Reflections on Geography, the Long 1960s, and the Trahison Des Clercs

One of the characteristics of post-1945 American Geography has been the influx of young and mid-career geographers from the UK. For this geographer, the trans-Atlantic migration as a doctoral student to the University of Michigan proved to be transformative. Ann Arbor provided a rich and multi-disciplinary platform for the study of African political economy, including robust links to Anthropology and Ecology, building upon the firm foundations provided by an undergraduate education in Geography at University College London under the tutelage of Paul Wheatley and David Harris. The author makes the argument that he was the beneficiary – as much a product of luck as design – of benefiting from the intellectual and political energy of arriving in particular places and institutions at particular times: London in the late 1960s, Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, and the University of Michigan in the 1970s and Berkeley in the post-Sauer era of the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in the period when Allan Pred was Chair. Equally crucial were the opportunities provided by working outside of the university narrowly construed, especially for the Social Science Research Council, a number of US foundations, and serving on the boards of a number of US and Nigerian NGOs. Not least, a lifetime of teaching at Berkeley and collective work with a group of Bay area activists (RETORT) left an indelible mark on his geographical work in political ecology and Marxian political economy.