Quantitative Geography Research Articles

Theorizing with GIS: A Tool for Critical Geographies?

In this paper I explore the potential of using geographical information systems (GIS) in qualitative research by disentangling the seemingly rigid association of the field of geographic information science with quantitative geography. I examine the opposition between quantitative and qualitative methods as an extension of different epistemologies and not as indicative of their innate incompatibility, and reposition GIS within these methods seen as a continuum. I show that the always-assumed alignment of GIS with quantitative research has never been complete and the many openings in GIS enable qualitative research. I also discuss how critical geographers can engage with and transform GIS as well as enhance their explanations and social theory in general by representing spatially complex social processes and relationships.

Geomorphological equilibrium: myth and metaphor?

Equilibrium is a central concept in geomorphology. Despite the widespread use of the term, there is a great deal of variability in the ways equilibrium is portrayed and informs practice. Thus, there is confusion concerning the precise meanings and usage of the concept. This confusion has arisen because of the enshrinement of Gilbert's original ideas as a myth that supports a narrow, short‐termist, process‐based approach to geomorphology that developed following the quantitative revolution, and is furthermore essentially untestable. It may be better to represent equilibrium as a metaphor that underpins many geomorphological concepts and ideas, which are utilized in our everyday practice and which are built upon a relatively narrow, modernist perspective of the discipline.

Quantitative methods: not positively positivist

I IntroductionA chief reason why the past 10 years have notbeen kind to human geographers practicingquantitative geography has been the notionthat quantitative geography must be posi-tivist; more specifically, any practice ofquantitative methods is associated withlogical positivism. In my second report (Poon,2004), I suggested that quantitative methodshave undergone retooling in the field.Nonetheless, it may be argued that suchretooling does not move the Þeld away fromthe monopoly of logical positivism as thecentral way of knowing. In this third report,I pursue the theme that epistemology is amatter of representation and practice: inrecent years, this practice is underscored bymethodological and theoretical pluralism thatdoes not betray logical positivism as its foun-dationalist faith. Further, positivism has cometo be associated with narrow social interests,and the exercise of power from above. Again,this view resects a particular view of posi-tivism. Hence a second theme is to suggestthat the Þeld need not be an ally ofsocial con-servatism that promotes the narrowing ofknowledge representational perspectivesbased on technical Þxes.II Methodological pluralismClassical positivism, as practiced in the 1960s,was rooted in a form of formalism that islargely embedded in a deductivist tradition inthe Popperian sense where the focus is onrefuting falsehoods. Quantitative geographyand formalism were seen to share the samefoundation. In an extreme form, formalismoperates insensitively in an environment ofsocial facts and its monopoly reduces geo-graphic facts to a set of explanations that aresometimes trivial. The hypothetico-deductivemethod, in the spirit of Euclidean geometryand cartesian space, focuses on scientificpractice as a product rather than as a process.Geographic explanations are Opublic objects ofjustiÞcationO that can be veriÞed by an inde-pendent and logical set of criteria (Sebok,1995; Aliseda, 2004: 341). In recent years,however, pressure is mounting within thecommunity to constitute a more encompass-ing logic of inquiry that hesitates to assert inany doctrinal way in a world that is perme-ated with particularity and intersubjectivity.To borrow from McLennan (2002: 493), thisimplies that quantitative geographers are underpressure to Omove closer to realityO, Oemphasizenon-cartesian spaceO, Odo narrativeO.Notwithstanding its appeal, embracing theresexive turn implies a repudiation of anythe-oretical commitment since it is not possible tosay anything outside of oneOs social context.As noted by Bohman (1998), there is no clearway to think about the social organization ofcritical inquiry under resexive methodologies.

The quantitative revolution plus 55 years: relevant, testable and reproducible modelling?

The quantitative revolution plus 55 years: relevant, testable and reproducible modelling?

Stephen Jay Gould, Jack Sepkoski, and the ‘Quantitative Revolution’ in American Paleobiology

During the 1970s, a “revolution” in American paleobiology took place. It came about in part because a group of mostly young, ambitious paleontologists adapted many of the quantitative methodologies and techniques developed in fields including biology and ecology over the previous several decades to their own discipline. Stephen Jay Gould, who was then just beginning his career, joined others in articulating a singular vision for transforming paleontology from an isolated and often ignored science to a “nomothetic discipline” that could sit at evolution’s “high table.” Over the course of a single decade, between 1970 and 1980, this transformation had in large part been accomplished. Among those most centrally involved in this process were Gould, Thomas Schopf, David Raup, and Gould’s graduate student Jack Sepkoski, all of whom made major contributions in theoretical and quantitative analysis of the fossil record and evolutionary history. Recognizing that an ideological agenda was not enough, Gould and others developed and promoted new outlets, technologies, and pedagogical strategies to nurture their new discipline. This paper describes this process of transformation, and presents Sepkoski’s education and participation as exemplary of the “new model paleontologist”, which Gould hoped to produce.

What kind of quantitative methods for what kind of geography?

This paper asks why we teach what we teach to geography undergraduates in quantitative methods courses. We re‐consider the origins of quantitative geography and note how partial and historically contingent the traditional syllabus is. From this basis, we suggest that other approaches should be considered in order to provide a broader training in quantitative methods. We then propose an example syllabus that attempts to integrate a range of quantitative methodologies within a common, applied context that is also connected to relevant social, economic and political issues. We conclude that students with a better understanding of methods in physical and social science could be very valuable to the betterment of society, but to achieve this may require a change to our quantitative methods teaching.

Placing ideas: genius loci, heterotopia and geography's quantitative revolution

The paper is concerned with understanding the geography of intellectual creativity and change using as a case study the quantitative revolution in geography. First, I review briefly the sea change occurring over the last 40 years in understanding intellectual production, and made most forcefully in the literature in the sociology of scientific knowledge. I highlight three elements: the nature and persistence of intellectual breaks and ruptures; the embodiedness and material embeddedness of the intellectual process; and the centrality of networks and alliances. Secondly, I take each of these three components of intellectual production, and work them through different theories of place to illuminate the role of the geographical within each. In particular, I argue that the geography of intellectual rupture is clarified by using Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia, that the place of intellectual embodiment and embeddedness is elucidated by Kevin Hetherington and John Law's work on materiality, and that spaces of network and alliance are enhanced by the recent writings on place by Nigel Thrift. Finally, using these three features I present an interpretive analysis of the place of geography's quantitative revolution drawing upon 36 oral histories I conducted with firstand second-generation pioneers of that movement.

The Approaching Quantitative Revolution in Diagnostic Anatomic Pathology

The Approaching Quantitative Revolution in Diagnostic Anatomic Pathology

Ecologies of Value in a Wall Street Trading Room

Our task in this paper is to analyze the organization of trading in the era of quantitative finance. To do so, we conduct an ethnography of arbitrage, the trading strategy that best exemplifies finance in the wake of the quantitative revolution. In contrast to value and momentum investing, we argue, arbitrage involves an art of association - the construction of equivalence (comparability) of properties across different assets. In place of essential or relational characteristics, the peculiar valuation that takes place in arbitrage is based on an operation that makes something the measure of something else - associating securities to each other. The process of recognizing opportunities and the practices of making novel associations are shaped by the specific socio-spatial and socio-technical configurations of the trading room. Calculation is distributed across persons and instruments as the trading room organizes interaction among diverse principles of valuation.

Doing Justice to the Law

First, let us dispense with the issue of whether Tobler’s First Law of Geography (TFL: Tobler 1970)—everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things— is indeed a law. While logicians and philosophers of science define ‘‘law’’ strictly and precisely, physical geographers—and, I daresay, most other practicing scientists—have a much looser, more flexible, and more catholic definition of what constitutes a law. In Quantitative Geography, for example, Cole and King (1968) give six definitions of ‘‘law’’ used in geography, several of which would apply to TFL. The more relevant question, at least to the geoscientist, is the extent to which TFL helps us understand landscapes, climates, ecosystems, soils, and the other spatial phenomena we deal with.

Tools of the trade: the socio-technology of arbitrage in a Wall Street trading room

To analyze the organization of trading in the era of quantitative finance we conduct an ethnography of arbitrage, the trading strategy that best exemplifies finance in the wake of the quantitative revolution. In contrast to value and momentum investing, we argue, arbitrage involves an art of association—the construction of comparability across different assets. In place of essential or relational characteristics, the peculiar valuation that takes place in arbitrage is based on an operation that makes something the measure of something else—associating securities to each other. The process of recognizing opportunities and the practices of making novel associations are shaped by the specific socio-spatial and socio-technical configurations of the trading room. Calculation is distributed across persons and instruments as the trading room organizes interaction among diverse principles of valuation.

From Chicago to L.A. and Back Again: A Chicago-Inspired Quantitative Analysis of Income Distribution in Montreal*

In a recent issue of Urban Geography (2001), a number of key players in the 1960s and 1970s school of quantitative urban geography (called Chicago II in this article) set out some of the approach's key methodological premises and assessed its influence in the wider arena of urban studies. At about the same time, the 1920s and 1930s Chicago School of urban sociology (called the Chicago School in this article) was being reassessed in France (Huet 2000), and deconstructed in Los Angeles (Dear 2001). In this article, we outline a selection of basic models of urban space proposed by the Chicago School and further elaborated by Chicago II. We then consider certain aspects of three important critiques: humanist/aesthetic, Marxist, and postmodern. We argue that none of these invalidates the Chicago II approach to the study of urban areas, and we demonstrate its resilience and usefulness by way of the empirical example of Montreal. Though the results are of interest in their own right, the principal purpose of the analysis is to illustrate the type of insight that a structured quantitative approach provides and the way this approach rests on a theoretical understanding of processes at work in cities. We conclude by arguing that the humanist and Marxist critiques shed important light upon the possibilities and limits of the Chicago II approach, but that the postmodern claim that the spatial development of urban areas is not structured by at least some general processes is inaccurate.

American influence on Japanese human geography: A focus on the quantitative and GIS revolutions

Japanese geography has been greatly influenced by American academia since the Second World War. The first wave was the quantitative revolution, which occurred at the end of the 1950s. Sophisticated analytical techniques and fine spatial models were introduced to Japanese geography and used in empirical studies, especially in the field of urban/transportation geography in the 1970s. The second wave was the new geography in the 1980s, including behavioral, radical and humanistic approaches. The third wave was the GIS revolution in the 1990s, which has been promoting a problem-solving approach focusing on policy matters. In this paper, I discuss how American geography has impacted on the development of Japanese human geography during this half century.

Quantitative methods: producing quantitative methods narratives

Recent writings in human geography have claimed that practice of quantitativemethods in the field is retreating as accounts of knowledge move away from metanar-ratives to more discursive practices where sociocultural meanings are seen to beparamount for understanding geographic phenomena. Practitioners of quantitativemethods (QM) in geography have been criticized for their emphasis on generalizationand simplification rather than social construction of reality, their use of semiotics andrepresentation without recognition to positionality and authority, and their use of math-ematical or statistical language that obfuscates rather than clarifies (Curry, 1991; Binnie,1997; Doel, 2001). Rather paradoxically, just as quantitative geography is coming underincreased fire, other disciplines have begun quantifying geographic phenomena, andstepping up their production and use of quantitative methods in areas where somegeographers have abdicated in favor of more qualitative approaches. In sociology, forexample, mapping crimes has led to the ‘discovery’ of spatial statistics and encouragedthe rise of research in ‘geocriminology’ (Vann and Garson, 2001; Meier andBrantingham, 1999; Morenoff et. al. 2001). The new economic geography, in particular,has seen much quantitative analysis in geographic phenomena by economists. Thislatter point has also been observed by Lam (2003) in her recent analysis of NationalScience Foundation’s Geography and Regional Science research proposals.The criticism of QM as the operative methodology of human geography rests largelyon the repudiation of modernism and thereby scientism as the central metaphysicalbasis of knowledge production. Geographic locations present a ‘unique’ configurationof geographic reality whereas the modernist metaphysic leans towards the equilibriumof locations and synchronic spaces. Such unique-universal dialectics, according tocritics, are not easily resolved by modernism as much of the credo of modernism drawsfrom logical positivism’s precepts of prediction, objectivity, determinism, causality andlaws.

Mark Melton's geomorphology and geography's quantitative revolution

Mark Melton published some important papers in the late 1950s that have had a significant influence upon the subsequent development of geomorphology. Two of these papers were published in the same journal in the same year, and have a similar number of total citations, and these are compared in this study. Although both papers present novel empirical findings and discuss innovative conceptual frameworks, the extent and manner to which they have been used within geography and geology differs quite markedly. This reveals marked differences in the conceptual frameworks and research priorities of the two groups of scientists, which may help explain why geomorphology has proceeded differently on the two sides of the Atlantic since the quantitative revolution.

Reviews

Books reviewedNicky Chambers, Craig Simmons and Mathis Wackernagel, Sharing Nature’s Interest: Ecological Footprints as an Indicator of SustainabilityJonathan Dimbleby, From Here to Sustainability: Politics in the Real WorldH. Hötker, E. Lebedeva, P. S. Tomkovich, J. Gromadzka, N. C. Davidson, J. Evans, D. A. Stroud and R. B. West (eds.), Migration and International Conservation of Waders: Research and Conservation on North Asian and European FlywaysSteiner Andresen, Tora Skodvin, Arild Underdal and Jorgen Wettestad, Science and Politics in International Environmental Regimes: Between Integrity and InvolvementSteven Dovers (ed), Environmental History and Policy: Still Settling AustraliaAntoine S. Bailly, Philippe Cadene, Jean–Paul Ferrier, Lay J. Gibson, Eric Glenn, Jean–Pierre Lozato–Giotart and Jean–Pierre Paulet, Les treès grandes villes dans le mondeAndrew M. Marton, China’s Spatial Economic Development: Restless Landscapes in the Lower Yangzi DeltaPeter A. Rogerson, Statistical Methods for GeographyR. J. Buresh, P. A. Sanchez and F. Calhoun (ed.), Replenishing Soil Fertility in AfricaMaurits Van Den Berg, Land Use Systems Research on Strongly Weathered Soils in South and South–east BrazilLisa M. Benton and John Rennie Short (ed.), Environmental Discourse and Practice: A ReaderH. Arnberger and E. Arnberger, The Tropical Islands of the Indian and Pacific OceansSolon L. Barraclough and Krishna B. Ghimire, Agricultural Expansion and Tropical Deforestation: Poverty, International Trade and Land UseLesley Head, Cultural Landscapes and Environmental ChangeA. Stewart, A. S. Fotheringham, C. Brunsdon and M. Charlton, Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on spatial data analysisDavid Green (ed.), GIS: A sourcebook for schoolsRobert W. Dixon–Gough, European Coastal Zone Management: partnership approachesB. V. Bodungen and R. K. Turner (ed.), Science and Integrated Coastal ManagementJorge E. Hardoy, Diana Mitlin and David Satterthwaite, Environmental Problems in an Urbanizing World

Book Review: Quantitative geography

Book Review: Quantitative geography

Reviews

Books reviewed:R. Blong, D. Sinai and C. Packham, Natural Perils in Australia and New ZealandDavid Robertson and Aynsley Kellow (eds), Globalization and the Environment: Risk Assessment and the WTOLibby Robin, Defending the Little Desert, The Rise of Ecological Consciousness in AustraliaH. Millward, K. Beesley, B. Ilbery And L. Harrington (Eds), Agricultural And Environmental Sustainability In The New CountrysideA. G. Aguilar And I. Escamilla (Eds), Problems Of Mega Cities: Social Inequalities, Environmental Risk And Urban GovernanceA.s. Fotheringham, C. Brunsdon And M. Charlton, Quantitative Geography: Perspectives On Spatial Data Analysis

Reviews: Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis, Understanding Local Housing Markets: Their Role in Local Housing Strategies, Tourists in Historic Towns: Urban Conservation and Heritage Management, Web Cartography: Developments and Prospects, the Postmodern Urban Condition, Economic Simulations in Swarm: Agent-Based Modelling and Object Oriented Programming, Housing Associations and Housing Policy: A Historical Perspective, Transportation for Livable Cities

Reviews: Quantitative Geography: Perspectives on Spatial Data Analysis, Understanding Local Housing Markets: Their Role in Local Housing Strategies, Tourists in Historic Towns: Urban Conservation and Heritage Management, Web Cartography: Developments and Prospects, the Postmodern Urban Condition, Economic Simulations in Swarm: Agent-Based Modelling and Object Oriented Programming, Housing Associations and Housing Policy: A Historical Perspective, Transportation for Livable Cities

Quantitative Geography: Representations, Practices, and Possibilities

Representations of quantitative geography, both by practitioners and by others, have tended to associate quantification with empiricism, positivism, and the social and academic status quo. Qualitative geography, by contrast is represented as nonempiricist or postempiricist, sensitive to complexity, contextual, and capable of empowering nonmainstream academic approaches and social groups. Attempts to engage in debate between these positions rarely challenge this dualism, reproducing the representation of quantitative geography as logical positivism, and a dualism separating quantitative and qualitative geography. I argue that this dualism can be broken down, by deconstructing the underlying representation. I discuss why this representation came into existence and how it was stabilized; how close attention to the practices of quantitative geographers, and particularly to the evolution of these practices, reveals its inadequacies; and what new possibilities for quantitative practices emerge from this deconstruction. GIS, one of the recent manifestations around which representations of quantitative geography polarize, is used as a case study to illustrate these arguments. I pay particular attention to the question of the relevance of quantitative practices for an emancipatory human geography.