What makes an -ologist, -osopher, -ographer?
What, for instance, makes one an anthropologist? A geographer? A philosopher? A scientist?
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As chair of a search committee looking to hire a political ecologist, a tenure-track position to be shared between a Geography department and an Environmental Studies program, I’ve been involved in intensive discussion of what would make one enough of a geographer for the job. We are open to interdisciplinarians, and a lot of environmental anthropologists and other social scientists have applied — understandably, given how the field of political ecology has been evolving — but the person will be required to teach some geography courses and to successfully navigate their review/promotion/tenure career in the Geography Department.
What we seem to be settling on is something like “experience or a very clear capacity to teach introductory geography courses, and clear indication of experience and participation in the development of geographic concepts, theoretical approaches, associations, etc.” So if you’re not a geographer but have gone to an AAG and had a publication in Society and Space, you just might be alright by us. (But not necessarily by others.)
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