Geography Paradigms
Quantitative Revolution (1950s - 1960s)
Burton (1963): quantitative revolution and theoretical geography**:
Hartshorne (1959) Perspective on
the Nature of Geography
quantitative revolution is over: 1) when the revolutionary ideas themselves become a part of the conventional wisdom (Ackerman, Hartshorne, and Spate agreement); 2) schools add courses in quantitative mthods.
quantification for what?
Norbert Wiener: the necessity of crossing academic boundaries.
quantitative techniques can be applied to geographical problems.MY RESEARCH?
Geomorphology: Strahler: there was no quantitative work in geomorphology but descriptive and region studies. Responses: Wooldridge: Rock sculpture cannot be effectively analyzed using mathematics at an advanced level of education, the subjective and interpretive nature of art, which resists quantification and objective measurement.
Climatology: little arguments.
Human and economic geography
oppositions: 1) geographers were overly focused on developing and refining their technical tools and representations...shift their focus to applying these tools...isopleth maps is not; 2) methods are not correctly applied 3) quantifiers are over-enthusiasm
proposition: :...emphasizes the importance of social science being valuable in terms of prediction without imposing control over individuals. ...the evolution of social science in recognizing both random behavior on an individual level and predictable patterns on a societal level, as a result of the quantitative revolution.
1) another dubious dichotomy that either improve their tools or engage in research with available tools...
1) isopleth maps is not adequate to determine correlations...
2) ... they are genuine and honest attempts to gain new knowledge
3) they are involved in a revolution...
Roots of the revolution : dissatisfaction with ideographic geography.
1) ...a genuine need to make geography more scientific, and a concern to develop a body of theory.
Consequences: ...development of theoretical, model-building geography...geography from idiographic to nomothetic
Future: ...construction of theory from observations and descriptions need statistical techniques. Case studies serve to highlight deficits of theory, but the abandon of theory requires statistical techniques to demonstrate their validity.
Regional geography
Behavioral geography (1960s-1970s)
Humanistic geography (1970s-1980s)
Radical and Marxist Geography (1970s-1980s)
Feminist Geography (1980s-Present)
Postmodern and Poststructural Geography (1980s-Present)
Critical Geography (1990s-Present)
GIS and Remote Sensing (1980s-Present)
Environmental determinism: Davis, Semple. The ideas of environmental "control" or "influence".
The idea of the relationships between man and environment evolved.
Barrow (1923): geography as human ecology.
Carl Sauer (1925): Morphology of landscape.
Lead to two directions: 1) West: anthropological and historical approaches to geographic questions; 2) Midwest: a chorological, area-oriented stream.
Pattison (1964): man-land view
Taaffe (1974): geographers only trying to synthesize those phenomena of significance to man which had significant spatial expression.
strength: impacts on policy
weakness, human ecology view: 1) force the investigative questions for relations between man's activities; 2) fail to form cumulative generalizations. Seldom has local utility. Large number of studies pronounces that man, not nature, has dominant force affect man's activities. 3) to narrow to encompass the work actually being carried on by geographers
Fenneman (1919)
Platt (1948)
Hartshorne (1958)
Synthesizing types of area study
Area differentiation:... the wide variety of phenomena exist together in area that distinguish them from other areas.
...life comes to people filled with unassorted localized phenomena to be dealt with together and at once rather than with single categories systematically sorted.
weakness: again cumulative generalizations. interrelationships which had formed the basic rationales for the integrative view were seldom treated explicitly
Spatial view (quantitative geography)
Positive: 1) more productive of cumulative generalizations; 2) disciplinary overlap: other disciplines involve the spatial expression of phenomena (economics); MY RESEARCH: A better understanding of spatial organization in general, man-land in general; places, cities...
Negative 1) selection of overly abstraction spatial models. 2) extensive and complex quantitative efforts produce trivial outcomes 3) highly complex and technical often end up refining methods for tasks that may not have been very important or necessary 4) creating endless new classifications, self-perpetuating and meaningless 5) lack of attention to clearly communicating conclusions. what's the significance to man?
Solution 1)... there must be specific criteria to choose which models---to selecting models is to base them on formal theories----This approach can lead to focusing too much on problems that are easy to study theoretically but may not be socially significant.
Outlook: 1) Science-Activism Dichotom: less emphasis on academic roles, searching for hypotheses, generating new ideas, more on teh appliation of known findings
maintain momentum in scientific tradition + more concerns for societal utility. ME DUBIOUS dichotomy. Taaffee: generalizaitons improve applications. complex probmes may face simplistical solutions. application is the ultimate test of generalizations.
The disconnection between regional geography and the mathematical and theoretical models: Regional geographers benefit from using detailed spatial data and considering human interactions with the environment.
Gould (1979)