HC1-classical paradigms

Question 1

1850-1950: Ecology & Geography

Answer 1

• Environmental determinism: environments determine the lifestyles of people
   Social Darwinism: survival of the fittest; some groups are inferior, serving imperialism
• Environmental possibilism: genre de vie (Vidal de la Blanche) environment affect lifestyle, populations also have an effect on how they live their lifestyle  environment- human as interrelation

Question 2

1920s-1960s: Bifurcation

Answer 2

• Spatial sciences/positivism (based on Comte)  go beyond descriptive of spaces and environments, looking for general laws (deductive-nominal model)
• Humanist approaches/phenomenology (Heidegger/Sartre/Husserl)  vb. Phenomenology in city planning; how can we arrange space and deal with multiple perspectives of a city, cultural geography
  (positivism is the way we do research nowadays)

Question 3

1960-now: plurality of approaches

Answer 3

• Behavioural approaches
• Structuralism/Marxist approaches
• Structuration approaches
• Post-structural approaches
• Quantitative-spatial approaches
• Postmodern approaches
• Feminist approaches
• Post-colonial approaches
• Post-human approaches

Question 4

Structure

Answer 4

-Structures as patterned entities that influence and limit people’s lives
-They exist prior to an individual is confronted with them (external to human action)  objectivist
-They can be cultural, economic, material, social  vb. Capitalism; language

-Views on relative importance of ‘social structure’ or individuals’ actions’ in analysis of how social world works. Relates to ontological issue, as to whether or structures or individuals are the most important aspects of human social existence

Question 5

Agency

Answer 5

-Agency as the capacity to act individually
-Individual freedom, purposeful action, decision making, subjective meaning making, free choice, motive
-Human beings as agents of change.

Question 6

Ontology

Answer 6

About what the real world is like, what is in it, and what makes it up.

-E.g. ‘structuralism’ (functio): structures basic and most fundamental aspects of human social life (influence one’s thinks and acts).
- E.g. individualism: the ‘real’ things in human life are individual people.

Question 7

Epistemology

Answer 7

How intends the theory to study what it thinks of as the ‘real world’, How do we know? And what knowledge do we gain?

• Interpretivism: understand social life by interpreting the meanings to be found in the heads of individuals.
• Positivism: social theory and sciences should be modelled on natural sciences (general laws)

Question 8

Social structures

Answer 8

the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together

Question 9

Kant’s ontological standpoint

Answer 9

Kant: the nature of knowledge (epistemology) and reality (ontology); avoid extremism of 2 earlier philosophical positions:
- Realism: world exists wholly independently of my mind’s perception of it.
- Idealism: world is merely a projection of what my mind imagines it to be. Kant’s middle way between these positions involved claiming that each object in the world has 2 sides:
- Noumenal side: beyond human perceptions; limited, because cannot grasp on world of ‘things in themselves’.
- Phenomenal side: the object as it appears in human perception (the world shaped for us by our minds).

-Never gain direct access to ‘real’ world (noumena), because mind shapes phenomenal side, and so creates the world as we perceive it.
-All human minds are alike, and so the world as perceived by me is the same world as perceived by you (or anyone else)