Reading To Be Done before This Discussion:

Jean-Robert Pitte. 2002. The geographical way of life. Progress in Human Geography. 15:583-585.  Available http://search.epnet.com/direct.asp?an=7489761&db=aph

Adam Ortman 2003 A student’s guide to helping ease worldwide poverty, The Torch October 10.  http://www.intra.valpo.edu/index.php/torch?edition=86&section=5&article=2918&options=

Chris Sopher.  2010.  Does your Major Matter?  The Daily Tar Heel.  November 8, 2010

Things to Bring to Class: Your own notes on the articles and/or a print out. 
Due in Discussion This Week: Answers to the questions below and your Reflection Paper on Geography and Vocation.
Due in Discussion Next Week: Nothing! This is the last one.

Concepts/Ideas/Places: public space, the street, scale, globalization, practicality, volunteerism, civic engagement, citizenship, vocation.

Reflection Paper Assignment
Your last writing assignment for the course is a 2-3 page paper reflecting upon the relationship among geography and vocation. In your paper you should respond to the following questions:

What do you believe is your current vocation and what do you think your vocation will be after you graduate from college?   In what ways might your choice of vocation be tied to the task of changing the world or creating new geographies? How do you think you might you use some of the knolwedge you have gained in this class in a future vocation (in the workplace, in your family, or in your community)?

The discussion below and the readings will help you to better understand what vocation is and how geography and vocation are related. You are encouraged to quote from and use ideas from the articles in discussing the answers to these questions. The paper does not have to follow the five paragraph format, but should be well organized with an introduction and conclusion and should use supporting evidence from the articles or from your own life to illustrate the points it makes. As usual your paper should be typed (or word-processed), double spaced, in 12 pt font, stapled, and with 1 inch margins all around.  You must cite any direct quotes AND paraphrased ideas from the article or other sources as directed in Citing Sources in GEO 101.  Papers that do not properly cite sources will lose points.

To Prepare for Discussion: This discussion asks a big question: How does one go about changing the world? The question, of course, assumes first that the world needs changing and that we know what to do to change it.  Because we are asking this question in the context of an introductory human geography class we should also ask a related question: What role is there for geography and geographers in making a difference in the world? There are no correct or final answers to these questions, but I think that they are valuable ones to ask and to contemplate. 

In this class we have explored the geography of some of the world’s problems.  At the beginning of the course we discussed the seemingly impossible problems of population growth and environmental destruction.  Here at the end of the semester we have addressed issues of poverty and segregation.  What has not been made as explicit in this class is that people around the world are working to solve all of the problems we have discussed this semester. One of the biggest lessons that you should take away from this class is that the geographies we live with day in and day out are not in any sense natural or inevitable.  This means that in fact there are indeed solutions to the problems we have been discussing.  Furthermore knowledge of the geographical concepts and ideas that we have discussed this semester might even be useful in figuring out solutions to some of the problems we have discussed. 

If you’ll stick with me for a moment I want to digress a bit and see if I can connect some of what I’m talking about here with two ideas you might have encountered attending this university. I am not an expert on Lutheran Theology, and I know that many of you may know much more about the topic than I do. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there are some ideas “in the air” at a place like VU that might have some relevance for our discussion.  That is, I want to suggest that some of what you have learned in this class may be directly related to some of what you learn by attending a Lutheran University (and what I learn by teaching at a Lutheran University) and that you (and I) would not learn by attending another type of educational institution.  One theological notion that is central to education at a Lutheran university is the idea of vocation (Schwehn).  Some might say that a vocation is what you are called to do with your life.  It is also more than just one’s choice of career.  Your career is just one of the many vocations that you may engage in simultaneously.  For example, you may also be a parent, a citizen, or a neighbor at the same time that you work as a fast food restaurant manager or a civil engineer.  Any of these vocations might provide opportunities to serve one’s neighbor and to improve the state of the world, even if just in a small way.  The idea of vocation has a geography because it is concerned not just with what we do with our own lives, but also with what we do in the world.  That is it is about how through our work and our actions we change the world for better or worse, and in so doing change ourselves.  In short our vocations involve us in creating and recreating the world. 

This is related to another theological concept that is “in the air” here at VU; that is the idea of Luther’s Two Kingdoms in which a heavenly or spiritual kingdom coexists with an earthly or secular kingdom.  It is this idea that allows a University like VU to exist for it is the separation of theological and secular concerns that allows for the academic freedom so necessary for intellectual inquiry we are engaging in with this very discussion topic (Solberg).  What interests me about Luther’s two kingdoms is that it is a geographical metaphor that expresses a particular notion of space. While the two kingdoms are separate spaces or realms they are also related or interconnected.  This is similar to the notions of social space or relative space that I have advanced in this course.  Space is not a container for things but is rather the relationships among things.  Because it is rooted in this particular understanding of space, the two kingdom’s idea suggests not a choice between two worlds, either withdrawal from the secular world toward some spiritual or heavenly world or being mired in the secular world without participation in a spiritual one, but rather active engagement with the secular world informed by simultaneous engagement with the spiritual world. Now my interpretation of these ideas may not fit with interpretations of those who are better versed in these matters and who can speak with better authority on them (see the references below for examples of more authoritative discussion).  Nevertheless, these two ideas point toward some other less obvious ways that people might usefully engage their talents in making the world a better place.  That is that we change the world not just though things like public protest but also through our vocations and through the ways we live our everyday lives. 

The Readings: It seems to me that the author of the first reading, Jean-Robert Pitte, has an incredibly sharp sense of his vocation as a geographer.  I like his statement about what it means to be a geographer: "To be a geographer, or to live as a geographer, is to be conscious of both the risks and the possibilities facing humanity in order to ameliorate material and moral life conditions." (pg. 584). What he suggest here is that the geographical knowledge that you have gained in this class as well as perhaps the knowledge you have gained throughout your university education has a purpose beyond that of advancing a career or providing personal fulfillment. Understanding something about the world is a prerequisite to any work towards mitigating human suffering and improving the quality of people's lives around the globe. Pitte I think is suggesting that the vocation of a geographer is necessarily one of making the world a better place. One who understands "the risks and possibilities facing humanity" can not help but to take action to help mitigate those risks and realize those possibilities.

Making a difference in the world of course is not just the work of geographers. Whether or not you identify yourself as a geographer you will likely have opportunities to get involved in making your community a better place. There are people out there day in and day out who are not just studying ways to make the world a better place but are actually going out and doing something about it.  One question this provokes for me is what would the world be like if all these people weren’t out there doing all this work in the civic and public realms? The next article is from our campus newspaper The Torch.  Adam Ortman argues that one way that you can contribute to making the world a better place is through your chosen occupation. Is he correct?

The final article you read for today was recently published in the Daily Tar Heel and asks "Does Your Major Matter?" While searching for articles on geography and vocation, this article caught my attention because it focuses upon the seemingly tough choice between practicality and love of subject matter in the choice of a major or vocation. As the article indicates this may in fact be a false choice as the most practical major and career may just turn out to be the one you love the most.  There is also plenty of good advise for you in the article.   

Additional Works Cited

I apologize for not providing a full citation here. The following articles were provided to me without full references and I have not been able to identify their full origins.

Schwehn, Mark R. The identity of Lutheran colleges and universities pp. 4-6. 

Solberg, Richard W.  What can the Lutheran tradition contribute to Christian higher education?  In Models for Christian Higher Education, Richard Huges and William Adrian eds. Pp. 71-81.

Additional Questions to be Discussed

What is the purpose of an education at a Christian/Lutheran/Church-Related/Liberal Arts/Professional University anyway?
What role does geography play in fulfilling the purpose of such an education?

What role has practicality vs. love for subject played in your own vocational discernment?

Name: Honor Code:
Questions to be answered and turned in at the beginning of Class

1.  What are some of the characteristic of geography as a field of study that make it useful for solving problems and taking advantage of possibilities for making the world a better place?

 

 

 

 

2.  Do you agree with Adam Ortman’s contention that finding the right job is one way to make the world a better place?  Why or why not? 

 

 

 

 

 

3.   What are your current vocations?  What do you think your vocations will be after you graduate from college?  In what ways might your choice of vocation be tied to the task of changing the world or creating new geographies?

 

 

4.  Does your major matter? What do you think about the advice that one should choose a major based upon what they really love?   

 

 

 

5.  What is one question about vocation, changing the world, volunteerism and all you have read about that you would like to discuss in class?