History of Behavioral Geography and Its Future

Abstract

Behavioral geography, which started in the 1960s, had lost its impetus on account of internal division and various criticism from radicals and humanists in geography after about 1980. Because of its perceived lack of social relevance at a time when social issues had become the major focus of human geography, behavioral research was often relegated to a minor role within the discipline.Behavioral geography, however, has revitalized since 1990. This stems from two sources: the theoretical pluralism in post-modern geography and interdisciplinary studies with psychology, cognitive science, and GIS.This paper has three purposes. First, it outlines a history of behavioral geography and describes its revitalization in the 1990s. Second, the geographical studies on cognitive map and cognitive mapping, which has been the most important research theme in behavioral geography, are critically examined. Third, this paper pursues the future development of behavioral geography surveying the new ideas in recent psychology and examining the raison d'etre of cognitive studies in human geography.In discussion, this paper makes the following pleas. 1) Behavioral studies in geography should look hard at routinized non-awareness activities in our daily lives in societal and cultural context. 2) The focus of the study should be on ‘behavior in space’, not on‘spatial behavior’, 3) The study on ‘vista’ will bring fertile perspectives to behavioral geography. 4) Behavioral geographers should notice that human spatial knowledge has various aspects.