was inseparably linked to his idea of justice. Therefore, he argued that the social scientist, the activist and the artist had the task of building a better world, socially and aesthetically. For that reason, Reclus cooperated with artists representing different visual tendencies because he considered social content paramount in the assessment of art; though engaging directly with visual languages for both geographical publishing and political propaganda. Reclus and the anarchist geographers were strongly committed to the visual arts of their day. Within a wide network of intellectuals, activists and painters they proved to be at once influential and influenced. This essay suggests that several aspects of the artistic avant-garde of the first half of the twentieth century, such as the social role of art, the questioning of the aura and the dichotomy between the 'creative genius' and art's recipients were anticipated by early anarchist geographers.

The scholarly field defined as "critical geography," or more accurately "critical geographies," has experienced a spectacular expansion and tended to become an umbrella gathering a very heterogeneous array of contributions. While labels like critical geography are not always displayed explicitly by scholars, rare are those who would not claim for drawing upon some form of critical thinking, and the geography journals whose editorial programmes are broadly inspired by critical or radical theory are increasingly well established. This expansion poses first the problem of defining what is "critical," what is "radical" and what is "mainstream," considering that the boundaries between these realms, if ever defined, are increasingly uncertain and blurred. This uncertainty also implies interrogations on how to enhance socially engaged scholarly approaches beyond the academy and its frontiers, defined by the social status of the academics and by the limits of academic main dissemination practices, such as publishing and conferencing in English. In the following text, I discuss limits and potentialities of the places and networks where current critical geographical knowledge is prevalently produced. Then, I analyse the variety and plurality of the works carried out in this field and claim for decolonizing geographical scholarship, including its critical and radical strands. This decolonization includes giving more consideration to output produced by non-Anglophone scholars, especially from the South, a problem which has been widely discussed at the International Conferences of Critical Geography but not definitively resolved hitherto. Glossary Academic extractivism. Extractivism is widely studied as a colonial and neo-colonial attitude to predate the natural resources of certain regions (especially in the Global South) at the

A renewed interest in the relationship between geography and anarchism has characterised international tendencies in geographical scholarship in the last 10 years or so. As this new wave is having a very quick and spectacular development, quite corresponding to the rising of a new generation of scholars, this chapter especially focuses on these new developments and discusses their ruptures and continuities with precedent 'bursts' of anarchism in geography such as the historical experiences of the networks associated with Elisée Reclus and Pyotr Kropotkin, and the rediscovery of these authors which occurred between the 1970s and the 1980s. Highlighting the strong historical inspiration of the present wave of studies, especially committed to establishing new links with the anarchist tradition, I discuss the contributions that new authors are giving to current geographical scholarship in terms of radical pedagogies, more-than-human and non-representational approaches, alternative geographical traditions, transnationalism and cosmopolitism, gender studies and 'total liberation'. All these lines of study resolutely link academic scholarship and grassroots activism. Glossary Other geographical traditions. This definition includes the notions of 'genealogy', 'anarchist roots of geography' and 'early critical geographies' and participates in a wider reassessment of plural and contested geographical traditions. While, in the last decades, the imperial past of geography has been one of the main targets of radical critics within the discipline, now works by early unorthodox and critical authors, including anarchist and anti-colonialist ones, increasingly attract scholarly attention.

This chapter addresses the problem of nationalities in the work of early anarchist geographers at the Age of Empire.  Drawing on recent literature on anarchist geographies and histories of transnational anarchism, I address the work of three key exponents of the international network of the anarchist geographers, Mikhail Dragomanov or Drahomanov (1841-1895), Pëtr Kropotkin (1842-1921) and Elisée Reclus (1830-1905). My main argument is that the anarchist tradition and the idea of nation stand not in opposition, but in mutual relation, and that such relation was linked to early anti-colonialism in the Age of Empire. The standpoint of anarchist geographers is a privileged one to understand the anarchist idea of nation because these militants and scholars worked on territories, regions, and borders, thus the definition of what a nation is (or should be) was part of both their professional duties and their political interests.

In occasione della consegna in Società Geografica Italiana di un ricco archivio di materiale originale su Geografia Democratica raccolto da Giuseppe De Matteis, la giornata di studi intende riflettere sull'attualità di quell'esperienza, sulla sua rilevanza per l'evoluzione successiva del pensiero geografico, sul se e come Geografia democratica sia parte del bagaglio collettivo delle geografe e dei geografi italiani e sulla sua eredità per chi fa oggi geografia critica e radicale in Italia e altrove. Durante la giornata si alterneranno gli interventi di studiose e studiosi delle generazioni più recenti che si sono confrontat* con Geografia democratica e con alcune delle questioni centrali connesse alla pratica di una geografia critica e radicale in Italia, e discussioni con alcuni delle e dei partecipanti a quell'esperienza e con il pubblico.

Interventi di Claudio Cerreti, Giuseppe Dematteis, Francesca Governa, Filippo Celata, Floriana Galluccio, Claudio Minca, Elena dell’Agnese, Chiara Giubilaro e Anna Casaglia, Giacomo Spanu e Alberto Valz Griss, Federico Ferretti, Juliet Fall.

Organizzato da Filippo Celata, Francesca Governa, Floriana Galluccio, Claudio Minca.

Jornadas de Historiografías y Pedagogías Geográficas Críticas, 2 y 3 de octubre de 2023. Departamento de Geografía (FFyH-UNC).
Martes 3 a las 18hs. en el Auditorio del Pabellón Venezuela de Ciudad Universitaria Conferencia Geografías anarquistas y pedagogías libertarias ofrecida por Federico Ferretti, Doctor en Geografía y Profesor de la Universidad de Bolonia (Italia).
El espacio busca ampliar y profundizar las agendas temáticas y líneas de investigación que se desarrollan en Córdoba desde hace más de una década a partir de diversas Cátedras y equipos de investigación que forman parte del Departamento de Geografía y abre esta actividad a todo público que quiera participar.
Federico Ferretti tiene una amplia trayectoria en el estudio, investigación y práctica en y desde las geografías críticas y anarquistas y, en el encuentro entre la geografía y la historia. Ha examinado las redes, trayectorias y el devenir del pensamiento y pedagogía geográfica en Europa y América Latina, con multiples participaciones en eventos académicos y publicaciones en el campo disciplinar. Ha sido expositor en la mesa de diálogo “Trayectorias de otras Geografías críticas del Sur” XVIII EGAL realizado en Córdoba en 2021. Es uno de los co-creadores de las Conferencias Internacionales de Geografes y Geografías Anarquistas (CIGGA).
Las Jornadas contarán con la participación de Perla Zusman, Doctora en Geografía, Investigadora Independiente del CONICET, docente de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UBA. Integrante del Grupo de estudios sobre Cultura, Naturaleza y Territorio. Y con especialistas en la temática del Instituto de Geografía Romualdo Ardissone perteneciente a la Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), del Instituto de Geografía de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo y docentes e investigadores de la Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades de la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.
¡Esperamos puedan ser parte de esta Conferencia!
Organizan
Carolina Ricci - Carla Pedrazzani - Santiago LLorens - Lucas Palladino - Lucía Aichino
Cátedras Participantes
Introducción al Pensamiento Geográfico, Epistemología de la Geografía, Contra-cartografías del neoliberalismo: luchas y movimientos sociales en defensa de los territorios y de la vida, Debates actuales sobre ruralidades cordobesas, Seminario Perspectivas sobre el territorio: genealogías, abordajes y (cosmo)políticas.
Proyectos de Investigación vinculados
Geografías en Córdoba. Contextos, prácticas territoriales y discursos, 1890 – 2003. CIFFyH-LET
Imaginaciones geográficas y espacialidades abigarradas. Estudios sobre imágenes, formas espaciales y procesos sociales en Córdoba (2020-2021). CIFFyH-LET
Hacer en común y resonancias del porvenir: (Des)pliegues de imaginaciones geográficas, cartografías y espacialidades desde múltiples existencias. CIFFyH
Comité Organizador Local de las 4° Conferencias Internacionales de Geógrafes y Geografías Anarquistas (CIGGA).

In recent years, scholars have started to write the international history of the movement called “Radical Geography” that arose around journals such as Antipode from the 1960s-1970s. While one of the declared aims of these authors is to overtake Euro- and Anglo-centric readings of this phenomenon, this task seems far from being fully accomplished, given that most of the latest contributions address cases from the Anglosphere, especially from North-America. My ongoing research project on Brazilian and Latin American critical and radical geographies extends this body of scholarship and puts it in relation with a burgeoning literature on geography and decoloniality, often inspired by authors akin to the Latin American “decolonial turn”. I do this by addressing multilingual works, archives and networks of a circuit of Brazilian geographers who were exiled or variously persecuted by the military dictatorship that ruled their country between 1964 and 1985. At that time, they played influential but still neglected roles in inspiring critical and radical scholarship worldwide, thanks also to their exile experiences and their multilingualism. My main argument is that these scholars anticipated some aspects of current debates on the decolonisation of social sciences such as the critique of Northern recipes in development studies, the engagement with non-European cultures like those of indigenous and Afro-descendants, and the need for a more pluralist and cosmopolitan geography, one which can connect scholarship and grassroots mobilisations

Anne Buttimer (1938-2017) was doubtlessly one of the most prestigious international and transnational figures of humanistic and critical geographies in the last fifty years. Yet, her intellectual legacy seems to be still neglected or poorly understood. Drawing upon recent literature in cultural and historical geographies on the use of archives and primary sources for performing archaeologies of knowledge to better understand the construction of ideas, this paper presents the study of Buttimer's archives as a way for rediscovering this outstanding scholarly figure and for allowing international geographical scholarship to reengage with her ideas. An exceptional and multilingual collection including books, correspondence and work materials, Buttimer's archives are held at UCD School of Geography and will be the object of both inventory and research projects in the next few years. In presenting this collection, our argument is twofold. First, Anne Buttimer was a cosmopolite, transnational and socially engaged figure, whose networking with international exponents of radical geography in the 1970s and 1980s needs reappraisal to reflect on what she called 'accountability', i.e. the social role of the researcher. Second, her legacy still nourishes critical discourses challenging what she called the danse macabre of 'inhuman geographies'. As Anne refused all labels, including that of a 'humanistic geographer', we define her work as a drive towards 'humane geographies', drawing upon the definition of 'humane sciences' already developed in critical scholarly traditions such as humanitarianism and anarchism.

Voices from the Northeast: radical development and geographies of global engagement in Brazil and in exile (1960s-1980s) Many Brazilian scholars experienced the exile, or different levels of political persecution, during the military dictatorship which ruled their country from 1964 to 1985. Three geographers from the Brazilian region traditionally considered as the less 'developed', the Northeast, were among the most active in establishing global networks of scholarly sociability during their voluntary or forced sojourns in Europe, Africa and North America. They were Milton Santos (1926-2001) from Bahia, Josué De Castro (1908-1973) and Manuel Correia de Andrade (1922-2007), both from Pernambuco. Addressing their unpublished correspondence, only recently opened to researchers in Brazilian public archives such as the São Paulo IEB and the Recife Fundaj-CEHIBRA, I analyse their exchanges with international geographers, which show the width of their networks and the contributions they provided for international critical and radical scholarship on matters of geography and 'development'. This contribution extends both recent literature on critical development and decolonization, and the debates on localisations and circulations of knowledge. My argument is twofold: first, the biographies of these scholars, further clarified by the primary sources I analyse, show the importance of a region, the Nordeste, as a productive and inspiring place for scholars seeking alternatives to mainstream neo-colonial notions of development worldwide. Second, states and political persecutions can affect 'global histories of geography' in contradictory ways: on the one hand, they can hinder the circulation of knowledge by implementing conservative and nationalistic politics; on the other, they can involuntarily open unexpected paths for global engagement by stimulating stories of exile and emigration, indirectly fostering the encounters that these experiences may entail.

Anarchism and Republicanism: James Guillaume, Elisée Reclus and the ‘true’ République

Recent scholarship on the relation between early anarchists and the 1789-1848 French revolutions has shown an ambivalent attitude toward the French “Republican” and “Revolutionary” tradition. On the one hand, anarchists refused the official République, on the other they claimed for anarchism as the ‘true’ republic of workers and of equality. It is worth noting that, before the Swiss and Italian federations of the Anti-Authoritarian International adopted formally the label of “anarchist communists” in the mid-1870s, most of the future anarchists defined themselves as Republicans. Many of them were acquainted with the international networks of Giuseppe Mazzini and with the French republican opposition to the Second Empire (1852-1870). It was the case of Elisée Reclus (1830-1905), who maintained his wishes for an ideal ‘Republic’ all his life long. Another of the ‘Founding Fathers’ of anarchism and a scholar of the 1789 French Revolution, James Guillaume (1844-1916), was even involved in the Republican movement for popular and secular education led by Ferdinand Buisson since he moved from Switzerland to France in 1878.
My main argument is that there is a privileged link between the anarchist and the republican traditions, which took both inspirations from the historical experiences of free communes, free cities and free republics in Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, and from the seventieth century English revolutions and the 1789 French one. Between the nineteenth and the twentieth century, anarchists were empathetic towards the most radical components of the republican movements and especially with their federalist and anticlerical components. Anarchists and Republicans shared common struggles against monarchies (such as in the case of the Italian Risorgimento and of French republican opposition from 1848 to 1871), against empires (in Eastern Europe, Ireland and in the extra-European colonised world) and finally against fascism (the most striking example being the transnational movement Giustizia e Libertà in Italian, French and Spanish anti-fascist resistance).     
This allows seeing anarchism not as a “derivation” or “dissident branch” of Marxism, but as a major political thinking inserted in an old European tradition, which finds its roots in the idea that Philip Pettit calls ‘freedom as non-domination’, which anarchists elaborated then in a radically equalitarian and cosmopolite way.
As an example and a major case study, I analyse the texts and the archives of two important intellectuals and activists like Guillaume and Reclus in order to understand their references to the concepts of republic and republican freedom and their importance for the respective political agendas.

Recent scholarship on early anarchist geographers has discussed the substantial engagement of scholars such as the brothers Elie and Elisée Reclus, in collaboration with fellows such as Pyotr Kropotkin, Lev Mechnikov and the couple Octavie and Henri Coudreau-Renard, in dealing empathetically with so-called ‘primitive’ peoples by questioning the ethnocentric, racist and determinist views of most European scientists of their day. Over the last quarter of the nineteenth century, these scholars denounced indigenous genocides and colonial crimes, pleading for the revolt of colonized peoples. Before the very institutionalization of scholarly disciplines, their works closely connected geography with the field that they defined either as ‘anthropology’, ‘ethnography’ or ‘ethnology’, roughly corresponding to current notions of cultural anthropology. Based on ideas of empathy, fraternity and acknowledgment of different adaptations to different milieus, their works chimed with some of the concepts concurrently discussed by Franz Boas, such as the need to avoid the presumption of all cultures to feel superior to others, as Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt opportunely stresses since the opening quotation of her book. Although Boas was much younger than the Recluses, one can find a dozen of explicit references to his trip in Baffin Land in Elisée Reclus’s L’Homme et la Terre and Nouvelle Géographie universelle. Accessed in German through Petermann’s publications, Boas’s travel notes were used by Reclus as a first-hand source to listen to the voices of the Inuit whom Boas interviewed, to reconstruct their migrations, to reflect on indigenous toponyms, to analyse their demography, their beliefs and what is called today ‘vernacular knowledges’ in relation to space. Conversely, in Boas’s major works, I did not find hitherto any explicit reference to Reclus or Kropotkin, although this can be easily explained by the well-known academic neglection of anarchist geographers and by the rigid disciplinary separation that knowledges experienced in the twentieth century. This paper discusses this geographical-anthropological connection, which took place directly and indirectly in times of evolutionism, a notion that anarchist scholars understood through the lenses of mutual aid. I finally call for deeper studies on interdisciplinary connections among human and social sciences targeting what Kropotkin called ‘feelings more worthy of humanity’ rather than serving imperial powers, racism and socio/environmental determinisms.

Decía Javier Marías que “escribir es una manera privilegiada de pensar”, y eso es lo que tan bien hacía Élisée Reclus. Conocido y reconocido geógrafo francés durante segunda mitad del siglo XIX y el inicio del XX, es hoy en día un escritor desconocido fuera del círculo de los geógrafos y los pensadores y activistas sociales. Años después de su viaje a América en un velero de tres palos procedente de Irlanda, y ya como escritor de la Revue des Deux Mondes, publicó una serie de artículos sobre la guerra de Secesión y la causa defendida por Lincoln que tuvieron una gran repercusión en Europa. Sus valoradas descripciones geográficas, que abarcarían la Tierra por entero en numerosos volúmenes, fueron traducidas a diferentes idiomas, entre ellos al español, y serían utilizadas por Julio Verne (que compartió amistad con la familia Reclus) como base de sus tramas y personajes. Los imaginarios geográficos y políticos de Reclus y sus originales puntos de vista tienen como fundamento nuestra relación con la naturaleza y el sentimiento hacia ella. Reclus, el geógrafo indignado con las injusticias, el hacedor de la Geografía social y de la Geografía crítica, buscó en el anarquismo “la máxima expresión del orden” y en la humanidad “la naturaleza que toma conciencia de sí misma". Sobre estos temas hablarán los geógrafos Federico Ferretti, especialista en Reclus, Vincent Berdoulay, especialista en la Geografía francesa y José Antonio Rodríguez-Esteban, especialista en la Geografía española del XIX y XX, como moderador.

Le Forum abordera le contrôle des territoires colonisés, puis expliquera comment les géographes anarchistes ont abordé cette question. Ensuite, direction Nord-est aride du Brésil (Sertão ou Grand Désert) avant un temps de débat. De quoi redécouvrir la richesse et la pluralité des traditions géographiques dissidentes.