28 HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY

Dr. Chandreyi Banerjee

DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANISTIC 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. Kant was also of the opinion that empirical knowledge could be obtained in two ways—either (i) through pure reason, or (ii) through the senses. Senses again could be divided into—(i) inner senses and, the (ii) outer senses. The world as perceived by the inner senses was the seele (soul) or mensch (man) while as perceived by the outer senses, was the Nature. 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. Prior to him, systematic geography only involved physical geography and, human geography was mainly confined within regional studies. His anthropogeographie was essentially a reflection of the Darwinian viewpoints and emphasized on the concept of natural selection that was used in the natural sciences.

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 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. Blache’s possibilist philosophy was carried forward by Jean Brunhes throughout France and other parts of the globe. His main emphasis was on the exploitation of the earth by humankind for satiating human needs and desires.

In fact, it was the French historian, Lucien Febvre, who is actually credited for coining the term ‘possibilism.’ In his ‘Geographical Introduction to History’ (1922), Febvre accorded to the Vidalienne tradition of possibilism. He 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.

The discipline of geography underwent several paradigm shifts and revolutions over time. The 1920s witnessed the revival of the positivist philosophy after. The concept was however, introduced in the 1830s by August Comte. The aftermath was a theoretical and quantitative revolution in geography in the 1950s. Schafer’s critique of Kant’s exceptionalism and the introduction of his ‘spatial organization paradigm’ opened the door for such revolution. However, in the 1970s there was yet another 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.

Humanistic geography sought to be more than a mere critical philosophy. Therefore, Anne Buttimer in 1978 attempted to resuscitate the Vidalienne tradition and asserted that any spatial unit should be studied from a local perspective (similar to Blache’s concept of ‘pays’) and with a historical approach. This was possible because some affinity was discovered between Vidal’s le geographie humaine and humanistic geography. But, there were grounds of departure between the two. Firstly, Blache considered human geography as a natural science and, many of Blache’s work contained the elements of functionalism which the humanistic geographers renounced.

    Humanistic Geography la geographie humaine and humanistic geography (Gregory, 1981)

   Humanistic geography also contained elements of neo-Kantianism and pragmatism in it owing to its emphasis on human consciousness and experience which were reflected in human actions and, which in turn, were directed towards alleviating human problems.

Though humanistic geography started on the same platform as of behaviourial geography, the two soon parted ways as, humanistic geography according to Entrikin concerned itself with the ‘subjectivity’ of both the researcher and the reconnoitered. It digressed from the formal structures of behaviourialism which otherwise was supposed to have a strong connection with the positivist/spatial tradition and was rather considered an outgrowth of that tradition.

One of the first geographers to advocate humanistic geography was the Irish geographer, William Kirk as early as in 1951. He published his ideas in his essay, ‘Historical Geography and the Concept of the Behaviourial Environment.’ But perhaps the time was not appropriate since by then, geography was greatly inspired by the positivist tradition to initiate the quantitative revolution. Later in 1976, it was Yi-Fu Tuan who argued for humanistic geography as concerned with people and their conditions. He opined that humanistic geography sought to achieve an understanding of the world through an insight into the human-nature relationship and the geographical behaviour of humankind as well as their perception about space and place. Geographical activities and phenomena were treated as the manifestation of human awareness and knowledge.

After the 1980s, humanistic geography advanced further from its early position of a critique of positivist philosophy to attack on structuralism. At the same time it developed an insightful methodology for empirical research. Two prominent streams of work were identified in humanistic geography. One stream tried to connect with the humanities by investigating knowledge that emanated from human feelings and experiences regarding being a human being on this planet. The other stream tried to connect with various philosophies of human and social sciences.

    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 behaviourial 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; the connection with pragmatism has already been mentioned before. 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.

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 presuppositional 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 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: As mentioned earlier, sense of place 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 an 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.

Four conceptual and methodological themes were identified as inherent of humanistic geography.

According to humanistic geographers, human life and experiences were regarded as dynamic and multivalent that had cognitive, attitudinal and emotional elements attached to them. Humanistic geographers asserted that the task of a comprehensive human geography was to identify these elements and understand how they contributed to human experiences and actions, as well as, how each of these elements were connected to each other in a supportive or contradictory manner. This may be made clear in the words of Tuan that every individual human was at the same time a biological being, a social being and an inimitable personality and all these three aspects were believed to be a function of environmental perceptions, attitudes and values.

Since human experiences were indefinable, humanistic geographers departed from the scientific methods employed under the positivist regime in which everything was to be explicated and verified empirically using statistical techniques. On the contrary, humanistic geographers adopted the ontological-epistemological perspective to encompass a much wider range of experiences; which would have created a framework within which the investigators would be able to study the experiences of their subjects with greater precision.

The humanistic geographers advocated that humanistic geography should have originated from the self-knowledge and first-hand experience of the investigator. At the same time, it should have also incorporated the experiences of the ‘others.’ The others could range from  people,  places,  any  natural  phenomena  or  any  aspect  of  human-environment relationship. This approach of humanistic geography brought them in sharp contrast with the objective approach of the quantitative paradigm in which the experiences of the researchers were greatly minimized. With regard to this, Tuan asserted that through an understanding of geographical experiences individuals developed a sense of environmental humility and acted more compassionately towards other humans and the place and the environment they occupied.

Humanistic geography employed the usage of two complimentary research methods—-

one that involved the explanations of experiences. It was based on a multitude of descriptive sources like first-hand experiences of individuals, archived reports and literature, evidence gathered through photography, films or any other forms of media. Its emphasis was to highlight the commonalities that existed in experiences related to a place or an environment. The other method that involved the interpretation of the social world was based on philosophical arguments rather than experiential evidences. It involved a wide range of philosophical traditions ranging from existentialism, pragmatism, idealism to post-structural Marxist approach.

CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY

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.

However, humanistic geography was not free from criticisms.

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 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 post-modernists 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 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.

References

• Adhikari, S. (2006) (4th ed.): Fundamentals of Geographical Thought, Allahabad, Chaitanya Publishing House.
• Entrikin, J. N. (1976): Contemporary Humanism in Geography, Annals Association of American Geographers, 72, pp.30-59.
• Gregory, D. (1981): Human Agency and Human Geography, Transactions, Institute of British Geographers, 6, pp.1-16.
• Husain, M. (1988) (Revised ed.): Evolution of Geographical Thought, Jaipur, Rawat Publication.
• Johnston, R.J. et.al. (1986)(ed.)(2nd ed.): The Dictionary of Human Geography, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, pp. 207-209.
• Ley, D. and M. S. Samuels (1978)(ed.): Humanistic Geography: Problems and Prospects, London, Croom Helm.
• Tuan, Yi-Fu (1976): Humanistic Geography, Annals, Association of American Geographers, 66, pp.266-76.