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The essays collected in Geography and Revolution explore two broad themes: the geography of revolution and geography in revolution. The former uses the discipline of geography to better understand the processes at work in various revolutions—technological, social, political. The latter focuses on how geographic knowledge and concepts are used or presented in the context of the various types of revolution. The volume's editors, David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers, argue persuasively that while economic, political, and sociological explanations abound for revolutions, these explanations have been lacking when it comes to questions of place and geography. In fact, most revolutions have been portrayed as virtually "placeless." This collection of papers offers a corrective.
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Geography and Revolution is divided into three parts. Most of the chapters in the first section, "Geography and Scientific Revolution: Space, Place and Natural Knowledge," will be accessible only to those with a background in the history of science. The chapter by John Henry is of most importance for setting the context for the rest of the volume. Arguing that scientific practices develop within specific cultural contexts, Henry compares the national scientific institutions and practices of the English and French in the 17th century and ties their differences to the distinct religious and political histories of the two nations. In England, experiments were perceived to simply reveal matters of fact absent any theorizing on cause. This perspective was identified with the philosophy of the Church of England, which supported a notion of doctrinal minimalism and "common sense." Under this philosophy, experimentation was seen to produce knowledge that all parties could agree upon, not going beyond undeniable claims that were obvious. In contrast, French science advanced through the use of experimentation that served the purpose of building larger theoretical constructs. And these national differences played out in contrasting perspectives on the nature of matter and force, but also on the nature of God and such metaphysical concepts as causality. This particular chapter fits well within larger debates over epistemology in the sciences, providing an example of how cultural context shapes the practice of what has been considered the "universalistic" practice of science.
The second part of the collection, "Geography and Technical Revolution," is the most interesting and accessible and builds on the perspectival theme. These chapters illustrate how what is taken to be "obvious" or "factual" is to some degree dependent on the physical place from which the viewer sees the world. Jerry Brotton presents a case study on the impact of the printing of maps on depictions of the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. Unsurprisingly, portrayals of the indigenous people of the Cape were framed by the purposes of the Europeans doing the framing. At the time of the initial maps, the Cape of Good Hope was seen as a commercial end, peripheral to early European travelers with no discrete identity. Maps were not neutral when they depicted this region, but consistently portrayed the Khoisan people of the area as dangerous, based on their failure to participate in the purposes for which Europeans came to the Cape.
Paul Glennie and Nigel Thrift push the reader further in self-consciousness of perspective and "place" in their discussion of "Revolutions in the Times." Sharply critical of technological determinism, they suggest that changing conceptions of time—and changes in the technology associated with measuring and marking time—were closely connected to "communities of practice," the real-life contexts where people lived and worked and negotiated the meaning of their lives. Glennie and Thrift capture the non-static nature of the relationship between technology and the practice of living but also show how practices can become "reified"—how, for example, familiar practices such as those that involve time become so "deeply grooved into the body" that they seem intuitive, natural, universal.
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