Perspectives in Human Geography 2

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Perspectives in Human Geography-2
Geographical Thought (University of Delhi)
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Geography with Sandeep Sir
Radicalism in Geography
The radical approach in geography developed in 1970s as a reaction to
‘quantitative revolution’ and positivism which tried to make geography as a spatial science,
with great emphasis on locational analysis.
Radical geography is an approach to geographic research that seeks to

understand social and spatial problems, and advocate solutions. Radical geographers are
interested in everyday lives: the lived experiences of members of society. They are interested
in issues of relevance to everyday social life, such as access to safe and affordable food and
housing, fair pay, educational opportunities, and basic health care, to name just a few. This
emphasis reflects a desire for geographers to do research that is relevant to, and useful for,
society. A quest for social justice permeates much of radical geography.
Radical geographers reject the spatial determinism implicit in spatial science;

instead they seek to place questions of geography within broader social and political contexts.
They emphasize context and relationships between places and people and broaden the
geographical research agenda by considering previously neglected issues including poverty,
hunger, urban decay, and social inequality.
Radical viewpoint started through William Bunge’s work who wrote about
Radicalist ideas in his book Theoretical Geography in 1962 and who founded Society for
Human Exploration at Detroit in 1968. This Society urged geographers to undertake
fieldwork in areas where poorest people live or the areas which are most backward and
depressed. Such expeditions targeted to acquire first-hand and unbiased information of these
areas so that a collective engagement with local people can bring meaningful inputs and bring
about sound policy and planning framework.
Radical ideas flourished in the hands of David Harvey and Richard Peet.
Harvey wrote Social Justice and the City where he talked about Black people living in
Ghettos. Richard Peet started to publish articles in a famous journal known as Antipode in
Clarke University in Massachusetts in 1969. The issues in Antipode were quite revolutionary.
They talked about urban poverty, discrimination against Blacks, feminism and cruelty against
women, crime, deprivation, problems pertaining to minorities etc. Therefore, geography
again got a breakthrough from its original systematic or regional approach when it started
incorporating new social issues.
Due to increased poverty and inequality, especially poverty among the people
of Ghetto and rural areas, Radicalists tried to perceive planning from a new viewpoint i.e.
planning with the people rather than planning for the people. According to Harvey,
geographers should consider the question as to who is going to control whom, in whose
interest the controlling is going to be exercised and if it is exercised in the interest of people,
who is going to take it upon himself to define that public interest.

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The origin of the radical geography movement can be traced to the in late 1960s,
especially in the U.S.A. with three contemporary political issues:
1. The Vietnam War,

2. Civil rights (especially of the American blacks), and
3. The pervasive poverty and inequality suffered by the residents of urban ghettos and
deprived rural areas all of which were generating increased social unrest and tension.
In the words of Poet (1977), radical geography developed largely as a negative

reaction to the established discipline (spatial science). The radical geographers introduced the
study of topics such as poverty, hunger, health, and crime to human geographers, who had
previously very largely ignored them.
The salient features and objectives of radical geography were:
1. To expose the issues of inequality, deprivation, discrimination, health, exploitation,

crime and environmental degradation in the capitalist countries.
2. To highlight the weaknesses of the positivism and quantitative revolution in
geography which emphasized on geography as a ‘spatial science’ with a thrust on
locational analysis.
3. To bring a cultural revolution to eradicate permissiveness, sexism and discrimination
against females.
4. To remove regional inequalities.
5. Radicalists opposed political centralization and economic concentration. Contrary to
multinationals, they favoured small- scale self-sufficient social units, living in greater
harmony with their natural surroundings.
6. They were against imperialism, nationalism, national chauvinism and racism.
7. They opposed the idea of the superiority of the white and the west.
8. According to radicalists the man and environment relationship may be understood
through history. In other words, the mode of production in any society determines the
economic relation among its people.
9. One of the objectives of the radicalists was to explain not only what is happening but
also to prescribe revolutionary changes and solution to the social problems.
10. To develop a more just, equal, tension free, peaceful and enjoyable society.
To a certain extent, Radicalism was linked with anarchism. Anarchism called

for the removal of state, and its replacement by voluntary groups of individuals. These
individuals could work without external pressure and maintain social order. In a way,
anarchism promoted individual liberalism and socialism.
Cooperation based production; decision-making at grassroots level, the spread

of democracy, greater integration of short-distanced workspace and living space were some
of the ideals many Radical geographers followed.
A great contribution of guiding geography towards Marxism happened

through the works of David Harvey. In his book on Ghettos located in American cities, he

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pointed towards roots of problems that lie in capitalism. According to him, the capitalistic
system created such a market based mechanism, that regulates land use, and this is biased
against the poor Black population. He argued that once a geographer adopts Marxist approach
towards looking social problems, he or she cannot detach himself or herself. That’s why a
political awareness is generated within them, and they get actively involved in making a
society with more justice. Harvey’s influence was so strong that some practitioners of social
relevance research started adopting a Marxist approach. Nowadays, radical geography is
more aptly known as Marxist geography.
Radicalism was able to usher in some fruitful changes in the methodological discourse of
geographical studies. These are:
From the rhetoric of quantitative technique based analysis of geographical attributes,

it reoriented human geography towards prominent social and environmental issues,
thereby broadening the scope of geography to interact with other disciplines of social
sciences.
The classical tradition of fieldwork in a small region was altered in the sense that
more in-depth and participatory planning oriented studies were encouraged. This
fieldwork entailed a new pattern where respondents were involved in the process of
surveying. One needs to understand that this new pattern was quite challenging. The
expeditions, promoted by the Society for Human Exploration, could not go on
extensively due to multiple reasons (including existing power structure), even though
it received a certain chunk of academic interest.
Some of the limitations or weaknesses of radicalism are:
1. The theoretical base of the radical paradigm was weak. They attempted to borrow
theoretically sophisticated ideas from other disciplines without much success.
2. The radicalists tried to draw freely on a variety of sources of political theory including
anarchism. With such approach, radical geographers made numerous attempts at
developing an anarchist base with a distinct political perspective on alternative forms
of society. Their objective was not to reform but to change the society. They were
determined to turn the society upside down. They however, could not change the
capitalistic society to make a more socialistic social order and to make life of
everyone enjoyable and tension free. Thus the discipline of geography remained as a
regional science, dependent on statistical tools to explain regional variations.
3. Radical geography was radical in topics (imperialism, anti-war, discrimination,
poverty, crimes etc.) and politics (anti-capitalist) but not in theory or method of
analysis.
4. The radicalist could not develop an appropriate model about population resource in an
integrated dynamic way to remove inter-regional and intra-regional inequalities.
5. The radical geographers developed a deep leaning towards Marxism (historical
materialism), and gave over weightage to the Marxian analysis to explain the spatial
variations of geographical phenomena. They attempted to evict human agency from
human history. In- other words, men and women are reduced to the passive ‘bearers’

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of historical and structural determination. In fact, man is not the product of history
and historical materialism. He is an active agent who created history, affects the
historical processes and in turn gets transformed.
6. The radicalists and Marxists gave priority to time over space. Those who criticized
radical geography insist that “just as there is a theory of history, in historical
materialism too, there is also a geography”—the space dimension is by no means
sacrificed to the time dimension; both are indelibly present. The humanists who
attacked and criticized radical geography stressed that we have to liberate ourselves
from the chain of spaceless Marxist orthodoxy.
7. The radicalists however, could not develop a theory of uneven development and they
followed the Marxist philosophy, emphasizing on ‘wage labour’ as the key to
historical geography of capitalism. The fall of the state apparatus in the erstwhile
USSR and Eastern Europe during the 1989-91 gave the impression that socialism has
fallen and is the final victory for capitalism’ which is based on locational analysis.
Thus, it was established that the socialist governments following the model of Marx
were not clean were marred by bureaucratic and oppressive character of the real
existing socialism.
Thus, despite Marxian leaning the radicalists could not liberate human beings,
especially the oppressed class from the natural and social restraints. In the process of creation
of space, and man and environment relationship, the followers of radicalism in geography
ultimately realized that eradication of social injustice and removal of regional inequalities
from both the capitalistic and socialistic societies is a gigantic task which demands deep
thinking and more empirical research.
In brief, it may be said that geography cannot evolve through positivism

(quantitative revolution, regional science) nor through radical methodologies. Instead,
geography must return to its roots and revive its concern with the relationship of environment
and social concern within place, area, region or context. An amalgamation of the quantitative
and qualitative methodologies seems to be necessary for a reliable interpretation of man,
space, and place and environment relationship.

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Behaviouralism in Geography
By the mid-1960s use of statistical techniques in research for precision has

been largely accepted by geographers. It was increasingly realized by the geographers that the
models propounded and tested with the help of quantitative techniques, provided poor
descriptions of geographic reality as well as the man-environment relationship.
The behavioural approach in geography was introduced in the 1960s. Its origin
can be traced to the frustration that was widely felt with normative and mechanistic models
developed with the help of quantitative techniques. These normative and mechanistic models
are mainly based on such unreal behavioural postulates as ‘rational economic man’ and
isotropic earth surface. In normative models, there are always several assumptions, and
generally the centre of attention is a set of omniscient (having infinite knowledge) fully
rational actors (men) operating freely in a competitive manner on isotropic plane
(homogeneous land surface). Many normative models are thus grossly unrealistic as they
ignore the complexities of real world situations and instead concentrate on idealized
behavioural postulate such as rational economic man. People behave rationally, but within
constraints—the cultures in which they have been socialized to make decisions.
Theories such as Central Place Theory, based on statistical and mathematical

techniques, were found inadequate to explain the spatial organization of society. The
economic rationality of decision-making was also criticized as it does not explain the
behaviour of man. It was a psychological twist in human geography which emphasized the
role of subjective and decision-making processes that mediate the association between
environment and spatial behaviour of man. It can be said that the dissatisfaction with the
models and theories developed by the positivists, using the statistical techniques which were
based on the ‘economic rationality’ of man led to the development of behavioural approach in
geography.
The axiom of ‘economic person’ who always tries to maximize his profit was
challenged by Wolpert. In his paper entitled ‘The Decision Process in Spatial Context’,
Wolpert (1964) compared the actual and potential labour productivity of Swedish farmers and
came to a conclusion that optimal farming practices were not attainable. He concluded that
the farmers were not optimizers but, satisfies. Thus human behaviour was seen to be a
product of decision-making and it was a human tendency to have incomplete information, to
make imperfect choices and even then be satisfied with sub-optimal options.
Behavioural geography banks heavily on ‘behaviouralism’. Behaviouralism is

an important approach which is largely inductive, aiming to build general statements out
of observations of ongoing processes. The essence of behavioural approach in geography
lies in the fact that the way in which people behave is mediated by their understanding of
the environment in which they live or by the environment itself with which they are
confronted.

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In behavioural geography, an explanation for the man-environment problem is

founded upon the premise that environmental cognition and behaviour are intimately related.
In other words, the behavioural approach has taken the view that a deeper understanding of
man-environment interaction can be achieved by looking at the various psychological
processes through which man comes to know the environment in which he lives, and by
examining the way in which these processes influence the nature of the resultant behaviour.
The basic philosophy of behaviouralism may be summed up as ‘the behavioural geographer

recognizes that man shapes as well as responds to his environment and that man and
environment are dynamically interrelated. Man is viewed as a motivated social being, whose
decisions and actions are mediated by his cognition of the spatial environment.’
One of the most interesting and applied aspects of behavioural geography was
work examining the human perception of environmental hazards. The pioneering work by
Robert Kates (1962) on floodplain management is one of the bases of this approach.
He states the manner in which human beings perceive the uncertainty and unpredictability of
their environment play a significant role in the process of decision making. He developed a
scheme that had relevance to a wide range of human behaviour. This scheme of Kates was
based on four assumptions –
1. Men are rational while taking decisions.

2. Men make choices.
3. Choices are made on the basis of knowledge.
4. Information is evaluated to pre-determined criteria.
Subsequently, Kirk (1952-1963) supplied one of the first behavioural models.

In his model, he asserted that in space and time the same information would have different
meanings for people of different socio-economic, cultural and ethnic backgrounds living in a
similar geographical environment. Each individual of a society reacts differently to a piece of
information about the resource, space, and environment. This point may be explained by
citing the following example. The highly productive Indo-Gangetic plains have different
meanings for different individuals belonging to a various caste, creed and religion. Jats,
Gujjars, Ahirs, Sainis, Jhojas and Gadas living in the same village perceive their environment
differently. A Jat farmer may like to sow sugarcane in his field, a Gada and a Jhoja may
devote his land to sugarcane, wheat and rice, an Ahir may like to grow fodder crops for the
milch animals, and a Saini is invariably interested in intensive cultivation, especially that of
vegetables. For a Saini (vegetable grower), even five acres of arable land may be a large
holding, while a Jat who uses a tractor considers even 25 acres a small holding. The
perceived environment of each of these farmers living in the same environment thus differs
from each other both in space and time.
The aspect which was most enthusiastically adopted by geographers from

behavioural analysis was the concept of mental maps. The paper of Peter Gould (1966) was
the seminal contribution in this regard. He points out that since decisions on location were
guided by the manner in which a human being perceives the environment, it becomes

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essential for a geographer to have a mental image of how one perceives his environment
while making decisions. Therefore, mental maps are not just images or maps but an
amalgamation of information and interpretation that a person has on a particular thing
as well as how he or she perceives that place.
Gould opines that mental maps are not only means of examining a person’s
area of a spatial preference but also provides insight into the processes which led to that
particular decision. He states that mental maps may provide a key to some of the structures,
patterns and processes of man’s work on the earth surface.
The objectives of behavioural approach were:
To develop models for humanity which were alternative to the spatial location
theories developed through quantitative revolution;
To define the cognitive (subjective) environment this determines the decision-making
process of man;
To unfold the spatial dimensions of psychological and social theories of human
decision-making and behaviour;
To explain the spatial dimensions of psychological, social and other theories of
human decision-making and behaviour;
To change in emphasis from aggregate populations to the disaggregate scale of
individuals and small groups;
To search for methods other than the mathematical and statistical that could uncover
the latent structure in data and decision-making;
To emphasize on procession rather than structural explanations of human activity and
physical environment;
To generate primary data about human behaviour and not to rely heavily on the
published data; and
To adopt an interdisciplinary approach for theory-building and problem-solving.
Salient Features:
The salient features of behavioural geography are as under:
1. The behavioural geographers argued that environmental cognition (perception) upon which
people act may well differ markedly from the true nature of the real environment of the real
world. Space (environment) thus can be said to have a dual character:
(i) As an objective environment—the world of actuality—which may be gauged by

some direct means (senses); and
(ii) As a behavioural environment—the world of the mind— which can be studied
only by indirect means.
No matter how partial or selective the behavioural environment may be, it is

this milieu which is the basis of decision-making and action of man. By behavioural
environment it is meant: reality as is perceived by individuals. In other words, people make

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choices and the choices are made on the basis of knowledge. Thus, the view of behaviour was
rooted in the world as perceived rather than in the world of actuality. The nature of the
difference between these two environments and their implications for behaviour was neatly
made by Koffka (1935-36) in an allusion to a medieval Swiss tale about a winter travel:
On a winter evening amidst a driving snow-storm a man on a horse-back

arrived at an inn, happy to have reached after hours of riding over the winter-swept plain on
which the blanket of snow had covered all paths and landmarks. The landlord who came to
the door viewed the stranger with surprise and asked from whence he came? The man pointed
in a direction away from the inn, whereupon the landlord in a tone of awe and wonder said:
“Do you know that you have ridden across the Great Lake of Constance?” At which the rider
dropped stone dead at his feet. This example vividly shows the difference between the
‘objective environment’ of the ice-covered lake Constance and the rider’s subjective or
‘behavioural environment’ of a wind-swept plain. The rider reacted to the situation by
travelling across the lake as if it were dryland—we may safely surmise that he would have
acted otherwise had he but known!
2. Secondly, behavioural geographers give more weight to an individual rather than to

groups, or organizations or society. In other words, the focus of study is the individual, not
the group or community. They assert that research must recognize the fact that the individual
shapes and responds to his physical and social environment. In fact, it is necessary to
recognize that the actions of each and every person have an impact upon the environment,
however, slight or inadvertent that impact may be. Man is a goal-directed animal who
influences the environment and in turn is influenced by it. In brief, an individual rather than a
group of people or social group is more important in man-nature relationship.
3. Behavioural approach in geography postulated a mutually interacting relationship between

man and his environment, whereby man shaped the environment and was subsequently
shaped by it (Gold, 1980:4).
4. The fourth important feature of behavioural geography is its multidisciplinary outlook. A

behavioural geographer takes the help of ideas, paradigms, and theories produced by
psychologists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists, ethnologists and
planners. However, the lack of theories of its own is coming in the way of rapid development
of behavioural geography.
The fundamental arguments of behavioural geography are that:
1. People have environmental images;

2. Those images can be identified accurately by researchers; and
3. There is a strong relationship between environmental images and actual behaviour.

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The behavioural paradigm has been shown in above Figure. In this paradigm,
man has been depicted as a thinking individual whose transactions with the environment are
mediated by mental processes and cognitive representation of external environment. In
geographical circles, this concept is derived primarily from the work of Boulding (1956) who
suggested that over time individuals’ developmental impressions of the world (images) are
formed through their everyday contacts with the environment and that these images act as the
basis of their behaviour.
The conceptual framework provided by Downs has been illustrated in Figure

below. This framework proposes that information from environment (real world) is filtered as
a result of personality, culture, beliefs, and cognitive variables to form image in the mind of
man who utilizes the environment. On the basis of the image formed in the mind of the
utilizer about the environment he takes a decision and uses the resources to fulfil his basic
and higher needs. Downs’ framework also suggests that there exist an ‘objective’ and a
‘behavioural’ environment.
A similar but slightly more complex classification came from Porteous (1977) who
recognized the existence of:
(i) The phenomenal environment (physical objects);

(ii) The personal environment (perceived images of phenomenal of real environment);
and
(iii)Contextual environment (culture, religion, beliefs and expectations that influence
behaviour).

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Sonnenfeld (1972) went even further and proposed four levels at which the environment
should be studied.
The four-fold environment, advocated by Sonnenfeld, has been given as below:
a) The geographical environment (the world);

b) The operational environment (those parts of the world that impinge upon a man,
whether or not he is aware of them);
c) The perceptual (the parts of the world that man is aware of as a result of direct and
indirect experience); and
d) The behavioural (that part of the perceptual environment that elicits a behavioural
response).
The behavioural approach in geography is a fruitful one and it helps in

establishing a scientific relationship between man and his physical environment. The broad
scope of behavioural geography is remarkable even by the standards of human geography.
Criticism
There are, however, overall, biases in content towards urban topics and
towards developed countries. One of the main weaknesses of behavioural geography is that it
lacks in the synthesis of empirical findings, poor communication, inadvertent duplication, and
conflicting terminology. In behavioural geography, the terminology and concepts remain
loosely defined and poorly integrated, primarily owing to the lack of systematically-
organized theoretical basis.
Another shortcoming of behavioural geography lies in the fact that most of its
data are generated in laboratory experiments on animals and the findings are applied directly
to human behaviour. Koestler (1975) pointed to the danger of this strategy, in that
behaviouralism “has replaced the anthropomorphic fallacy—ascribing to animals human
faculties and sentiments—with the opposite fallacy; denying man faculties not found in lower
animals; it has substituted for the erstwhile anthropomorphic view of rat, a rato-morphic view
of man”. In short, behaviouralist’s theories are elegant but unhelpful when it comes to
understanding the real world man-environment interaction.
Behavioural geography has too often put too much emphasis on ego-centred
interpretations of the environment. Specifically, scholars are critical of two assumptions on
which a great deal of behavioural research in geography is based. The first assumption is that
there exist identifiable environmental images that can be accurately measured. It is not clear
whether an environmental image can be extracted without distortion from the totality of
mental imagery. Moreover, not enough effort has gone into checking and validating the
methods by which images are elicited.
The second critical assumption is that there exists a strong relationship

between revealed images or references and actual or real-world behaviour. The main
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objection to this assumption is that it is an unfounded assumption because extremely little

research has been undertaken to examine the congruence between image and behaviour.
Another significant deficiency in behavioural geography has been the gap

between theory and practice. This has been most noticeable over the question of public
policy. In fact, behavioural geographers remain observers rather than participants. There is a
serious lack of knowledge of planning theories and methods amongst behavioural
geographers, which is an impediment to more active involvement.
It is a barrier that can be removed only by developing the requisite

understanding of the planning processes; it cannot be camouflaged by noble sentiments and
moral tone. For instance, it will be only rarely that a small survey carried out upon a sample
of students will supply the basis for far-reaching policy recommendations, yet the final
paragraphs of many such works contain this seemingly obligatory element.
Despite several constraints and methodological limitations, behavioural

geography is now widely accepted within the positivist orientation. It seeks to account for
spatial patterns by establishing generalizations about people-environment interrelationship,
which may then be used to stimulate change through environmental planning activities that
modify the stimuli which affect the spatial behaviour of us and others.
The research methods of behavioural geography vary substantially but the

general orientation—inductive generalization leading to planning for environmental
change— remains. Eventually, it is hoped, a ‘powerful new theory’ will emerge. Golledge
argued that substantial advances in understanding spatial behaviour have already been made
by studying ‘individual preferences, opinions, attitudes, cognitions, cognitive maps,
perception, and so on—what he terms processes variables.
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Humanistic Approach in Geography

Humankind as an agent of change on the earth’s surface was first identified by
Comte de Buffon as early as in the 18th century. Inspired by his ideas, Immanuel Kant
developed his physical geography that was essentially ‘anthropocentric’ in nature and
content. According to Kant, physical geography not only included the features visible on the
earth’s surface created by natural processes but also by human actions. The concept of Kant’s
anthropocentric geography was subsequently adopted by Carl Ritter. In his famous
‘Erdkunde’, he asserted that the central theme of geography was the element of reciprocity
that is believed to have existed between the natural phenomena and humanity. Subsequently,
Friedrich Ratzel in his ‘Anthropogeographie’ set a framework for the systematic study of
human geography and thus set a new trend in the subject.
The human approach in geography was greatly popularized by the French

geographer Paul Vidal de la Blache in 1899 with his introduction of a new dimension to the
possibilistic philosophy. Blache may rightly be called the father of modern human
geography. He advocated ‘genre de vie’(a term encompassing the idea that the “way of life”
of a region reflected its inhabitants’ psychological, social, and economic identities
imprinted on the landscape.), a concept akin to human culture, inherited and developed over
time to convert natural ‘possibilities’ into elements of fulfilment. Nature was conceived as a
mere adviser and humanity, an active force of change. Lucien Febvre put forward that
humankind emerged as a powerful agent of modifying the earth’s surface through centuries
of his accumulated labour and decision making. In 1924, American geographer Carl O. Sauer
propounded his ‘landscape paradigm’ in which he highlighted on humans as agent of
‘fashioning’ the natural landscape.
In the 1970s there was a revolution in geography which was essentially anti
positivist in nature. It came to be known as the ‘critical revolution’ as its origin was rooted in
the criticism against the positivist-quantitative-spatial tradition of geography. The effort
was on replacing the quantitative methods with a variety of humanistic approaches. This was
supposed to ascribe a pivotal role to humankind in the subject particularly to ‘human
awareness, human consciousness and human creativity’ and freed human beings from
geometric determinism. Thus, the modern humanistic geography was mainly an outcome of
the growing dissatisfaction against the quantitative revolution.
Effort was made to revive the ‘normative statements’ of values, attitudes,

beliefs and so on. It aimed at ‘verstehn’, that is, understanding humankind within the
surrounding environment in which humankind by using his rationality could improvise on the
conditions of their lives.
The proponents of humanistic geography asserted that, humanistic geography

should not be considered as an earth science in its scope and content. Instead of viewing
geography as the study of the earth, it treated geography as the study of the earth as the
home of humankind. Hence, the main focus was on how humans perceived the place they
inhabited through their thought processes, consciousness and experiences.
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Most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, humanistic geography is a conceptual

perspective claiming that a comprehensive understanding of human–environment
relationships must consider individual and group experiences and meanings of space, place,
landscape, region, mobility, and related geographic phenomena. Partly propelled by 1960s
research in behavioral geography and environmental perception, humanistic geography
incorporated a wide range of philosophical approaches that included phenomenology,
existentialism, idealism, pragmatism, grounded theory, and symbolic interactionism.
The first geographer to describe humanistic geography formally as a

disciplinary subfield was Yi-Fu Tuan (1976). He defined the approach as the geographic
study of human beings’ experiences and understandings of space, place, and the natural
world.
In relation to environmental and ecological deterioration, humanistic

geographers argued that, because humans are earth’s most conscious and environmentally
exploitive beings, their efforts at betterment must extend beyond the human world to
protecting and strengthening the welfare of other sentient beings as well as ecosystems,
places, landscapes, natural regions, and the planet as a living whole.
Approaches to Humanistic Geography
Humanistic geography was developed as a conceptual perspective that

highlighted on the thorough understanding of human-environment relationship particularly on
the basis of individual or group awareness and experiences regarding different spatial units
and related geographical phenomena. The main emphasis was on humans as rational being
with the power to think and perceive rather than as mere responders to stimuli as was
presented within the positivist and behavioural framework.
According to Ley and Samuels, humanistic geography incorporated a wide

range of philosophical approaches within it ranging from idealism, existentialism and
hermeneutics to phenomenology; pragmatism. At the same it ascribed a central role to
human beings and was a people’s geography with human development as its principal
objective.
Humanistic geography imbibed in it the philosophy of existentialism that

urged on human quality and subjectivity. It was based on the doctrine of ‘existence before
essence’ which implied that humans existed first and, thereafter were responsible for their
every action. It stressed upon personal freedom, personal decision-making and personal
commitment. In other words, the purpose of humanistic geography in its affinity with
existentialism, was to analyse the existential space as occupied by humans and the ways they
defined their relationship with their space. This approach was essentially historical in that, it
attempted to reconstruct space through the experiences of its denizens.
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As a counter to the postulates of positivism, Leonard Guelke propounded the

philosophy of idealism and urged the human geographers especially the historical
geographers to probe into what humans, as decision-makers believed in and not why they
believed. Thus, human geographers were not supposed to engage themselves in developing
theories as, the pertinent theories that resulted in the geographical activities under study were
already extant in human minds. Humanistic geography inspired by the idealist philosophy
upheld that reality was basically a mental construct and a pattern of human behaviour actually
reflected the underlying ideas. Idealism according to Guelke was based on two propositions--
- (i) a metaphysical proposition which asserted that an idea or a mental construct had a
particular duration which was however, independent of material things and processes; and,
(ii) an epistemological proposition which believed that knowledge was derived indirectly
from the subjective human experience of the world and was an outcome of human thoughts
and ideas. It upheld that the existence of a ‘real’ world was actually mind-dependent.
Idealism was basically a sort of hermeneutics that dealt with the theory of
interpretation and clarification of meaning. It developed in the German tradition of
‘geisteswissenchaften’ or human science. The contention between the objectivity and
subjectivity of human discourses led to ‘double hermeneutics.’ Hermeneutics was applied in
contrast to the positivist-spatial science methods as advocated by humanistic geography
through, a pre-suppositional approach directed by social conscience. It provided an
epistemology that aided in restructuring regional geography by speaking of the spatio-
temporal aspect of a region. At the same time, it expressed its concern regarding any spatial
unit with respect to its culture as developed by humans occupying it over time particularly
language.
In the 1970s, another philosophy that was more popular among the human
geographers than idealism was phenomenology. Though the term was first used by Sauer in
the 1920s, it became widespread in the 1970s when Relph tried to introduce the approach
within geography. The objective was similar to the above approaches---to present a critique
of the positivist tradition. It presented an alternative to positivist philosophy that was based
on the premise that there can be no objective world without human existence. Kirk in 1963
identified two different yet mutually dependent environments---- (i) a phenomenal
environment that included everything on this planet; and, (ii) the behaviourial environment
that was the perceived and experienced part of the former. Phenomenology in geography was
concerned with the phenomenal environment the elements of which were considered
distinctive for every human since, it was the outcome of individual perception and action.
Therefore, the phenomenological approach in geography sought to explore how individual
human being structured the environment in a subjective way.
Themes and Methods of Humanistic Geography
Humanistic geography originated as a perspective against that form of human

geography that was reduced to an abstract study of space and structures. Sometimes,
humanistic geography could be used interchangeably with humanism because it accorded
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central role to humans. But precisely, humanistic geography was mainly concerned with the
outcomes of human activities.
According to Ley and Samuels, humanistic geography was based on three

basic precepts----- (i) anthropocentrism; (ii) subjectivity; and (iii) the concept of place.
Humanistic geography did not consider humans as mere ‘economic man’ but
attempted to investigate as to how geographical activities and phenomena were a
manifestation of human awareness and creativity. As a propounder of humanistic geography,
Tuan identified the following five major themes of humanistic geography:
 Geographical knowledge or personal geographies: Humans were to be treated as

rational beings with the ability to think and perceive. The main task of the humanistic
geographers therefore, was to study the ideas and thoughts that emanated from human
minds since these ideas constituted geographical knowledge. Each and every human
being possessed such knowledge though their perception varied. They utilized their
geographical knowledge for their biological survival. Hence, geographical knowledge
was conceived as personal.
 Role of territory and creation of place identities: Sense of Space was an intrinsic
aspect of humanistic geography. Every human being occupied and utilized some
space with which they developed a strong sense of emotional bonding. Much of his
biological needs were satiated in that space. Hence, a particular space constituted the
territory of humans which was not only a confined area in its literal sense but a place
with which human beings identified themselves. It was here where humanistic
geographers stepped in to analyse how a mere spatial unit turned into a place identity
for individual human being.
 Crowding and privacy: Crowding of a place resulted in physical as well as
psychological tensions which were eased out by cultural, social institutions and
infrastructures. In a similar way, privacy and seclusion also influenced the thought
processes and actions of humans. Privacy was thought to be required by every
individual. Within the private space individuals developed their own personal world.
 Role of geographical knowledge in determining livelihood: For sustenance humans
engaged themselves in economic activities. They utilized their geographical
knowledge to decide their economic activities. Thus, accordingly they planned their
action for sustenance which was the essence of pragmatism. In doing so, they were in
a position to distinguish between life-sustaining and life-destroying activities.
 The impact of religion: Religion was supposed to be subjective and associated with
the normative elements of values, beliefs or ethics. Religion was conceived as the
desire for coherence. The variation in this desire, which differed with individual
persons and culture, provided a field of investigation for the humanistic geographers.
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Broadly, one can identify four central conceptual and methodological themes relating to
humanistic geography as it developed in the 1970s and 1980s.
1. Humanistic geographers understood human life and experience to be a dynamic,

multivalent structure that incorporates bodily, sensory, emotional, attitudinal,
cognitive, and transpersonal dimensions. Humanistic researchers argued that a
comprehensive human geography must describe these many dimensions; understand
what they contribute to environmental experience, action, and meaning; and seek out
integrated frameworks identifying how these many dimensions relate and interact in
supportive and undermining ways. For example, Edward Relph (1976) delineated a
spectrum of spatial experience that ranged from the instinctive, bodily, and immediate
to the cerebral, ideal, and intangible. He probed how the experience of space differs
from the experience of place and contended that space becomes place when it gathers
human meanings, actions, and identity environmentally and temporally. Similarly, Yi-
Fu Tuan (1974) delineated a conceptual structure of environmental attitudes and
values by consolidating similarities and differences in the ways that human beings
respond to their geographical worlds physiologically, psychologically, socially, and
culturally. He concluded that every person is, simultaneously, a biological being, a
social being, and a unique individual. He demonstrated how environmental
perceptions, attitudes, and values arise from and contribute to all three aspects of
human being.
2. Humanistic geographers emphasized that much of human experience is opaque,
ineffable, or beyond taken-for-granted awareness. To identify and describe these less
accessible aspects of human life, humanistic geographers largely turned away from
conventional scientific method that required tangible, measurable phenomena
explicated and correlated mathematically and statistically. Instead, humanistic
geographers turned toward ontological perspectives that accepted a much wider range
of experience and presence. They drew on epistemological perspectives that sought to
be open to phenomena and to accept all aspects of their constitution. The aim was an
empathetic, wider-ranging mode of discovery whereby the phenomenon was given
time and space to present itself. The emphasis was on “methodologies of
engagement” that allowed researchers to encounter and understand the worlds and
experiences of their subjects carefully, accurately, and comprehensively. In working
toward a more intimate encounter with the phenomenon under study, some humanistic
geographers used directed intuition and self-reflective explication; others carefully
studied real-world situations, for example, a specific urban neighbourhood or a small
number of individuals asked to describe their environmental experiences and actions
as accurately and as thoroughly as possible.
3. Many humanistic geographers argued that, as much as possible, the evidence, general
principles, and understandings of humanistic geography should arise from self-
knowledge grounded in researchers’ first-hand experiences. Research should work
toward a forthright engagement with the experiences of others, whether those “others”
are people, places, landscapes, elements of nature, aspects of the human-made
environment, or other sentient beings. Humanistic geographers called into question
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conventional empirical research that defined the topic of research in objectivist

fashion as a thing or situation separate from and unrelated to the life or experience of
the researcher. Humanistic geographers argued that, by understanding the significance
of environmental and geographical experiences in their own lives, individuals might
act more responsibly and generously toward other human beings and toward the
places and environments that one inhabits or knows (Tuan 1976). In this regard,
Edward Relph (1981) advocated for an environmental humility – a way of engaging
with the world whereby things, places, landscapes, people, and other living beings are
all respected just for being what they are and, therefore, are thoughtfully cared for and
intentionally protected.
4. Broadly, humanistic geographers grounded their work in two complementary research
models, the first of which can be identified as explications of experience; and the
second, as interpretations of social worlds. Explications of experience were most
often associated with “place studies” and represented by such geographers as Anne
Buttimer, Douglas C.D. Pocock, Edward Relph, David Seamon, and Yi-Fu Tuan.
Much of this work was grounded in phenomenology and, for its place interpretations,
drew on a wide range of descriptive sources that included first-person experience,
philosophical argument, archival reports, accounts from imaginative literature, and
experiential evidence from photography, film, and other artistic media. Typically, this
work emphasized lived commonalities in relation to environmental and place
experience, though these humanistic researchers also asked how those commonalities
varied in terms of individual and group differences. In the 1980s and 1990s, this work
would be criticized as essentialist – claiming generalizable, universal structures such
as “place” and “home” and largely ignoring lived variations grounded in social,
cultural, and historical factors.
Human experience and human actions have always been the focus of
humanistic geography. The central thesis of humanistic geography was provided by the
criticisms rendered against positivism. It ardently highlighted upon human as ‘living, thinking
and acting being’ and insisted that human conditions could only be suggested through
humanistic endeavours expressed in human attitudes, impressions and sense of place which
otherwise could not be articulated through positivist methods.
Criticisms of humanistic geography
Beginning in the 1980s, humanistic research faced increasing criticism from

quantitative analytic geographers, on the one hand, and Marxist, feminist, and post structural
geographers, on the other hand.
The first and the basic criticism rendered against the humanistic methods is that the
researcher was not in a position to ascertain whether the real and the true explanations
had been provided or not. It is true that humanistic explanations could not be
established with certitude but this again provided a field of criticism by the positivist-
quantitative approaches where everything could be verified empirically and thus had a
greater
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certainty. In fact, the natural sciences whose methods were adopted by the positivist
regime were mainly comprised of theories that were abandoned through further
research which in turn enhanced the scope of study and resulted in more authentic and
powerful theories. But with humanistic methods this was not possible.
Secondly, on methodological grounds humanistic geography differentiated and
distinguished between physical and human geography which diluted the core of the
subject and gave rise to some sort of dualism in the discipline of geography. This
dualism sometimes proved to be detrimental in the development of geography.
Physical geography mainly dealt with inanimate objects and so its methods were
mainly scientific and mathematically verifiable. On the contrary, since human
behaviour was difficult to predict and varied over space and time, such quantitative
techniques were not always applicable in human geography. However, humans as the
prime focus of humanistic geography and physical environment of physical
geography were not mutually exclusive but rather related and, could not be studied
independent of the other.
Humanistic geography was criticized as ‘methodologically obscure’ since its main
focus was on subjective rather than objective research. Humanistic geography was
largely based on the experiences and perceptions of the humans which were mental
constructs and were essentially abstract in nature with no practicality as such. Any
method was acceptable to interpret the meanings of human experiences. Thus,
humanistic geography had no sound or valid methodological base on which the
theories developed by it could be successfully and authentically grounded.
This gave rise to another criticism against humanistic geography that it had limited
applied aspect. The investigator could have numerous interpretations of reality and in
that situation it was really difficult to ascertain reality. Under such circumstances, it
was rather challenging to identify the geographical problems and frame alleviating
policies accordingly.
Though humanistic geography attempted to combine several philosophical traditions
along with an incisive methodology, yet as pointed out by Entrikin, it failed to
provide a suitable and viable alternative to the scientific methods. It was better
described as some kind of critical philosophy that originated against the positivist
tradition with a purpose to revive the ‘humane’ element in geographical research.
The concept of place as enshrined in humanistic geography was static and exclusive.
This was criticized by several post-structuralist geographers who presented a
progressive and dynamic concept of space that was responsive to wider social and
environmental contexts. The sense of place of humanistic geography was also
questioned by the postmodernists on the ground that the distinction between perceived
and real space was no longer valid in the world of booming hyperspace comprised of
digital environments and virtual realities.
Humanistic geography has been subjected to criticisms and rejection by modern day
geographical research due to its unscientific character and its associated gross inability to
provide generalisations, laws and theories. However, since any philosophy is largely an
outcome
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of thoughts originating in human minds, the importance of human ideas can in no way be
undermined. It is true that post 1990s humanistic geography disappeared as a distinctive sub
branch of geography, but interests in humanistic themes still persists particularly among the
phenomenological philosophers regarding the phenomena of space. Interestingly with time
humanistic geography with its continued focus on human action, human beliefs and
awareness; human interaction with their place in space and, the interpretation of that place
within space, have adopted psychoanalytic theories. The objective behind this has been to do
away with the criticisms regarding their obscured methodological and poor theoretical base.
It had also started focusing on the increased interaction between human and physical
geography particularly in determining the role of individuals’ perception in creating the
physical landscape.
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Welfare Approach in Geography

Welfare geography is an approach to geography where the emphasis is on
spatial inequality and territorial justice. Destined up with the rise of radical geography in the
early 1970s, welfare geography stresses the need to identify and explain the existence of
crime, hunger, poverty and other forms of discrimination and disadvantage. Welfare
geography sought to reveal who gets what, where and how.
Welfare geography focuses on the connection between the spatial variation of

need and structures of a provision in the creation of geographies of welfare (Smith 1973). A
rather late arrival of welfare approach in humanities and social sciences and particularly in
geography has several political, historical, and psychological reasons, e.g., the Vietnam War,
crime explosion, environmental degradation.
The welfare approach in geography has been defined differently by some

eminent scholars of geography.
Mishan was of the view that, “theoretical welfare geography is that branch
of study which endeavours to formulate positions by which we may be able to rank, on
the scale of better or worse, alternatives in the geographical situation open to society.”
Nath has defined welfare geography as that area of geographical study

where we can study the possible impacts of different geographical policies for the well-
being of society.
In the spatial context, Smith defined welfare geography as the study of “who
gets what, where and how.”
The geographers whose prime concern are the problems of society and are
trying to formulate more realistic plans for public policy by giving the description and
explanation of the phenomena. Through such analysis, they evaluate their plans and suggest
suitable strategies for the balanced development. The explanation involves the empirical
identification of territorial levels of human development and the human condition. This is a
major and instantaneous research area in which astonishingly little works has been done in
India and other developing countries as well as developed.
Geographers by their expertise can build up more sophisticated knowledge and

models of the process of development. This involves unscrambling and complex networks of
economic, social and cultural relationships and also the ecological relationships in
equilibrium, so easily disturbed by ill-conceived ‘developmental’ projects. Geographers by
sharing out, analysis and synthesis of space can contribute, successfully, meaningfully and
more efficiently to the formation of the policies for the public, property, etc.
In developing countries like China, India, and Brazil there is relatively a high
degree of internal inequality. On the other hand in the Third World nations, wealth and power
and other facilities of public interest are still largely in the hands of urban elites or big
landlords. In India, more than 50 percent of the population is still below the poverty line and
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on the contrary over 50 percent of the total national assets are in the hands of only a dozen
families. Moreover, in India, most of the economic activities are concentrated in metropolitan
cores, although still, more than 70 percent of the total population is residing in the rural areas.
The urban-based industrial and social infrastructural policy adopted by planners is widening
the already wide gap on the one hand, between the rich and the poor and on the contrary
between rural and urban population.
The highly advanced and developed countries like U.S.A., Russia, Australia,
and Japan also have spatial disparities in levels of human development. In the United States,
the overall material standard of living is higher than anywhere else in the world. Millions of
Americans, especially Negroes (black people), live in poverty and social denial in ghettos
(city slums). In many parts of the rural south of U.S.A. (Texas, Georgia, etc.) the living
conditions of some people are as bad as anywhere in the African continent.
The planners with the help of geographers can construct general social
amenities which can benefit all sections of the society. Geographers, however, cannot be the
cure for all the ills, inequalities and socio-economic imbalances that are persistent.
Geographers can analyze the spatial dimension of environmental problems, natural hazards
and more particularly they know how to handle, analyze and interpret spatially distributed
data. This consciousness of and facility of tackling the spatial dimension, which is a major
component of all problems of resource and environmental management, is something not
provided by those in other disciplines and have a tendency to be overlooked if a geographer
does not arrange it.
In countries like Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Israel, Denmark,

U.S.S.R., Australia and New Zealand where geographers in collaboration with the scholars
and scientists of other fields to design public policies. Which is effective and beneficial and
reaching all sections of the societies.
Difference between Welfare Human Geography and Humanistic Geography
By their efforts, geographers can bring the causal relationships between

inequality arising between the spatial organization of society and social structure. Public
policies about restructuring and rearrangement can be designed properly by the experts
through planning. The experts are those who have expertise in man-environment relation and
spatial analysis of phenomena. For this purpose, geographers will have to emphasize on
themselves through their applied and practical researches.
Although, human geography has appeared from earth sciences and has
persistent links with physical geography. Hitherto the core aim of this particular branch of
knowledge is to examine the various problems of different social groups about their
environment. At present, especially after the 1960s, the geographers have adopted welfare
approach as a go-to approach for the study of the human behaviour. The welfare approach, in
fact, emerged as the response to quantitative revolution, spatial science, positivism, and
model-building which was thought to be unsatisfactorily concerned with contemporary
glitches of human societies.
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The 1970s saw a chief redirection of human geography in the direction of

‘welfare’ issues such as hunger, deprivation, malnutrition, poverty, crime, distribution of
income, assets, and access to social services (e.g., education and healthcare). This
corresponded to a major change in social concern, from constrained economic conditions of
development or progress to wider aspects of the quality of life. Spatial distribution of
phenomena and distributional issues have presumed new importance in the present era of
slow economic growth, for in these conditions policies of distribution in favor of the poor or
socially deprived can be instigated only at the expense of the rich or better-off members of
society. This is also known as Pareto optimality—a condition in which it is not possible to
make some people rich without making others poor. The Pareto model assumes that one
society has touched the edge of production possibilities, i.e., if there is no more growth; the
poor cannot be made rich unless at the expense of the rich.
The basic emphasis of the welfare approach is who gets what, where and how. The ‘who’
refers to the population of the area under review (a city, region or country, or the entire
world), subdivided into groups by caste, class, race, or other relevant characteristics like
religion.
The ‘what’ refers to the different goods and bads enjoyed or tolerated by the population, in
the form of services, commodities, social relationships, environmental quality, and so on?
The ‘where’ reflects the fact that living standards differ according to the place of residence.
The ‘how’ refers to the procedure whereby the observed differences arise.
The initial task posed by the welfare approach is descriptive. The present state
of society concerning the fact that who gets what? Where? Maybe signified by the extension
of the abstract interpretations of welfare economics, and hence, the practical objective is to
give these empirical substances to the people. According to the Dictionary of Human
Geography edited by R.J. Johnston, D. Gregory and David M. Smith (1994), “ in a spatially
disaggregated society, the general level of welfare may be written as:
W = f (S1……. Sn),
Where S is the level of living or social well-being in a set of n regional

subdivisions. In other words, it can be said that welfare is the function for the distribution of
goods and bads among different groups of the people as defined by the area of residence.
Social well-being may be defined regarding what people get, as follows:
S=f (X1… Xm),
Where 'X' represents the quantity of the goods and bads consumed or experienced. Social
wellbeing may also be expressed regarding the distribution within the area in question:
S = f (U1… Uk), Where 'U' is the level of well-being, ‘utility’ or satisfaction of each of the k
population subgroups.
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In all the above expressions, the terms may be weighted differentially and joined
according to any function, to denote the combination of territorial or regional levels of
wellbeing, goods, and bads that maximize the objective function (W or S).”
For identifying a discrepancy in territorial distribution, development of social

indicators is of great importance. Such indicators may be as follows: housing, income,
education, employment, social orders or social participation, etc. The welfare approach found
Neo-classical economics as the least suitable one to explain social inequality. The Marxian
economics provides a useful tool for analyzing social problems such as housing, income,
education, employment, etc., because capitalism has an inherent tendency of to create
disparity. The second level of explanation deals with the process of how specific elements of
a socio-political and economic system operates.
D.M. Smith (1977), in his Human Geography: A Welfare Approach, first

suggested the approach which later amalgamated with other approaches of geography dealing
with the issues of inequality. The issues dealt by welfare geography demand an
interdisciplinary approach of the highest order. Moreover, in a rapidly changing era of
globalization where the developing South stands deprived vis-a-vis the advanced North, there
has been a transformed interest in welfare geography.
Welfare and Social Wellbeing
In the 1970s there was a major redirection of human geography towards social
problems, viz., poverty, hunger, crime, racial discrimination, access to health, education, etc.
The issues such as the distribution of the fruits of economic development received attention
mainly as a result of dramatic socio-political changes in Eastern Europe and South Africa.
The empirical identification of inequality in territorial distribution involves

developing social indicators. These may combine particular elements of social well-being in a
composite manner. Conditions that may be included are income, wealth, employment,
housing, environmental quality, health, education, social order (i.e., the absence of crime,
deviance and other threats to social stability and security), social participation, recreation, and
leisure. Alternatively, the focus may be on individual aspects of social well-being, such as
inequalities in access to health care or the differential experience of a nuisance such as noise,
air pollution and so on.
Descriptive research of this kind is justified because it provides information on

aspects of life hitherto neglected in geography. It also provides a basis for evaluation,
whereby the existing state is judged against an alternative (the past, predicted or planned)
according to some criterion of welfare improvement. Thus, the impact of alternative plans for
facility location or closure (e.g., hospitals, schools) could be judged by the test of which
would most equally distribute the benefits (such as access to health care) among the
population of various sub-divisions of the area under review. This raises the question of rules
of distributive justice and the manner in which they are applied (explicitly or otherwise) in
the political process. Although originally proposed as an alternative framework for human
geography, the welfare approach has now been merged with other lines of inquiry within
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geography directed towards the fundamental problem of inequality. Implicit in ‘welfare

geography’ is recognition that the issues in question extend beyond the limits of a single
discipline, and in fact, render disciplinary boundaries increasingly irrelevant. The welfare
approach logically requires a holistic social science perspective.
In order to achieve the welfare target, geographers are attacking social

problems and exploring the causes of socio-economic backwardness, environmental
pollution, and uneven levels of development in a given physical setting. Now, the main
objective of geographical teaching and research is to train students in the analysis of
phenomena, so that they can take up subsequently the problems of society as the fields of
their research and investigation, thereby helping the local, state and national administration.
Problems are being tackled with approaches ranging from positive to normative, from
radicalism to humanism, and from idealism to realism.
In brief, geographers are increasingly concerning themselves with the

problems of society, conditions of mankind, economic inequalities, social justice, and
environmental pollution. For reduction of regional inequalities and for the improvement of
the quality of life, the main concern of geographers is with what should be the spatial
distribution of phenomena instead of with what it is. It is in this context that the spatial
inequality in social amenities and living standards is investigated by geographers to trace the
origin of disparity rather than to condemn injustice.
24

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Perspectives in Human Geography-2

Geographical Thought (University of Delhi)

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

Radical geography is an approach to geographic research that seeks to

Radical geographers reject the spatial determinism implicit in spatial science;

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

1. The Vietnam War,

In the words of Poet (1977), radical geography developed largely as a negative

The salient features and objectives of radical geography were:

1. To expose the issues of inequality, deprivation, discrimination, health, exploitation,

To a certain extent, Radicalism was linked with anarchism. Anarchism called

Cooperation based production; decision-making at grassroots level, the spread

A great contribution of guiding geography towards Marxism happened

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

From the rhetoric of quantitative technique based analysis of geographical attributes,

Some of the limitations or weaknesses of radicalism are:

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

In brief, it may be said that geography cannot evolve through positivism

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

By the mid-1960s use of statistical techniques in research for precision has

Theories such as Central Place Theory, based on statistical and mathematical

Behavioural geography banks heavily on ‘behaviouralism’. Behaviouralism is

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

In behavioural geography, an explanation for the man-environment problem is

The basic philosophy of behaviouralism may be summed up as ‘the behavioural geographer

1. Men are rational while taking decisions.

Subsequently, Kirk (1952-1963) supplied one of the first behavioural models.

The aspect which was most enthusiastically adopted by geographers from

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

The objectives of behavioural approach were:

The salient features of behavioural geography are as under:

(i) As an objective environment—the world of actuality—which may be gauged by

No matter how partial or selective the behavioural environment may be, it is

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

On a winter evening amidst a driving snow-storm a man on a horse-back

2. Secondly, behavioural geographers give more weight to an individual rather than to

3. Behavioural approach in geography postulated a mutually interacting relationship between

4. The fourth important feature of behavioural geography is its multidisciplinary outlook. A

The fundamental arguments of behavioural geography are that:

1. People have environmental images;

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

The conceptual framework provided by Downs has been illustrated in Figure

(i) The phenomenal environment (physical objects);

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

The four-fold environment, advocated by Sonnenfeld, has been given as below:

a) The geographical environment (the world);

The behavioural approach in geography is a fruitful one and it helps in

The second critical assumption is that there exists a strong relationship

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Geography with Sandeep Sir

objection to this assumption is that it is an unfounded assumption because extremely little

Another significant deficiency in behavioural geography has been the gap