To Be or Not to Be International: Geographic Knowledge, Globalization and the Question of Languages

Even before geographers started to conceive the global world and the way it affected established worlds, their own scientific world has already changed. As IGU congresses show, starting in the 1960s English became the language of global science. However, this process did not go without questions and worries about languages from IGU prominent geographers; there has been recently a renewed interest among geographers. The authors focus here on the questions of production and transposition of knowledge, although the latter cannot be dissociated from its publication. The central question is: Can the global scale, which may offer a way out of, say, regional or national normative grips, have become itself normative. Say differently: does the acceptance of English as the international communication device ends all discussions on the hegemonic normative position it has on scientific productions? Is going global the same as being international? Does meeting the global scientific standards suffice for your research to be considered, “universal”? The authors do not pretend here to be able to answer all those questions completely and satisfactory, the merit of their contribution might simply be to shed a new light on some of them.