| name | aaag-literature-positioning |
| description | Use when positioning an Annals of the American Association of Geographers manuscript in the literature — engaging geographic scholarship across the relevant area and the cross-cutting debates Annals readers expect. Frames the gap and the conversation; it does not design the study. |
Literature Positioning (aaag-literature-positioning)
The Annals expects a paper to enter a geographic conversation, not merely to cite a domain
literature with a few geography references appended. Position the work so its area's readers, and
geographers more broadly, recognize the debate it advances.
When to trigger
- Writing or revising the introduction/related-work and framing the gap
- A reviewer said "you've missed the geography literature" or "this reads as [other discipline]"
- Deciding which conversations to foreground for the declared area's editor and reviewers
Position in two registers
- Within the area. Engage the live debate your contribution moves — e.g., for Methods, the
spatial-dependence / scale / uncertainty literature; for Nature-Society, political ecology / land
change / resilience; for Human, the relevant social-theoretic strand; for Physical, the process
literature in your subsystem.
- Across geography. Connect to a cross-cutting geographic concern (scale, place, region,
space-time, environment-society, spatial data) so a reader outside the subfield sees the stake.
The "geographic conversation" test
Name the single closest prior account and write one sentence: "Prior work holds ___; we show
instead/additionally ___, which matters for [geographic debate] because ___." If the closest prior
account is in another discipline, you must still show how the contribution lands in geography.
Engage geographic theory, not just topical citations
- Cite the geographers who own the concept you use (place, scale, region, territory, landscape,
spatial dependence, environment-society), not only the domain-science sources.
- Treat geography's internal pluralism as a feature: a Human-Geography framing and a quantitative
framing of the "same" phenomenon are different conversations — pick the one your method serves.
- Avoid the "literature dump." Map the field into 2-4 positions and place yourself among them.
Area-aware positioning cues
| Area | Conversations to engage | Common gap to claim |
|---|
| Methods | spatial dependence, MAUP/scale, uncertainty, geocomputation | inference distortion others ignore |
| Human | the relevant social-spatial theory (urban, economic, political, cultural) | a relational/spatial mechanism missed |
| Nature-Society | political ecology, land-system science, hazards/resilience | one-sided treatments of coupled systems |
| Physical | process literature in the subsystem + RS/measurement | a process or scale gap in the evidence |
Worked micro-example (illustrative)
A draft on migration and climate cites a long climate-science literature and one geography reference.
Problem: reads as climate science with a geography citation appended (Human/Nature-Society editors
will ask "where is the geography conversation?")
Repair: map the field into positions — (a) climate-determinist accounts, (b) political-ecology accounts
stressing vulnerability-as-produced, (c) mobility/place-attachment accounts; place the paper among them
Closest prior account: the determinist reading; the contrast sentence states what the paper shows instead
Cross-cutting stake: how place attachment mediates environmental "push" — legible to migration, hazards,
and political-ecology readers alike
The revision enters a geographic debate and gives each area's reader a position to react to.
Checklist
Anti-patterns
- A domain-literature review with geography references bolted on at the end
- "First study to map X in [place]" framed as a contribution with no conceptual stake
- Ignoring the geographers who coined the concepts the paper leans on
- Undifferentiated literature dump with no positions and no closest rival
Output format
【Area conversation】the live debate this paper moves
【Closest prior account】name + the one-sentence contrast
【Cross-cutting stake】why geographers outside the subfield care
【Geographic theory engaged】concepts + their owners
【Next】aaag-theory-building
Supplementary resources
