Geographic Thought

A Critical Introduction

Tim Cresswell

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118256480
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Géographie humaine

This engaging and accessible introduction to geographic thought explores the major thinkers and key theoretical developments in the field of human geography.

• Covers the complete range of the development of theoretical knowledge of the field, from ancient geography to contemporary non-representational theory
• Presents theories in an accessible manner through the author's engaging writing style
• Examines the influence of Darwin and Marx, the emergence of anarchist geographies, the impact of feminism, and myriad other important bodies of thought
• Stresses the importance of geographic thought and its relevance to our understanding of what it is to be human, and to the people, places, and cultures of the world in which we live

Chapter 1

Introduction

Good evening. Welcome to Difficult Listening Hour. The spot on your dial for that relentless and impenetrable sound of Difficult Music. So sit bolt upright in that straight-backed chair, button that top button, and get set for some difficult music.

(Laurie Anderson – “Difficult Listening Hour,” from “Home of the Brave,” 1986)

Hostility to theory usually means an opposition to other people’s theories and an oblivion of one’s own.

(Eagleton 2008: xii)

If the scientific investigation of any subject be the proper avocation of the philosopher, Geography, the science of which we propose to treat, is certainly entitled to a high place …

(Strabo 1912 [AD 7–18]: 1)

Geography is a profound discipline. To some this statement might seem oxymoronic. Profound geography seems as likely as “military intelligence.” Geography is often the butt of jokes in the United Kingdom. A school friend of mine who was about to start a degree in pure mathematics described my chosen degree as the “science of common sense.” I once appeared on a public radio quiz show in the United States. When the host asked me what I did and I explained I was a geography student, he asked what geographers had left to do – surely we know where Milwaukee is already? I mumbled an apologetic answer. Taxi drivers ask me to name the second highest mountain in the world, trying to catch me out by avoiding the obvious first highest. My parents thought I was going to be a weather forecaster. So why is geography profound? Why indeed would the classical Greek/Roman scholar Strabo (more on him in Chapter 2) suggest that geography deserves a “high place” and that it constitutes “philosophy”?

Strabo presented a number of answers ranging from the fact that many “philosophers” and “poets” of repute had taken geography as central to their endeavors to the fact that geography was indispensable to proper government and statecraft. But perhaps most profoundly:

In addition to its vast importance in regard to social life, and the art of government, Geography unfolds to us the celestial phenomena, acquaints us with the occupants of the land and ocean, and the vegetation, fruits, and peculiarities of the various quarters of the earth, a knowledge of which marks him who cultivates it as a man earnest in the great problem of life and happiness.

(Strabo 1912 [AD 7–18]: 1–2)

“The great problem of life and happiness.” This was and is a central philosophical and theoretical problem. How do we lead a happy life? What constitutes a good life? How should people relate to the nonhuman world? How do we make our life meaningful? These are profound questions and they are also geographical questions.

In addition to being profound, geography is also everywhere. The questions we ask are profound because of, not in spite of, the everydayness of geographical concerns. This point is well made in this extended extract from an essay by the cultural geographer, Denis Cosgrove:

On Saturday mornings I am not, consciously, a geographer. I am, like so many other people of my age and lifestyle, to be found shopping with my family in my local town-sector precinct. It is not a very special place, artificially illuminated under the multi-storey car park, containing an entirely predictable collection of chain stores – W.H. Smith, Top Shop, Baxters, Boots, Safeway and others – fairly crowded with well-dressed, comfortable family consumers. The same scene could be found almost anywhere in England. Change the names of the stores and then the scene could be typical of much of western Europe and North America. Geographers might take an interest in the place because it occupies the peak rent location of the town, they might study the frontage widths or goods on offer as part of a retail study, or they might assess its impact on the pre-existing urban morphology. But I am shopping.
Then I realise other things are also happening: I’m asked to contribute to a cause I don’t approve of; I turn a corner and there is an ageing, evangelical Christian distributing tracts. The main open space is occupied by a display of window panels to improve house insulation – or rather, in my opinion, to destroy the visual harmony of my street. Around the concrete base of the precinct’s decorative tree a group of teenagers with vividly coloured Mohican haircuts and studded armbands cast the occasional scornful glance at middle-aged consumers. …
The precinct, then, is a highly textured place, with multiple layers of meaning. Designed for the consumer to be sure, and thus easily amenable to my retail geography study, nevertheless its geography stretches way beyond that narrow and restrictive perspective. The precinct is a symbolic place where a number of cultures meet and perhaps clash. Even on a Saturday morning I am still a geographer. Geography is everywhere.

(Cosgrove 1989: 118–119)

Here Cosgrove reflects on the way our discipline sticks close to the banal everydayness of life. It is not possible to get through an hour, let alone a day, without confronting potentially geographical questions. Shopping centers in medium-sized British towns do not seem particularly profound (when compared to the question of the origins of the universe, say), but they are. They are full of geography. But this geography is not always readily apparent. It is not just there like park benches or shop windows. To see it we have to have the tools to see it. We need to know about the importance of a “peak rent location” or even what a “symbolic place” is, and to know this we have to think about geography theoretically. So geography is at the same time “profound” and everyday. Unlike theoretical physics or literary theory, it is hard to escape geography. Once you are a geographer, particularly one interested in theory, you always are a geographer. It is this confluence of the profound and the banal that gives geographical theory its special power.

This book is focused on key geographical questions. It is based on my belief that geography is profound: that the ideas geographers deal in are some of the most important ideas there are. Each of the chapters that follow may occasionally seem slightly arcane as I recount the arguments that geographers and others have with each other in the pages of journals and monographs. But at the heart are important questions. They are important both for the existential dimension of how we lead a good life and for more worldly issues of equality, justice, and our connections to the natural world. I am convinced that thinking through the theoretical issues of geography at least makes us more aware of ourselves, of the world, and of our relationship with the world.

While geographical questions remain central to this book, I make no claims to completeness. Geographers, like practitioners of many other disciplines, are constantly arguing about ideas. Often it is the people who are supposed to be in agreement that are doing the arguing. We are used to the idea of advocates of competing ideas clashing with each other. In these arguments large numbers of people are lumped together as “positivists” or “Marxists” for instance. But if we look closely we find that these groups are constantly arguing with each other too, over what it means to be a positivist or a Marxist. A book like this cannot hope to recount each and every one of these arguments. Such a book would be an encyclopedia of many volumes. Here I hope to convey what, to me, are the essential questions that geographic theory helps us to answer – questions that all of us can apply to our everyday lives in order to help us make sense of the world. This will necessarily involve ignoring the vast majority of work in geography including, undoubtedly, some work that my colleagues and others may feel is central. This book reflects my own fascinations and predilections. Theory in human geography is more complicated by orders of magnitude than what I have to present here. To engage with these complications I provide suggested readings along the way (indicated with an asterisk (*) in the References section at the end of each chapter). This is a road map and there are many small towns and hamlets and even some major cities that these roads do not connect. You will have to go off road occasionally to find them.

This book is likely to play an important role in a ritual. At some point, either as an undergraduate or as a postgraduate, geography students (particularly human geography students) have to do a course on theory, or geographic thought, or philosophy and geography. It is a rite of passage. For many, this is much like Laurie Anderson’s “difficult listening hour” – relentless and impenetrable. For two or three hours a week students are confronted with a dizzying array of theories and philosophies each with its own particular jargon and logic. And just when one “ism” appears to make sense the next one comes over the horizon and declares it invalid, wrong, confused, or, amazingly, too simplistic. To many of us this ritual seemed a long way from doing geography. It was a diversion that took us away from getting on with our work. To some, however, (and I include myself here) it made geography come alive. It was certainly difficult but it seemed to make other parts of the discipline make sense and make our own work more profoundly connected to currents of thought that coursed not only through geography but its sister disciplines as well.

Why Theory Matters

This ritual is important. It is important because all geographical inquiry, even that which pretends otherwise, is always shaped by theory and philosophy. To paraphrase the literary scholar, Terry Eagleton: those who say they don’t like theory mean that they don’t like someone else’s theory and are unaware of their own. So how does theory shape geographical inquiry?

First, it is there when we make choices about what to study. If we choose to look at the micro spaces of the home, there is a history of feminist theory urging geographers to take private space seriously. If we choose to study the structuring of public space, there are any number of theorists who have argued about the meaning of “public” (let alone the meaning of “space”). It is true that we may be unaware of these writers, and not directly influenced by them, but theory still has played a role at a number of levels. First, these previous theorists have been instrumental in making such projects acceptable as geographical research whether we have heard of them or not. A geography of the spaces of home would probably have been dismissed out of hand as a viable research project in the vast majority of geography departments in (say) 1960. Funding bodies would probably have returned a polite rejection; many of them still would! Second, we are practicing theory ourselves when we make these decisions. We are deciding what, out of all the possible projects in an infinitely complicated world, is important to us. We are prioritizing some questions over others – promoting some parts of the world as important, as interesting. Such choices are (in part) theoretical.

The second major way in which theory shapes geographical study is in the choices we make about what to include and what to ignore in our study. Once we have decided we want to explore domestic space, we still have work to do. We have to decide what might be included in such a study. What kind of domestic space? Where? How many? Do we focus on the “things” in a space or the things people do? Is it important to explore these themes at different times of the day, week, or year? Should we look at the world of children or just the adults? Shall we link the research to the kinds of spaces the family members inhabit when they are not at home? Questions such as these are endless. They are (in part) theoretical questions.

The third major way in which theory shapes geographical study is in the choices we make about how to gather information. Theory is linked to method through methodology and epistemology (how we know what we know). Can we answer the questions we have set ourselves through a survey of thousands of households? Will a quantitative approach be more “scientific” and generalizable? Or do we need to live life with the inhabitants of a small number of households over a long period of time in order to get some of the depth and richness of life as it is lived? Is there archival material we could access to study these issues in the past or elsewhere? These are, of course, practical questions concerning how much money, time, expertise, and energy we have. But they are also theoretical/philosophical questions about what it is we consider important to find out, whether we are more interested in generalizability or depth. Methods are theoretical too.

The fourth major way in which theory shapes geographical study is in the choices we make about how to represent our research to others. The answer to this might seem straightforward; a standard journal paper, a monograph, in text or graphs. But we have to ask how we are going to write a text: impressionistically or with hard certainty? What kind of maps or charts will we use? Why? What journal will we choose to publish in? How will we engage with those beyond the academy? Do we even need to? All of these are theoretical questions too.

So theory is involved in all stages of geographical research. We may not be clear about exactly how, but it is there nonetheless. And it is my assertion that it is better to be somewhat aware of this than blissfully unaware.

Claims to have no theory (claims which are frequently made) are simply delusional. Theory is everywhere, in everything we do. Without theory, life (not just geography) would be chaos. One purpose of this book is to raise awareness about which theory or theories are implicit in geographical research – to make theory less implicit and more explicit in the practice of geography. It should be an aid in making decisions about theories you like and do not like, believe in or disbelieve. Beyond that, it will provide some ways of thinking that might stimulate self-analysis about how you and those around you lead your lives. With any luck it will make you less scared of thinking difficult thoughts.

What Is Theory?

Perhaps we have jumped the gun slightly here. Perhaps we need to define theory in order that it might make sense. The term theory can seem unduly threatening and worryingly vague. At the most general level, theory seems to refer to pretty much anything that is going on in our minds. Despite its slightly imposing implications, theory is actually a word that is used frequently in everyday speech. We say things like “Tim has a theory about that” or “In theory, that might work – but not in practice.” Here theory refers to the realm of ideas. It is opposed to “practice” which itself often appears to mean “reality.” Theory is thinking and practice is doing. This opposition leads many to think of theory as impractical and unreal. Theory can often be used as a term of abuse. But most things that exist in our heads are not really “theories.” Thoughts and ideas may be hopes, dreams, guesses, fears, or a host of other mental phenomena that are not strictly or wholly theoretical. Theory, in the academic sense, usually refers to organized and patterned sets of ideas rather than spur-of-the-moment thoughts. Theories are more or less organized ways of ordering the world which exist in our minds and which we share with others. They have a collective and enduring intellectual quality.

Clearly we perceive the world in many ways using the senses of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. As we move through the world we are barraged with sensations that our body has to make some sense of. Think for a minute about the everyday activity of crossing a busy road. We can see the traffic speeding past, smell the exhaust, and see recent rain on the pavement. We can hear the surrounding people and vehicles. How do we cross the road? Is it not miraculous that we get to the other side? Why don’t we stand in the middle of the road and marvel at the steady stream of perception – the roar of engines, the stream of colors? Clearly we have to order our senses to make them make sense. The middle of the road is not a good place to stop and wonder. We did not know this as a very small child. We had to become aware of it. We make sense of the world by taking what our senses present to us and ordering it, prioritizing and assembling sensations so that we might make it to the other side. In fact we are so good at this we can do it seemingly without thinking. This is the beginning of theory – making the complexity of the world clearer – ordering it and prioritizing. Avoiding death. Few would actually say that the mental processes involved in crossing the road constitute theory, but it is certainly the first step to understanding what theory can do for us.

One metaphor that is frequently used to describe theory is the “lens.” Think of theory as a lens that helps us see some things clearly – it imposes conceptual order on messy reality – it brings an indistinct blur into focus. Theory turns the perceived and experienced world into an “interpreted world.” How this happens is extremely varied and the subject of considerable debate among geographers. People use different lenses to see the same things differently – and then argue about it. Some might say, for the sake of argument, that we need only present “the facts.” This, broadly speaking, constitutes a kind of theoretical approach (whether its advocates see it this way or not) which we might call empiricism. An approach that tries to s...