NO. I ETHNOGEOGRAPHIC BOARD — BENNETT 3 



have appointed professional committees and consultants, and hired 

 professional personnel for this purpose. The Government's role in the 

 support of academic research is still a much debated issue. 



Area Approach 



"Ethnogeography," according to the Board's own definition of its 

 somewhat cumbersome name, "is the study of human and natural re- 

 sources of world areas." In its application for financial support, the 

 Board restated its function ". . . to furnish to Governmental war 

 agencies, military and civilian, needed information of all sorts relating 

 to any areas outside the United States where military, economic, or 

 other action is carried on or planned." This brings up another major 

 problem faced by the Board, namely, that Government agencies, partic- 

 ularly the military, operate in terms of areas, while universities, coun- 

 cils, and foundations are organized by disciplines. Again it was nec- 

 essary to translate the discipline knowledge into the geographic cate- 

 gories used by the Government. 



Since the beginning of the war there has been a marked increase in 

 area consciousness on the part of academic institutions, but at the time 

 of the founding of the Board the problem was really acute. Before 

 1940, only the American Council of Learned Societies, among the 

 three research Councils, had area committees. These were concerned 

 largely with language and literature, although some, like the Com- 

 mittee on Latin American Studies, were truly cross-disciplinary 

 bodies united by an area interest. 



Some disciplines, such as history and government, have long recog- 

 nized area subdivisions, even though these tend to be fixed by tradition 

 and rarely achieve world coverage. Likewise, some fields of study are 

 by their very nature more av/are of areas than others. Most of the 

 natural historians, particularly those in museums, have an area ap- 

 proach. Among the social sciences, geography is the most logical 

 leader for the area approach in spite of the fact that it has so far failed 

 to develop many specialists. Because of its interest in "primitive" peo- 

 ples, anthropology has had many specialists with foreign-area experi- 

 ence. Previous to the area programs in the universities, sociology, 

 political science, and economics largely ignored the area approach. 



On the other hand, many of the Government departments, like Com- 

 merce, Agriculture, and State, have long maintained foreign-area di- 

 visions and staffed them with area experts. In fact for future discus- 

 sions, it is interesting to remember that the foreign-service personnel 

 of the Department of State has debated the issue of area versus pro- 



