Buttimer, Anne (1938–)

Anne Buttimer, a world famous geographer, gained exceptionally high regard through her work in social and humanist geography, her understanding of the human life experience, and her work on planning and sustainable development, all within a conception of geography as a social science.

Buttimer was born in rural Ireland, educated (BA 1957, MA 1959) at the National University of Ireland, and destined for service in the Dominican Sisters of Providence. She moved to Seattle in 1960 to obtain a Washington State teaching certificate at Seattle University. She joined the PhD program at the University of Washington, completing her dissertation in 1965. She taught initially at Seattle University but moved to the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in urban studies, followed by a long tenure at Clark University—from postdoctorate to professor, from 1970 to 1981—during which she was at times a visitor to Lund University in Sweden. She moved to Lund as a research fellow in humanities and social sciences from 1982 to 1988, where she met and married engineering professor B. Broberg. After 2 years at the University of Ottawa, she returned to Ireland in 1991, where she remained till her retirement in 2003, as professor and head of the department of geography at University College Dublin.

She has held numerous professional positions—on editorial boards; as a member, secretary, or chair of commissions; and as officer of professional organizations, such as the Association of American Geographers, the Irish National [Page 309]Committee for Geography, the Institute of British Geographers, and the Acadameia Europaea. Especially significant has been her many roles in the International Geographical Union (IGU), beginning in 1973 and culminating in her service as president of the IGU from 2000 to 2004. She has received many awards and honors, including two honorary doctorates.

The major themes of Buttimer's research and writing have been (1) social geography and social space, (2) genres de vie or understanding the life world of people in places, (3) dialogue—orally derived biographies of practicing geographers, (4) the philosophy of a humanistic social science, and (5) humanist planning and sustainability. Her initial work was to help establish social geography within American and British geography and develop the concept of social space within the emerging social scientific geography, challenging simplistic and mechanical modeling and arguing that understanding social space required incorporation of cultural diversity and competing individual values.

A major aspect of Buttimer's social geography was her reinvigoration of concepts of genres de vie, or life worlds, as social space experienced and created, not just perceived by individuals and groups. At Lund, she went beyond the use of the developing field of time-geography at the daily level to that of people's lifetimes. This led to her important and intellectually valuable dialogue project, which has resulted in hundreds of fascinating interviews concerning the actual practice of geography, which occupied much of her time at Lund.

A parallel theme throughout her career was her concern with the philosophy of geography, ccharacterized by a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration and incorporating a humanist concern for people's different experiences and values into a social scientific geography, not rejecting the quantitative tradition but broadening its perspective and capability. Yet another related theme has been a concern with effective planning—a practice in need of a humanistic, social science understanding. This began with work in the slums of Glasgow and continued with work in IGU commissions and current work in sustainable development.

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