Researching Human Geography

Anna Davies, Keith Hoggart, Loretta Lees

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134638895
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Researching Human Geography is an essential new text for any geography student about to embark on a research project. An understanding of how different theories of knowledge have influenced research methodologies is crucial in planning and designing effective research; this book makes this link clear and explores how various philosophical positions, from positivism to post-structuralism, have become associated with particular methodologies.



The book gives an overview of a wide range of methods and data collection, both quantitative and qualitative, and explores their strengths and weaknesses for different kinds of research. 'Researching Human Geography' also looks at the various techniques available for the analysis of data, which is presented as an integral and ongoing part of the research process. Clearly written, with extensive use of examples from previous research to show 'methodology in action', this new text is an invaluable addition to both the theory and method of research in human geography.

1
Method and methodology in human geography

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. Every past vision of scientific truth, every model of natural phenomena, has proved in time to be more limited than its adherents claimed. The survival of productive difference in science requires that we put all claims for intellectual hegemony in their proper place – that we understand that such claims are, by their very nature, political rather than scientific.

(Fox Keller 1985: 178–9)

The primary aim of this chapter is to examine claims for renewed attention to questions of method in human geography (e.g. Jones et al. 1997). In doing so, a fundamental consideration will be the identification of links between methodology* and method* (words with an asterisk are described in the Glossary). The distinction between these is well recognized in some geographical circles, where researchers acknowledge the consequences of different epistemologies* for research practices, but in others issues of methodology are seen in the narrowly technical terms of data collection and data analysis. In the terminology used in this book, data collection and analysis are issues of method. Methodology is a more encompassing concept that embraces issues of method but has deeper roots in the bedrock of specific views on the nature of ‘reality’ (namely, in ontology*) and the grounds for knowledge (namely, in epistemology*). One of the distinctive features of this book is the manner in which it draws links between issues of method and epistemology. The geographical literature is already replete with contributions that focus on theoretical and epistemological issues (D. W. Harvey 1969, 1989; R. J. Johnston 1986; Cloke et al. 1991; J. P. Jones et al. 1993; G. Rose 1993; Gregory 1994; Peet 1998), without exploring in depth their implications for research methods. In similar vein, a large number of methods texts present techniques of data collection or analysis with little regard for their philosophical underpinnings (Ebdon 1985; Sheskin 1985) or present the two as somewhat dislocated (Flowerdew and Martin 1997; G. Robinson 1998; Kitchin and Tate 2000). We believe that epistemology and method are closely and complexly intertwined.

While this book focuses more on method than on epistemology, its starting point and its continuing reference point are necessarily epistemology. However, as we state in the Preface, we do not offer a comprehensive overview of all epistemological concerns. There are many good books that focus explicitly on philosophy and theory. These issues have become increasingly important – and contentious – as geographers have come to grips with the sceptical, anti-foundational* currents of postmodernism* (Box 1.1). Unlike books about social theory, our focus is on the relationship between epistemology and research method. In so doing we seek to bring together researchers who rarely cross each others' paths. To proponents of more traditional scientific methodologies we hope to demonstrate the importance of thinking explicitly about epistemology and considering the implications of various postmodern currents for their research (Box 1.2). For those human geographers who have embraced postmodernism and pursue various anti-foundational methodologies, we hope to demonstrate the utility of traditional social scientific methods and approaches. Basically we would like the two factions to be cognizant of each others' work and to engage in sensible, open conversation.

Box 1.1 Postmodernism: a reaction against the Enlightenment Project

Modern enlightenment claim	Postmodern response
There is an independent world of objects that exists independent of the way it is represented to be (ontology).	The phenomenon of reality depends on how it is represented to be.
The rational human subject is the universal foundation for knowledge (Descartes: I think therefore I am).	The human subject is decentred, driven by all sorts of unconscious and irrational desires.
True knowledge corresponds to how the world actually is (epistemology: correspondence theory to truth).	Truth is whatever we agree to call it, there is no archimedian point from which to observe the world that is independent of it.
Observation is theoretically neutral and has no effect on the thing being observed.	Knowledge and power are mutually constituted (Foucault, etc.).
Writing is an unproblematic representation of knowledge.	Representation is not transparent; it inevitably influences, inflects, distorts the thing it represents.

Source: David Demeritt, designed for class in Philosophy and Epistemology, King's College London.

A primary reason why human geographers have become so concerned with epistemology in recent years is doubt over the acceptability of previous research practices. Lying at the heart of such doubts was/is a so-called crisis of representation. The reasons behind this crisis of confidence in the foundations of knowledge and the truth of representation are various but long-standing. Yet only in recent years has the social science literature seen such regular and angst-ridden declarations of uncertainty about the epistemic status of its knowledge and the truth of its representations of the world. For some this uncertainty results from changes in society. Shifts in emphasis from production to consumption, the much touted decline of Fordism* and the rise of post-Fordism*, the contradictions of globalization alongside localization, and the growth of unstable, multidimensional and multifaceted social identities, have combined to challenge the foundations and principles of established interpretative perspectives. For others the weakened base of contemporary research arises less from empirical* factors than from the epistemological (and indeed political) frailties of prevailing analytical modes. It is the latter of these that is the focus of this chapter.

Box 1.2 Three strands of postmodernism

1. Some emphasize new and non-universalist models of human subjectivity and rationality suggested by postmodernism (Pile 1991). These challenge both the neo-classical economic ideas of homo economicus (popular especially in economics, behavioural psychology and human ecology) and the long-standing liberal tradition of social contract theories of rights, justice and limited government. The postmodern attack on the essential universality of human nature presents problems for Marxist and feminist appeals to the common and undifferentiated interests of the working class and women. For this reason, postmodernism has been received uneasily by Marxists and some feminists.

2. Others see postmodernism as an essentially epistemological project attacking notions of Truth and universal knowledge. In this guise postmodernism is a challenge to so-called meta-narratives and claims to foundational knowledge (in the sense of True for all times and all places). This is perhaps the most widely accepted notion of postmodernism, wrapped up with the work of post-structuralist philosophers and deconstructionists. From this direction comes the widely proclaimed ‘crisis of representation’ in the social sciences. If the social sciences can no longer be said to be about representing the truth about society, then what is their purpose?

3. Others emphasize the radical phenomenological* and social constructivist* implications of postmodernism in suggesting that our knowledge of nature, and, in some sense, the nature of reality itself (and of nature), are culturally relative. In this way, postmodernism has become embroiled in the so-called Science Wars and the debates over the social construction of science and nature. This argument is perhaps most closely associated with Baudrillard (1983). For a review of these debates, see Demeritt (1998).

Source: David Demeritt, designed for class in Philosophy and Epistemology, King's College London

Fundamental to claims about a crisis of representation is the notion that there is no self-evident and universally accessible reality against which the ‘truth’ of research conclusions can be checked. One (but by no means the only) important channel through which such claims have emerged is feminism (I. M. Young 1990). The feminist critique has helped undermine the authority of ‘conventional’ social science by challenging the notion of value-free research. Feminists have demonstrated that supposedly value-free research regularly embodies gender specific values and that there is a white, Western, male, middle-class bias to most social theory, social policy and social research (Fox Keller 1985; Lather 1991; G. Rose 1993; Women and Geography Study Group 1997). Many feminists have gone a step further and claimed that objective and unbiased knowledge is impossible because our access to reality is never unmediated. Our experience of the world, they claim, depends on language and on preconceived theories and practices. This means that knowledge must always be situated and partial, in the double sense of incomplete and biased (Haraway 1991). As we will see, feminism is not the only source of these radical critiques. There are other intellectual sources as well.

These critiques are important because they challenge the philosophical foundations of scientific approaches to the investigation of human societies. As we will discuss, there is no single scientific approach. There are important philosophical differences between the empiricism* of the long-standing fieldwork tradition of human geography and the positivism* that came to prominence in geography during the ‘quantitative revolution’ of the late 1950s and 1960s (Billinge et al. 1984). What is more, the scientific underpinnings of positivism sit uncomfortably alongside the philosophical presumptions of Marxist-inspired critical realism (Sayer 1984). Despite their philosophical and political differences, the dominance of empiricism-positivism-realism in geography ensured that the discipline was wedded to the idea of itself as a science and that scientific methodologies dominated post-war human geography (R. J. Johnston 1991). This is despite the fact that the basic tenets of different scientific approaches so differ that many criticisms of positivism are as appropriately made from a Marxist or realist standpoint as they are from ‘non-scientific’ perspectives like hermeneutics* or postmodernism*. What this demonstrates is that there is a basic divide not simply between scientific and non-scientific approaches, but also amongst scientific approaches, and amongst non-scientific approaches.

Scientific methodologies

Positivism and the scientific method

As Hammersley and Atkinson (1995: 3) note: ‘Today, the term “positivism” has become little more than a term of abuse among social scientists.’ Perhaps it stretches the analogy somewhat, but the tone of this abuse is such that, for some researchers, to proclaim an adherence to positivism carries overtones similar to a member of the general public openly declaring that he or she is racist or sexist. Such extreme reactions are often born of a polemical refusal to acknowledge distinctions among different scientific epistemologies. As reviews of the scientific method make clear, what we find under this heading is a rather disparate array of philosophical ideas (J. Hughes 1980). This applies even if we focus on similar scientific traditions. For example, even amongst those who hold that methodologies from the natural sciences can be transferred to the investigation of human phenomena, there are divergent understandings of what constitutes the scientific method (D. W. Harvey 1969; Amedeo and Golledge 1975). Positivism itself is not a unitary approach (J. Hughes 1980).

Positivism has a long and complex history stretching back to the dawn of the Enlightenment Project in the eighteenth century. At this time, philosophers like Comte (1903) saw positivism as a methodology for applying reason to distinguish scientific truth from religious dogmatism and superstition (Kolakowski 1972). Influential philosophers, like Popper (1965), shared this faith in reason, but argued that claims about absolute truth cannot be verified. Just because all previously observed swans were white does not provide a logical basis for assuming all swans, even those not yet observed, are white.

Popper responded to this problem by reformulating positivism into logical positivism (sometimes also called critical rationalism). First, he distinguished analytical statements, a priori propositions, like mathematical proofs, whose truth was guaranteed logically, from synthetic statements that made reference to the external world based on empirical observation. Second, he argued that, although such synthetic statements could not be verified, they could be falsified. Thus he argued that science should be based upon falsification of hypotheses rather than their verification.

Despite these important differences between positivist verificationism and logical positivist falsificationism, they share certain basic tenets with each other and with other scientific methodologies. Positivism is founded on five philosophical beliefs. The first two of these are shared in common with empiricism.

1. Scientific observations are grounded in a direct, immediate and empirically accessible experience of the world.

2. Statements about those empirical observations can be made, and their truth evaluated, independently of any theoretical conclusions that might be constructed about them.

Where positivist geographers responsible for the so-called quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s differed from the long-established tradition of empirical regional geography was in their commitment to the nomothetic ideal of building universal scientific laws from empirically observed particulars. Capturing the mood of the times, Bunge's Theoretical geography proclaimed that ‘The basic approach to geography is to assume that geography is a strict science’ (Bunge 1966: x), wherein: ‘Regional geography classifies locations and theoretical geography predicts them’ (Bunge 1966: 199). Alongside D. W. Harvey's Explanation in geography (1969), Bunge provided a philosophical manifesto for the quantitative revolution in geography.¹

Their pursuit of general explanatory theories of spatial science committed positivist geographers to several further beliefs.

3. Scientific observations had to be repeatable, and this universality was guaranteed by a unitary scientific method.

4. Science would advance through the construction of formal theories, which, if empirically verified, would assume the status of universal laws.

5. Those scientific laws would pertain only to matters of necessary fact and would be properly distinguished from normative questions of value.

Within this positivist framework, the classical formulation of the scientific method proceeds in seven analytical steps (Haines-Young and Petch 1986; see also Fig. 1.1). The starting place for these steps is the ‘discovery’ of scientifically derived propositions (steps 1–3), wherein it is assumed that investigators do not have theoretically derived prior expectations. The process through which data are analysed to generate theoretical propositions is called induction*.

Figure 1.1 Seven steps of the scientific method

The seven analytical steps of the scientific method

1 Observation of facts

Like empiricists, positivists believe that science begins with direct and immediate empirical observation of the world. For them observation is the necessary starting point for research, because it lays the groundwork both for formulating hypotheses and for testing them. Both critical realists and anti-foundationalist critics of positivism argue that this starting point is problematic because it leaves unexamined the manner in which the researcher arrives at a research problem (Gregory 1978; Sayer 1984). These critics maintain that, far from being self-evident, as sometimes claimed (J. U. Marshall 1985), empirical observation depends on theoretically determined observational categories, concepts and preconceptions that help the researcher identify ‘facts’ and distinguish them from ‘noise’ and other irrelevant information.

In contrast to naive inductionist versions of positivism, more sophisticated positivists, such as Popper (1965: 36), acknowledge that

at no stage of scientific development do we begin without something in...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Method and methodology in human geography
• 2 Research design
• 3 By the book? Using published data
• 4 Behind the scenes: archives and documentary records
• 5 Superficial encounters: social survey methods
• 6 Close encounters: interviews and focus groups
• 7 Part of life: research as lived experience
• Postscript: multi-layered conundrums
• Glossary
• References
• Index