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BOOK REVIEW
Journal of Environmental Psychology (1997) 17, 353–335 1997 Academic Press Limited
0272-4944/97/040353+03$25.00/0
Journalof
ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY BOOK REVIEWS
Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective. By Reginald G. Golledge and Robert J. Stimpson New York & London: The Guildford Press. 620 pp. £20 paperback, £30 hardback. 1997. ISBN 1 57230 050 7; 1 57230 049#3 Reviewed by R. Dan Jacobson Reginald Golledge is a Professor of Geography at University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of RUSCC (The Research Unit on Spatial Cognition and Choice). His current research interests include behavioural geography, cognitive mapping, spatial cognition, choice, GIS and special populations. Robert Stimpson is at the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering at Queensland University of Technology. His current research interests include urban and regional planning development, human spatial behaviour and decision making, locational analysis and services sector and tourism in economic development. Dan Jacobson is a Research Assistant studying for a doctorate at Queen’s University, Belfast. His research interests include cognitive mapping, geographies of blindness and GIS. How do human beings negotiate the spaces in which they live, work, and play? How are firms and institutions, and their spatial behaviours, being affected by processes of economic and societal change? What decisions are made about the natural and built environment, and how are these decisions acted out?
Although written from, as the title suggests, a geographic perspective, many of these issues are central to environmental psychology and there is much common ground bridging psychology and geography.
The book is broken down into 15 chapters or sections, written in a modular format, so a specific section can be read in isolation. This offers the reader a concise, insightful review of the topic the section addresses. The text is well written, accessible, and surprisingly easy to read for such a modular style book. Alternatively, if read from cover to cover, although the sections may not have the start-to-finish flow of a narrative, they do build to form a substantial work of reference, modules of information linking together to form a more holistic and coherent whole understanding of spatial behaviour. At 620 pages, the book represents excellent value for money. It began life as a rewrite of Analytical Behavioural Geography and as the change in the title suggests has evolved to be much more than an update of the original work. The back cover suggests the book’s inclusion as either a primary or supplementary text, but the book is more than a textbook, being an original contribution in itself. The reference-like nature of the book means that it should have a wide appeal, accessible to many people beyond the realms of geography. The text, well complemented with tables, diagrams and maps, offers extensive case studies and empirical evidence of human behaviour in a wide range of settings—physical, social and economic. Essentially the main themes of the book explore spatial behaviour across aggregate and disaggregate situations at a variety of scales from micro to macro, over varying time spans in different settings. The authors state in the preface that they have ‘no ideological axe to grind.’ Indeed, their approach is refreshing and open minded. They happily blend ideological approaches, both in their writing and their selection of case studies. As the book began life of an update of Analytical Behavioral Geography it is perhaps not surprising that there remains an implicit undercurrent of analytical behaviouralism about the work. This is a situation some geographers may feel uncomfortable about, although it
ps970072
354
Book reviews
lends itself very well to spatial analysis, focusing on decision making and choice behaviour. The openness of mind with which the book is written makes it clear that the text is really far more realist, explaining a situation, exploring the approaches, acknowledging issues of validity and methodology, offering conclusions on the evidence presented and ultimately encouraging the reader to think about how humans act in space and to draw their own conclusions. For environmental psychologists it is worth noting that the book is not weak on psychological theory, but addresses issues such as cognition and perception concisely rather than in great depth. In chapter 6, Perception, Attitudes and Risk, perception and cognition merit about a dozen pages, with a further 30 page references to perception in the index, addressing other areas such as perceptual thresholds and environmental and landscape perception, with cognition having a further 20 references. This provides enough information for the non specialist to elicit the key information, and providing a good overview for geographers new to their subject. For environmental psychologists drawing on other sources from geography this provides an excellent opportunity for a window into the geographer’s approach to these topics, which may prove invaluable when carrying out cross disciplinary reading. I found the most thought-provoking sections of the book the first section, ‘Society Space and Behavior’ and the section near the end ‘Geography and Special Populations.’ It is the inclusion of these sections which really make the book stand out, addressing issues of the creation of knowledge and the geographies of ‘the other’, sections of community who have been discriminated against, misrepresented, and are denied the opportunity of fully sharing in a society’s experiences and participating in their activities. In the first section after an introduction to the book, a brief history of behavioural analysis in geography, discussions of micro and macro behaviour there is a substantial and most welcome section on issues in research design. This is highlighted because it addresses such issues in the main stream of the book rather than relegating them to a specialist publication in methodology. This section addresses issues of objectivity, validity and reliability, often dealt with too lightly within geographical research. Drawing on wide ranging sources, social science methodologists, psychologists and geographers, Golledge and Stimpson weave together a section critically addressing these issues, almost demanding of the reader that they think of
these more reflectively and as more important. Making this section stand out is that it goes beyond mere validity issues in studying spatial behaviour, to promote thought about the wider issues of the creation of knowledge as a whole within science. of the position of the research relating to social and other theorists and acknowledges the need for crossdisciplinary enrichment. The first section concludes with a paradigm for understanding human–environment relationships and a summary of current spatial behaviour research. In the second chapter the authors introduce a conceptual model of the decision-making process. This is expanded and topics to be covered in later chapters are introduced. This review takes in a historical perspective bringing the reader up to date with current theory about decision making and choice procedures. Building on the work of the first section the constraints of ecological and psychological fallacy are introduced. The central part of the book can be viewed as two sections, the next couple of chapters dealing with economic, social and technological change. Changes having far reaching global effects, affecting many people at both micro and macro scales. The second collection of chapters address disaggregate or individual behavioural processes such as the acquisition of spatial knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, risk and cognitive mapping. The subsequent chapter contextualizes these activities within time and space and this is followed by a further expansion of activity and how this is modelled in transportation and travel. Chapter 10 looks at consumer behaviour and retail centre location, both widely studied within geography. Chapter 11 addresses issues more central to environmental psychology, notions of place and space. It draws from geography first, relating space and place, and then heavily from environmental psychology, to look at the emotions and affective components of perception. It touches on landscape perception, and then interestingly brings in other ideas of space such as its representation and description by spatial language. Chapters 12 and 13 look at two ends of the spectrum of human movement, migration, and mobility and location decisions. The specific problems of special populations, ‘The Other’, are explored with wheelchair users, blindness and visual impairment, and mentally challenged people being focused upon. Strategies and possible ways forward are highlighted. Concepts of disability are weighted within the World Health Organization defined ‘medical model’. Here disability is broadly viewed as a function of impair-
Book reviews
ment rather than as a ‘social model’ which stresses society’s role in disabling people who have impairments. This section side-steps recent critical debates in geography to present the ‘reality’ of the geographic situation faced by special populations, rather than theorizing over notions of disability. Much neglected gender issues are covered in the next chapter, highlighting the increasingly important role of societal change. Without the inclusion of first and latter sections the book would still have been very valuable but these set the book apart setting the research described within a wider understanding and view of society as a whole. Reading through the work, I tried to take critical view, but found there was little I could take issue with. True, there are some sections I would have liked to see extended, and perhaps others short-
355
ened, but this is more a reflection of my personal preferences rather than any significant error of omission. A person using the text may wish that it were written with a particular ideology or perspective closer to his or her own. This is part of the beauty of the book, its openness means that the reader can sight what they read within their own tinted spectacles, framing the ‘reality’ of the work within whatever schema or ideology they choose. However, one area where the book is lacking is in any form of conclusion or summary. Perhaps the enormity of this task is too great due to the complex nature of human spatial behaviour. This work is of great breadth and depth of scholarly enquiry, packed densely and richly with information, valuable to both the geographer and environmental psychologist.
0272-4944/97/040353+03$25.00/0
Journalof
ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY BOOK REVIEWS
Spatial Behavior: A Geographic Perspective. By Reginald G. Golledge and Robert J. Stimpson New York & London: The Guildford Press. 620 pp. £20 paperback, £30 hardback. 1997. ISBN 1 57230 050 7; 1 57230 049#3 Reviewed by R. Dan Jacobson Reginald Golledge is a Professor of Geography at University of California, Santa Barbara, and director of RUSCC (The Research Unit on Spatial Cognition and Choice). His current research interests include behavioural geography, cognitive mapping, spatial cognition, choice, GIS and special populations. Robert Stimpson is at the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering at Queensland University of Technology. His current research interests include urban and regional planning development, human spatial behaviour and decision making, locational analysis and services sector and tourism in economic development. Dan Jacobson is a Research Assistant studying for a doctorate at Queen’s University, Belfast. His research interests include cognitive mapping, geographies of blindness and GIS. How do human beings negotiate the spaces in which they live, work, and play? How are firms and institutions, and their spatial behaviours, being affected by processes of economic and societal change? What decisions are made about the natural and built environment, and how are these decisions acted out?
Although written from, as the title suggests, a geographic perspective, many of these issues are central to environmental psychology and there is much common ground bridging psychology and geography.
The book is broken down into 15 chapters or sections, written in a modular format, so a specific section can be read in isolation. This offers the reader a concise, insightful review of the topic the section addresses. The text is well written, accessible, and surprisingly easy to read for such a modular style book. Alternatively, if read from cover to cover, although the sections may not have the start-to-finish flow of a narrative, they do build to form a substantial work of reference, modules of information linking together to form a more holistic and coherent whole understanding of spatial behaviour. At 620 pages, the book represents excellent value for money. It began life as a rewrite of Analytical Behavioural Geography and as the change in the title suggests has evolved to be much more than an update of the original work. The back cover suggests the book’s inclusion as either a primary or supplementary text, but the book is more than a textbook, being an original contribution in itself. The reference-like nature of the book means that it should have a wide appeal, accessible to many people beyond the realms of geography. The text, well complemented with tables, diagrams and maps, offers extensive case studies and empirical evidence of human behaviour in a wide range of settings—physical, social and economic. Essentially the main themes of the book explore spatial behaviour across aggregate and disaggregate situations at a variety of scales from micro to macro, over varying time spans in different settings. The authors state in the preface that they have ‘no ideological axe to grind.’ Indeed, their approach is refreshing and open minded. They happily blend ideological approaches, both in their writing and their selection of case studies. As the book began life of an update of Analytical Behavioral Geography it is perhaps not surprising that there remains an implicit undercurrent of analytical behaviouralism about the work. This is a situation some geographers may feel uncomfortable about, although it
ps970072
354
Book reviews
lends itself very well to spatial analysis, focusing on decision making and choice behaviour. The openness of mind with which the book is written makes it clear that the text is really far more realist, explaining a situation, exploring the approaches, acknowledging issues of validity and methodology, offering conclusions on the evidence presented and ultimately encouraging the reader to think about how humans act in space and to draw their own conclusions. For environmental psychologists it is worth noting that the book is not weak on psychological theory, but addresses issues such as cognition and perception concisely rather than in great depth. In chapter 6, Perception, Attitudes and Risk, perception and cognition merit about a dozen pages, with a further 30 page references to perception in the index, addressing other areas such as perceptual thresholds and environmental and landscape perception, with cognition having a further 20 references. This provides enough information for the non specialist to elicit the key information, and providing a good overview for geographers new to their subject. For environmental psychologists drawing on other sources from geography this provides an excellent opportunity for a window into the geographer’s approach to these topics, which may prove invaluable when carrying out cross disciplinary reading. I found the most thought-provoking sections of the book the first section, ‘Society Space and Behavior’ and the section near the end ‘Geography and Special Populations.’ It is the inclusion of these sections which really make the book stand out, addressing issues of the creation of knowledge and the geographies of ‘the other’, sections of community who have been discriminated against, misrepresented, and are denied the opportunity of fully sharing in a society’s experiences and participating in their activities. In the first section after an introduction to the book, a brief history of behavioural analysis in geography, discussions of micro and macro behaviour there is a substantial and most welcome section on issues in research design. This is highlighted because it addresses such issues in the main stream of the book rather than relegating them to a specialist publication in methodology. This section addresses issues of objectivity, validity and reliability, often dealt with too lightly within geographical research. Drawing on wide ranging sources, social science methodologists, psychologists and geographers, Golledge and Stimpson weave together a section critically addressing these issues, almost demanding of the reader that they think of
these more reflectively and as more important. Making this section stand out is that it goes beyond mere validity issues in studying spatial behaviour, to promote thought about the wider issues of the creation of knowledge as a whole within science. of the position of the research relating to social and other theorists and acknowledges the need for crossdisciplinary enrichment. The first section concludes with a paradigm for understanding human–environment relationships and a summary of current spatial behaviour research. In the second chapter the authors introduce a conceptual model of the decision-making process. This is expanded and topics to be covered in later chapters are introduced. This review takes in a historical perspective bringing the reader up to date with current theory about decision making and choice procedures. Building on the work of the first section the constraints of ecological and psychological fallacy are introduced. The central part of the book can be viewed as two sections, the next couple of chapters dealing with economic, social and technological change. Changes having far reaching global effects, affecting many people at both micro and macro scales. The second collection of chapters address disaggregate or individual behavioural processes such as the acquisition of spatial knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, risk and cognitive mapping. The subsequent chapter contextualizes these activities within time and space and this is followed by a further expansion of activity and how this is modelled in transportation and travel. Chapter 10 looks at consumer behaviour and retail centre location, both widely studied within geography. Chapter 11 addresses issues more central to environmental psychology, notions of place and space. It draws from geography first, relating space and place, and then heavily from environmental psychology, to look at the emotions and affective components of perception. It touches on landscape perception, and then interestingly brings in other ideas of space such as its representation and description by spatial language. Chapters 12 and 13 look at two ends of the spectrum of human movement, migration, and mobility and location decisions. The specific problems of special populations, ‘The Other’, are explored with wheelchair users, blindness and visual impairment, and mentally challenged people being focused upon. Strategies and possible ways forward are highlighted. Concepts of disability are weighted within the World Health Organization defined ‘medical model’. Here disability is broadly viewed as a function of impair-
Book reviews
ment rather than as a ‘social model’ which stresses society’s role in disabling people who have impairments. This section side-steps recent critical debates in geography to present the ‘reality’ of the geographic situation faced by special populations, rather than theorizing over notions of disability. Much neglected gender issues are covered in the next chapter, highlighting the increasingly important role of societal change. Without the inclusion of first and latter sections the book would still have been very valuable but these set the book apart setting the research described within a wider understanding and view of society as a whole. Reading through the work, I tried to take critical view, but found there was little I could take issue with. True, there are some sections I would have liked to see extended, and perhaps others short-
355
ened, but this is more a reflection of my personal preferences rather than any significant error of omission. A person using the text may wish that it were written with a particular ideology or perspective closer to his or her own. This is part of the beauty of the book, its openness means that the reader can sight what they read within their own tinted spectacles, framing the ‘reality’ of the work within whatever schema or ideology they choose. However, one area where the book is lacking is in any form of conclusion or summary. Perhaps the enormity of this task is too great due to the complex nature of human spatial behaviour. This work is of great breadth and depth of scholarly enquiry, packed densely and richly with information, valuable to both the geographer and environmental psychologist.