What is Geography?

Geographers are everywhere. Mapping and location apps have created a generation of geo-geeks and environmental and international questions make up the media surround sound of our daily lives. My answer to the question ‘What is geography?’ is straightforward: geography is the world discipline. It is not just another slot in the curriculum but one of humanity’s big projects, reflecting our need for knowledge of people and places both near and far. These agendas were pressing when I wrote the first edition. Now they depict an emergency.

In this updated and expanded edition of What is Geography? environmental questions, environmental crisis, and the fast pace of global change, loom large. Our shared experience of living through a pandemic has confronted us with our shared vulnerability but also our interdependency. The fact that none of us are safe until we are all safe is a mantra of health care professionals promoting global vaccine roll-out but it has wider implications. It points towards another theme that has been developed in this revised edition, social justice. Inequality is geographically expressed and organized: it shapes where you live, where you feel safe as well as which communities and which nations are poor and which are not.

REVIEWS

“Alastair Bonnett successfully cuts through the forest of subjects, topics, themes, and approaches to get right to the essential spirit of the field of geography. What is Geography? demonstrates how geography counters the hyper-specialization of knowledge to provide a space for global inter-connected knowledge to flourish. Bonnett makes a convincing case for why fostering a ‘planet of geographers’ is critical to humanity’s future.”
— David H. Kaplan, Kent State University

Bonnett’s second edition pushes us to think harder about how the world is interconnected, and what that means. In a post-Covid world where those economic, social, and political interdependencies have been so explicitly laid bare, this volume lays out the importance of geography to understanding the world we have built and on which we are now so utterly dependent. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
— Jason Dittmer, University College London

An engaging and accurate introduction to the key concepts and debates shaping geography. Bonnett also makes a compelling case for why geography matters if we want to understand and address the issues facing our planet. This should be the book of choice for everyone interested in knowing more about geography and their place in the world.
— James Esson, Loughborough University

The publisher promotes What is Geography? as a textbook. I recommend this book for all geographers, particularly advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Many contemporary geography students have advanced skills in geospatial techniques. But many do not intensively engage with the history of the discipline. What is Geography? makes an irresistible case for all geographers to study the history of geography. It would make a great book to assign in a course devoted to the history of geography/geographical inquiry. The book should be paired with publications devoted to detailing the history of geography. What is Geography? expects a certain familiarity with the legacy of past geography and geographers. This essay captivatingly argues that the best way to conceptualize the future of geography is to know its past. Frederick Sunderman, Saginaw Valley State University,  Geographical Review, 2024, pp. 1–4.

At least twice in a school year, at options evenings, geography teachers around the country rhetorically pose the question, ‘What is geography?’ to an audience of prospective students and their parents or guardians. While the subject is experiencing a serious uptick in popularity, answering this question has been perennially tricky: how can we, as practitioners at the educational coalface, make this broad, complex and vital discipline make sense to future geographers?

Alastair Bonnett’s second edition of What is Geography? is here to equip the teacher with much more than a straightforward response to this question. Bonnett offers a range of in-depth answers from the perspective of the discipline’s history, the complicated relationship between people and place, the concept of power, the emergency of the urban and the subject’s future (an update from the first edition). Each chapter patiently unfolds a narrative that illustrates the beautiful synergies between the human and the physical, and the past, present and future of the subject.

One of Bonnett’s main contentions is one that all geographers definitively feel in their bones. Rather than splintering into a mess of sub-disciplines, the subject’s multifaceted interdisciplinary nature reads like a rule book of how to navigate challenging times. Indeed, in the preface, Bonnett centres geography in our existentially threatened modern world: ‘… in 2008, I argued that the ancient bond between geographical knowledge and human survival is not over. I worried, back then, that this might seem like an exaggeration. I’m not worried now.’

Bonnett’s love of geography is manifest throughout. However, hyperbole is replaced by a detailed exploration of the temporal development of the subject, its relevance to a diverse range of settings and issues, and how we might use the principles of geography to chart a pathway through an uncertain 21st century and beyond. Nevertheless, he also states some bold contentions that might open up rich debate. For example, at the end of Chapter 4, Urbanisation and Mobility, he cautions how a mostly urban world may ‘… wrench us away from nature. [causing] more and more of us to live disconnected from an intimate knowledge of place, landscape, and environment.’ While there are many who would contend that urbanisation is creating its own unique sense of place, there is no doubt that the most forwardlooking cityscapes are more and more working to incorporate the natural world in the day to day.

In sum, What is Geography? is a comprehensive guide to the development and future of the discipline. Each chapter provides the reader with a deeper understanding of the importance of the subject in that context. It is repeatedly detailed with beautifully formed responses to the titular question – it is literally overflowing with options evening definitions. The one I’ll be using? ‘… the geography delivered in schools and universities is the tip of a very large iceberg. The things that matter to students of geography are things that matter to all of us.’. Julian Carrera, Head of Geography, The John Lyon School, Harrow on the Hill. Teaching Geography, 49, 3, 2024

“I cannot imagine a better guide to the transition between school and undergraduate geography than this short, informative and confidently-argued book. Written without fuss but based on solid learning and clear thinking, it tackles head-on a question many professional academic geographers would rather avoid.”
– Alisdair Rogers, University of Oxford

“A beautiful little book that helps to introduce the core concepts of geography and provides an ideal framework for relating other fields of knowledge and academia.”
– Stefan Zimmermann, University of Osnabruck

Press

Bonnett, A. (2025) ‘What geography lessons will look like in 2075’, Teaching Geography, 50, 3, 97-99.

Bonnett, A. ‘The Future of Geography: Key Trends for the Next 50 years’, Geographical Association Magazine, 56, Spring 2024.

Bonnett, A. ‘The changing world of geography’, 3 July, 2023, Geographical, https://geographical.co.uk/news/the-changing-world-of-geography

Interview, ‘What is Geography?’ Faculti, 17 November 2023, https://faculti.net/what-is-geography/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6XKIt1nfhA

’The Futures of Geography’, PTI Geography Enrichment Residential, York, 13 July 2024

‘The Future of Geography’, Prince’s Teaching Institute Enrichment Residential at Downing College, Cambridge, 29 June 2019. Released in PTI’s ‘Lectures from Esteemed Speakers’ series: https://www.ptieducation.org/what-we-do/videos