Everything about Critical Geography totally explained
The development of
critical geography can be seen as one of the four major turning points in the history of geography (the other three being
environmental determinism,
regional geography and
quantitative revolution). Though post-positivist approaches remain important in geography the critical geography arose as a critique of
positivism introduced by quantitative revolution.
Two main schools of thought emerged from human geography and one existing school (
behavioural geography) which made a brief comeback. Behavioural geography sought to counter the perceived tendency of quantitative geography to deal with humanity as a statistical phenomenon. It flourished briefly during the 1970s and sought to provide a greater understanding of how people perceived places and made locational decisions and sought to challenge mathematical models of society, in particular the use of
econometric techniques. But the lack of a sound theoretical base left behavioural geography open to critique as merely descriptive and amounting to little more than a listing of spatial preferences.
Radical geography emerged during the 1970s and 1980s as the inadequacies of behavioralist methods became clear. It sought to counter the
postivist quantitative methods with
normative techniques drawn from
Marxist theory: quantitative methods, it argued, were not useful unless alternatives or solutions were given to problems.
The final and, arguably, most successful of the three schools was
humanistic geography, initially formed part of behavioural geography but fundamentally disagreed with the use of quantitative methods in assessing human behaviour and thoughts in favour of
qualitative analysis. Humanistic geography used many of the techniques that the
humanities use such as source analysis and the use of text and literature to try to ‘get into the mind’ of the subject(s). Furthermore,
Cultural geography revived due to humanistic geography new areas of study such as
Feminist geography, postmodernist and poststructuralist geography began to emerge.
Additional Reading
- Social Justice and the City, Ira Katznelson (Foreword), David Harvey, Blackwell Publishers, ISBN 0-631-16476-6
"Antipode", A Radical Journal of Geography, Blackwell Publishing(External Link
)
ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies (http://www.acme-journal.org)Further Information
Get more info on 'Critical Geography'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://critical_geography.totallyexplained.com">Critical geography Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
