Debates in the 20th Century Geography Flashcards
GT
Anthropogeography
analysed how the environment influenced societies (Peake, 2017) –> focus on environmental determinism (Keighren, 2010)
Anthropogeography emerged
in the late 1800s/early 1900s and was associated with early exploration and the establishment of the RGS
the underpinnings of anthropogeography were darwinism
with Ratzel and Semple two key academics
Ratzel’s idea of Lebensarum
was the idea that state development was tied to resource requirement –> natural part of development
Semple was influenced by the America Civil War
argued that slavery was bad but necessary for societal development (Kliinke, 2022)
Semple studied under Ratzel and later translated lots of his work
they both supported each other’s ideas on racial inferiority (Klinkle, 2022)
contemporary anthropogeography –> Nazi regime used Lebensarum (Peake, 2017)
it is also responsible for theories of racial inferiority and discources underpinning development discourse
Regional geography
studied areas based on their scale –> important for geography as they are being reshaped due to geopolitics (Smith, 2010)
Herbetson focused on regions in consideration of the environment
Blache focused on regions in consideration of their cultural values (Maddrell, 2006)
Regional geography collapsed in the 1950s/60s during the war for not being scientific enough
also criticised for being too entrenched within Eurocentrism as modernity was naturalised (Escobar, 1995) –> did not account for the politics within regions as it produced categorisations
New Regional Geography –> emerged within the 1980s (van Schendel, 2001) –> documented social and political variation between places
New New Regional Geography –> emerged within the mid-2010s –> regions not produced through geographic space but socio-spatial assemblages e.g. ‘plastic space’ produced by institutions (Malabou, 2007)
Area Studies –> 1950s –> by the cold war –> study regions to known the enemy (Murphy, 2013) e.g. USSR –> switched to Central Asian studies (van Schendel, 2001) and Oriental Studies (Powell et al., 2017)
within the wider discipline not just geography
anti-area studies –> access local knowledges like indigenous studies
(Morris-Zuzuki, 2000)
Spatial sciences emerged in the 1950s with the first quantitative revolution
as part of Schaeger’s criticism that geography was too idiographic and required universal laws to underpin it e.g. positivism and scientific method –> models to simplify and understand the world
Spatial science emergence was also driven by WWII and the Cold War (Barnes and Farish, 2006) –> 1941 Office of Strategic Services 129 workers at peak
e.g. Harvard dept being shut down for not being scientific enough
Spatial science –> apolitical but was the opposite
e.g. Central Place Theory (Christaller) –> urbanisation predicted through human behaviour –> Nazi regime used this for settler colonialism
Humanistic geography emerged through the 1970s –> criticism that the spatial sciences did not focus on abstractions or humans (Smith, 1981)
focus on qualitative methods like subjectivity and experience e.g. Yi Fu Tuan.
humanistic geography -problematic
universalisation of knowledge –> white, male (Smith, 1981)
Anthropocentrism
untestable and not founded on positivism or scientific research (Taylor, 1976)
humanistic geography contemporary relevance
embedded within aspects of the discipline e.g. mobilities research (elderly needing more structure – Roles, 1978)
‘sense of place’ –> Space and Place research –> phenomenology (Cresswell, 2013)
criticsms of post-humanism and more-than-human geographies –> lack of positionality (Greenhou, 2014; Rose, 1997)
cultural geography –> shaped by emotions and subjectivity (Rose, 1997)
Robert Hartshorne (1939) - ‘The Nature of Geography’
regions as static regions which need to be analysed (Barnes and Farish, 2006) and a focus on regional geographies as the core point of geographic research (Hartshorne, 2005)
humanistic geography methodologies
Verstehen –> analysing the deeper meaning of simple actions
Ethnography –> immersed in one’s soceity (Smith, 1981)
humanistic geography research examples (Tuan, 1976)
crowding and privacy –> factory farms alter animal behaviours
livelihoods and economics –> capitalist structures influence daily lives
religions –> shape landscapes
Risk and opportunity –> construction of regions is centred on these ideas
Ratzel –> black people should not be given the vote (Klinkle, 2022)
Semple refined anthropogeography –> 1911 book Geographic Environment –> did write that Europeans had the right to dominate land as they were more developed and smarter (Klinkle, 2022)
In 1905 regional studies –> research based on the imperial value of regions
e.g. Britain for Africa, India and Australasia (Powell et al., 2017)
new paper –> School of Oriental and African Studies (2015) –> no Somali academics (Aidid, 2015) –> lots of research in Africa is extractive
postcolonialism –> unable to reveal the ongoing coloniality within Africa –> brain drain and neocolonialism remain –> African scholars considered unscientific (Powell et al., 2017)
Quantitative revolution –> lots of research into regional studies –> positivist-based research and mathematical models –< World War II regime as the whole of academia was influenced (Barnes, 2008)
e.g. Tobler –> GIS/Cartography but designed a nuclear attack plan –> published in a geographical paper titled ‘Automation and cartography’ (Tobler, 1959)
Garrison –> Seattle cold war evacuation plan –> using social, political and economic knowledge of the systems.
Gibson-Graham (2004) –> poststructuralist critique of area studies
it emerged in the 1980s and others as it was produced to determine how regions were different from the west –> Spate (1951) produced a dept in Australia –> analyse colonies and produced works on Indian and Pakistan –> viewed them as an other, a villain and a threat –> reinforced binaries and dualisms
There are some arguments in favour of area studies continuing (Gibson-Graham, 2004)
needs to be resituated instead of mapping places and instead focuse on disciplinary discourse (Lederman, 1998).
Mamas Lus Frut in Papua New Guinea –> instead of the oil palm plantation being a viewed as a economic region of productivity
people paid to pick up dropped fruit –> changes the way in which the economic framework is produced as indigenous empowerment is the undercurrent (Gibson-Graham, 2004)
Spatial divison of labour critiques regional geography
highlights that geographic boundaries are not the driving force of regions but that the production of labour can be the producing factors of regions (Massey, 1979)
arguments for the quantitative revolution (Todd, 1976)
Minshull (1970) stating models and idiographic research were complete opposites and therefore needed to split apart
Henderson (1968) –> open to the quantitative turn believing it would enhance geography.
overall, social sciences experienced shifts over the last 15 years (Taylor, 1976)
quantitative revolution –> rift in regard to methodology and the way in which research should be conducted –> the arguments were that previous research focused too greatly on idiographic methods and therefore methodology needed to shift –> destabilised the discipline and led to the emergence of more positivist geography with maths and numbers
