Bowling for Better: Reforming World Geography Bowl to Create a More Inclusive Geography

Abstract

Since 1993, the World Geography Bowl (WGB) has been a part of the fabric of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), with competitions happening at nearly all AAG regional and national meetings. Initially intended as a way of encouraging attendance and participation by undergraduates and geographers at non-research-intensive universities, today the competition exhibits problematic understandings of how best to create community and foster future generations of geographers. In this article, we briefly recount our experiences with the WGB and explore how aspects of the WGB’s operations reinforce many of the same problematic aspects of the discipline that many geographers seek to dismantle as geographers. We outline some of the issues with the WGB as it is currently constructed and propose several ways it could be reformed toward a more inclusive community-building activity. Given the appropriate reform, we conclude that the WGB can serve as an important part of the discipline’s framework and social reproduction.