Geography and ‘The New’

Abstract

This Intervention reflects on the multiple, contradictory and ambivalent relations human geography has with ‘the new’. Some sort of relation with the new is an inescapable and necessary part of all practices of knowledge generation. Newness, whether it be an empirical finding, an idea, a concept or an approach, can fuel the interest, wonder, urgency or surprise that can animate and sustain academic life. Yet, relations with the new are fraught. Claims of newness are enrolled into materially consequential systems and practices of audit, and the desire for newness is inseparable from the digitally mediated political economy of academic publishing. Questions persist about whether contemporary h..