Human geography

Chapter 2:
 Philosophical options
o The philosophical diversity of contemporary human geography
reflects the diversity of our subject matter, namely, human behaviour
in a spatial context
o Some aspects of the human geography are clearly aphilosophical or
empiricist, others are positivist, humanist, Marxist, feminist, or
postmodernist
 Empiricism
o Based on the belief that all knowledge results from experience and
therefore gives priority to factual observations over theoretical
statements
o Contends that we know through experience and that we experience
only those things that actually exist
o Typically sees knowledge acquisition as an ongoing process of
verifying and, as necessary, correcting factual statements
o Allow the facts to speak for themselves
 Rejects any philosophy that purports to be an all-embracing
system
o However, empiricism is rejected by most other philosophies
o Fundamental assumption of positivism, a philosophy that built upon
the basic empiricist foundation to include such strategies as theory
construction and hypothesis testing
 Positivism
o Contends that science is only able to deal with empiricism questions,
that scientific observations are repeatable, and that science
progresses through the construction of theories and derivation of
laws
o It is rigorous and clear, a clear and straightforward philosophy for
human geography, and positivism makes the following argument:
 Human geography needs to be objective; the personal beliefs of
the geographer should not influence research activity.
 According to humanism and Marxism, objectivity is not
only undesirable but in fact impossible
 Human geography can be studied in much the same way as any
other science
 For the positivist, there is really no such thing as a
separate geographic method; all sciences rely on the
same method
 Reflect the belief that human and physical objects to be
treated in a similar fashion
 Humanism and Marxism reject this assumption,
believing that it dehumanizes human geography
 Specific method that positivism sees is scientific method
  Reflecting the empiricist character of the philosophy,
research begins with fact; a theory is derived from those
facts, together with any available laws or appropriate
assumptions; a hypothesis is derived from the theory;
and that hypothesis becomes a law when verified by the
real world of facts
 Scientific method consists of the study of facts, the
construction of theory, the derivation of hypotheses,
and the related recognition of laws
o Closely associated with quantitative methods and theory development
o Is an integral part of what we described earlier as the spatial analysis
approach
o The introduction of it was very questionable since it directly
challenged the regional approach dominant at the time
 Humanism
o More loosely structured set of ideas
o It is a philosophy centred on such aspects of human life as value,
quality, meaning, and significance
o Focuses on human as individual decision-makers, on the way humans
perceive their world, and emphasizes subjectivity in general
o Pragmatism is one example; for human geographers the most
important is phenomenology
 Phenomenology is based on the idea that knowledge is
subjective
o The central component of phenomenology is the idea that researchers
need to demonstrate verstehen, or sympathetic understanding, or the
issue being researched
 Verstenhen is a research method, associated primarily with
phenomenology, in which the researcher adopts the
perspective of the individual or group under investigation,
German term translated into “empathetic understanding”
o Phenomenology seeks an empathetic understanding of the lived world
of individual human subjects, whereas positivism seeks objective
casual explanations of human behaviour, without reference to
individual human differences
o Several other humanistic philosophies, such as individuals’ persona
existentialism and idealism, have been advocated by geographers, but
not proved to be highly influential
 Existentialism
 Philosophy that sees humans as responsible for making
their own natures; it stresses personal freedom,
decision-making, and commitment in a world without
absolute values outside individuals’ personal
preferences
 Idealism
  Humanistic philosophy according to which human
actions can b understood only by reference to the
thought behind them
o The brief discussion of humanism raises two general issues
 The basic distinction between positivism and humanism is one
of objectivism versus subjectivism
 Positivism contends tat the study of human phenomena can be
objective; humanism says that it cannot- long-established,
unresolved problems in social science
o Three questions are relevant here:
 Is there an interaction between the researcher and the
research subject that invalidates the information collected?
 Does the researcher have a personal background that
effectively influences her or his choice of problem, methods,
and interpretation of results?
 If we view humans objectively, does this mean we see them as
objects? If so, is this approach dehumanizing?
o Answer “no” to these three questions means that you have positivistic
tendencies; “yes” means you have humanistic tendencies
o Classic humanistic philosophies place some emphasis on individuals
o For many human geographers, this emphasis on individuals is
inappropriate, and much humanistic work in geography has been
done on a group scale, groups are defined by culture, religion,
language, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality
 Marxism
o The ideas of Karl Marx are foundational to an understanding of the
human-land interface and must be considered
o The body of social and political theory developed by Karl Marx, in
which mode of production is the key to understanding society and
class struggle is the key to historical change
o Nowhere is the idea presented in a clear, unequivocal fashion, and any
interpretation of Marxism is bound to give rise to disagreement
o Marx was a political, social, economic, and philosophical theorist that
wanted to construct a social theory that could explain how society
works
 Also a revolutionary who aimed to facilitate a change in the
economic and political structure of society from capitalism to
communism
 Capitalism- a social and economic system for the
production of goods and services based on private
enterprise
o Marxist perspective is often described as historical materialism
 Historical materialism- associated with Marxism that explains
social change by reference to historical changes in social and
material relations
 o Marx summarized the character of society as follows:
 There are forces of production: the raw materials, implements,
and workers that actually produce goods
 There are relations of production: the economic structures of a
society, that is, the ways in which the production process is
organized
o The most important relations are those of ownership and control
o Mode of production
 The organized social relations through which a human society
organizes productive activity
 Key concept to understand composition of society
 Ex. In a capitalist society, those relations are such that workers
can sell their labour in an open market, though they produce
goods, the relations of production determine how the
production process is organized, these forces and relations
make up mode of production
 Includes slavery (labour that is controlled forcefully and is not
paid), feudalism (land was owned by the monarch, controlled
by lords, and worker/farmer is the lord’s authority), capitalism
and socialism (involves common ownership of the means of
production and distribution
o Marx believed that one class (owner) exploited the other (worker) in
order to maximize its own profits
o Marxism differs from both positivism and humanism in that it sees
human behaviour as being constrained by economic processes
o Marx believed that social institutions were created by humans and
that, were those institutions no longer served a society’s needs, they
could and should be changed
o Marxism is an attractive philosophy for human geographers to feel
strongly that their work should focus explicitly on social and
environmental ills and contribute to solutions to those ills
 Other philosophers, such as positivism, see it as superstructure
(a Marxist concept that refers to the political, legal, and social
systems of a society), which is implicitly accepted as
appropriate
 Feminist thought
o Feminism are united in their commitment to improve the social status
of women and securing equal rights with men
o Seeking to change society for the better is central to all critical
theories, especially Marxism, feminist, and post-colonial/anti-racist
theories
o Women are usually in a disadvantage in most areas of contemporary
life
o The fundamental inequality is patriarchy, a system in which men
dominate women
 o Under the tradition culture, women are often depended on me, and
very few women work outside and they get less pay than men even
with the same amount of work
o Sexuality and violence are seen as forms of social control over women
 Fighting to intervene in cases of violence against women
o Literal feminism, aimed at securing equal rights and opportunities for
women
o Two of the most important recent traditions argue that the
oppression of women cannot be corrected by superficial change
because it is embedded in deep psychic and cultural processes that
need to be fundamentally changed
 Radical feminism- contends that gender differentiation results
from gender inequality, such as those based on class
 Social feminism- similarly emphasizes gender inequality but
links that inequality to class; it argues that both men and
capital benefit from the subordination of women
o Gender, like class, implies a distinction between power groups
 Dominate males and subordinate females
o Female geographers believe that gender is a social construction
deriving largely from the natural category of biological sex; thus the
discussions of gender are premised on the logic of constructionism,
not essentialism
 Constructionism- the school of thought according to which all
our conceptual underpinnings are socially constructed and
therefore contingent and dynamic, not given or absolute
 Essentialism- Belief in the existence of fixed unchanging
properties; attribution of “essential characteristic to groups”
o Work available for women outside are typically low paid and low
skilled
o Women and men tend to do different work in different places and to
lead different lives, which include different visions of the world and of
themselves
o Girls and boys are raised differently as well
 Girls are raised with unequally, boys are tend to get the
leadership role while girls are to be passive and a follower
o Although women achieve a better education, however, they receive a
lower paid and occupy less top jobs
o As noted, these differences are not explained in terms of biological
differences (sex) but in terms of cultural differences (gender)
 Postmodern thought
o Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to modernism, a general term
used to refer to any number of movements beginning in the mid-
nineteenth century that broke with earlier traditions
  Postmodernism- based on the idea that reality cannot be
studied objectively and that multiple interpretations are
possible
 Modernism- a view that assumes the existence of a reality
characterized by structure, order, pattern, and causality
o Modernism developed most fully in art and architecture, but social
science methodology arose via the positivism tat first appeared in the
nineteenth century
o Modernism is also closely linked to the Industrial Revolution and the
rise of capitalism, emphasizing such classic liberal themes as the
rationality of humans, the privileged position of science, human
control over the physical environment, the inevitability of human
progress, and a search of universal truths
o Postmodernism is an especially difficult body ideas to understand
o Another is that there are many versions of postmodernist theory,
most of them developed in disciplines far removed from human
geography
o Postmodernism plays an important role in contemporary human
geographic research
 The postmodern alternative
o Postmodernism rejects all assumptions of modernism
o Since reality cannot be studied, it is often thought as a “text”
(intertexual), thus reality cannot be accurately represented
o How do postmodernists approach an understanding of the world we
live in?
 The emphasize the deconstruction of texts and the
construction of narratives that do not make claims about
truthfulness; such narratives tend to focus on differences,
uniqueness, irrationality, and marginal populations
o Postmodernism considers modernist claims to be arrogant, even
authoritarian
 “Postmodernism and deconstruction question the implicit or
explicit rationality of all academic discourse”
 The diversity of postmodernism
o People who embrace postmodernism continue in the progressive
directions suggested by modernism, becoming involved in social
movements or working to break down the barriers between
researchers and subjects so that people are allowed to speak for
themselves
o Central message of postmodernism is the importance of diversity
 Human geographic concepts
o Human geographers involve two basic endeavours
 The need to establish facts
  Know where places are and to be aware of their
fundamental characteristics, what we called geographic
literacy
 The need to understand and explain the facts, the understand
why the facts are what they are
 Requires the conscious adoption of an appropriate
philosophical stance
o Concepts and techniques that are not tied to particular philosophies
focus on factual matters, such as determining where things are on the
surface of the earth
 Understand or explaining why things are where they are
o An importance distinction needs to be drawn here between
idiographic and nomothetic methods
 Idiographic approach is concerned with individual
phenomena; traditional empiricist regional geography-
Hartshorne’s areal differentiation- was idiographic in focus, as
is much humanistic and postmodern geography
 Nomothetic approach formulates generalizations or laws
 Much to Marxist human geography and some feminist
geography
 Space
o A real extent; used in both absolute (objective) and relative
(perceptual) forms
o It is common to describe human geography as a spatial discipline
o Distinguish between absolute and relative space
 Absolute is objective, it exists in the areal relations among
phenomena on the earth’s surface
 Heart of map-making, the study of regions, and spatial
analysis, and it is central to the ideas of Kant
 Relative space is perceptual, it is socially produced and
therefore, is subjected to continuous change
 Location
o Main question that human geographers ask is “where?”
 It refers to a particular position within space, usually a position
on the earth’s surface
o There are two ways to describe location
 Absolute location identifies position by reference to an
arbitrary mathematical grid system such as latitude and
longitude
 Absolute locations are unchanging, whereas some
relative locations do change (relative to a city, roads
and air route do change)
o Geographers also distinguish between site and situation
 Site refers to the local characteristics of a location
 Situation refers to a location relative to others
 Place
o It refers to a location and more specifically to the values that we
associate with that location
o A place is a location that has a particular identity
o A place is not about space and location such as where we live, but
rather about how we live where we live
o Sense of place refers to our attachments to locations with personal
significance, such as our home, and to especially memorable or
distinctive locations
 It is possible to be aware that a particular locations evokes a
sense of place without necessarily visiting it (famous place)
o Sacred space
 Refers to landscapes that are particularly esteemed by an
individual or a group, usually for a religious reasons but also
political and other
o Mundane space is occupied by humans but has no special quality
o Human geographers use the concept of placelessess to identify
landscape that are relatively homogeneous and standardized
o Places may be thought of as especially characteristic of pre-capitalist
cultures, whereas placelessness is more evident in the industrial and
post-industrial world
o Topophilia- “love of place”
 Refers to the positive feelings that link humans to particular
environments
o Topophobia
 Refers to dislike of a landscape that may prompt feelings of
anxiety, fear, or suffering
o We can think of places as emotional anchors for much human activity
 Region
o The most useful yet the most confusing of geographic concept
o Dividing a large area into regions, or regionalization, a process of
classification in which each specific location is assigned to a region
o Many various types of regions, most notably the formal (or uniform)
region, and the functional (or nodal) region
 Formal (or uniform) region- an area with one or more traits in
common
 Functional (or nodal) region- an area with locations related
either to each other or to a specific location
 Ex. German-speaking people qualifies as a formal region, while
the sales distribution area of a city newspaper qualifies as
functional region
o Delimiting formal region is notoriously troublesome
o Another problem inherent in region delimitation is the implication
that regions are geographically meaningful
 o Human geographers began arguing for a revitalized regional
geography involving vernacular regions (regions perceived to exist by
people either within or outside them
 Distance
o The spatial dimension of separation; a fundamental concept of spatial
analysis
o The distribution of geographic facts- such as churches or towns- can
often be explained by reference to the distance between them and
other geographic facts
o In reference to the mapped appearance of spatial facts
o Characterize distribution as resulting from a clustering process
o First law of geography: everything is related to everything else, but
near things are more related than distant things
 Notion of distance decay – the declining intensity of any pattern
or process with increasing distance from a given location
 Sometimes refer as friction of distance
 This concept lies in the heart of spatial analysis
o Accessibility refers to the relative ease with which a given location can
be reached from other locations and therefore indicates the relative
opportunities for contact and interaction
o Interaction refers to the act of movement, trading, or any other form
of communication between locations
o Agglomeration describes situations in which locations are in close
proximity to one another
o Deglomeration refers to situations in which those locations are
characterized by separation from one another
o Distance can be measure in Km, however, some geographers measure
distance in time and cost
 Physical distance
o The spatial interval between points in space
o Often measure with some standard system, usually a precise
measurement
 Shortest travel distance between points is often not a straight-
line
 Time distance
o Quickest rather than the shortest
o Travel time is not directly proportional to physical distance
o Isochrones- lines on a map of equal travel time from a given starting
point
 Economic distance
o Movement from one location in space to another usually entails an
economic cost of one kind or another
 The cost incurred to overcome physical distance
  For many industries and other business, cost distance is of
paramount importance
 Scale
o One of the first decision made in any piece of geographic research
relates to the selection of appropriate scales- spatial, temporal, and
social
o Different scales can generate different time
o Geographers use the concept of spatial scale in three distinct ways
 Scale is the ratio of distance on a map to distance on the
ground
 Map at large areas are at a small scale and map at small
areas are at a large scale
 Whether the locations in a given set are clustered together
(agglomerated) or dispersed (deglomerated), the answer will
vary with the area selected
 Spatial scale also needs to be carefully identified
whenever we make statements about density
 Spatial scale refers more generally to the specific identification
of the area being studied
o Regional scale concerns with a larger area
o Some studies are empiricist in character, belonging to the genre we
call regional geography
o The entire world is analyzed in many instances, as in studies of world
population or the global economy
o Positivist and Marxist analyses are likely to be conducted at all these
scales
o The choice of temporal scale is also important
 If concerning with the evolution of landscape, a temporal
perspective is essential, but if concerning the manner in which
a given area functions, a temporal perspective maybe
irrelevant
 Historical and cultural geography usually emphasize time,
while chorological work and spatial analysis tend to emphasize
the present
 Contemporary human geography uses whatever temporal
scale is most appropriate
o The identification of social scale is a major concern
o Marxist perspective focus on groups since they believe that individual
cannot be understood without reference to the appropriate larger
cultural context
o Most traditional cultural geography has favoured a group scale since it
is best suited to the typical geographic interest in the world or regions
of the world
o Most contemporary social theory favours the group scale, largely on
the grounds that individual actions are determined by ideas and belief
 rooted in groups defined on the basis of interaction and
communication
 Diffusion
o The spread of a phenomenon over space and growth through time, is
one way change occurs
 The migration of people, the movement of ideas, and the
expansion of land use
o It has been a long central to cultural geography since of the need to
understand landscape evolution
o Large positivistic in character, introduced three important ideas:
 The neighbourhood effect
 Situations where diffusion is distance-biased, where
phenomenon spreads first to individuals or groups
nearest its place of origin
 The hierarchical effect
 The phenomenon first diffuses to large centres, then to
centres of decreasing size
 The s-shape curve
 Most diffusion situations proceed slowly at first and
then very rapidly
 The diffusion concept is perhaps best described as a
process that prompts changes in landscapes, regions,
and locations
 Perception
o The process by which humans acquire information about physical and
social environment
o Necessary to present it under a twofold aspect, first objectively, as an
actual phenomenon, and next subjectively as it is reflected in the
feelings of mankind
o All humans relate not to some real physical or social environment but
rather to their perception of that environment- a perception that is
varies with knowledge and is closely related to cultural and social
consideration
o Humanistic geographers talk about the mental images of places and
other people and seek to describe the images, or mental maps that
carry in our heads
o Mental maps of relatively unknown areas are especially subjects to
error
 We acquire our mental maps through varies sources
 Development
o Any one area changes through time and that different areas have
different landscape
 Such conditions called development- the general meaning in
terms involves measures of economic growth, social welfare,
and modernization
 o Certain areas are more developed than the others
o It is important that human geographers highlight spatial disparities in
economic well-being and it is important that we interpret variations
with reference to cultural and social considerations
o The risk of oversimplification is needed to be aware when analyzing
development
 Discourse
o “Speech” or a way of communication in speech or in writing
o The history of ideas is a history of changing discourses in which;
 There is a fundamental connection between power and
knowledge
 Truth is not absolute but relative, dependent on the power
relations within the societies that construct it
 Globalization
o The most fundamental consequence of globalization is that our
complex and varied human worlds are becoming, however unevenly,
more and more like a single world
o The world is becoming increasingly homogenized economically,
politically and culturally
o Is the cause and result of ever-increasing connectedness of places and
people as economic, political, and cultural to combine what was
separating people and places together
o The most obvious components of globalization are advances in
communications technologies and the increasing dominance of
transnationals
 Transationals- large business organizations that operate in two
or more countries
 Overcome distances
 Concepts: a concluding comment
o Central on how human behaviour affects the earth’s surface
o All the terms introduced will reappear in subsequent accounts of the
substantive work of human geographers and will be put into practice
 Techniques they use to collect, display and analyze data
o Cartography
o Computer-assisted cartography
o Geographic information systems
 Cartography
o Conception, production, dissemination, and study of maps
o The purpose of such maps was to communicate information
o Now, cartography is less dependent on manual skills and is closely
integrated with analysis
o The type of maps constructed depends on the information being
presented
 o Choropleth map displays data by using tonal shading that are
proportional to the density of the phenomena in each of the defined
areal units
o Isopleth map consists of a series of lines that link points having the
same value
o Small-scale maps raise a fundamental question: how can we best
represent a nearly spherical earth on a flat surface?
 Computer-assisted cartography
o Sometimes referred as digital mapping, is discussed separately from
traditional cartography since it represents much more than just
another technical advances have significantly reduced the need for
manual skills
o They diminish the need for artistic skills and allow for desktop map
design skills as decisions
o Has introduce maps and map analysis into a wide range of new arenas
o Computer-generated maps facilitate decision-making and are
becoming important in both academic and applied geography
 Geographic information systems (GIS)
o A computer-based tool that combines several functions: storage,
display, analysis, and mapping of spatial reference data
o Includes processing hardware, specialized peripheral hardware, and
software
 Peripheral hardware may be used for data input
o Central on computer methods of map overlay and area measurement
o Maps are both its principal input and output
o GIS is distinguished according to the methods they use to translate
spatial data into computer form
o There are two principal methods of translation
 The vector approach describes spatial data as a series of
discrete objects
 The raster method represents the area mapped as a series of
small rectangular cells known as pixels: points, lines and areas
are approximated by sets of pixels and the computer maintains
a record of which pixels are on or off
o What is the value of a GIS? What applications are possible?
 GIS has numerous and varied applications in many context that
may be concerned with spatial data
o The data involved are spatial
 Remote sensing
o Obtaining data using both photographic and non-graphic sensor
systems
o Electromagnetic radiation occurs naturally at a variety of
wavelengths, and there are specific sensing technologies for the
principal spectral regions
 o There are several principal advantages to satellite remote sensing
 Repeated coverage of an area facilitates analysis of land-use
change
 Since the data collected are in digital format, rapid data
transmission and image manipulation are possible
 For many parts of the globe, these are the only useful data
available
 Remote sensing allows the collection of entirely new sets of
data
o Remote sensing is less useful if we are concerned with underlying
economic, cultural, or political processes
o Aside from remote sensing, some data can be collected by another
means
 Digital geographic technology, the global positioning system
(GPS)
o Along with remotely sensed data, GPS data can be integrated in a GIS
 Qualitative methods
o Refers to research with a focus on the attitudes, behaviour, and
personal observation of human subjects
o Part of ethnography, a general approach that requires researcher
involvement in subject studied
o Fieldwork- a traditional term for the methods that geographers use to
obtain primary data
 New type of fieldwork appeared in response to humanistic
concerns, and human geographers now use a range of
qualitative methods for collecting and analyzing data
o Contemporary qualitative fieldwork is by nature humanistic as a
response to the humanistic requirement that human geography strive
to understand the nature of the social world
o For a humanist, qualitative methods that involve a researcher’s
observation of and involvement in everyday life are central to
understanding humans and human landscapes
o Participant observation, a standard method in anthropology and
sociology, a popular approach
o The principal advantage of this method is its explicit recognition that
people and their lives do matter
o Qualitative methods requires skills, subjective procedure like
participant observation does not provide any means for the
researcher to objectively control the relationship between observer
and observed
 One of the key issues in the differences between humanism
and positivism
 May cause the researcher is ethnocentric (ethnocentrism-
presumption that one’s own culture is normal and natural and
 that other cultures are inferior), or the researcher may identify
with the group being observed and become its advocate
o Other disadvantages of qualitative procedures include:
 Risk that the researcher will begin with a biased or otherwise
inappropriate idea about the data to be collected or the study
of the field isn’t enough to represent the accurate picture
 Quantitative methods
o The use of a questionnaire to survey people
 Part of an empiricist research activity
 It asks all individual the same questions
 The value of questionnaire results depends on the respond rate
selected (sampling method)
 The most used technique is random samplings
 Random sampling- every part of an area will have an
equal chance to participate in the survey
o The spatial analysis school recognized early that models could play a
much greater role in analyzing data
o A mode is an idealized, simplified representation of the real world
that highlights its key properties and eliminates incidental
information
o Early human geographers for the spatial models were based on the
generalization about the relationships between the distribution of
geographic facts and distance
o This method is use for analyzing relationships between spatial
patterns and for classifying data
 Describe relationships is fundamental in producing
explanations and is broached by proposing a functional
relationship such that one variable is dependent on one or
more other variables
o Classifying imposes order on data, and a number of techniques
facilitate that activity
 Conclusion
o Positivism and the quantitative procedures associated with it have a
tendency to exclude the individual human element from research,
focus on aggregate data, criticized as dehumanized human geography,
it’s a geography of people
o Humanism, postmodernism, and the qualitative procedures
associated with emphasize the integration of researcher and
researched, generating a geography with people
o Marxism, and feminism aspires to solve problems associated with
inequality and lack of social justice, thus aiming for the geography of
people