Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
question these assumptions as being far removed from the reality
of people's behaviour. In reality, people often behave in suboptimal
ways, with much less than full information and perhaps
infl uenced by emotional values.
From this point, spatial analysis was to lose its predominance
and another process of relegation was in train, though the
impact of the changes varied in different parts of the world. By
the early 1970s, new perspectives began to dominate the practice
of human geography. Humanistic and cultural approaches
in particular discarded the scientifi c perspectives of spatial
analysis and moved away from its emphasis on measurement
and generalization. The new focus was on qualitative meanings
and values and on the diversity of human behaviour. There
was evidence for the inadequacy of central place theory, for
example, as many consumers were shown to ignore its precepts
and shop at a variety of destinations. The sophisticated models
of spatial analysis bore little relation to the real lives of people
and their attachments to specifi c places; it was time to assert
the diversity of human behaviour. For many, this was a welcome
and positive shift, but others argued that geography had turned
its back on quantitative spatial data analysis just as many
other disciplines, such as economics, came to recognize its
importance.
First reactions: humanistic and structural approaches
There were initially two main points of departure from the focus
on spatial analysis. Humanistic geography asserted the centrality
of people and focused on the meanings of place rather than the
geometry of space. The 'image' entered the lexicon of geography
with ideas such as perceived space, mental maps, and 'irrational'
behaviour. It was evident that different people perceived places in
different ways. There were studies, for example, of the meanings
of 'wilderness'. At one extreme, there were those who defi ned
wilderness as remote areas devoid of population; at another
Search WWH ::




Custom Search