Paste your essay in herID: 6273478
GEOG 5PO1 -Theoretical Approaches to the Critical Examination of Geographical Issues
Topic: Critical paper on Humanistic Geography
Instructor: Professor Catherine Nash
Introduction
Humanism in geography or simply put humanistic geography surfaces in the discipline of geography because of the shortcomings associated with the earlier paradigms of thought that preceded ‘humanism turn’ in geography as far as geographic knowledge and what should be the focus of geography is concerned. Geography as a discipline has taken its fair share of the evolution beginning from the era of exploration and voyage, through to environmental determinism and environmental possibilism. The former focuses on how the environment influences the human action and eventual use of human curiosity, dexterity, and acumen coupled with technology to surmount the constraints posed by the environment to humans as espoused by the latter. These two concepts also not standing the test of time in geographical knowledge production culminated into the emergence of regional geography. Regional geography emphasizes that geography should be concerned with regions and aerial differentiation. As opined by Entrikin (2011, p.344) “early twentieth-century methodological discussions of the region were most often concerned with the region as a means of conceptually drawing together physical and human geography or, more broadly, nature and culture”. The resultant effect of these culminated into a search among geographers for a new way of approaching the discipline of geography and eventually coming to the scene during the 1970s, what is now referred to as the humanistic geography or humanism in geography.
The focus of this paper is to critically examine the emergence of humanism and humanistic geography. I will attempt the contributions of humanism or humanistic geography to the discipline of geography. Lastly, I will elucidate on some of the criticisms levels against humanistic geography.
Humanistic Geography
Humanism in the medieval period is characterized with an emphasis on human dignity over the natural order. Scholars pushing the humanistic ideas during this period were medieval scholars who studied the text of Roman, Greek, philosophy, rhetoric, and history (Smith, 2009). A name worth mentioning in this era is Petrach and he is often regarded as the first humanist. The research methodology employed by medieval humanists involved the use of “ancient languages, compared and edited surviving texts, and wrote interpretative commentaries” (Smith, 2009, p. 240).
According to Smith (2009), humanistic geography is the school of thought that came to limelight after the 1970s and remained significant close to two decades forming the ‘new cultural geography’ through the amalgamation of humanistic geography itself, neo-Marxism and postmodernism. Humanism relies on the doctrine of humanism and this doctrine according to Smith (2009) emphasizes the natural dignity of human. Clohe & Salder (1991) also state that humanistic geography has developed into a more disjointed manner, unlike the Marxist geography which is rooted in the theoretical works of Marxism. This fragmentation inherent in the development of humanistic geography is attributed to the diverse, and conflicting intellectual positions held by the humanistic geographers. As succinctly put by Clohe & Salder (1991, p.57):
Indeed, these positions have included foundational philosophies such as ‘phenomenology’ and ‘externalism’, methodologically inclined philosophies such as ‘pragmatism’, philosophies of meaning such as ‘hermeneutics’, theological arguments derived from the Christian Bible; psychological and psychoanalytical materials, notably those referred to as ‘environmental psychology’; and also principle of substantive inquiry such as ‘historical idealism’ or ‘interpretative sociology.
The above quote shows the various perspectives and philosophical positions coming together to form the umbrella of humanism with focus on human and their conditions. The main argument of humanism in geography is that human should be the force to reckon with in all intellectual processes. Tuan (1976) argues that humanistic geography looks at geographical phenomena with the ultimate aim of understanding human and his condition. This definition by Tuan presupposes that as far as humanism is concerned in geography, any geographical inquiry should aim at understanding humans and their conditions in relation to that geographical phenomena under study.
Contributions of humanistic geography to the discipline of geography
First and foremost, humanistic geography has thrown more enlightenment on how certain geographical concepts can be looked at critically from a humanistic point of view. For example, the geographical concept of space, environment, and place. Humanistic geography places people at the center in the conceptualization of these geographical concepts. This is done with the emphasis on how people experience their environment, space, and place (Clohe & Salder, 1991). Clohe & Salder (1991, p.81) note that:
what has also surfaced on occasion is a genuine concern for the more ‘everyday geographies’ of the places in which we live and labour: for the houses, streets, factories, offices, schools, fields, parks, cinemas and so on where we spend most of our days, and about which we unavoidably develop a sense of place – a rudimentary understanding of how this place ‘work’ and nagging and a nagging feeling towards this place of liking, disliking, loving, hating, accepting, rejecting or whatever.
In the view of Smith, humanistic geographers approach the concept of place in two different ways. Thus, to understand a sense of place and the understanding of the symbols and messages the place conveys (Smith, 2009).
Secondly, the application of humanistic principles in geographic inquiry makes the object of the inquiry very important to the inquiry process. This is because humans are central to humanism school of thought and any geographic investigation must adhere and consider their object of research as an active participant than a passive participant. This approach is converse to what pertains in spatial science or quantitative inquiry where the researcher and the researched subject are detached from each other. With the application of humanistic geography, the researcher would be able to go beyond numbers and statistics and reveal what lies beyond those statistics with a deeper understanding of peoples lived experiences pertaining to the research questions and objectives.
Furthermore, aside humanism contribution to geography as a discipline by giving a central place to object of study and how certain geographical concepts can be relooked at from humanism perspective, humanism has also contributed methodologically to geography. This is because, with humanism emphasizing people experience and conditions, the only research methodology that is suitable for this research endeavour is a qualitative method. Despite this method being scrutinized by the quantitative and positivist school of thought that, it is a just mere text of peoples’ opinion, humanism has emboldened this methodology because it helps people to share their rich lived experience. This is achieved using interviews, focus group discussions, experiential fieldwork, and writing of personal biographies, and interpretation of texts.
Criticisms against humanistic geography
Humanism in geography has also witnessed its share of the criticisms. First and foremost, humanistic geography is criticized by what Smith called the neo – Augustinian thought. They criticized humanistic geography on the premise that the twentieth and contemporary times is full of horrific and cruelty activities perpetuated by humans and that there is absolutely nothing so dignifying about humanity (Smith, 2009). The neo – Augustinian school of thought sees humans as a half beast and devil (Smith, 2009). Secondly, another reason advanced by another school of thought labeled as the deep ecology and radical environmentalism is that it an exaggeration on the part of humanism to give more value to human and their needs than other species and the environment (Smith, 2009). Moreover, using humanism in giving an explanation to a geographic phenomenon is problematic. This is because it will be difficult on the part of the researcher to know if the explanation given is true and reflected the true nature of object under study. In addition, humanistic geography loses sight of the fact that humans operate in the social and political milieu and this environment put some limitations to the extent to which man can operate their own life and this is recognized as one of the inherent deficits of humanistic geography (Clohe & Salder, 2009). Another criticism which can be raised against humanistic geography is that it does not take other branches of geography into consideration especially, physical geography. The central focus of this school of thought makes it impossible for physical geography to find expression within their scope. This assertion is buttressed by Clohe & Salder (1991, p.58) when they note that “the bottom line for humanistic geography lies in the objective of bringing human beings in all complexity to the centre-stage of human geography”. The last but not the least criticism against humanistic geography is that, since humanistic geography focuses much on human consciousness and wellbeing, it will be impossible to generalize findings using this approach in a geographic investigation. The same criticism is expected to be leveled against humanistic geography by the positivist and quantitative school of thought because they are more into statistics and numbers aimed at generalization and prediction.
In this paper, I started off by examining the emergence of humanism and humanistic geography to the discipline of geography. I proceeded to discuss the contributions of humanism turn to geography and concluded by pointing out some of the criticisms that bedeviled this approach. Despite these criticisms, it is important to point out that, the emergence of cultural turn in geography was because of the collaborative effort of humanistic geography, neo-Marxism, and postmodernism.
References
Cloke, P. Philo, C. and Salder, D. 1991. ‘“Peopling” human geography and the development of the humanistic approaches,’ in Approaching Human Geography: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Debates, P. Cloke. C. Philo and D. Sadler (eds.) New York: The Guilford Press, pp. 57-92.
Smith, J. M. 2009. Humanism/humanistic geography. International encyclopedia of Human Geography Elsevier.
Simonsen, K. 2012. In quest of a new humanism: Embodiment, experience and phenomenology as critical geography Progress in Human Geography pp. 1-17.
Tuan, Y. F. (1976). Humanistic geography. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 66(2), 266-276.
e…