Spirals, Bridges and Tunnels: Engaging Human-Environment Perspectives in Geography

Cultural Geographies (formerly Ecumene)

Volumn 4, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 196-217

  Turner, B L ^a  

^a CLARK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH; MAN ENVIRONMENT RELATIONS; NATURE-SOCIETY RELATIONS; RESEARCH PARADIGM; THEORETICAL STUDY;

USA;

EID: 0030809177     PISSN: 14744740     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/147447409700400205     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. B. L. Turner II, ‘Thoughts on linking the physical and human science in the study of global environmental change’, Research and Exploration 7 (1991), pp. 133-5.
2. Social sciences refer to all disciplines and fields of study that engage human cognition, behaviour and structures beyond their biophysical elements alone, including portions of the humanities.
3. The A-axis is explained in the text. The B-axis, problem interests, involves the range of research topics engaged. On the C-axis, time is self-explanatory. Evidence refers to the accumulation of basic data generated over time, independent of the need to deconstruct and reinterpret that evidence.
4. Use of the spiral metaphor does not imply a teleological or goal-oriented system. The spiral moves upwards because base data or evidence accumulates through time and the amount of information generated at any moment increases, although these data may need to be reconstituted by changing perspective and questions. Spiralling, therefore, need not lead to better understanding, but it does provide the potential for richer understanding. This quality follows from the overall evidence upon which each new research core may draw as well as from the insights gained from preceding cores. This richness in understanding is only a potential inasmuch as research cores may choose to ignore the data and insights or be unable to reconstitute them within the new framing of the problems.
5. N. J. Smelser, Sociology (Oxford, Blackwell; Paris, UNESCO, 1994), p. 24, notes that a Kuhnian ‘accumulation’ model of science is not apparent in the history of sociology, and by implication the social sciences in general, because increased improvement in the validity of understanding is ‘rendered invalid’ by the next mode of understanding (perspectives or paradigms). The social sciences, implied in Smelser's argument, do not follow a Kuhnian pattern of paradigm advancement in the sense of improved explanations; rather, they change the fundamental structure of what constitutes explanations. Even if the accumulation model does not hold, the changing perspectives, if sufficiently appreciated, offer the potential for enriched understanding.
6. E. Sheppard, ‘Dissenting from spatial analysis’, Urban Geography 16 (1995), p. 297.
7. The impacts of this behaviour go beyond the practitioners. Their practice in seminars and elsewhere socializes their graduate students so that they learn to caricature other cores and individuals within them as well, often with minimal self-examination of the original literature.
8. See e.g. M. Komarovsky, ‘Some persistent issues of sociological polemics’, Sociological Forum 2 (1987), p. 562.
9. Some practitioners seek to define paradigms in terms of ideology. Philosophers and logicians, however, classify paradigms first on the qualities I use here (see Table 1). Ideology crosses paradigms, although it may be blurred with ontology and epistemology. See E. G. Guba, ‘The alternative paradigm dialog’, in Guba, ed., The paradigm dialog (Newbury Park, CA, Sage, 1990), pp. 17-27.
10. Merton, ‘Structural analysis’. See also M. Komarovsky, Common frontiers of the social sciences (Glencoe, IL, Free Press, 1957), and Smelser, ‘The alternative’.
11. K. Popper, Conjectures and refutations (New York, Harper & Row, 1968), p. 215.
12. For a corresponding assessment of academic styles in general, see A. Sullivan, ‘London diarist’, New Republic, 20 Nov. 1995, p. 50.
13. D. Gregory, ‘Areal differentiation and post-modern human geography’, in D. Gregory and R. Walford, eds, Horizons in human geography (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1989), pp. 67-9.
14. Historically, geographical education has involved studies in natural science (physical geography), cognitive and behavioural sciences (human geography, cartography), and the humanities (historical and cultural geography), thus engaging a large range of perspectives of understanding. It is not clear that contemporary geographical education encourages exploration of the full range of the subfields of the discipline and hence of the perspectives associated with that range.
15. Or, as W. Cronon (‘Cutting loose or running aground?’, Journal of Historical Geography
16. (1994), pp. 38-43) responds to D. Demeritt (‘Ecology, objectivity and critique in writings on nature and human societies’, Journal of Historical Geography 20 (1994), pp. 22-37), nature ‘is not entirely our own invention’. Furthermore, I find some of the criticism of the human-nature dichotomy somewhat disingenuous for at least two reasons. The dichotomy has always been understood to reflect a nature perceived and often reconstituted by humankind. Its use has been a convenience denoting a reflexive agent within nature's complex. Furthermore, it is difficult to detect much difference in the actual outcomes between work overtly employing the dichotomy and work seeking to eliminate it. The possible exceptions are those extreme perspectives that would deny the existence of nature independent of the imagination - a view, it seems, that would deny the evolution of our species with its imagination.
17. Different modi operandi are detectable in the way geography's subfields define and assess themselves; see G. L. Gaile and C. J. Willmott, eds, Geography in America (Columbus, OH, Merrill, 1989).
18. I refer to the following subfield entries in Geography in America: energy geography, water resources, cultural ecology, cultural geography, environment perception and behavioural geography, contemporary agriculture and rural land use, hazards research, and geography from the left. I do not consider the recently developed ‘human dimensions of global environmental change’ subfield. Practitioners typically identified as ‘physical geographers’ are considered where their work involves a direct human component and is identified by one of the subfields noted as part of its research contributions.
19. The contributions of Yi-Fu Tuan are a case in point. Subfields noting his influence in Geography in America are environmental perception, regional development and planning, hazards and regional synthesis - all subfields with strong postpositivist components. Most geographers think of Tuan as an intellectual leader in the development of humanistic geography, in opposition to postpositivism, and yet none of the subfields purporting to represent humanism in Geography in America makes reference to Tuan's work. See, however, the relevant sections of R. F. Abler, M. G. Marcus and J.
20. M. Olson, eds, Geography's inner worlds: pervasive themes in contemporary American geography (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1992).
21. W. W. Speth, ‘Historicism: the disciplinary world view of Carl O. Sauer’, in M. S. Kenzer, ed., Carl O. Sauer: a tribute (Corvalis, Oregon State University Press, 1987), pp. 11-39.
22. A. Bebbington and J. Carney, ‘Geography in the international agricultural research centers: theoretical and practical concerns’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers (AAAG) 80 (1990), pp. 34-48; J. N. Entrikin, ‘Carl O. Sauer: philosopher in spite of himself, Geographical Review 74 (1984), pp. 387-408; J. Leighly, ‘Ecology as metaphor: Carl Sauer and human ecology’, Professional Geographer 39 (1987), pp. 405-12; K. Mathewson, ‘Sauer south by southwest: antimodernist and the Austral impulse’, in Kenzer, Carl O. Sauer, pp. 90-11; L. Rowntree, ‘The culture landscape concept in human geography’, in Earle et al., Concepts in human geography, pp. 127-59.
23. Two of Sauer's late career publications suggest the degree to which he moved towards the humanities in its classical traditions: The early Spanish Main (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967) and Northern mists (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1967).
24. M. Reuss, 1993, Water resources people and issues: interview with Gilbert F. White (Fort Belvoir, VA, US Army Corps of Engineers, 1993); J. L. Wescoat, Jr, ‘The “practical range of choice” in water resource geography’, Progress in Human Geography 11 (1987), pp. 41-59.
25. See e.g. I. Burton, R. W. Kates and G. F. White, The environment as hazard (New York, Oxford University Press, 1978); J. K. Mitchell, ‘Hazard research’, in Gaile and Willmott, Geography in America, pp. 410-24. Human ecology questioned various facets of positivism, if only indirectly, through its emphasis on cognition and reflexivity. Critiques of human ecology, however, often imply that it was aligned completely with the logical positivist paradigm of its time.
26. Geography at the University of Chicago was an exception. Faculty of both cores were present, as well as those that would help to direct the emergence of cultural ecology. A review of human-environment dissertations from Chicago indicates a greater appreciation of the various cores than I claim for geography in general.
27. See R. W. Kates, ‘The human environment: the road not taken, the road still beckoning’, (A74A7)A,G pp. 525-34. Missing in many assessments of geography's position in the rise of environmental studies in American universities is the overall weak role apparently played by physical geography vis-à-vis ecology and other natural sciences. I too omit it here, save that many physical geographers directly engage and influence certain human-environment cores.
28. This fragmentation is difficult to attribute to the exceptional growth in the number of practitioners (see A. D. Hill and L. A. LaPrairie, ‘Geography in American education’, in Gaile and Willmott, Geography in America, pp. 1-26). It may reflect more the trend in science towards basing expertise on increasingly narrow subject domains. Regardless of the cause, fragmentation served as an impediment to the traditional, synthetic character of geographical contributions to research. Geographers began to mimic in their research the parallel speciality fields in other disciplines, and pay less attention to the more integrative perspective that is somewhat peculiar to the geographical tradition; they were increasingly thrust into a specialist-synthesis dilemma (B. L. Turner II, ‘The specialist-synthesis approach to the revival of geography: the case of cultural ecology’, AAAG 79 (1989), pp. 88-100).
29. The Price-Lewis and Cosgrove-Duncan-Jackson debate in the 1993 issues of the AAAG illustrates this point. This debate focused on the distinctions between what I refer to here as the cores of cultural landscape and new cultural geography. See M. Price and M. Lewis, ‘The reinvention of cultural geography’, AAAG 83 (1993), pp. 1-17; ‘Reply: on reading cultural geography’, AAAG 83 (1993), pp. 520-2; D. Cosgrove, ‘Commentary on the reinvention of cultural geography’, A8 A3AG (1993), pp. 515-17; J. S. Duncan, ‘Commentary on the reinvention of cultural geography’, AAAG 83 (1993), pp. 517-18; P. Jackson, ‘Berkeley and beyond: broadening the horizons of cultural geography’, AAAG 83 (1993), pp. 519-20.
30. These two cores differ more in their substantive interests and disciplinary outreach than in the broader perspectives taken. Resource geography is strongly ‘western world’- oriented, with strong links to economics, political science and policy studies. Cultural ecology, in contrast, is strongly ‘non-western world’ in orientation, with strong affinities to anthropology, ecology and agricultural economics applied to smallholders.
31. I recognize that a small set of influential practitioners existed at this time who do not fit into either of these two cores as I define them. I refer to those espousing more humanistic approaches to human-environment relationships, e.g. A. Buttimer and D. Seamons, eds, The human experience of place and space (London, Croom Helm, 1980); D. Lowenthal, ‘The pioneer landscape: an American dream’, Great Plains Quarterly 2 (1982), pp. 5-19; Y F. Tuan, Topophilia: a study of environmental perception, attitudes, and values (New York, Pantheon, 1976). The subfield referencing them in Geography in America is environmental perception, to which these and other individuals sharing their vision contributed. And yet the trajectory of their work is against the postpositivism that dominates much of the two cores. I am reluctant to award these practitioners the status of a separate research core, if only because of their small numbers for the period in question. This problem illustrates an important point: my cores are aggregations and abstractions that mask the variability of perspectives held at any one time.
32. Gaile and Willmott, Geography in America.
33. S. L. Cutter, ed., Living with risk (London, Arnold 1993); W. I Graf, Plutonium and the Rio Grande (New York, Oxford University Press, 1994); J. D. Ives and B. Messerli, The Himalayan dilemma: reconciling development and conservation (New York, Routledge and United Nations University, 1989); T. R. Lakshmanan and P. Nijkamp, eds, Systems and models for energy and environmental analysis (Aldershot, UK, Gower, 1983).
34. R. C. Mitchell and R. T. Carson, Using surveys to value public goods: the contingent valuation method (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future/Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
35. R. W. Kates, C. Hohenemser and J. X. Kasperson, Perilous progress: technology as hazard (Boulder, CO, Westview, 1984); S. Krimsky and D. Golding, eds, Social theories of risk, (London, Praeger, 1992); T. J. Wilbanks, ‘Sustainable development in geographic context’, AAAG 84 (1994), pp. 541-57.
36. Following P. L. Wagner and M. W. Mikesell, Readings in cultural geography (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1962) and perhaps implied in Price and Lewis (‘The reinvention’ and ‘Reply’), cultural ecology in geography may be identified as a direct offshoot of the cultural landscape core as merged with cultural ecology in anthropology. As noted by J. Leighly (‘Ecology as metaphor: Carl Sauer and human ecology’, Professional Geographer 39 (1987), pp. 405-12), however, the Sauerian vision of this core, at least in its later stages of development, did not favour the more ‘restrictive’ view appended to cultural ecology, including its strong links to science (Price and Lewis, ‘Reply’, p. 521). Thus, while cultural ecology drew much of its subject interest from the cultural landscape core (and its anthropological counterpart), the basic approaches taken were different in their intent and were strongly influenced by practitioners of foreign training, specifically Harold Brookfield and Karl Butzer (K. W. Butzer, ‘Cultural ecology’, in Gaile and Willmott, Geography in America, pp. 192-208; Turner, ‘The specialist-synthesis’) as well as by the sustained influences of Julian Steward, Robert Netting, and cultural ecologists in anthropology.
37. K. W. Butzer, Archaeology as human ecology: theory and method for a contextual approach (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982); D. R. Stoddart, ‘Geography and the ecological approach: the ecosystem as a geographical principle and method’, Geography 50 (1965), pp. 242-51.
38. W. M. Denevan, ‘Adaptation, variation and cultural geography’, Professional Geographer 35 (1983), pp. 399-407.
39. R. C. Netting, Smallholders, households: farm families and the ecology of intensive, sustainable agriculture (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1993). See Zimmerer, ‘Ecology’ for a different interpretation of the various components of cultural and human ecology.
40. It is important to note, however, that leading cultural ecologists strongly identify with ‘culture’ as a complex concept that cannot be adequately treated through the simplifications of generalizations and theory alone. Thus, while cultural ecology involved a move toward the natural science pole as framed here, its links with the humanities pole remained strong. See e.g. K. W. Butzer, ‘Towards a cultural curriculum for the future’, in K. E. Foote, P. J. Hugill, K. Mathewson and J. M. Smith, eds, Re-reading cultural geography (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1994), pp. 409-28.
41. P. Blaikie and H. C. Brookfield, Land degradation and society (London, Methuen, 1987). I read this work as an attempt at bridging in the sense that I use that term here. Others have subsequently employed the term ‘political ecology’ with different meanings and possibly intent (e.g. R. Peet and M. Watts, ‘Development theory and environment in an age of market triumphalism’, Economic Geography 69 (1993), pp. 227-53). Thus not only is the practice of political ecology diverse, the modus operandi varies from bridging to tunnelling.
42. D. Rocheleau, B. Thomas-Slayter, and E. Wangari, eds, Feminist political ecology: global perspectives and local expressions (New York, Routledge, 1996); M. J. Watts, Silent violence: food, famine, and peasantry in northern Nigeria (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983); M. J. Watts, ‘Powers of production: geographers among peasants’, Environment and Planning D 5 (1987), pp. 215-30; Karl S. Zimmerer, ‘Human geography and the “new ecology”: the prospect and promise of integration’, A8 A4AG (1994), pp. 108-25.
43. See e.g. A. Sayer, ‘Epistemology and conceptions of people and nature in geography’, Geoforum 10 (1979), pp. 19-43.
44. K. Hewitt, ed., Interpretations of calamity (Boston, Allen & Unwin, 1983).
45. J. Emel and R. Peet, ‘Natural resources and hazards’, in N. Thrift and R. Peet, eds, New models in geography (London, Unwin, 1989), pp. 49-76.
46. L. Rowntree, K. Foote and M. Domosh, ‘Cultural geography’, in Gaile and Willmott, Geography in America, p. 212.
47. Without restaging the Price-Lewis and Cosgrove-Duncan-Jackson debate, we must recognize that the new cultural geography and landscape history cores occupy similar positions relative to the A-axis and the other research cores. Many of the attributes ascribed to Sauerian historicism (cultural landscape or ‘old cultural geography’) seem present in the new cultural geography (Speth, ‘Historicism’, pp. 26-7). This observation does not, of course, deny the many differences between the two. If there were none, the metaphor of the spiral should be replaced by an ellipse.
48. Sheppard (‘Dissenting’) makes a similar argument for a ‘new social theory’ core within spatial geography.
49. Demeritt, ‘The nature of metaphors’ (p. 167) searches mightily to find a common ground between the reality of nature and human constructions of it. It is somewhat surprising in his ‘Ecology’, therefore, that he seems to move fully into the constructivist position, as noted in Cronon's (‘Cutting loose’) reply. Like Cronon, I concur with much of Demeritt's argument. His case, however, partially employs a ‘straw person’ logic to which I take exception. Thus we are informed, for example, that the work of A. W. Crosby T(he Columbian exchange: biological and cultural consequences of 1492 (Westport, CT, Greenwood, 1972); Ecological imperialism: the biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1986)) borders on biological determinism because it fails to emphasize the social struggles embedded within the subjects. I find it difficult to accept this conclusion, simply because Crosby chooses to write on the biological impacts in question without entering into the complexities of accompanying social relationships. That Demeritt does so conclude may have much to do with his favoured perspective.
50. Cosgrove and Duncan, Editorial, p. 3.
51. Of course, other geographers recognize this condition, although most imply that this pluralism involves perspectives that fall along the middle and right portion of the Aaxis (Fig. 2). See Graham, ‘Postmodernism’.
52. Rediscovering geography, the National Academy of Sciences’ forthcoming assessment of geography's contribution to science and problem-solving, indicates a renewed interest in the discipline by those outside it. That the NAS speaks of a ‘rediscovery’ also indicates geography's low standing (see e.g. R. F. Abler, ‘Desiderata for geography: an institutional view from the United States’, in R. J. Johnston, ed., The challenge for geography: a changing world, a changing discipline (Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1993), pp. 1-23). We must also recognize that part of the rediscovery involves the significant impact of geographical information systems as an analytical tool beyond the confines of the discipline, providing a springboard for more spatially explicit approaches to problem-solving. Geography and its human-environment domain should use this opportunity to benefit the status of whole discipline.
53. D. Gregory (‘Areal differentiation and post-modern human geography’, in Gregory and Walford, Horizons in human geography, pp. 67-9) and J. Pickles and M. J. Watts (‘Paradigms for inquiry’, in Abler, Marcus and Olson, Geography's inner worlds, pp. 301-26), describe fragmentation as a means by which research cores justify not dealing with one another, presumably in terms of substance as well as perspective. The source of the fragmentation, therefore, is internal, involving insecurities or some other attributes of the cores. Undoubtedly, there is some validity in this view. On the other hand, the differing modi operandi, as I attempt to articulate them here, operate as external impediments to bridging, thus reinforcing the fragmentation.
54. Abler, ‘Desiderata’, pp. 17-18.
55. Unfortunately, I have no more than personal (participatory) observation to support my conclusion, and would welcome a more rigorous and thoughtful assessment. My observations suggest to me that on average all cores do not equally recognize the contributions of other cores. And various attempts by some cores and practitioners to engage the many in truly collaborative assessments and research have not been very successful.
56. R. D. Sack, ‘The realm of meaning: the inadequacy of human-nature theory and the view of mass consumption’, in B. L. Turner II et al., eds, The earth as transformed by human action (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 659-72.
57. E. G. Guba, ‘Carrying on the dialog’, in The paradigm dialog, pp. 368-78.
58. Dear, ‘The postmodern challenge’; R. W. Kates, ‘The human environment: the road not taken, the road still beckoning’, AAAG 77 (1987), pp. 525-34.
59. Pickles and Watts, ‘Paradigms’, p. 303.
60. Sheppard, ‘Dissenting’.
61. Other geographers have recognized the need to improve such engagement. Those calling for it, however, differ from my views in at least one of two ways. As noted previously, they confer the status of competing perspectives in the social sciences largely on those falling from the middle to right portion of the A-axis (e.g. Dear, ‘The postmodern challenge’; Graham, ‘Postmodernism’), by implication dismissing perspectives of a postpositivist kind. And/or they imply that the social sciences display a directionality along the A-axis of those perspectives that will dominate in the near future. As noted in Guba (‘The alternative’), Merton (‘Structural analysis’), and many others outside geography (see n. 12 above), competing perspectives extend along the full range of the A-axis, and the postpositivism dismissed by some geographers will remain a central component of the larger social sciences into the foreseeable future.
62. Unfortunately, much of this bridging is accompanied by the apparent requirement to denounce ‘straw person’ logical positivism, as if the dead horse has to be beaten regularly lest it rise to run another race. This practice among geographers seems misguided to me for at least two reasons. First, as I have noted throughout, few, if any, logical positivists remain in human geography, and the many postpositivists that do cannot be equated or dismissed so simply. Second, a historical perspective surely suggests that the social-science research spiral will swing back towards the natural-science pole: The silks of the dead horse may race again, but on a new steed.
63. Blaikie and Brookfield, Land degradation.
64. J. Carney, ‘Converting the wetlands, engendering the environment: the intersection of gender with agrarian change in the Gambia’, Economic Geography 69 (1993), pp. 329-48; B. J. Cook, J. L. Emel, and R. E. Kasperson, ‘Organizing and managing radioactive waste disposal as an experiment’, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 9 (1990), pp. 339-66; Jody Emel, ‘Are you man enough, big and bad enough? Ecofeminism and wolf eradication’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995), pp. 707-34; J. L. Emel and R. Peet, ‘Resource management and natural hazards’, in Peet and N. Thrift, eds, New models in geography (London, Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 49-76; D. M. Liverman, ‘Drought impacts in Mexico: climate, agriculture, technology, and land tenure in Sonora and Puebla’, AAAG 80 (1990), pp. 49-72; ‘Evaluating global models’, Journal of Environmental Management 29 (1989), pp. 215-35; K. S. Zimmerer, ‘Soil erosion and social discourses: perceiving the nature of environmental degradation’, Economic Geography (639), pp. 312-27; ‘The origins of Andean irrigation’, Nature 378 (1995), pp. 481-3.
65. A. Bebbington, ‘Modernization from below: an alternative indigenous development?’, Economic Geography 69 (1993), pp. 274-92; Bebbington and Carney, ‘Geography in the international agricultural research centers’, AAAG 80(1): pp. 34-48; A. Bebbington and G. Thiele, Non-governmental organizations and the state in Latin America: rethinking roles in sustainable agricultural development (New York, Routledge, 1993); J. L. Wescoat, Jr, ‘The “practical range of choice” in water resource geography’; ‘The “right of thirst” for animals in Islamic water law: a comparative approach’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (1995), pp. 637-54.
66. D. M. Liverman, ‘Vulnerability to global environmental change’, in R. E. Kasperson, K. Dow, D. Golding and J. X. Kasperson, eds, Understanding global environmental change: the contributions of risk analysis and management (Worcester, MA: Graduate School of Geography and Center for Technology, Environment, and Development, 1990), pp. 27-44.
67. T. O'Riordan, ‘On integrating science for global environmental change’, plenary address, Annual Meeting, Human Dimensions of Global Change (International Social Science Council), Geneva, 1995.
68. I recognize, however, that the modus operandi has much to do with a core's view of how to go about inter-core collaboration. For some, this entails the announcement of a special edition of a journal or a compendium and requests for various core practitioners to participate. For others, it is the development and implementation of integrative projects or programmes, a far more difficult kind of collaboration.
69. D. Stoddart (‘To claim the high ground: geography for the end of the century’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers n.s. 12 (1987), pp. 327-36) and D. Demeritt (‘The nature of metaphors’; ‘Ecology’) have noted this point for historical geography and climate history. The implications for other areas of geography can be found in P. Stern, O. Young and D. Druckman, eds, Global environmental change: understanding the human dimensions (Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 1992).