On the geography of deserts

ABSTRACT

What is a desert? What is a desert to a geomorphologist, a geoclimatologist, a biogeographer, a geoanthropologist, a cartographer or a geopolitologist? Geography, as a discipline that is as much concerned with terrestrial morphology and climates as it is with ecosystems and human societies, shed light on the various meanings of the term ‘desert’ in different fields of language and knowledge, providing insights into the significance of deserts for our contemporary societies. The ambition of this reflection is to unravel the complexities of deserts and help to grasp what deserts are and what they ‘do’ by encouraging geographers to merge bioclimatic analyses and geo-historical understandings, establishing the geographical discipline as the quintessential science of deserts.

KEYWORDS:

• Geography
• discipline
• desert
• arid land
• Sahara

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. On the place of the desert in the art of declaimed speech (khuṭba) and poetry (shiʿr) in classical Arab culture, approximately from the 6^th to the 13^th century, see Irwin (2000) and Farrin (2011); and in the poetic imagination more generally, see in particular Durand (2005).

2. On the representations of dry lands in African and Afro-diasporic literatures, and how it reveals modes of ‘Black ecological thought,’ see Meché (2022).

3. For a critique of the use of isohyets as geographical boundaries, see Retaillé’s (2018) stimulating reflection on zonal models in regional geography.

4. This text is an edited and shortened version of the inaugural lecture of the 33^rd International Festival of Geography held in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, France, from September 30 to October 2, 2022.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Julien Brachet

Julien Brachet is a researcher at the French Research Institute for Development, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. His research investigates economic and political dynamics in the Sahara and the Sahel, and the dynamics of knowledge production in/on Africa. He has been a visiting research fellow at the universities of Niamey, Oxford, N’Djaména and Princeton. Former editor-in-chief of the quarterly journal Politique africaine, he is notably the author of Migrations transsahariennes. Vers un désert cosmopolite et morcelé (Paris, 2009) and The Value of disorder. Autonomy, prosperity and plunder in the Chadian Sahara (with J. Scheele, Cambridge, 2019).