{"id":931,"date":"2013-09-18T22:35:56","date_gmt":"2013-09-18T12:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/?p=931"},"modified":"2013-09-18T22:35:56","modified_gmt":"2013-09-18T12:35:56","slug":"geographic-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/?p=931","title":{"rendered":"Geographic Thought"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cresswell\"<\/a>Rating:<\/strong> \"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"★\"\"☆\"<\/p>\n

Tim Cresswell. 2013. Geographic Thought – A Critical Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978 1 4051 6939 4.<\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I think it’s fair to argue two points in particular in relation to texts on the philosophy of geography: firstly, that such insights are essential in developing a critical perspective on the subject; and, secondly, that such thought usually intensifies rather than reduces the divisions in the subject. In terms of the former, such study should be seen as an integral part of passing from tyro to adept although (as even the author admits) it’s often seen more as a chore than a necessity. I think the latter is more open to dispute although I’m not sure it should be. We are told (especially in the opening chapters of the book) of the mix of physical and human geographies that the early Geographers saw as being the subject. The changes wrought in the 1970s created a division which shows no sign of healing. The physical geography strand (how many now admit to being physical geographers<\/em> nowadays?) has become the realm of environmental or earth science, whereas the human<\/em> side remains looking at the applied side of the subject, often dispensing with the “human” tag as if it were a tautology! This is not to start a battle but to provide a perspective to the debate this book investigates. Perhaps the battle needs to be documented, but that is another text!<\/p>\n

The aim here is to describe the key figures and ideas in the theoretical geography debates. The focus is not an even historical spread but more a canter through early ideas and a longer time looking at current critical debates. Following an outline of the value of this subject, we start, as we should, with the earliest people who could be considered ‘geographers’. Herodotus<\/a> gets a mention as one would expect along with the usual luminaries as Strabo<\/a> and Ibn Battuta<\/a>. The pace set is stunning: we go from ancient to Medieval to modern ideas in a very brief chapter! Chapter three tackles the rise of modern geographical thought in quite an unusual way. The opening thesis is that Kant is a geographer in that he tries to create a framework for rational argument which is where early modern geography developed. Here, we can see visions of the German idea<\/a> of rational explanation that created such a development of thought in the 19th century. It’s this move towards logical positivism and Continental Geography that sets apart the human side into theorists and empiricists (or Europe vs US). On the other side we see the rise of a wide range of geographical perspectives that are still being actively argued. Both are contained and constrained by one of the biggest geographical arguments in the C20th – the rise and value of geopolitics.<\/p>\n

The next stage of the debate starts with the intriguing snippet that Harvard closed its Geography department in 148 citing that Geography was “intellectually inadequate”! That’s hardly flattering and not really adequate to describe a subject slowly filling university departments (although the physical\/human dichotomy was, and still is, evident). The point is made that geography was dominated by regional geography and that this said little about the generalities of regions. The comparison is made with scientists who only study one element or specific animal and yet that does not really grasp the complexity of the situation as it developed. More is made of the “Quantitative Revolution<\/a>” the move towards the mathematics of social geography – a move which is still debated today. It was this, I think, more than any other that finally created the rift between physical and human we see today.<\/p>\n

It was inevitable that there would be a move against the quantitative revolution and we see this unfold in subsequent chapters. Although it all comes under the heading of humanism, the reaction was more a desire to look at geography as a personal experience (so creating sets<\/em> of geographies).\u00a0 That too was soon altered and some of the more powerful analyses came to the fore. Perhaps the best known is David Harvey<\/a> and the various members of the Marxist schools of thought. If Marxist thought is based on power relations and material production, then the next case, feminist geography is divided by gender. The central argument is that much of geographical explanation has had a masculine focus and the implications of this need to be carefully analysed. Along similar lines, the fragmentation of geography into geographies, brought along the ideas of post-modernist thought which later spread into post-structuralism and the work of Foucault. It is as if we have taken a single explanation and then shattered it to see how it was constructed and if it could be better constructed.\u00a0 As we are taken through the various developments we can see the way in which ideas have been taken up to try to better understand space (or time, as with time-space geography<\/a>) .<\/p>\n

Up to this point we have seen a move away from regional geography to a more “scientific” approach to a complete negation of that in the numerous geographies that have developed in the latter part of the twentieth century. In the final chapters, the author talks about some of the most recent ideas such as relational geography (which almost come back to ideas of power and the geopolitics of the late C19th!), the increasing consideration of non-human animal geography and actor-network<\/a> theory. Concluding chapters investigate the some of the aspects missed in the text and the attempts to link (re-link?) human and physical geography.<\/p>\n

This is an extremely interesting text both in what it includes and in what it excludes. The author notes this arguing it’s a subset of geographical thought in that it is focussed on human\/cultural geography in N America and Europe. As such it covers impressive ground, focussing more on ideas and developments rather than just lists of personalities. It provides a map (if one can use such a term after reading this text!) of intellectual development within a specific time-space. As such, it does its job very well providing the reader with a solid overview of key philosophical ideas (and a rich bibliography to follow up key arguments). Against this, it must be acknowledged that there are large areas not covered especially with physical geography (which only gets a mention at the end). There is much of interest to be gained by looking at such divisions. What we do have is a text that deserves a wide readership. At least with such a good introduction there is no need for geographical theory to be seen as dry and without context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rating: Tim Cresswell. 2013. Geographic Thought – A Critical Introduction. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978 1 4051 6939 4. I think it’s fair to argue two points in particular in relation to texts on the philosophy of geography: firstly, that such insights are essential in developing a critical perspective on the subject; and, secondly, that such thought usually intensifies rather than reduces the divisions in the subject. In terms of the former, such study should be seen as an integral part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":921,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,249,29,176],"class_list":["post-931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-geography","tag-human-geography","tag-maps","tag-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ecogeog.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}