Human Geography Disciplines Research Articles

The Role of Geography in The Healthcare Sector

Geography and health are linked to each other such as where we are born, live, study and work all these directly influences our health experiences. The air we breathe, the food we eat and the health services we can access. Geographical investigations of the spatial variation of diseases provide important insights into what contributes to disease outcomes and options for prevention. This means that health is a resource to help an individual perform their function in society, rather than an end in itself. Healthy lifestyle allows us to live a full life with meaning and purpose. The social, built and natural environment affect our health and wellbeing in ways that are directly relevant to health policy. Health geography is a sub discipline of human geography, which deals with the interaction between people and the environment.

Ideological productions in human geography as an apparatus of the state/power

ABSTRACT … ‘Humanity’ is an apparatus that could be used ideologically (Schmitt 1963, 55). This study analyses the ideological practices of the state/power -including panoptic surveillance and organic integrity practices- in the discipline of human geography through the lenses of curriculum, scientific freedom, and autonomy. Human geographers have long analysed the sociospatial traits of societies using scientific perspectives. However, in many socioeconomically less-developed countries like Turkey, human geography and other social sciences, portray social issues through the meticulously designed ideological expectations of powers, rather than universal scientific criteria. This ideological structure damages the scientific development of human geography and hinders students’ abilities to practice coexistence with other groups by instilling a dependent consciousness.

Defiant scholarship: Dismantling coloniality in contemporary African geographies

Colonial epistemes persist in studies of African geographies. We argue that colonial continuities are revealed in (a) the status of human geography within African higher education; (b) the marginalization of Africa (particularly beyond Southern Africa) within the discipline of human geography; and (c) erasures of the functions of racialization in African societies. These are compounded by the relative marginalization of African knowledge within decolonial thought, including decolonial geographies and the disunities between the subfields of black geographies and African geographies. To challenge some of these dynamics, we introduce the concept of defiant scholarship in Africa, a form of scholarship that seeks to work against and outside of dominant grammars and prevailing registers and which draws from a powerful and extensive intellectual tradition across the African continent. Working from Walter Rodney's ‘guerrilla intellectuals’ and drawing on Walter Mignolo's ‘epistemic disobedience’, defiant scholarship cultivates those ways of thinking and those practices that are external to, in opposition to, and/or unconventional to the coloniality of knowledge. We ask what it means for our scholarship to be disobedient to colonial and capitalist epistemes, and, in so doing, we sketch the contours of an African geographies subdiscipline that is anti‐racist, decolonial, and in active conversation with black geographies. The result of our engagement is a call for a reinvigoration of African geographies as we currently know and practice them.

The geo-constitution: Understanding the intersection of geography and political institutions

This paper draws on existing work in the discipline of human geography and cognate fields in order to develop the concept of the ‘geo-constitution’. This concept aims to: (1) highlight the importance of intersections between geography and political institutions in the constitution of government; (2) consider the path-dependent development of political institutions and their impact on statecraft and citizenship; (3) explore the implications of this for political reform. The paper provides an overview of current thinking in political geography and applies the concept of the geo-constitution to the example of devolution and localism in the United Kingdom.

The Planning and Architecture of Deportation, Imprisonment and Death - Reflections on the Ethical Implications of the Holocaust for Built and Natural Environment Disciplines

This paper is based on an exchange and dialogue between two academics on how the legacy of the Nazi period is relevant for built environment, planning and human geography disciplines. We argue that we should be reflecting on the conduct and utility of spatial and urban planning and design in the Nazi period from the perspective of professional ethics, not just as a historical reflection and remembrance but also to inform current and future generations of professionals.

Pregnancy Loss, Skin-Based Body Modifications and Agency

This article utilizes notions of ‘agency’ to explore the relationship between experiences of pregnancy loss and narratives about related skin-based body modifications. The term ‘pregnancy loss’ is used to denote a range of medical events with potentially far-reaching emotional and social consequences. The research from which the empirical content of this article is drawn seeks to bring together feminist interests and the discipline of human geography to examine experiences of pregnancy loss. Different aspects regarding ‘agency’ are attended to through several practices—namely, the acquisition, display/concealment and narration of skin-based bodily marks like stretch marks and memorial tattoos. This includes a discussion on notions of ‘choice’ in terms of receiving/acquiring changes to the skin through pregnancy and pregnancy loss, regarding which stretch marks and tattoos are often pitted as oppositional. A more complex picture of agency is explored and illustrated with the narratives of several women with pregnancy-loss experiences, highlighting that both kinds of skin-based modifications can be framed in more agential ways, including as appreciated reminders of simultaneous love and loss. In doing so, this article constitutes an attempt to engage with pregnancy loss from a feminist perspective, as encouraged by Linda Layne, and to contribute to feminist scholarship on body modifications.

A critical approach to discipline of human geography as an apparatus for state hegemony in Turkey

This study examines the hegemony of political power on the discipline of human geography in Turkey. Throughout the history of the country, human geography curricula have been aligned with the nationalist and hegemonic power politics of state authorities instead of being guided by universal norms, thus ignoring Turkey’s sociopolitical and cultural geography. This is reflected in the contents of human geography text books at the high school and college level. Similarly, the subjects of articles that have appeared in the 12 academic geography journals published in Turkey within the last 71 years also support this claim. The intervention of political power in the academic identity of human geography and the efforts to align human geography curricula with a certain ideological view have resulted in the emergence of apolitical geographers, who remain deaf and blind to social issues. This study analyzes the negative features of human geography education curricula and their political implications in Turkey, and proposes several recommendations.

“Cultural Branch” of Human Geography in Contemporary Russia: Genesis, Main Peculiarities, and Priorities of Development

This paper presents the overview of the historical origins, specifi c features, development trends, and key issues of development for the cultural-geographic branch of the Russian human geography. In the global academic landscape, this discipline is known as Cultural Geography. Two concepts are used on the national research scene: Geography of Culture or Cultural Geography. The impact of anthropological and cultural traditions, inherited from the pre–Soviet period of the Russian geographic science and anthropogeographic research approaches of the early Soviet period, on the development of cultural geographic research in Russia is analyzed. The consequences of the period of oblivion of the humanistic traditions in the Russian anthropogeography, which marked the cusp of the 1920s–1930s, for the development of economic geography in the USSR are investigated. The orientation of the national human geography towards the cultural geographic dimension at the end of the last century is explored. Statistical data on dissertations defended in the fi eld of geoculture between 1995 and 2012 in Russia are analyzed. Special attention is paid to the assessment of major problems and priority areas of cultural and geographical research in view of general trends and prospects for the development of modern human geography in Russia. It is concluded that the potential of cultural geography in Russia has not yet been fully tapped into. The theoretical and methodological framework of cultural geography has to be further developed. The authors point to the rise of the phenomenon of “neoculturalization” in the national geographic science based on a closer relation between cultural geography with other disciplines of human geography.

“Cultural branch” of human geography in contemporary Russia: Genesis, main peculiarities, and priorities of development

This paper presents an overview of the historical origins, specific features, development trends, and key issues, as well as priority areas and prospects for development, of the cultural and geographic branch of Russian human geography. In the global academic landscape, this discipline is known as cultural geography. Two concepts are used on the national research scene: geography of culture or cultural geography. The relationship between these two concepts is discussed. The paper analyzes how anthropological and cultural traditions inherited from the pre-Soviet period of Russian geographic science and the research approaches of anthropogeography of the early Soviet period have influenced the field of cultural geographic research in Russia. The consequences of the period of oblivion of humanistic traditions in Russian anthropogeography, which marked the end of the 1920s-beginning of the 1930s, for the development of economic geography in the USSR are investigated. The orientation of national human geography toward the cultural geographic dimension at the end of the last century is explored. Key features and development trends that were characteristic of Russian geography of culture or cultural geography over the past quarter-century are discussed. Statistical data on dissertations in the field of geoculture between 1995 and 2012 in Russia are aggregated and analyzed. Special attention is paid to the assessment of major problems and priority areas of cultural and geographic research in view of general trends and prospects for the development of modern human geography in Russia. It is concluded that the potential of cultural geography in Russia has not yet been fully tapped into. The theoretical and methodological framework of cultural geography should be developed further. In addition, research in this area is highly fragmented and suffers from a lack of coordination and dissociation with other areas of human geography. The authors point to the rise of “neoculturalization” in national geographic science, which is based on a closer relationship of geography of culture and cultural geography with other disciplines of human geography.

Placing Neoliberal Jesuses

This essay attempts to further James Crossley's project in Jesus in an Age of Neoliberalism by proposing the development of a literature on how historical Jesus scholars construct neoliberal geographical formations. Reviewing the discipline of human geography, this proposal suggests that biblical scholars move beyond examining geographical contexts for texts to show how historical Jesus studies actively make place. This approach is demonstrated through a brief case study of historical Jesus scholarship constructing and contesting the secular public sphere in post-handover Hong Kong, especially in the recent Occupy Central debate.

Geographies of energy transition: Space, place and the low-carbon economy

This paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process, involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity. The paper draws on a seminar series on the ‘Geographies of Energy Transition: security, climate, governance' hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011, which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography. Focussing on the UK Government's policy for a low carbon transition, the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy. Six concepts are introduced and explained: location, landscape, territoriality, spatial differentiation, scaling, and spatial embeddedness. Examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low-carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent – and contending – potential geographical futures are in play. More attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low-carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low-carbon economy will be like. It also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available.

Human Geography trains diverse perspectives on global development

PurposeEducation for equity in global development and cultural diversity calls for professional capacity building to perceive diverse perspectives on complex procedures of globalisation. The discipline of human geography is such a “provider of perspectives”. The purpose of this paper is to propose a historic series of how theories of geography and human development have emerged.Design/methodology/approachThis paper contributes to education and training by proposing a historic series of how theories of geography and human development have emerged.FindingsThe outcomes of this analysis of geographic paradigms offer options for the management of multicultural education in development. A critical synopsis and a combination of various paradigms on global development seem most promising for a holistic and comprehensive understanding of globalisation.Research limitations/implicationsIn particular, recent developments in human geography exhibit rapidly changing paradigms (ironically called “the Latin America of sciences”) and are hence difficult to systematise.Practical implicationsSpaces are understood to be communicational spaces, the substrate of which is enabling communication technologies. The theoretical contemplations of this paper permit to design learning environments, learning styles and related technologies.Social implicationsPerception and understanding of contradicting theories on global (economic and human) development facilitate education fostering multiple cultures of understanding. The author's own professional experience shows that only esteem for all paradigms can provide the full picture. Success means “collective production of meaning”.Originality/valueUnderstanding history frees us to reach future consensus.

Values, Places and Bodies: Opportunities for Forging a Deeper Understanding of Public Perceptions of Ccs?

This paper explores how theories and epistemological understandings from the disciplines of human geography and environmental ethics may be usefully deployed to further understanding of public perceptions of carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). In particular, the themes of values, place and embodied experience are explored in turn. The aim of doing this is to consider how reflection on some of the ‘deeper’ issues underpinning CCS projects has the potential to shed new light on how people come to hold particular viewpoints. This paper argues that alongside the endeavour of producing very practical advice and guidelines on public engagement in CCS, there is room to reflect critically on the contexts in which people form their perceptions of CCS and perform these perceptions. Doing this has the potential to offer new insights into what exactly it is publics may find troubling – or, indeed, appealing - about CCS.

Water Places: Cultural, Social and More-Than-Human Geographies of Nature

Cultural, social and more-than-human approaches to nature research are largely held apart in the discipline of human geography. In this paper I argue that these three approaches can be brought together to good effect. The paper presents a situated account of ‘water places’ in inland Australia—namely the artesian bores, boredrains and boredrain wetlands of the Birdsville Track—in order to demonstrate that together, these three approaches can reveal the complex interactions that form particular places, and comprise a more-than-human world. This account explores the layers of interaction that have formed these water places, including their insertion into the landscape through drilling, and their various roles: in opening the country for stock; in the Australian colonial imagination as means for developing the inland and the nation; as tools for displacing Aboriginal peoples from their country; as a focus for life in the desert; as key to mining and petroleum exploration; and in local controversy. It illustrates their physical and conceptual transformation from ‘bores’ to ‘wetlands’. The paper argues that cultural, social and more-than-human geographies are needed in order to effectively govern human relations with ‘nature’, and to better understand how to live in and with a more-than-human world.

Abstract/Résumé

This study explores the work of J.B. Harley (1932–1991), the British historical geographer and historian of cartography whose advocacy of a cultural paradigm for map studies has been widely influential across the humanities and social sciences. It examines his entire intellectual career: his doctoral studies in the historical geography of medieval England in the 1950s; his empiricist map analyses and cartographic studies in the 1960s; his first excursions in theory in studying map use in the 1970s; his work with David Woodward on The History of Cartography; and his forceful, compelling polemic for a post-structuralist study of cartography in the 1980s. Harley especially sought to create an intellectual identity for the field, first by means of academic cartography's communication models, supplemented by the art historical methodology of iconography, and subsequently by means of Michel Foucault's concept of power/knowledge and the analysis of maps as texts. This study accordingly provides a history of the late-twentieth-century paradigm shift in Anglo-American cartographic history, of the field's interrelations with the disciplines of human geography (including historical geography) and cartography, and of its own pretensions to disciplinary autonomy.

Explaining landscape change: Group identity and behavior.

There is an ongoing need for behavior analysts to look beyond their conventional interests and to conduct research on the behavior of individuals as members of groups, and there is a corresponding need for other social scientists to take advantage of the established and growing body of concepts and principles developed by behavior analysts. One possible area of investigation concerns behavior that changes landscapes that groups occupy and that facilitates creation of regional landscapes. Both landscape change and regional landscape creation are general outcomes of behavior that are conventionally studied by cultural geographers, a group of scholars who have shown little interest in, indeed disdain for, behavior analysis. Notwithstanding the unfortunate precedent, the prospects for an integration of interests are encouraging. The concepts of rule-governed behavior and of delayed outcomes appear especially relevant. Keywords: cultural geography, landscape, behavior, group identity, religion ********** Cultural geography, as one part of the larger discipline of human geography, is concerned with relationships between people and place. For example, cultural geographers focusing on historical topics are interested in human behavior and related landscape change and regional landscape creation. One research question might be: Why did Mormon settlers choose to venture significantly beyond the American frontier in 1847 and settle in an area that most contemporary Americans regarded as inappropriate? Another question might be: Why did British settlers in southeastern Australia move from the established coastal region to initiate a pastoral economy beginning in the 1820s? Answers to questions such as these usually refer to specific contexts of people and place. Thus, Mormons moved from Nauvoo, Missouri, to the Salt Lake region to enhance group identity and facilitate creation of a Mormon place, while pastoral expansion in southeastern Australia was related to the interest in occupying land suited to wool production. Behavior analysts will recognize that these examples of cultural geographic questions are about human behavior, albeit at a group scale, and that behavior analytic concepts and principles might be relevant in seeking answers. However, as discussed in an earlier paper in this journal (Norton 2001b), research along these lines is atypical in the context of a cultural geography subdiscipline characterized by subjectivist approaches. Written for an audience of behavior analysts, this paper aims to encourage researchers to expand their horizons to include studies of behavior normally of interest to cultural geographers on the grounds that behavior analysts are particularly well equipped to provide explanations and insights. Of course, cultural geographers are being encouraged to apply behavior analytic concepts and principles in their studies (for example, Norton, 2000). Expressed rather differently, for both groups of scholars, the aim is to suggest the value of a behavior analytic informed research agenda for cultural geography. The paper is organized into four sections. First, there is a brief review of selected concepts introduced by cultural and historical geographers that are implicitly behaviorist. Second, two analyses that are explicitly behaviorist are briefly noted. Third, group identities and the landscapes groups occupy, value, and change are further discussed with reference to behavior analytic concepts and principles. An optimistic, but admittedly uncertain, final section appraises the prospects for a cultural geography informed by behavior analysis. Some cultural geographic concepts It is possible to identify many instances of cultural geographic research that have behaviorist overtones, but few that are explicitly based on the logic of behavior analysis. Seminal work by Sauer (1925, 1941), the doyen of American cultural geographers, has been interpreted as behaviorist because of the focus on culture as learned behavior, because of the interpretation of culture as cause of landscape change, and because of the claim that cultural groups strive to maximize satisfactions and minimize effort. …

Human Geography, Regional Science, and the Study of Individual Behaviour

This paper discusses the relationship between the highly disaggregated studies of spatial behaviour and perception, which are becoming more and more commonplace in the geographic and planning literature, and the basic tenets of the methods generally accepted within the parent disciplines of human geography and regional science. The argument is advanced that the relationship is an unfortunate one of dependence; that behavioural research in geography has accepted too easily a philosophy of science and an approach to problem formulation and hypothesis testing which is ‘handed down’ indirectly from the natural sciences; and that this limitation has effectively precluded a whole range of approaches to the study of human spatial behaviour, approaches which could be very fruitful indeed.