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Video abstract – Federico Ferretti talks about “Between Radical Geography and Humanism: Anne Buttimer and the International Dialogue Project”
The Antipode Foundation released Assoc. Prof. Federico Ferretti's video abstract on the Anne Buttimer paper through their blog (opens in a new window)https://
Forthcoming in Antipode 51(4) this September, and available online now, (opens in a new window)Federico Ferretti’s latest paper, “Between Radical Geography and Humanism: Anne Buttimer and the International Dialogue Project”, argues for rediscovery and reassessment of the contributions that humanistic approaches can make to critical and radical geographies.
Based on an exploration of the archives of Anne Buttimer (1938-2017) and drawing upon Paulo Freire’s notion of conscientização (awareness of oppression accompanied by direct action for liberation), a concept that inspired Buttimer’s International Dialogue Project (1977-1988), Federico explores Buttimer’s engagement with radical geographers and geographies. His main argument is that Buttimer’s notions of “dialogue” and “catalysis”, which she put into practice through international and multilingual networking, should be viewed as “theory-praxes” in a relational and Freirean sense. In extending and putting critically in communication literature on radical pedagogies, transnational feminism, and the “limits to dialogue”, this paper discusses Buttimer’s unpublished correspondence with geographers such as David Harvey, William Bunge, Myrna Breitbart, Milton Santos and others, and her engagement with radical geographical traditions like anarchism, repositioning “humanism” vis-à-vis the fields of critical and radical geography.
Coming out at the same time as the latest title in the Antipode Book Series, (opens in a new window)Trevor Barnes and Eric Sheppard’s Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond, we hope “Between Radical Geography and Humanism: Anne Buttimer and the International Dialogue Project” will be nourishing food for thought for those thinking through our discipline’s history, current condition, and possible futures.
Federico Ferretti is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography at University College Dublin. His research and teaching interests lie in philosophy and history of geography and in cultural and historical geography, as well as in the international circulation of geographical knowledge through critical and anarchist approaches, with a special focus on Latin America and the Global South.
“Between Radical Geography and Humanism” is his third Antipode paper, following (opens in a new window)Arcangelo Ghisleri and the “Right to Barbarity”: Geography and Anti‐colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (2016) and (opens in a new window)“They have the right to throw us out”: Élisée Reclus’ New Universal Geography (2013). You can read all about his work, which has appeared in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, ACME and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, among many other places, at his website: (opens in a new window)https://people.ucd.ie/federico.ferretti