Barney Louis Warf

Barney Warf
  • Professor

Contact Info

Department Phone:
785-864-5143
Malott Hall #3027

Biography —

I am a human geographer with wide-ranging interests. Over the years, I have studied a diverse plethora of topics in economic, political, and social geography. Running throughout this panoply is my interest in political economy as it pertains to the construction of space and place. I have consciously sought to position myself within the discipline at the intersections of traditional economic geography and contemporary social theory.

Research —

My research and teaching interests lie within the broad domain of regional development, emphasizing producer services and telecommunications. Early in my career I focused on the lumber industry and the changing impacts of ports; I also made extensive use of input-output analysis. I have studied, among other things, New York's role as a global city, commercial real estate trends, information services in the Dominican Republic, offshore banking in Panama and Bahrain, electronic currency transactions, international trade of legal and engineering services, the savings and loan industry, bank failures, mergers and acquisitions in the telecommunications industry, impacts of stock market booms, the satellite industry and its competition with fiber optics, military spending, the globalization of back offices and clerical work. I have written extensively on the geographies of cyberspace, including uneven patterns of access (the digital divide), e-government, and internet censorship. I also study political geography, including voting technologies and the spatial dynamics of the Electoral College. I have authored several papers concerning religious diversity at the regional, national, and global scales. More recently I have written about geographies of corruption. I have sought to complement these empirical studies with conceptual and theoretical analyses of various sorts. I draw from two major intellectual traditions: Marxism, which I find useful in bringing to bear issues of class, power, and historical context, and phenomenology, which I think is central to a serious appreciation of human intentionality and consciousness. I was active in the shift toward postmodernism and poststructuralism, and find this to be an inspirational body of literature today. Thus, invoking these strands of inquiry, I have written about globalization and its relations to the unique, idiosyncratic characteristics of individual places; the inter-relations between social theory and regional science; structuration theory; theories of contingency, alternate-worlds, and complexity; and the implications of capital hypermobility for the post-Keynesian state. I have also published reviews of the state of social theory in human geography as well as its implications for geographic pedagogy. More recently, this line of thought has led me to explore actor-network theory and commodity chain analysis. I sutured together these varying strands of thought in a recent book on the historical geographies of time-space compression, which attempts to illustrate how time and space are social constructions, molded and reformed to suit varying historical and geographic circumstances. Running throughout this wide array of topics is a lifelong interest in how different perspectives on space intersect and collide. I enjoy exploring the similarities and differences that run through contrasting bodies of theory, and in teaching, attempt to draw out the strengths and weaknesses of each school. Academic research is at its richest when it brings different lines of thought into a creative tension with one another. I am uncomfortable being pigeonholed in a single, convenient category (e.g., "economic geographer" or "urban geographer"), maintaining instead that there is no necessity of being simply one or the other. It is possible, even necessary, I think, to adhere to several lines of thought simultaneously, to use different languages and perspectives to study different problems and issues, and to participate vigorously in multiple intellectual communities. Such a stance does not lead to eclectic superficiality; rather, it allows me, or so I hope, to draw upon contrasting perspectives, to select the best each has to offer, and to be inspired by their differences. Geography has always been a self-consciously intentionally inter-disciplinary body of thought, drawing from and in turn contributing to neighboring disciplines.

Research interests:

  • internet
  • telecommunications
  • services
  • urban geography
  • cosmopolitanism
  • social theory

Teaching —

Teaching interests:

  • globalization
  • social theory
  • economic geography
  • internet

Selected Publications —

Warf, B. 2017. Human Geography: A Serious Introduction. Books. San Diego: Cognella.

Warf, B. 2015. “Atheist Geographies and Geographies of Atheism.” Book Chapters. In The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, edited by S. Brunn, 2211–33. Dordrecht: Springer.

Warf, B. 2015. “Global Cities, Cosmopolitanism, and Geographies of Tolerance.” Journal Articles. Urban Geography 36 (6): 927–46.

Warf, Barney. 2015. “Injecting Cosmopolitanism into the Geography Classroom.” Journal Articles. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 39 (1): 37–50.

Galvan-Miyoshi, Yankuic, Robert Walker, and Barney Warf. 2015. “Land Change Regimes and the Evolution of the Maize-Cattle Complex in Neoliberal Mexico.” Journal Articles. Land 4: 1–24.

Warf, B., and C. Ferras. 2015. “Nationalism, Identity and Landscape in Contemporary Galicia.” Journal Articles. Space and Polity 19 (3): 1–3.

Warf, B., and E. Fekete. 2015. “Relational Geographies of Cyberterrorism and Cyberwar.” Journal Articles. Space and Polity 20 (2): 1–15.

Warf, Barney. 2015. “The Hermit Kingdom in Cyberspace: Unveiling the North Korean Internet.” Journal Articles. Information, Communication and Society 18 (1): 109–20.

Warf, B. 2014. “Asian Geographies of E-Government.” Journal Articles. Eurasian Economics and Geography 55 (1): 94–110.

Warf, B. 2014. “E-Government in the OECD: A Comparative Geographic Perspective.” Book Chapters. In Handbook of Research on E-Governance and Social Inclusion: Concepts and Cases, edited by S. Baum and A. Mahizhnan, 148–63. New York: IGI Global Press.

Warf, Barney. 2014. “Geographies of E-Governance in Latin America.” Journal Articles. Journal of Latin American Geography 13 (1): 169–85.

Warf, Barney. 2014. “High Points: An Historical Geography of Cannabis.” Journal Articles. Geographical Review 104 (4): 414–38.

Warf, B. 2014. “Spaces of the Telemediated Self.” Book Chapters. In The Ashgate Research Companion to Media Geography, edited by P. Adams, 291–310. London: Ashgate.

Warf, B. 2014. “Web 2.0, Neogeography, and Urban e-Governance.” Book Chapters. In Citizen E-Participation in Urban Governance, edited by C. Silva. New York: IGI Global Press.

Warf, B. 2013. “Contemporary Digital Divides in the United States.” Journal Articles. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie 104 (1): 1–17.

Warf, B. 2013. “Geographies of Global Telephony in the Age of the Internet.” Journal Articles. Geoforum 45: 219–29.

Warf, B. 2012. “Dethroning the View from above: Toward a Critical Social Analysis of Satellite Occularcentrism.” Book Chapters. In Down to Earth, edited by L. Parks and J. Schwoch, 42–60. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Warf, B., ed. 2012. Encounters and Engagements between Economic and Cultural Geography. Books. Dordrecht: Springer.

Warf, B. 2012. Global Geographies of the Internet. Books. Dordrecht: Springer.

Warf, B. 2012. “Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Geographical Imaginations.” Journal Articles. Geographical Review 102 (3): 271–92.

Warf, B. 2011. “Excavating the Prehistory of Time-Space Compression.” Journal Articles. Geographical Review 101 (3): 435–46.

Warf, B., and J. Leib, eds. 2011. Revitalizing Electoral Geography. Books. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Warf, B. 2010. “Do You Know the Way to San José? Medical Tourism in Costa Rica.” Journal Articles. Journal of Latin American Geography 9 (1): 51–66.

Warf, B., and M. Winsberg. 2010. “Geographies of Megachurches in the United States.” Journal Articles. Journal of Cultural Geography 27 (1): 33–51.

Warf, B. 2010. “Teaching Time-Space Compression.” Journal Articles. Journal of Geography in Higher Education 35 (2): 143–61.

Stutz, F., and B. Warf. 2010. The World Economy: Resources, Location, Trade, and Development. Books. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Warf, B. 2009. “The U.S. Electoral College and Spatial Biases in Voter Power.” Journal Articles. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99 (1): 184–204.

Shaw, I., and B. Warf. 2009. “Worlds of Affect: Virtual Geographies of Video Games.” Journal Articles. Environment and Planning A 41 (6): 1332–43.

Warf, B., and S. Arias, eds. 2008. The Spatial Turn: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Books. London: Routledge.

Warf, B. 2008. Time-Space Compression: Historical Geographies. Books. London: Routledge.