THE FOUR TRADITIONS OF GEOGRAPHY (original) (raw)

History and philosophy of geography II: In search of 'a properly geographical theorist'

Progress in Human Geography , 2024

This report offers an interpretation of recent scholarship that articulates pasts and futures of geographical thought and praxis. By focussing on growing concerns about speculative, abyssal, and analytical styles of thinking in Geography, I argue that a more cogent philosophical take on geographic theory-making is needed. Drawing upon ongoing discussions on the role of geographic theory, I use the occasion of the various history and philosophy of geography-related anniversaries to reflect on why we are where we are today. I therefore claim that practitioners of history and philosophy of geography need to address some structural difficulties to navigate tensions between recurring calls for endogenous forms of geographic theory and relentless deconstruction of epistemic and ontological arrays as a way forward for Geography to merge with critical thinking.

American Geography and Geographers: Toward Geographical Science

The AAG Review of Books, 2015

Martin has been the official archivist of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) for more than thirty years. His books and articles are models of empirical reportage and accuracy. American Geography and Geographers: Toward Geographical Science has been awaited with great expectations. It has been years in the making and is the capstone of Martin's career.

The Philosophy of Geography

Special issue of Topoi, Vol. 20:2, 2001

Geography has been much neglected by philosophers. Yet geography presents an interesting and intricate trade-off between empirical issues, on the one hand, and deep philosophical issues (from ontology to political philosophy), on the other. What is a geographic entity? What is the relationship between a geographic entity and a physical territory? Can a geographic entity survive without a territory or without definite borders? Can it survive radical changes in its territory? Are there clear-cut identity criteria for geographic categories? Contributors: B. Bennett, R. Casati, J. Collins, A. Galton, B. Smith, A. L. Thomasson, A. C. Varzi, L. Zaibert.

Changing Paradigms of Geography

2011

Nowadays for an appropriate, way to deal with geographic space there is an axiomatic need to accept an integrated approach both in terms of the way we regard geographic space and how we investigate it. This leads to a two-prong position: First, that geographic space constitutes a dialectic entity and second that the spatial methodological approaches presently in use are now absolute. That is, Geography has recently undergone a paradigm shift from Geoinformatics, which in their own way have replaced traditional concepts, towards an integrating approach, bringing Geography into a new paradigm, called in this paper

CHAPTER 12 THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF COMMON SENSE GEOGRAPHY

In this essay, 'Geography' is (narrowly) understood as: " The art of locating points on the surface of the Earth and efficiently communicating this knowledge. " Two techniques are available to achieve this goal, 'common sense geography' (CSG) and 'scientific' geography; both have their successes and failures. Using a modern canon of what a scientific measurement should mean, a short list of historical achievements of that goal is given to help distinguish CSG from early (not so successful) scientific geography. It is then shown that some judgments on early geographers depend more on erroneous interpretations by modern scholars than original flaws. Therefore it is argued that deeper understanding of the issues may be achieved by using modern cognitive linguistic techniques to analyse both, ancient thinking and modern thinking about geography.

H. Jöns, J. Brigstocke, P. Couper, F. Ferretti, 2024, ‘History and philosophy of geography: looking back and looking forward’, Journal of Historical Geography special issue Reflections on histories and philosophies of geography: biographies, philosophies, impacts

This introduction to the special issue Reflections on Histories and Philosophies of Geography discusses the context and content of nineteen articles written to mark the fortieth anniversary of the History and Philosophy of Geography Research Group (HPGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGSIBG). The group was founded in 1981, two years after the early career researchers who set up the group, Richard T. Harrison and David N. Livingstone, published jointly their first critical interventions in support of human geography's paradigmatic shift away from positivism, based on an early form of social constructivist argumentation. We argue that the subsequent proliferation of epistemic pluralism, which is discussed in the contributions to this special issue and has characterised the activities organised by the HPGRG, exemplifies the considerable value of three historiographical practices: first, engaging with the history and philosophy of geography collectively in one research group; second, situating methodologies within the history and philosophy of geography; and third, critically interrogating the discipline's evolving geographical knowledges, professional practices, and material cultures from different authorial positionalities.