Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
according to a standard typology. The results were collated
to produce land-use maps. The exercise was repeated once.
Again, this was by a geographer, Alice Coleman, in the 1960s.
Similarly, as urban geography developed, the earliest method
was fi eldwork. Information was gathered on urban land-use,
on types of buildings and the dates of their construction, on
fl ows of people and traffi c, and on patterns of human behaviour.
Out of this, models were developed of urban growth, land-use
within cities, and classifi cations of urban forms. Mention should
be made of the Le Play Society, founded in 1930, and supported
by leading geographers of the day. In its expeditions, such as
those to the Balkans, it embodied all the qualities of geographical
fi eldwork and this spirit survives. Finally, by way of example,
if one examines the school of cultural geography founded by
Carl Sauer at Berkeley and diffused to many parts of the world,
fi eldwork was always one of its essential components. It was
one of the areas in which fi eld sketches were widely used to
represent key indicators of cultural landscapes, whether they
were fi eld systems, irrigation methods, or particular architectural
styles.
Although the relative importance of fi eldwork to the subdiscipline
of human geography has declined with the rise of other
approaches, it is still of vital importance. Even more so than is
the case in physical geography, fi eldwork in human geography
has evolved rapidly in recent years. This evolution is refl ected in
the diversity and sophistication of its fi eld methods, which range
from questionnaire surveys to unstructured in-depth interviews,
focus groups, and participant observation. Geographers studying
the neglected topics of women's lives in past periods have often
used diaries and letters as primary sources of information. The
correspondence of the wives of colonial administrators in India,
for example, has thrown considerable light on their roles in those
societies and also on their sense of remoteness and longing for
home. The diary of a Mormon woman who lived in Pine Valley,
Utah, around 1900 demonstrated the communal qualities of
