More Quantitative Research on the Quantitative and Theoretical Revolution in German Geography

Abstract

In the self-description of German-speaking geography, the late 1960s are regarded as a time when an epistemic rupture occurred that made a ‘revolutionary’ transformation of the discipline’s methodological and conceptual orientation inevitable. Disciplinary historiography often places the student rebellion against the regional studies (“Länderkunde”) paradigm and the old institutions at the centre of the narrative, probably most prominently in the commemoration of the Geographers’ Day in Kiel in 1969. This paper explores how fundamental changes in the epistemology of a discipline can be traced and narrated without relying on major events and the biographies of individual researchers. Therefore, in this historical review of the quantitative-theoretical turn in German geography, the transition from regional studies to quantitative and applied research is analysed in terms of citation patterns. With the historical network analysis, an approach was chosen that does not focus on individual persons, but analyses different actors and their connections to each other. With the help of a network of citations of German-speaking geographers in the four main geographic journals of the postwar period (Erdkunde, Die Erde, Geographica Helvetica, and Geographische Zeitschrift), the developments will be visualized and discussed more broadly.