Brinck Jackson in the realm of the everyday

Academic geography is dotted with fly-specks from the fashion conscious who have skittered from one enthusiasm to another like aggravating bugs in mid room flight. Our disciplinary history in fact abounds in dead-end roads ent ered at fatally high speed, theoretical turns not negotiated, crossroads or acles proved dismally inaccurate. By contrast, the formidable cultural geog rapher and landscape historian J. B. "Brinck" Jackson (1909-1996) conceived of a more slowly developing world, replete with enduring geographies. Alth ough firmly Brahmin by origin, Jackson was chary of the fleeting fashions a nd power tropes of what he sometimes dubbed the Establishment. He was incli ned instead to attend to the structures of the everyday, emphasizing commun ity and connection over didactic fashion. With writing grounded in daily ex perience and a consummate ability to witness pattern, he urged geographers to think and envision.