Geography

History and Concepts

Arild Holt-Jensen

• Editore: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781526448903
• Edizione: 5
• Argomento: Social Sciences
• Categoria: Human Geography

An accessible, definitive student introduction to geographical thought, this book takes a unique approach that encompasses environmental, historical and social perspectives. Now in its fifth edition, it includes new case studies, and revisions and updates throughout, with additional chapters expanding coverage of global subjects, poststructuralism, and the future of geography. This text explores complex ideas in an intelligible and accessible style. Illustrated throughout with research examples and explanations in text boxes, questions for discussion at the end of each chapter and a concept glossary, this is the essential student companion to the discipline.

1 What Is Geography?

Introduction: Dream and Reality

Of course the first thing to do was to make a grand survey of the country she was going to travel through. ‘It’s something very like learning geography,’ thought Alice, as she stood on tiptoe in hopes of being able to see a little further. (Lewis Carroll (1872) Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There)

Alice started from ‘some-where’ in her family garden in Oxford when she decided to follow the White Rabbit. But was she going ‘no-where’? A number of different perspectives are juxtaposed in her experiences in Wonderland:

‘Will you tell me, please,’ she said, ‘which way l must go from here?’

‘Yes,’ said the Cat, ‘but mustn’t you tell me where you want to go?’

‘Well, any place –’ Alice began.

‘Then you can go any way,’ the Cat said.

‘– if it is a place,’ Alice said.

After pointing out the Hatter’s house, the Cat explained that as everyone in Wonderland was mad, Alice must be mad too. The Cat did not go away, but it was still not there anymore. It just disappeared, its big grinning mouth the last to go. Space and time do not matter in Wonderland. At the Hatter’s house, the watch does not tell the time because it is always tea-time, and Alice is told there is no place for her, although there are many empty chairs. And strange doors and paths appear at the most unlikely places. Luckily she has pieces from both sides of the mushroom to eat, to get smaller or bigger when it pleases her. This comes in handy when she enters the rose garden to play croquet with the Queen of Hearts. This is the Queen’s territory, over which she seems to have total control, shouting ‘Off with his or her head’ every time someone displeases her. But heads were not cut off, as it was difficult to find the head of a playing card or the body of the Cheshire Cat. The trial before the Queen’s tribunal is fearsome as long as Alice is the size of a small girl; but as she swallows a ‘get bigger’ bit of mushroom the assembly is reduced to a pack of fifty-two small playing cards.

The experience of Alice in Wonderland is like a dream, which can be experienced as a sensed reality. One night I dreamt I was in charge of a BA field course to the Norwegian fjords, but had forgotten to order a bus for transport and also where the students should meet! Waking up I urgently felt the need to do something with this misery before understanding I was in my bed and had been dreaming. I had no field course to take care of. For a moment, however, the dream was a sensed reality!

We may agree that ‘Wonderland’ or ‘Dreamland’ does not exist in reality, but what is reality? The outer frame of any survey or research project rests upon a basic philosophical position – an ontology; that is a theory about what exists and what it means to exist. If we all adhere to the basic assumption that there is a real world of existence out there, we must admit that most of this existence is unknown to us. So we need a theory about how to get knowledge about the world – an epistemology, a theory of knowledge that guides the formulation of research problems. An epistemology (see Figure 7.1, Box 7.2, p. 130) is the basis for scientific methodology. Science traditionally is based on the assumption that knowledge about the world can be acquired through our sense perceptions: what we see, smell, taste, hear and feel when we are awake.

Couper (2015, p. 1) gives an example from a geographical field trip in the autumn. Looking through the bus window, one student turns to another and says, ‘The leaves are really turning brown now.’ This simple visual observation can be elaborated upon, based on knowledge of biology, climate change and so on that the student has obtained. But leaving such factual discussion aside, Couper (2015, p. 2) points out three basic assumptions:

1. The leaves are ‘real’ objects existing independently of us.
2. That our senses – in this case sight – provide us with knowledge of leaves.
3. That the memory that the leaves have not always been brown is accurate.

In practical research projects, we take these assumptions for granted. Investigations become problematic if we start worrying about whether objects like leaves are real. But it is clear that we can be wrong; we have all had experiences we cannot explain, be it dreams that seems real or hallucinations. And can you really trust that your sense perceptions are the same as your fellow observers’? We know that some persons are colour-blind, some cannot distinguish, or see, green and red colour. Even if you and I agree on seeing a green lawn and red leaves, how can we know for sure that we see green and red in the same way? As we will come back to later in this book, some geographical traditions go behind sense perceptions as a basis for research.

Box 1.1 Popular Notions of Geography

When you meet people at a party and tell them that you’re a geographer, they tend to ask you about distant places, capital cities and longest rivers. In my experience, they rarely ask you about globalization, sustainability, inequality or the other big issues about which geographers actually have a lot to say. The public perception of geography is a fact-based rather than conceptual discipline (Jackson 2006, p. 199).

Popular and Professional Notions on Geography

Most people have vague notions about the content of scientific geography (Box 1.1). School geography may have left many with bad memories of learning the names of rivers and towns by rote. This idea of geography as an encyclopaedic knowledge of places is illustrated when a newspaper rings up its local department of geography to find out how many towns there are in the world called Newcastle, or when readers write in to settle bets as to which is the world’s longest river. Some years ago Norwegian State Television phoned me and I thought this would be on my international research in social geography, but they wanted me to delimit ‘Northern Europe’ in a programme on ‘Northern attractions’! A whole TV crew came to record me drawing up different possible borders on a map of Europe.

Geographers are thought to be people who know how to draw maps and are somehow associated with the Ordnance Survey or the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. Another opinion is that geographers write travel descriptions – a reasonable belief for anyone who reads reviews of the year’s books and sees that many of those listed under ‘geography’ are accounts of exciting expeditions to the Amazon, sailing trips around the world or something similar.

These popular opinions as to what geography is have some truth in them, but correspond only vaguely to what professional geographers actually work with. Place names, locations of towns, land use, topography and other spatial features you may observe on maps, air and satellite photos are ‘facts’ for geographers of the same order as dates are ‘facts’ for historians. They are basic building blocks for the subject, but they are not the subject itself. Haggett (1990, p. 6) in arguing for a practical and pragmatic approach maintains that if ‘science is the art of the soluble, then much of geography is the art of the mappable’. Maps representing the collection of located data are very important specific tools for geographers. But we have to remember that all maps are ‘mental maps’, based on the surveyor’s imperfect sense perceptions and what the mapmakers – or the decisions by Ordnance Survey – find important to highlight. Take a look at ordinary topographical maps from a selection of countries and you will see that the standards for such maps differ greatly. Height curves on Danish topographical maps have 5-metre equidistance (the difference between height curves on a map), making us see ‘mountains’ that are only low hills of moraine, whereas a Norwegian topographic map in the same scale has 20-metre equidistance. Swiss topographic maps are artistic masterpieces; shadows and colours used give us the impression we are seeing the landscape from space! The market for maps, and the size and population density of a country, also to a large extent influence how much maps can be elaborated and how often revisions can be made. Different types of thematic maps are also important means of expression in geographical research, along with tables, diagrams and written accounts. Today geographers are using geographic information systems (GIS) and computer mapping, rather than the traditional maps (see pp. 209–212). Geospatial technologies have definitely changed geography; by combining, for instance, data from satellite images with other spatial data computer mapping has become a powerful tool for description and analyses. As stated by Bonnett (2008, p. 94), ‘the satellite and aerial data collected for Google Earth promise to allow anyone, anywhere, a God-like ability to see everything’. With access to the Internet you can start to explore the world. But to be able to analyse and make sense of what you see you need to learn more geography.

The art of visual expression and analysis is much more closely associated with geography than with other social and natural sciences. Observations recorded during travel and fieldwork still provide essential data for geographers. A cultivation of the power of observation is therefore an important objective in the education of a geographer. Geographical training aims at developing the ability to ‘see geographically’, to observe and interpret a natural or cultural landscape in the field and/or through the study of maps, aerial photographs, satellite images and other visual representations.

Many of us have travelled on holiday to Spain, Greece and other tempting destinations only to relax from study or work, sun ourselves on the beach and party. You may find travel guides useful to find out more about your holiday destination. Then you are a step further on your geographical journey! You may start to wonder: ‘What is different here from what I am accustomed to back home?’ What sort of a place is this? Why are some destinations more popular than others?’ To learn more as geographers we need to consider and get an understanding of the basic geographical terms place, space, territoriality and globalization.

Box 1.2 Absolute, Relative and Relational Space

In geography we tend to distinguish between absolute, relative and relational space. With absolute space we understand space as an objectively defined, distinct physical and real entity in itself. This is an understanding of space connected to geographic surveying and cartography, and is based on the idea that space exists independently of what is going on in this space. Geography has a long tradition of mapping the physical localization of topographical features, settlements, economic activities and so on. The most typical representation of absolute space is topographical maps showing where different elements are located in a geographical co-ordinate system.

A relative conception of space implies that space is a relation between events or locations, and thus bound to time and process. Localization in space is understood as relative, as the main focus is how something is located in relation to something else. It means that questions about distance, direction and connection between elements in geographic space are important. In economic geography we often study economic activities based on their relative location and connection to important factors of localization; for instance how oil refineries are located near oil fields or in harbours with good facilities for large oil tankers. The aim is not to describe absolute location in a co-ordinate grid system, but to analyse how something is located in relation to other factors. Relative space is particularly related to research within spatial science (Chapter 5).

Relational space implies that space is constituted in relations embedded in objects, actors and practices. We relate to other people and the physical environment. Relational space is consciously or unconsciously embedded in our intentions and actions, so to understand what is going on in the world we need to explore how actors understand limits and possibilities in space. This means that if we seek to understand geographical patterns, more than just presenting a plain description of absolute and relative location, we need to understand the economic, social and political relations and structures that create these patterns. Relational space is basic for assemblage and network theory, which will be discussed in Chapter 10.

How do the three spatial concepts relate to each other? Do we need to choose only one of them? Harvey (2006a) maintains that the three spatial concepts are related to each other as concentric circles in which absolute space is the narrowest and relational space the most inclusive. Relational space can include both absolute and relative space, whereas absolute space cannot include relative and relational space (Jordhus-Lier and Stokke 2017).

Place, Space, Territoriality and Globalization

All human actions involve space and place. The world is full of places, from mountaintops and forests to towns, streets and houses. When we travel fast in a car or by train and only briefly observe the places passing by, we conceptually recognize it as a journey through space (Box 1.2). Distances recognized as kilometres, travel time or as psychologically felt distance become more important than the places we pass by. We may recognize during our travel in space that in the modern world many differences from place to place are disappearing. Globalization leads to ‘McDonalization’ (Ritzer 2014) with the same architectural style all over the world. Globalization makes places more ‘look-alike’. Some call this ‘placelessness’ (Relph 1976). On the other hand, we experience in the contemporary world a counter-current of postmodernity which aims at preserving or creating places of special meaning. As increasingly millions of people today see international travel and awareness of place differences as normal parts of ordinary lives, the place-specific becomes much more interesting than the placeless features of modernity.

Relph (1996), however, warns that active investment in the...