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Essay Contents:
- Essay on the Empiricist Philosophy of Regional Geography
- Essay on the Scientific Explanations/Analysis
- Essay on the Trends towards ‘A New Synthesis’
- Essay on the Geographical Knowledge under Globalisation
- Essay on the Cosmopolitanism and Its Geography
- Essay on the Sites for the Production of Geographical Knowledge
- Essay on the Geography among the Disciplines
- Essay on the Political Projects
Essay # 1. Empiricist Philosophy of Regional Geography:
By the 1950s, disillusionment with the empiricist philosophy of regional geography was growing. Slowly the systematic specialism aroused the interests of the new generation of researchers, and the regional synthesis was ignored.
Prior to the 1950s, geographers adopted an empiricist philosophy, which places emphasis on depiction of the observed world. It was a discipline that provided descriptions of places. Further, each separate place was presented as singular, as an assemblage of phenomena into a whole (an idea of synthesis implied) which was not repeated elsewhere.
The task of geography was to identify those separate assemblages, describe them and account for them. The debate over this philosophy focused on the singularity of regions.
However, regions are not singular, but they are unique. A unique phenomenon results from a particular interaction of general principles and so can be accounted for by understanding what those principles are and how they have been combined in that particular instance. A singular phenomenon is one that cannot be accounted for by any general principles.
It was argued by the British geographers in the 1950s that it was possible to develop general laws regarding the elements of the physical environment, which could be combined to provide accounts of the environmental complex making up a region.
Thus, systematic geography and regional geography were to be seen as complementary, with the former providing the general understanding that could be synthesised in the latter when it referred to specific unique places.
In the United States, the protagonists opposing the exceptionalist view offered two sets of arguments: that it was possible to identify laws of spatial form, i.e. arrangement of phenomena on the surface of the Earth; and that it was possible to identify general laws of human behavior which produce those spatial forms.
The wide acceptance of these two sets of arguments meant that regional geography led to the development of systematic geographies as the origin of its inputs. Regional geographers are those who synthesised the findings of geomorphologists, climatologists, urban geographers, and so on into an explanation of the nature of a place.
The philosophy adopted in change-over or shift was positivism. Associated with the philosophy of positivism is a particular methodology, i.e. the scientific method. The positivist methodology is a continuous looping sequence of thinking, speculation and testing.
Much geographical works in the 1960s focused on the testing, on the empirical validation of hypotheses. The emphasis was on measurement of the phenomena under consideration and of their empirical coincidences, and on the use of statistical inference to establish the veracity of the hypotheses. Thus, the development of positivism was widely known as the quantitative revolution.
Geography came to be known as a law-seeking discipline, using the procedure of the natural sciences and the technology of quantification. The common method is the hypothetic-deductive method and the model discipline is physics. The positivist-inclined geography does not seem to have abandoned the idea of synthesis. Instead, it puts emphasis on the ‘unity of phenomena’.
Essay # 2. Scientific Explanations/Analysis:
From the positivist-led philosophical, methodological and empirical studies, Harvey (1969) attempts to identify six recognisible forms of scientific explanations in geography in the form of general and empirical laws. They are- cognitive explanation, morphometric explanation, cause- effect explanation, temporal modes of explanation, functionalism and functional modes of explanation, and systems analysis.
1. Cognitive Explanation:
It is the simple description of what is known, resulting from a more or less successful ordering and classification of the data which have been collected. No theory is involved explicitly but, because the classification usually follows some pre-determined ideas about its structure, this involves an element of theory.
2. Morphometric Explanation:
It is a special form of cognitive description where systematisation and classification form a geometric, spatial, coordinate system. Morphometric analysis can lead to certain types of predictive and stimulation models. In this explanation, the emphasis is on measurement, whereas studies of landscape morphology usually take the form of cognitive descriptions.
3. Cause and Effect Explanation/Analysis:
It develops from the assumption that previous causes can explain observed phenomena. We look for causal relationships which are, in their simplest form, of the type ’cause A leads to affect B’. This implies that ’cause B cannot lead to result A’.
Causal laws may be discovered by the hypothetic-deductive method, or more simply, by comparing data from different phenomena in a region. Cause-effect explanation is useful for the analysis of geographical problems.
It can be used to analyse simple phenomena, to regulate associations, to construct theories, to formulate laws, and so on. But causal explanation has its limitations. It may be applied with a high degree of success in a large number of situations but, at the same time, we must be cautious that the causal explanation is not the only basis for scientific analysis and explanation. Causal analyses provide only one of the several possible research tools, and cause-effect laws provide only one form of explanation of reality.
4. Temporal Modes of Explanation:
They provide scientific procedures for describing or explaining phenomena in relation to their development over time. Temporal explanation tends to form a distinct type of causal analysis. History can be seen as a causal series which began at the vaguely defined dawn of history and ends today. It is better termed as a historical analysis. In practice, it will never be possible to understand such a comprehensive causal series; the analysis must be restricted to some determined period of time.
The assumption in the explanation is that a particular set of circumstances may be explained by examining the origin and subsequent development of phenomena by the operation of process laws. Temporal modes of explanation are very common in studies of geomorphology and historical geography.
Holt-Jenson (1981, 111—12) points out that ‘although in-depth studies by geomorphologists in recent years have brought about a fairly comprehensive understanding of the processes which govern the formation of landscapes, human geographers have made little progress in the formation of laws which govern processes.’
5. Functionalism and Functional Explanation:
Functionalism is a perspective which views the world as a set of differentiated and independent systems. Their collective actions and interaction are instances of repeatable and predictable regularities in which form and function can be assumed to be related.
They explain these form-function relations in terms of their role in maintaining the continuity of systems. While much of empirical work in geography could well be construed as functionalism in form, its precepts tended to remain implicit rather than overt in (traditional) geographical thinking.
The positivist-led geography in the 1960s stressed the need for functional analysis as an alternative to the cause-and-effect explanation. Functional explanatory models are very common in geography. It is often assumed that teleological and functional forms of explanations are closely related to each other. What is interesting is the close association between the traditional view of geography as a discipline seeking synthesis and the functional-teleological analyses and forms of explanation.
It has been regarded as logically sound to make the synthesis (or wholeness) our goal, so that each phenomenon should be analysed with a view to explaining its purpose or function within the whole. However, a teleological explanation relates to the purpose of a phenomenon and a functional explanation refers to the functions, and functional analysis and explanation is contained within teleology.
Functional analysis/explanation attempts to analyse phenomena in terms of the role they play within a particular organisation. In most cases, functional analysis only demonstrates the necessary location conditions for a town or factory to flourish.
Harvey (1969) takes a central place or market which served the needs of an economy for the efficient exchange of goods and services. Functional analysis can be useful in enabling us to discern some of the conditions necessary for the phenomenon to function within a given system.
Functional mode of explanation may also be a useful point of departure for the formulation of individual theories and, perhaps more significantly, for research into alternative methods for the study of complicated systems and the structures of organisations.
It is also useful to know how central places function in an economy because this question raises a range of other questions and draws our attention to the complexity of systems within which researchers work. Useful derivation from functional analysis depends on the extent to which we can specify a system clearly. This is why functional analysis has been so ardently discussed by geographers in recent years.
In the 1970s, as human geography was once again brought much closer to the other social sciences, functionalism advanced on a broader front. Particularly important was the rapid incorporation of ideas both from classical and structural Marxism, and from somewhat different structuralism.
However, the 1980s, witnessed a series of debates on the relation between functionalism and Marxism. It is now widely held that the functionalist model requires a new level of sophistication if it is to survive the more general critique of simple functionalism in social theory.
6. Systems Analysis:
It is a methodological framework for investigating the structure and function of a system. Harvey (1969) maintained that systems analysis could be distinguished from any metaphysics based on general systems theory because it is a methodology pure and simple.
But in practice there must be a reciprocal relation between the concepts made available by systems theory and their translation into the methods of system analysis. Systems analysis provides a convenient calculus for examining geographical problems, particularly since these are frequently of a multivariate nature. But its use cannot be independent of the concepts that allow us to find an interpretation for that calculus.
Much of the geographical works around 1970 made use of general systems theory, and the application of systems analysis has served to highlight some of the impending methodological difficulties and problems that the geographers, adhering to positivism, have faced. Systems analysis has been used as a methodological tool to build a new form of ‘geographical synthesis’.
Essay # 3. Trends towards ‘A New Synthesis’:
Haggett (1972, 1979) attempted to develop ‘a new form of synthesis’, which proceeds from the traditional division of the subject. To him, it would be more useful to divide the discipline in relation to the way in which it attempts to analyse its problems.
He divided geography into three main groups of analysis:
i. Spatial analysis deals with the variation in the localisation and distribution of a significant phenomenon or group of phenomena. It is a type of systematic geography which seems to have been developed as a result of the positivist/spatial science tradition.
ii. Ecological analysis concerns itself with the study of connection between human and environmental variables. It is based on the concept of homogeneous region, that each phenomenon within it is similar, but differs from equivalent phenomenon of other regions. Ecological analysis appears to have close affinity with chorology and regional geography which seeks to understand the region as an entity.
iii. Regional complex analysis attempts to combine the results of spatial and ecological analysis. Appropriate regional units are identified by real differences. Connecting lines and flows between the individual regions may then be observed. Complex regional analysis concerns itself chiefly with functional regions.
‘Modern geography’, points out Holt-Jenson (1981), ‘attempts to focus its attention on spatial analysis, a systematic geography constructed with newer, expanded models; ecological analysis, a regional geography based on homogeneous region, and a regional geography based on functional regions. This simple division may have some relevance for the further development of geography towards a science of synthesis.’
Soviet geographer Anuchin (1973) also stresses the need to have synthetic geographical studies. To him, the existing main branches in geography, inspite of their relevance, are completely unsatisfactory when one is concerned with the evolution of the variables involved in regional complexes of the government which control the possibilities of the development of production.
The results of synthetic geographical studies would provide practical forecasts of consequences of interference with natural processes, which are taking place inevitably. What is interesting is the justification in asserting that geography can only add something useful to research in the future if it can make the geographic synthesis work.
While geographers in the 1960s and 1970s explored the positivist philosophy and associated scientific method, others extended the search to other philosophies, other definitions of knowledge and other scientific methods.
Quite a large number of geographers inclined towards critical theory, discarded what they called ‘neo-classical economics’, and sought for a new society through the development of a radical geography based on historical-dialectical methods and Marxist theory.
Other critics of the positivist-quantitative geography attempted to establish humanistic geography which focuses on the experience of place and environment and its methods involve means of identifying and reporting these meanings.
It is thus opposed to the type of positivist work which emphasises regularity and order, and which seeks to explain any event or piece of behaviour in terms of class events. Such work denies the individuality and humanity of people, ignores emotions and meanings, and treats humans in the same way as machines.
Geographers committed to critical theory also stress on the unity of science. Marx also wrote about a unified science which consisted of nature, society and human psychology. But while positivists maintained that a unified science should be based on the methods of the natural science, Marx considered the philosophy of the social science to be potentially far superior to that of the natural sciences.
The eventual fusion/amalgamation of the two fields of study would come about through the socialisation of the natural sciences. William Bunge (1973), known for his commitment to critical theory, observed that ‘geography is the integrating science so we call upon co-workers in geology, sociology and so forth to discuss planning for a region or even the lesser labour of just understanding a region with no ambitions humanly to improve it.’
Positivist-led quantitative geography or critical geography has not in fact given up the idea of synthesis. Instead, many of its leading advocates have been especially concerned in a search for synthesis through new forms of analysis.
Modern geography can, however, develop methods which can be used in the formation of regional synthesis. The synthesis needed, especially in planning, would provide a basis for the development of the discipline. Geographers should try to understand the synthesis, revealing the wholeness.
It is the dichotomies in geography which tend to weaken the very raison d’etre of synthetic geography, or attempt to weaken the geographical synthesis. James (1972) pointed out that acceptance of the many dichotomies is a semantic trap and that the attribution of fixed meanings or interpretations to word symbols may result in unreal conflicts between them.
He suggested that the following dichotomies have done particular damage to the raison d’etre of geographical synthesis and geographical thinking:
i. That geography must either be idiographic or nomothetic, but not both;
ii. That physical and human geography are clearly differentiated branches of the discipline with separate concepts and methods;
iii. That geography must be either systematic or regional;
iv. That geographical methods must either be inductive or deductive;
v. That geographical philosophies and methodologies must either be positivist or critical theory;
vi. That geography must be classified as either a science or an art (the quantitative-qualitative argument).
For Holt-Jenson (1981), geography straddles all these dichotomies, and tends towards synthesising the discipline. Geography, like any other discipline, must be both idiographic and nomothetic. There is a continuous transfusion from one to the other, and most research consists something of both.
An integration of physical and human geography is one of the dominant functions of geography justifying the existence of the synthetic character of the discipline. The systematic and regional geography are to be seen as complementary, with the former providing the general understanding that could be synthesised in the latter when it referred to specific and unique places.
Many geographers have regarded regional geography as the core of the subject, viewing systematic geography as the area in which laws are formulated and regional geography as the field in which they are tested empirically.
The culmination of regional geography there becomes the verification of geographical laws and the presentation of a synthesis of the physical and human phenomenon within an area or region. Both induction and deduction are generally used in the same scientific analysis.
The new critical geography shows some of the same characteristics as typical of scientific revolution in general and the positivist quantitative revolution in particular. Dichotomies between positivism and critical theory do not necessarily seem to split the very synthesis of the discipline.
Geography attempts to synthesis between science and arts, for it are neither a purely natural science nor a purely social science; it lies at the median of the two. If any of the traditions is taken out, geography will then cease to exist.
Geography today represents a well-established tradition of research and scholarship within the academic discipline. It is one in which the legacy of past ideas remains embedded, but current thinking is still being worked out.
Essay # 4. Geographical Knowledge under Globalisation:
The all-encompassing political-economic process which has come in recent years to be called ‘globalisation’ has depended heavily upon the accumulation of certain kinds of geographical knowledge. The further development of this political-economic system will undoubtedly influence geography as a distinctive discipline and as a distinctive way of knowing what permeates social thought and political practice.
Reciprocally, geographical understanding may affect future paths of Political-economic development (through, for example, the recognition of environmental constraints, identification of new resources and commercial opportunities or the pursuit of juster forms of uneven geographical development).
A critical geography might go so far as to challenge contemporary forms of political-economic power, marked by hyper development, spiraling social inequalities and multiple signs of serious environmental degradation.
The aforesaid dialectical relationship between political-economic and socio-economic change on the one hand, and geographical knowledge on the other, however, requires to be looked into with the following three basic observations:
i. The history of this dialectical relationship is a fascinating area of inquiry (for example, in the whole relationship between geographical knowledge, state formation, colonisation, military operations, geopolitics and the perpetual seeking out of commercial and economic advantages). The past legacy, however, weighs heavily upon contemporary geographical knowledge and any broad-based attempt to transform the latter must, at some point, confront the particularities of past achievement.
ii. It is dangerous to presume that there is some settled way of understanding or a unified field of knowledge called ‘geography’ even within the academy. A discipline that ranges from palace-ecology and desert morphologies to postmodernist and queer geography obviously has an identity problem.
The presumption that there is some yet to be discovered ‘essentialist’ definition of geography’s subject-matter, its methods and its ‘point of new’, has to be challenged, though it is a long time since any one dared write so confidently a book as Hartshorne’s Nature of Geography.
iii. The strategic point which is even more important: there is a significant difference between geographical knowledge in different institutional settings (e.g. state apparatus, the World Bank, IMF, the media, the public at large, NGOs, the tourist industry, multinational corporations, transnational organisations, financial institutions, etc.) and the geography taught and studied within departments that operate under that name.
The tension between geography as a distinctive discipline and geography as a way of assembling, using and understanding information of a certain sort in a variety of institutional settings is important. Geographical knowledge of the latter sort is widely dispersed throughout society. They deserve to be understood in their own right (e.g. how the tourist industry or cable television has created and promoted a certain geographical sense in society).
Different institutions, furthermore, create a demand for different kinds of geographical knowledge (the tourist industry is not interested in highlighting the geography of social distress). If academic geography does not or cannot meet these various demands then someone else will surely do.
From these preliminary remarks following immediate conclusions can be drawn:
i. Need for general studies in comparative historical and geographical settings to better understand how the dialectical relationship between forms of geographical knowledge and socio-economic and ecological development occurs.
ii. Need for careful studies of how geography as a mode of understanding is formulated, used and applied in different institutional settings (e.g. the military, green peace, the state apparatus, multinational corporations, etc.)
iii. Need to better understand the links between geographical discourses that emanate from particular institutions and the way geographical knowledge is created and taught both within and without the specific discipline of geography.
iv. Need to think through the principles that might govern the ‘proper’ application of ‘sound’ geographical knowledge in specific settings. Here geography has a potential role of considerable importance, as both arbiter and judge of appropriate uses of properly formulated geographical knowledge.
Essay # 5. Cosmopolitanism and Its Geography:
Cosmopolitan education would supply the background necessary for this deliberation.’ Cosmopolitanism without a ‘sound’ and ‘proper’ understanding of geography and anthropology is an empty ideal.
It is now claimed that global governance, management and regulatory activities are now being mobilised through ideals of ‘cosmopolitanism’. Writers like David Held have argued eloquently that such a cosmopolitan perspective is essential to the development of democratic institutions of global governance to regulate neo-liberalism. But what kind of geographical knowledge is presupposed in such an argument?
In order to conduct any adequate global dialogue, Nussbaum says, ‘We need knowledge not only of geography and ecology of other nations— something that would already entail much revision of our curricula—but also a great deal about their people, so that in talking with them we may be capable of respecting their traditions and commitments.
David Harvey (2002), however, says, ‘The assertion of Nussbaum follows no less a figure than Kant whose founding arguments on a cosmopolitan ethic are frequently appealed to in the general literature. Kant recognized both geographical and anthropological understandings as ‘necessary preconditions’ for the discovery and application of all other forms of knowledge including that of a cosmopolitan ethic.’
However, a study of Kant’s geography reveals a serious problem. Not only Kant’s account is unsystematic and incoherent but it is also prejudicial in the extreme. ‘Humanity’, Kant says, ‘achieves its greatest perfection with the whole race’.
Geographical knowledge of this sort appears deeply inconsistent with Kant’s universal ethics and cosmopolitan principles. It immediately poses the problem- What happens when universal ethics get inserted as principles of global governance in a world in which some people are considered inferior and others are thought indolent, smelly, or just plain untrustworthy? It inevitably leads to ‘prejudices’ of unspecified dimensions causes; ‘humanised space’ disaggregated and discriminated against. Biased or ’empty’ geographical knowledge, deliberately constructed and maintained, provide a license to pursue narrow interests in the name of universal goodness and reason.
A hefty dose of geographical enlightenment is, therefore, a necessary pre-condition for any kind of reasoned global governance. But what kind of geographical knowledge might be implied here? Geographers tend to be suspicious of cosmopolitan ideas (in part for good reason).
But geography, uninspired by any cosmopolitan vision, either becomes a matter of mere description or a passive tool of existing powers (military, administrative, economic). Liberating the dialectic between cosmopolitanism and geography seems a critical pre-condition for the achievement of any juster and saner socio-ecological order for the present century.
How can geographical knowledge be reconstituted to meet the needs of democratic global governance inspired by a cosmopolitan ethics, for example, justice, fairness and reason?
These are big questions, but essential to contemplate not only from the narrow standpoint of geography as a discipline, but more importantly from the standpoint of geographical knowledge (no matter where produced) in affecting future trajectory of the global socio-ecological order and its associated patterns of political-economic power.
Essay # 6. Sites for the Production of Geographical Knowledge:
Professional geographers, like economists, sociologists and political scientists, do from time to time generate their own data sets and produce novel information to fuel their enquiries. But much of their work rests on the analysis of data, information and perspectives developed elsewhere.
There is very little formal recognition within geography of how geographical knowledge assembled in different institutional settings varies according to distinctive institutional requirements, culture and norms.
If geography as a discipline aspires to be judge and arbiter of the proper application of sound geographical knowledge, then a first step down that path is to provide principles to evaluate the production of geographical knowledge in different institutional settings. Many geographers attach themselves to external institutions. But this is often viewed as a private or personal matter.
Rarely do we sit back and reflect upon the consequences of such attachment for the discipline as a whole. Consider, for example, some of the primary sites for the production of geographical knowledge and how the qualities of such knowledge vary from site to site.
i. The State Apparatus, with its interests in governmentality, administration, taxation, planning and social control, has steadily built up from the eighteenth century onwards as a primary site for the collection and analysis of geographical information.
The process of state formation was and still is dependent on the creation of certain kinds of geographical understanding (everything from mapping of boundaries to the cultivation of some sense of national identity within those boundaries).
For the last two centuries, the state has been perhaps the primary site for the production of geographical knowledge necessary for the creation, maintenance and enhancement of its power. However, the interests of particular states lead to particular kinds of geographical knowledge related, interestingly, to geographical and geopolitical conditions. The ‘hidden geography’ of geographical knowledge has rarely been expressed except elliptically and occasionally.
ii. Military Power deserves to be categorised separately because it is in this arena that correction between privileged geographical knowledge and the pursuit of power becomes most obvious. Geographical knowledge is here often held in secret. Access to it is a matter of national security. The connection between geographical knowledge and the military has always been extremely strong.
iii. Supra-national Institutions have increasingly become major sources of new geographical knowledge, particularly since 1950. The World Bank, the UN Development Program, the ILO, the WHO, the WTO, UNESCO, FAO, and the like form a huge and rapidly growing domain for the production of variety of geographical knowledge (often of a specialised sort on topics such as world health, agriculture, labour, the environment and the like).
Other supranational institutions, like the European Union, the OECD, NAFTA, APEC, and other such trans-continental institutions take less of a global perspective but, nevertheless, also operate as key sites for the production of particular geographical knowledge.
iv. Non-governmental Organisations have proliferated in recent decades, making the production of geographical knowledge throughout civil society at large a much more complicated affair in part because the objectives of such organisations vary greatly.
Such organisations incorporate vast amount of geographical knowledge as do human rights groups, like Amnesty International, environmental groups (like the World Wildlife Fund or Green Peace) and the vast array of organisations dealing with specific issues (violence, the situation of women and children, education, poverty, health, refugees, etc.)
v. Corporate and Commercial Interests have their own way of assembling and analysing geographical knowledge for their own particular purposes. The vast business of consultancy today operates with particular force as corporate and commercial interests seek out expert opinion on marketing possibilities, locational preferences, resource availability (both human and natural), environmental constraints, security of investment, business climate, amenities for personnel, and the like.
vi. Media, Entertainment and Tourist Industries are a prolific source of geographical knowledge. In this instance, however, we are largely concerned with the projection of images and representations upon a public at large and the predominant effects of those images and representations upon the population subjected to them. The impact is primarily aesthetic and emotive rather than ‘objective’.
The selectivity entailed in the choice of images is often problematic. But the variation in images and representation within the media, entertainment and tourist industries is enormous and it forms a highly problematic, but influential field within which geographical knowledge get shaped and reshaped.
vii. Education and Research Institutions generate a lot of disciplinary-specific geographical information. Economists, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists all produce and modify information that has geographical content and often re-shape that knowledge to their own disciplinary purposes. Geographical knowledge is found throughout the whole educational and research system. It is quite proper that such knowledge become widely diffused rather than circumscribed within one unified disciplinary frame.
This can be perceived within the discipline of geography either as a threat or as a marvelous opportunity to engage in constructive dialogue about the proper use of sound geographical knowledge in many distinctive spheres of endeavor.
Institutionalised geographical knowledge of the sort, as mentioned above, are particularly important to geography as an academic discipline. But there are far wider and more general kinds of geographical knowledge embedded in language, local ways of life, the local symbiosis achieved between nature, economy and culture, local mythologies and diverse cultural practices and forms, common-sense prescriptions and dynamic socio-linguistic traditions. Specialised geographical knowledge, however, abound.
Geographers along with anthropologists have paid close attention to localised ‘structures of feeling’ and ways of life and in doing so have helped frequently to highlight the conflict between institutionalised knowledge directed towards governmentality and localised knowledge that guides effective loyalties and socio- environmental identities.
They have traditionally provided and continue to provide the backbone of argument for an authentically independent discipline of (human) geography.
It is years now since Foucault taught us that knowledge/power/institutions lock together in particular modes of governmentality, yet few have cared to turn that spotlight upon the discipline of geography. They have been unmindful of Foucault s other key observations on the importance of discipline, surveillance and punishment to the functioning of all institutions.
Nevertheless, it requires to be recognised that geography as a discipline is situated at the confluence of a vast array of geographical discourses, constructed at quite different institutional sites with often seemingly incomparable and incommunicable rules of operation. We should view the confluence of these divergent discourses within the discipline of geography as an opportunity and an advantage rather than as source of mystification and confusion.
The extraordinarily diffused presence of geographical knowledge across the different disciplines and their dispersal throughout many major institutions provide a ready-made network for the diffusion of ‘strong’ geographical ideas, constructed within the discipline.
Instead of geography weakly retracting institutionalised discourses, it is possible to imagine geography as a discipline sending strong innovative impulses throughout the academy and across multiple institutional sites based upon the collective work which geographers produce.
However, geography will not survive unless it develops ‘strong’ geographical ideas expressive of some of the ‘unities’ that we come to identify among the highly differentiated discourses that converge within our disciplinary frame.
‘Strong’ ideas will be listened to and command respect elsewhere. And those strong ideas must be born out of experience gained through the specific personality of our discipline as a convergent point of multiple geographical knowledge.
Essay # 7. Geography among the Disciplines:
The four structural elements to be found within all forms of geographical knowledge collectively form structural supports for a unified methodological field of activity to be called ‘Geography’. A number of points can be made about the positionality of the field among the disciplines.
Work within this field is not confined to the discipline of geography. A scholar in literary theory studying, say, the works of Wordsworth, might examine his poetry against a cartographic background of the city-country, might pay minute attention to the conceptualisations of space and time that symbolise a distinctive way of life, thought and personal subjectivity, might pay close attention to environmental qualities and the portrayal of the relation to nature, and, finally, might examine the way in which the poetry helped to produce the idea of ‘The Lakes’ as a distinctive region eliding into the creation of a tourist industry (based on Word worth’s ‘Tour Guide’ writings) which in turn helped produce a distinctive regionality on the ground.
It is possible to imagine palaeoecologists, geomorphologists, sedimentologists, economic geographers, cultural historians and rural sociologists all taking somewhat similar steps in their research design.
‘Thinking like a geographer’ then entails an understanding in each one of these operations of how the four structural pillars of geographical knowledge can be worked and woven together in specific instances and settings to produce profounder insights into socio-ecological conditions and processes of change. There are some deep commonalities and unities in how seemingly disparate geographical knowledge are structured and it is surely worthwhile examining more carefully how such structure works.
The problem for geography as a discipline has been its search for an ‘essence’ and for an exclusively defined ‘nature’ which sets it clearly apart from all other disciplines within the social and natural sciences. Taking essentialist definitions of other subject matters like biology and economics as given, the best that geography can do is to claim some ‘hybrid’ status, to hold itself up as some model of higher order ‘synthesis’ or to set itself apart by indulging in ‘exceptioinalist’ claims.
The latter can be based on the peculiarities of thinking that derive from the deep contemplation of region and space relations, paying particular attention to the seeming recalcitrance of geographical information in the face of general theory (ergo the idea that general laws and universal statements are impossible in geography).
But there is an entirely different mode of thought that avoids essentialist definitions and meanings and which seems far more appropriate to our actually existing circumstances. Analogical reasoning seeks connections and inter-relations, pushes forward metaphors and underlying unities within seemingly disparate phenomena, and seeks analysis to illuminate phenomena in one area by examination of another.
Above all, it seeks translation between different modes of thoughts. It is profoundly open and avoids all the turf-wars and exclusions that typify a world dominated by essentialist and purist categories.
The moment in the history of geography that was particularly fertile in this regard was that led by the collaboration of Chorley and Haggett to produce collective works like Models in Geography. At the heart of that enterprise lay analogical reasons opposed to the essentialist definition earlier sought in, say, Hartshorne’s Nature of Geography.
What is so impressive about the current situation is the widespread occurrence of analogical reason. Spatial themes, for example, permeate literary and social theory. Some of the spatial and cartographic metaphors deployed in literary theory today are wildly inappropriate. Part of our scholarly job is to place such transfers of thought and feeling on reasonably solid ground.
But now seems the moment when geographers are superbly placed to be a central guiding force within the networks of knowledge being created by widespread appeal to analogical reason throughout all spheres of academic activity.
But for geographers to take advantage of this positionality, it is necessary to abandon essentialist attitudes (the negative effects of which are all too plain to see in other spheres of knowledge like multi-culturalism, nationalism, or gender studies).
There is no ‘nature’ of geography to be found. The search for an essence is profoundly misplaced if not counter-productive. But ‘thinking like a geographer’ is everywhere.
Learning to think ‘soundly’ and ‘properly’ as a geographer is a profoundly important attribute in today’s world. This is where the unified methodological field of geography is to be found at work.
Harvey, however, says- ‘As the example of Kant’s cosmopolitanism and its murky tradition all too easily shows, not knowing “how to think properly like a geographer”, how to weave together the four structural pillars of geographical knowledge into a system of geographic wisdom, has long-lasting negative effects upon the collective prospects for emancipatory socio- ecological change.
Essay # 8. Political Projects:
Even the most objectivist and neutral-sounding scientist will acknowledge that broad context of scientific activity and learning has a great deal to do with human emancipation from want and need, that the improvement of human understanding is a necessary condition for the betterment of society (whether it be in material or non-material ways).
The claim of objectivity and neutrality is always a circumscribed claim (pertaining to certain limited and carefully defined aspects of the overall learning enterprise).
The supposed neutrality of geographical knowledge has at best proved to be a beguiling fiction and at worst a downright fraud. Geographical knowledge in bourgeois era, for example, have always internalised strong ideological content.
In this scientific (and, predominantly positivist) forms, natural and social phenomena are represented objectively as things, subject to manipulation, management and exploitation by dominant forms of capital and state power.
In their more scientific, humanist and aesthetic incarnation, geographical knowledge project and articulate individual and collective hopes and fears while purporting to depict material conditions and social relations with the historical veracity they deserve.
Although it aspires to universal understanding of the diversity of life on Earth, geography has often cultivated parochialist and ethnocentric perspectives on that diversity. It has often been, and all too often still is, an active vehicle for the transmission of doctrines of racial, cultural, sexual or national superiority.
Ideas of geographical or ‘manifest’ destiny of ‘natural’ geographical rights, of the ‘white man’s burden’ and the civilising mission of bourgeoisie or of the global reach of an American definition of democracy (thoroughly corrupted by money power as it may be), are liberally scattered in geographical thinking and are deeply embedded in popular geographical lore.
Cold War rhetoric, fears of ‘orientalism’ or of some demonic ‘other’ that threatens the existing order have likewise been pervasive. The ‘facts’ of geography presented often as ‘facts of nature’ have often been used to justify imperialism, neo-colonial domination, expansionism and geopolitical plans for dominance. Geographical information can also be presented in such a way as to prey upon fears and feed hostility (the abuse of cartography is of particular note in this regard).
Many forms of geographical knowledge have been tainted by virtue of their connection with the instrumental ends for which they were designed and institutional frameworks to which they were beholden. But this is not to say that they are useless, irrelevant or too contaminated to be touched (any more than we might dismiss the uses of specific technologies because they are invented for purposes of military domination and destruction).
The problem, as much within as without, is to take these varied forms of knowledge, appreciate the circumstances of their origin, evaluate them for what they are and, if possible, transform them or translate them (with the aid of analogical reason) into different codes where they might perform quite different functions.
There are abundant examples of attempts to mobilise geographical knowledge to humanistic ends. Concern for the unwise use of natural and human resources, environmental degradations and insufficient or unjust spatial distributions (of population, industry, transport facilities, ecological complexes, etc.) have led many geographers to consider the question of ‘rational’ configuration of both.
This aspect of geographical practice, which emerged with the early geological, soil and landuse surveys, has increased markedly in the last 60 years as the state has been forced to intervene more actively in human affairs. Positive knowledge of actual distribution (the collection, coding and presentation of information) and normative theories of location and optimisation have proved useful in environmental management and urban and regional planning.
These techniques entailed acceptance of a distinctively capitalist definition of rationality, connected to the accumulation of capital and social control. But such a mode of thought also opened up the possibility for planning the efficient utilization of environments and space according to alternative and multiple definitions of rationality.
Harvey (2000) writes- ‘Geographical knowledge have the largely unrealised potentiality to express hopes and aspirations as well as fears, to seek universal understandings based on mutual respect and concern, and to articulate firmer bases for human cooperation in a world marked by strong geographical differences. The construction of geographical knowledge in the spirit of liberty and respect for others opens up the possibility for the creation of alternative forms of geographical practice, tied to principles of mutual respect and advantage rather than to the politics of exploitation. Geographical knowledge can become vehicles to express Utopian visions and practical plans for the creation of alternative geographies. They can openly confront and articulate the legitimate and frequently conflictual aspirations of diverse populations. They can infuse cosmopolitan projects, founded on ideas of justice, tolerance and reason, with geographical understandings that do not automatically negate their universal claims. They can become embedded in alternative politics to good effect. They can provide effective means to mobilize knowledge of the world for those emancipatory ends to which all learning and all science has traditionally aspired.’