Debates in the 20th Century Geography

Question 1

Anthropogeography

Answer 1

analysed how the environment influenced societies (Peake, 2017) –> focus on environmental determinism (Keighren, 2010)

Question 2

Anthropogeography emerged

Answer 2

in the late 1800s/early 1900s and was associated with early exploration and the establishment of the RGS

Question 3

the underpinnings of anthropogeography were darwinism

Answer 3

with Ratzel and Semple two key academics

Question 4

Ratzel’s idea of Lebensarum

Answer 4

was the idea that state development was tied to resource requirement –> natural part of development

Question 5

Semple was influenced by the America Civil War

Answer 5

argued that slavery was bad but necessary for societal development (Kliinke, 2022)

Question 6

Semple studied under Ratzel and later translated lots of his work

Answer 6

they both supported each other’s ideas on racial inferiority (Klinkle, 2022)

Question 7

contemporary anthropogeography –> Nazi regime used Lebensarum (Peake, 2017)

Answer 7

it is also responsible for theories of racial inferiority and discources underpinning development discourse

Question 8

Regional geography

Answer 8

studied areas based on their scale –> important for geography as they are being reshaped due to geopolitics (Smith, 2010)

Question 9

Herbetson focused on regions in consideration of the environment

Answer 9

Blache focused on regions in consideration of their cultural values (Maddrell, 2006)

Question 10

Regional geography collapsed in the 1950s/60s during the war for not being scientific enough

Answer 10

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

Question 11

New Regional Geography –> emerged within the 1980s (van Schendel, 2001) –> documented social and political variation between places

Answer 11

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)

Question 12

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)

Answer 12

within the wider discipline not just geography

Question 13

anti-area studies –> access local knowledges like indigenous studies

Answer 13

(Morris-Zuzuki, 2000)

Question 14

Spatial sciences emerged in the 1950s with the first quantitative revolution

Answer 14

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

Question 15

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

Answer 15

e.g. Harvard dept being shut down for not being scientific enough

Question 16

Spatial science –> apolitical but was the opposite

Answer 16

e.g. Central Place Theory (Christaller) –> urbanisation predicted through human behaviour –> Nazi regime used this for settler colonialism

Question 17

Humanistic geography emerged through the 1970s –> criticism that the spatial sciences did not focus on abstractions or humans (Smith, 1981)

Answer 17

focus on qualitative methods like subjectivity and experience e.g. Yi Fu Tuan.

Question 18

humanistic geography -problematic

Answer 18

universalisation of knowledge –> white, male (Smith, 1981)
Anthropocentrism
untestable and not founded on positivism or scientific research (Taylor, 1976)

Question 19

humanistic geography contemporary relevance

Answer 19

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)

Question 20

Robert Hartshorne (1939) - ‘The Nature of Geography’

Answer 20

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)

Question 21

humanistic geography methodologies

Answer 21

Verstehen –> analysing the deeper meaning of simple actions
Ethnography –> immersed in one’s soceity (Smith, 1981)

Question 22

humanistic geography research examples (Tuan, 1976)

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Ratzel –> black people should not be given the vote (Klinkle, 2022)

Answer 23

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)

Question 24

In 1905 regional studies –> research based on the imperial value of regions

Answer 24

e.g. Britain for Africa, India and Australasia (Powell et al., 2017)

Question 25

new paper --> School of Oriental and African Studies (2015) --> no Somali academics (Aidid, 2015) --> lots of research in Africa is extractive

Answer 25

postcolonialism --> unable to reveal the ongoing coloniality within Africa --> brain drain and neocolonialism remain --> African scholars considered unscientific (Powell et al., 2017)

Question 26

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)

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

Gibson-Graham (2004) --> poststructuralist critique of area studies

Answer 27

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

Question 28

There are some arguments in favour of area studies continuing (Gibson-Graham, 2004)

Answer 28

needs to be resituated instead of mapping places and instead focuse on disciplinary discourse (Lederman, 1998).

Question 29

Mamas Lus Frut in Papua New Guinea --> instead of the oil palm plantation being a viewed as a economic region of productivity

Answer 29

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)

Question 30

Spatial divison of labour critiques regional geography

Answer 30

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)

Question 31

arguments for the quantitative revolution (Todd, 1976)

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

overall, social sciences experienced shifts over the last 15 years (Taylor, 1976)

Answer 32

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