The Perils and Possibilities of Hanging out with Geographers

In this paper I reflect on being a cultural geographer in Australia by thinking about academic groupings of geographers (which were often formerly termed as departments) as neighbourhoods,and on geography in Australia as a series of interconnected neighbourhoods. I focus on the resources we gain from being ‘in’ geography and from associating with other geographers; I consider how our neighbourhoods impact on the practice of cultural geography in Australia; and I reflect on the perils and possibilities, for cultural geographers, of hanging out with geographers. These reflections are based on my autobiographical experience as a cultural geographer in Australia, and form a small part of my reconsideration of how geography is constituted by the myriad career paths of academics in the discipline (see, for example, Moss (ed.), 2001;Barnes, 2004; Johnston, 2004)