Contemporary British geography

Contemporary British geography

Vol. 10, pp. 215-218,1979. Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain. Geoforum, Contemporary British Geography EMRYS JONES,* London, U.K. Ab...

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Vol. 10, pp. 215-218,1979. Pergamon Press Ltd. Printed in Great Britain.

Geoforum,

Contemporary

British Geography

EMRYS JONES,*

London,

U.K.

Abstract: The late 50s and 60s witnessed a great surge of interest in applying scientific methods in geography, resulting in a new rigour of approach, an emphasis on quantitative analyses and the introduction of mathematical techniques. Partly as a reaction the behavioural approach attracted renewed interest in the 1960s. Although the problems of bridging the gap between individual behaviour and geographical generalisations remain, considerable insights have been gained by perception studies. The most recent reaction is a concern with social problems, often engaging geographers in methodological dilemmas of political involvement. These are not mutually exclusive with sequential phases necessarily suggesting progression, but outbursts of interest on continuing different philosophical approaches.

Several factors contributed to the dynamic quality of post-war geography in Britain. One was the growth of the discipline in universities, the rapid multiplication of teachers and a very marked increase in the amount of research and in the number of professional journals. Another was a growing dissatisfaction with an orthodoxy based on manland relationships and the concept of the region. The third was a new phase of enquiry in the social sciences as a whole, as the study of man in society strove to be more exact and rigorous. By the mid-1960s the accumulation of changes became the orthodoxy of a new generation, the so-called “revolution” had taken place and most geographers were accepting a new paradigm. The major thrust of the early changes was towards a scientific framework more rigorous than the classificatory approach established by Humboldt or the accepted Darwinian evolutionary model. The departure was away from inductive thinking and towards the deductive. The classic example of the latter Christaller’s central-place theory (1933) long predated the post-war changes (CRHISTALLER,

1966),

but

only

in the

1950s

and

* Professor E. Jones, The London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, U.K. 215

1960s were geographers asserting how weak traditional geography had been in theory and explanation. Partly because human phenomena are extremely difficult to accommodate in a scientific paradigm, geographers had been content with a humanistic and descriptive approach. A Kantian tradition had emphasised the uniqueness of geographical phenomena and weakened attempts at generalisations, leaving a heritage of the region as a central concept (HARTSHORNE, 1939), and a variety of environmentalistic linkages serving as causal explanations (SPROUT, 1965). The new emphasis was summed up by Chisholm: “the essence of the new paradigm is the model of certain sciences such as physics, in which the approach to knowledge is by deduction by hypothesis, the testing of hypotheses by carefully controlled experiments in which predicted outcomes are measured against reality” (CHISHOLM, 1975).

These conceptual aims were coupled with methodological changes - though they did not necessarily go hand in hand. Techniques often outstripped conceptual thinking and even threatened to be a weakness as method sometimes became an end in itself. One of the characteristics of the “new geography” was the freedom with which it borrowed techniques from other fields, and it soon became clear that its language was to be largely

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mathematical. Haggett, in a seminal text which introduced most geography students in Britain to the “new geography” (HAGGETT, 1965), stressed the geometric in spatial analysis. It was this approach and the insistence on numeracy more than anything which divided two generations of geographers and proved a difficult hurdle for the older. Gee graphy entered an age of mathematical extravagance, and the key to this age was the computer. Here was a method of handling an infinitely greater number of data than ever before, and at great speed. Moreover, by multivariate techniques like factorial analysis it was claimed to introduce that objectivity which is the keynote of science by producing variables from a most complex range of measurements. When the excitement subsided, these analytical techniques were seen and used as the useful tools that they were, rather than the philosophers’ stone to the truth. Even before the enthusiasm for the new model-building geography had waned, more and more geographers were soberly assessing its limitations as well as its merits, while others were reacting strongly in what some called a “counter-revolution”. “Success in the physical field has been taken as a licence for possible success in the social, once the appropriate Newton (or Galileo or Einstein) has come to the fore” wrote a sociologist. “Until this happens the main stricture is to become more methodologically rigorous and more scientific rather than think of the propriety of the exercise itself”(BA ILEY, 1975). Behind the confidence which the scientific approach had given to the subject and its practitioners, were all the old doubts about the validity of dealing mechanistically with human behaviour - which was, after all, what human geography was about. The more elegant the mathematical models, the greater the concern about the irrationality of men, and the more removed seemed the explanation from the realities of life. “Social physics” seemed to offer a reasonable explanation at the macro-scale, but it was weak at the micro-level. As a result there was a surge of interest in behavioural research, concentrating on the individual and the small group, and questioning the objectivity of the environment and the validity of scientific methodology (HARVEY,

Geoforum/Volume IO/Number 3/1979

1969; DAVIES, 1972). What is still missing is the link between the two scales of investigation. At the centre of the behavioural approach lies the problem that, while emphasising the subjectivity of environmental perception (KIRK, 1963), geographers are also looking for regularities in what is otherwise an atomised universe of individual perception (HAMILTON and LINGE, 1979). Paradoxically, perhaps, quantification and allied mathematical techniques, are being applied to data which began as strongly qualitative, such as measuring people’s reactions to the environment or their perception of it. Although there was a spate of work on these aspects - most interestingly perhaps on mental maps (GOULD and WHITE, 1974; TUAN, 1974) - nothing very new has emerged in the last few years which suggests ways forward along this particular path. Another contribution on the behavioural side was a new appreciation of the significance of time, leading to many space-time studies based on the activity of individuals (HAGERSTRAND, 1975). The subjective element in migration, for example, came under close scrutiny, shedding much light on the accepted macro-models of the more mechanistic kind. But this introduces motivation, and many geographers argue that they should confine themselves to the spatial elements of behaviour rather than be led to reductionism, and a delving into psychological methods for which they are not equipped. There is a waryness of pursuing the unique: rather, it is felt that explanations should be sought within group behaviour, stemming from common learning and the acceptance of group norms (JONES and EYLES, 1977). What is certain is that the subjective cannot be ignored. If people’s behaviour is conditioned within a subjective world, then techniques must be found to explore these worlds. There are continuing developments not only in questionnaires to provide quantifiable data, but in open-ended anthropological enquiries, to participant observation as a legitimate tool of analysis. Value systems, which shape the subjective world, may defy explanation in normative terms, but they need to be understood as part of the total comprehension of society’s role in geographical circumstances.

Geoforum/Volume lo/Number 3/1979

Side by side with deductive theorising on the one hand, and the phenomenological explanation of behaviour on the other, was the systems approach. Systems analysis has been exploited more particularly in physical geography, but it has also been applied in human geography. It has been fruitful, for example in urban studies, in which the city is thought of as a major system made up of numerous sub-systems like housing and transport; and at the same time part of an urban system extending through a whole country (BERRY, 1964). Systems analysis has been applied to the region, and here it touches on a very traditional and fundamental interest of the geographer. A recurring theme is the need to understand the totality of various elements and their interrelatedness within a given region, as for example in the German landschaft, the social region, the pays. Systems analysis is a device made more attractive by its scientific trappings and therefore more fashionable than the traditional geographic concern with separating the elements in a given environment: it may be no more than a new look at a very old problem. The most recent reaction to the scientific paradigm is a deep concern with the condition of man and society, an eagerness to solve social problems rather than geographic ones. The elegance of a mathematical model is far removed from the need to alleviate a social ill, and geography it seems must be focussed on the latter. “Relevance” made a dramatic appearance at the 197 1 meeting of the Association of American Geographers, although it had been foreshadowed by the appearance of Antipode: the Journal of Radical Geography in 1969, and the emergence of a French Marxist school of geography in 1968 (CASTELLS, 1968). It would be better at this point to separate the two strands involved relevance and Marxist geography - because the latter can often be highly theoretical, and the former must be looked at in the light of a long tradition of geographers’ concern with social problems which has no Marxist bearing (HOUSE, 1974). Albeit the strength of that tradition was as an empirical base for social action - like the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain - it has involved gee graphers more and more in planning of all kind since World War 2 and even regional theory has been wedded to empirical work

217

in planning. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the U.S.S.R. (MATLEY, 1966). Geographers have long graduated from the subsidiary role of supplying one input in the planning process: they have become part of decision and policy making on a national and international scale. The renewed concern with the environment - which geographers had been in danger of burying along with environmentalism - has also found a response in geographical work, in pollution, conservation, evaluation and control: in socialist countries this involvement is justified by an environmental-theoretical approach. A more direct concern with society brings its own methodological dilemmas. Social justice - even in its spatial aspects - involves value judgements of what is “good” and “better”, of standards of deprivation and of expectations (HARVEY, 1973). Accepting these difficulties, work on social indicators has gone a long way to reveal the social significance of the distribution and location of resources of all kinds: and one geographer has seen the need for framing human geography as a whole in terms of social welfare (SMITH, 1977). Concentrating on selected aspects of the human condition is seen by some geographers as a serious limitation, particularly if these exclude political and organisational aspects of society. The result is a resuscitation of political economy, a holistic approach favoured by Marxist scholars. The theoretical background, as expounded by Harvey and Castells, is structuralism, looking at reality as a totality of interrelated parts, the focus being on the interrelationships themselves. In such a concept, causality is weak and diffused; and what it looks for is “laws” governing the transformation of the whole, these stemming fundamentally from the economic base of society. In the process of transformation, elements in society are in perpetual conflict. These ideas have been particularly pervasive in urban studies (PICKVANCE, 1976) conflict models of segregation replacing consensus models, and constraints in housing replacing theories of choice in residential differentiation. The different approaches which have characterised British human geography in the last two decades have been looked at chrono-

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logically because this was the way in which their impact was seen in research and in teaching. More fundamentally they represent lines of thought stemming from different philosophies, and to a large extent they coexist - and have coexisted for a long time. Haggett reminds us that his geometrical approach echoes the identical approach of the Greeks. The scientific and mathematical approach has thus been a recurring theme, though methodological sophistication has opened up great possibilities for its expoitation. Nor has causal explanation and normative thinking been displaced by subsequent reactions. The systems approach is a parallel iine of thought: in human studies it had strong antecedents in functionalism from Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown to Levi Strauss, and was not unfamiliar in the traditional regional emphasis on holism and the inte~~latedness of parts. Stru~tur~ism is closely linked with functionalism - in both, causality is weak and determinism strong. And there has always been a school of thought reacting strongly in favour of freedom of will and human action and this is at the core of the behavioural approach. That these modes of thought have been seen as replacing one another is a matter of sequential emphasis: and our perception of revolutions are not entirely free from a desire to be on the latest bandwagon. Furthermore, it must not be forgotten that all these modes of thought are Western in origin and in spirit. Universals are elusive because we are dealing with the culturally specific. The degree to which it is possible for us to universafise depends on the degree to which different value systems have elements in common. The scientific aims at universals, the behavioural at ~dividuals. In between, those elements which are culture-specific must be considered. Geography may well find strength in relevance, but it is not simply relevance to existing so~ial,problems; in thought it must be relevance to specific culture systems.

IO~N~ber

311979

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