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Curiosity, Inquiry and the Geographical

Imagination. Daniel W. Gade. New York:
Peter Lang, 2011. xvii and 307 pp., maps,
ills., notes, bibliog., index. $59.95 cloth (ISBN
978-1-4331-1541-7)

Gregory Knapp

To cite this article: Gregory Knapp (2013) Curiosity, Inquiry and the Geographical Imagination.
Daniel W. Gade. New York: Peter Lang, 2011. xvii and 307 pp., maps, ills., notes, bibliog.,
index. $59.95 cloth (ISBN 978-1-4331-1541-7), The AAG Review of Books, 1:1, 13-15, DOI:
10.1080/2325548X.2013.785742

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Published online: 24 May 2013.

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The AAG Review OF BOOKS
Curiosity, Inquiry, and the
Geographical Imagination
Daniel W. Gade. New York:
Peter Lang, 2011. xvii and
307 pp., maps, illustrations,
notes, bibliography, and
index. $59.95 cloth (ISBN
978-1-4331-1541-7).
Reviewed by Gregory
Knapp, Department of Geog-
raphy and Environment, The
University of Texas at Austin,
Austin, TX.
The life of the mind escapes the
boundaries of institutions and
disciplines. One aspect of this
can be seen in the flourishing
publication records after what
used to be called retirement.
During the troisième âge it is nor-
mal to review the motives and
rationale of a career, revisit old
publications and field experiences, and perhaps consider
publication of intellectual autobiographies. The book
at hand represents an unusually complete exercise in
scholarly self-examination, linked with overviews of dis-
ciplinary, scholarly, and human history in the context of
contextualizing the author’s scholarly vocation.
Dan Gade (1936–) is well positioned to write this work.
At Wisconsin in the 1960s he took a seminar by Carl
Sauer that decisively affected his career. He overlapped
such other graduate students at Wisconsin as Terry Jor-
dan, Paul English, Sam Hilliard, Mei-Ling Hsu, Arthur
Morris, and Clarissa Kimber. He obtained his doctor-
ate in 1967 on plant use in the Vilcanota Valley, Peru,
cosupervised by Henry Sterling and William Denevan.
He had already in 1966 joined the faculty at the Univer-
sity of Vermont, where he would spend his career until
retirement in 1999. The Vermont locale gave him an op-
portunity to view the discipline from the periphery, giv-
ing him a bit of an outsider’s perspective: “Geographical
The AAG Review of Books 1(1) 2013, pp. 13–15. doi: 10.1080/2325548X.2013.785742.
©2013 by Association of American Geographers. Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.
marginality accommodates sub-
versive positions that question
the universalizing presumptions
of the center” (p. 171).
The book is divided into three
parts. The third part (which
some might wish to read first)
is a personal reflection on re-
search projects as lived and ex-
perienced, including extended
discussion of projects that were
abandoned for various reasons.
The first two parts constitute a
reflection on the role of wide-
ranging (epistemic) curiosity in
human history, including discus-
sions of shamanism, the coun-
terenlightenment, the romantic
sensibility, and the Sauer tradi-
tion in geography.
Readers expecting sharp attacks
will not find much to work with.
Gade does make clear his differences of opinion, but
most of this book is focused on movements and per-
sonages he admires. The result is a genial volume, one
that could well provide inspiration for a younger scholar
needing encouragement for an inner-directed career. It
is also noteworthy for its wide range of learning. Few
living geographers are as comfortable discussing such a
variety of classical, medieval, early modern, and mod-
ern authors, drawing on knowledge of French, German,
Spanish, and other tongues. Gade’s field experiences in
remote parts of the Andes, Africa, and Europe provide
more material for discussion and reflection.
For Gade, unlimited curiosity in its own right is satisfy-
ing; any findings will of necessity be incomplete, in need
of revisiting and revising. This puts Gade at odds with
those religious and academic figures who have a fixed
worldview and interpretive framework. The world is
full of surprises, and the intellectual journey will never
end. Often the journey involves travel and field work,
conversations and interviews, archives and browsing of
books in libraries. Scholarly ideas pass through an ini-
tial phase of “glimmering,” followed by research, publi-
cation, and critique. Gade provides examples of his own
projects that did not completely make it through the
process of publication, due to difficulties of data gather-
ing or the unwelcome discovery that someone else had
already published on the topic. Gade recognizes that the
latter should not be a deterrent, but he prefers the role
of pioneer rather than refiner of knowledge. He prefers
to be the fox rather than the hedgehog.
In this light, Gade provides outlines of tentative research
on subjects as diverse as the diffusion of bullfighting, ar-
son as a form of slave resistance, a German voluntary fire
department in Brazil, cats and insects as human food,
the early adoption of lightning rods in Venice, the Ma-
deira-Mamoré Railroad, dooryard gardens in Peru, civets
in Ethiopia, chestnuts in France, and lemon pavilions at
Lake Garda, Italy. Few of these topics appear relevant
to solving pressing problems, but all are intriguing and
entertaining.
In Gade’s view, the heroic, questing individual is central.
Counterenlightenment authors such as Rousseau, Herd-
er, Goethe, Fichte, and Wilhelm von Humboldt estab-
lished the importance of the spirit of rebellion, cultural
diversity, viewing phenomena in contextual unity, poly-
valent curiosity, and self-formation (Bildung). This set of
orientations is in opposition to reductionist approaches
that deny or truncate the role of the autonomous mind
or of human diversity. Structuralism, Marxism, neoclas-
sical economics, environmental determinism, and other
frameworks need to be “put aside” for vibrant research
to take place.
The book contains many vignettes and brief biographies
of exemplary figures and scholars who celebrated the
virtues of free inquiry and/or the values of the coun-
terenlightenment. Gade flags Herodotus, Thomas Jeffer-
son, Humboldt, Ratzel, Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh,
Elisée Reclus, Vidal de la Blache, and various natural-
ists. He also points to thinkers such as Carl Jung, Joseph
Campbell, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault;
composers such as Berlioz and Mahler; artists such as
Miró; and poets such as William Blake, Charles Olson,
and Gary Snyder. He argues that an explicit embrace of
romantic tenets is required as a corrective to the tenden-
cy of uniformitarian intellectual movements to claim a
hegemonic role as the sole advocates of rationalism.
In geography, Gade identifies Sauer as one of the best
exemplars of the romantic imagination, spotlighting his
14 THE AAG REVIEW OF BOOKS
German philosophical roots and his impact on genera-
tions of students. In addition to the Sauer school, he
highlights John K. Wright, David Lowenthal, Yi Fu
Tuan, and Clarence Glacken. Sauer’s many students
are also discussed in terms of his ongoing influence on
thought inside and outside of geography. Charles Olson,
for example, was influenced by Sauer in his poetry and
leadership of the Black Mountain School.
Gade suggests that teaching and textbook writing can
be distractions from the purer pursuits of scholarship
and publication. He points to Glen Trewartha as a case
example of a scholar whose textbook writing might have
distracted from more productive research. Gade is also
skeptical about rules, canons, and institutions. Advo-
cacy and instrumental research are criticized as often
involving unrealistic goals and as sometimes driven by
puritanical guilt rather than playful, epistemic curiosity.
A somewhat different critique is extended to postmod-
ern and other approaches of the new cultural geography.
Gade argues that postmodern approaches run the risk
of devaluing the environment, the past, and the role of
principled creativity in history, reducing reality to pol-
itics and discourse. Gade also is concerned about the
tendencies in cultural ecology, whether ecosystemicist or
adaptationist, to overgeneralize about functional causal
relationships and neglect spatial and temporal variation.
Environmental history’s topics are limited by the need
for written documentation. Gade identifies historical
ecology as a subfield better situated to carry forward the
agenda of classical cultural-historical geography.
Gade briefly touches on the topic of civilizational sup-
port or resistance to epistemic curiosity, speculating that
some societies are more hostile than others to indepen-
dent inquiry. In that context, it would have been nice
to provide some discussion of East Asian civilization,
both in terms of the persistence of shamanism and in
terms of the respect accorded to individualism in the
arts. Indeed, much of Gade’s thought seems akin to Zen
and other forms of Buddhism, with a similar appeal to
mindfulness and the ineffable. One might take an even
broader view and see the counterenlightenment itself as
having been directly or indirectly influenced by oriental
religion and art.
If there is a weakness in the approach taken here, it
might lie in an antinomian tendency to mistrust any es-
tablished movement, institution, or bent. Most people
are complex mixtures of (often incompatible) interests
and practices. It is possible to find creative and original
insights in the works of putative advocates of reduction-
ist paradigms or traditional institutions, and it is easy to
find wrongheaded or repulsive ideas espoused by coun-
terenlightenment romantics and rebels.
In sum, this book provides an entertaining overview
of personages and projects related to cultural-historical
geography in various places and times. It will provide
support and encouragement for students and scholars
pursuing individualistic research in the humanities or
(in some cases) the social sciences or sciences. Many
readers might also be stimulated to revisit or delve deep-
er into the literatures cited here. Gade’s way is not the
only route to scholarly creativity or even self-realization,
but it can be inspiring even for those with differing
tastes and inclinations.

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