What is the human geography`s subjective-field ? Tell me about it`s growth.?

Answer 1

Traditionally, human geography conceived itself generally speaking as a science
of spatial processes. Today this may still serve as a description of its research
interests. However, if human geography is supposed to be a real human or social
science, it has to develop its theory focusing on human activities. This lecture will
expose the language pragmatics approach and its relevance for human
geography. It will present communication, particularly the notion of speech act as
the key concept for the analysis of social structures and processes of
structuration. Within this theoretical frame the role of space and some major
consequences for applied human geography will be elaborated.
1. The copernican revolution within geography
According to my understanding of human geography there is a kind of copernican
revolution going on. It is not a simple paradigm change, but one which turns the
realtion of two centers of attention upside down. Therefore, I speak of a
copernican revolution. I would like to describe this move by two ideal types.
The one position takes geography as a science about space, spatial processes or
generally spatial phenomena. This is the traditional paradigm of geography. The
second and newer position regards this as a problematic perspective. According
to the second position, geography should not define itself as a science of space
or spatial phenomena. Rather, geography should listen to modern epistemology
and theory of science, and it should focus therefore on natural processes or on
human activities instead. With other words, this second position wants to
transform human geography form spatial into a social science.
A broad range of different geographies are much closer to the first ideal type then
to the second. I dare to say, that the first ideal type even represents the
geographic mainstream to a considerable degree. Still many geographers take
space as a thing, which causes effects. At the same time they regard space as a
kind of box or platform that contains human activities and material objects. And in
addtition to these two characteristics, space is not an empty container, but it is the
container with its content. Therefore space is also produced by the activities and
with help of the objects that space contains.
Fig. 1: The traditional conception(s) of space.
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According to the second perspective space is neither a thing, nor a container nor
a surface. Space does not cause anything, it does not contain anything, and we
cannot observe it. On the contrary, it is an instrument for observation, it is a mean
to describe, what we perceive.
If we think of the space of colors or of a vektor-space in mathematics we
understand this notion of space. From our lessons in geometry and algebra we
remember that we are able to conceive spaces with one, two, three or with n
dimensions. And these dimension often represent distance or time. But they may
represent as well any other quality. Seen from this perspective, what geographers
usually call space is either just one of innumerable spaces, or it is no space at all,
but a material thing, for instance an area or a sector of the surface of the earth.
According to the second ideal type, space is a frame of interpretation. It provides
dimensions in order to draw distinctions –, and that's it. It is a very abstract and
general concept. It is so to say meta-order. The mainstream geographers,
however, mistake their onw instruments of observation and communication for
the object that they want to study.
This critique does not mean, that geographers are interested in the wrong issues.
No, on the contrary, but they try to develop their research and theories and a
conceptual basis, which cannot be acceptet from contemporary philosophy of
science. Geographers should at least accept two things. First: Not the cartesian
dualism, but the problem, that it should solve. Second, the notion of space as
frame of interpretation. These two things are almost enough. Why? By the
distinction of res extensa and res cogitans Descartes tried to solve the problem,
that some parts of the world are obviously organized in a deterministic way, but
others not. How can we understand free will and mechanics as aspects of the
same world?
Descartes proposed an ontological division of the world. Today philosophers
rather tend to say, that we should think of one world, but of different levels of
organization, which provide high degrees of independence. So matter, life,
meaning and communication exist all the same way. But they are organized
differently. Their dynamics are highly autonomous, and we should therefore use
different languages on each level of reality. Consequently, empirical science
should develop different methodologies to investigate natural and social
phenomena. And therefore, human geography should take into account this
methodological dualism as well. Instead of focusing on space it should focus on
human activities, on their meaning and on bio-physical items, conditions and
consequences that are involved.
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Fig. 2:
Now we see quite clearly the copernican revolution. The relation between space
and activities is turned upside down. Traditional geography took space as a
container, as a cause, and as a consequence of acitvities. Social scientific
geography, on the contrary, regards space as an aspect of activities. Spaces are
the frames of interpretation which actors apply to conceive and plan their actions.
In this respect, space becomes again an important concept for geography.
According to the dualistic methodology, human geographers should investigate
and empirically reconstruct those subjective spaces, in order to understand,
analyze and evaluate human activities. We may still speak of spatial or temporal
structures and distributions. But we should know, that it is just one of many
possible conceptions of space which we geographers use to describe what
happens on earth. And we should avoid to speak of space as if it was a material
object, as if there was a space out there, that we may capture on our maps.
To conclude this section I would like to give you an example of space in this
non-traditional sense. It is taken from a study in which I investigated the contact
networks and the choreography of children in pre-school age. This work was
inspired by time geography. For children in that age the mobility is highly depent
on adults. Using a questionary I wanted to know something about their
possibilities to meet playmates and playgrounds.
Fig. 3:
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But how should I represent their world? I decided to do it with two simple
questions. The first represented distance, not in meters, but in spheres around
the home. We tend to use certain words to distinguish different spheres of our
activities. So I tried to use the same "space" in my questionary. The second
question refered to the circumstance if kids were allowed to go to places on their
own or only accompanied by some adults. So I have uses these two spaces to
represent an areal-differentiation of everday activities.