Friday, July 13, 2007

preliminary thoughts: wars (history, geography, vodka)

This is my first post on this topic and at this point my thoughts are relatively unformed. There's a lot to be said about this area so what I'm going to try to do is begin sketching the areas which I think are relevant and later add/take away from it (if I ever find the time). So what's this about? Well, most of you would have heard of the 'history wars':


Source: http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2006/07/22/davidson_2307_narrowweb__300x374,2.jpg
Last accessed: 14th July 2007

The debate is on the surface about what and how history should be taught in schools and hence what constitutes history (read truth). Kevin Donnelly has, of course, had his say in all of this and there has been an ongoing exchange between Donnelly and Stuart McIntyre. More recently the same argument has been transplanted to geography. I was very surprised to see this today:

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200707/r160023_584612.jpg
Last Accessed: 14th July 2007

The vodka war is about what constitutes vodka in the EU and what's at stake, from the perspective of legislators and the industry, is billions of dollars.

History, geography and vodka. All of this is about boundaries, the boundaries of entities, the boundaries of disciplines, categories. As these boundaries leak (crudely that history becomes histories, geography also becomes about space and place, vodka is not just distilled from potatoes) the legitimacy of the actors, that imbue the process of boundary maintainance with power, is dropping. This process of seeking to re-establish the boundaries, to reterritorialise, has already been thought about in many ways. How do we think what is happening to history, geography and vodka now?

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