People, Place, and Region: 100 Years of Human Geography in the Annals

Abstract

Human geography articles published in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers over the past century have gone through several overlapping phases that include Darwinian environmentalist approaches during the early part of the century, a strongly antideterminist cultural geography influenced by Carl Sauer at midcentury, and a science of “space” supported by quantitative methods in the postwar period. All three approaches take a regional perspective, although with very different definitions of the region. During the 1970s, regional and quantitative methods remained strong, although humanism and Marxism became the two dominant methodologies. Since the 1980s, and the emergence of a variety of poststructuralist perspectives, these two approaches no longer run on separate tracks. The past two decades have seen the rather later influence of feminism and antiracism as major themes in the Annals, as well as strengthening of economic and political theories. Presidential addresses have played an important role in influencing, or responding to, new directions in geography.