Paradigms in Geography PDF

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CBCS B.A.(Hons.) Geography III year VI Semester (January-May, 2020) Core Paper – Evolution of Geographical Thought Assignment Topic: Paradigms in Geography

Submitted by: Milind Shekhar Anand

Submission date: March 27, 2020

Department of Geography Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007.

INTRODUCTION Geography, the term derived from Geographia as coined by Eratosthenes , broadly means description of earth. The simplicity the term provides about its subject matter is totally opposite of what it encompasses as a discipline. The subject matter of Geography was not delineated with the coining of the term, instead it took various debates and researches of known scholars and geographers to decide the matter to be studied in the course of many years. The differing ideologies and methods of study of different scholars laid down a foundation of a common course of thought which dominated a certain period of time and directed the path of study and subject matter of the discipline. This dominated course of thought was later termed as paradigms.

Kuhn’s Paradigm The American historian of science, S. Thomas Kuhn, postulated a very important theory about the growth and development of science. According to him, science is not a well-regulated activity where each generation automatically builds upon the results achieved by earlier workers. It is a process of varying tension in which tranquil periods characterised by steady accretion of knowledge are separated by crises which can lead to upheaval within subject disciplines and breaks in continuity. Since Geography had a tint of both science and an art as a discipline the idea given by Kuhn saw a major applicability in this area. Hettner agreed that changes could occur, but was upholding the importance of historical continuity. Kuhn rejected such veneration of the past, arguing instead that fundamental changes are often necessary to enable science to progress. While it is possible to determine objectively whether an explanatory framework is satisfactory and reasonable within a specific scientific tradition, we have to choose between different scientific traditions – and this choice is subjective. We must select what Kuhn calls paradigms (models or exemplars) for our science. Kuhn conflated two conceptually distinct types of paradigm:-

Paradigm

Exemplar

Disciplinary matrix

• Exemplar- A concrete problem solution within a discipline that serves as a model for successive scientists. Generally, such exemplars tie a scientific theory together, serving as an example of a successful and striking application. • Disciplinary Matrix- It is the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community. A disciplinary matrix may be shared by a large group of members of a discipline while, at the same time, each member is working with different ‘exemplars’ in his or her everyday research. It is in the sense of a disciplinary matrix that the term ‘paradigm’ has most commonly been applied to geography. As represented by Hagget these are ‘supermodels’ of a discipline that provide best methods of investigation. Kuhn used this concept in at least 21 different ways. These were collapsed into three paradigm types by Masterman: Metaphysical Paradigm •Presents a total global view of science •Defines the concern of a particular scientific community.

Sociological Paradigm •Grounded on concrete scientific achievement; •A universally recognised scientific achievement

Construct Paradigm •Specific entities such as a textbook, an instrument, or a classic work are viewed as paradigms •Central to the development of paradigmatic sciences.

According to Kuhn, the model of a discipline’s development encompasses the evolution of the concept of paradigm also including the shift in paradigm. Diagrammatically it can be shown as:

PreParadigm Phase

Professionalization

Paradigm A

Crisis

Revolution

Paradigm B

This diagram illustrates the evolution of a paradigm which is eventually overtaken by another paradigm 1. Pre-paradigm period is marked by conflicts between several distinct schools around individual scientists. 2. The transition begins when the question as to what a specific science is about becomes acute. One of the conflicting schools of thought will often dominate the others in that it seems best suited to win the discipline’s academic esteem 3. A paradigm is established that leads to concentrated research within a clearly distinguishable problem area 4. This happens when more problems are accumulated than can be solved within the framework of the ruling paradigm 5. This stage shows a break in the continuity of research and a thorough going reconstruction of the research field’s theoretical structure, rather than steady development and the accumulation of knowledge 6. Another thinking process begins which solves hitherto problems and thus a new paradigm is established.

Kuhn gave a diagrammatic explanation of his model as follows –

Relationship between Theory, Philosophy and Paradigm – According to Ritzer: ‘theories are not paradigms, but only one aspect of a far broader unit that is a paradigm’. Meta-paradigm and the sociological paradigm ‘are prior to theory’. Such paradigms precede or are combinations of law, theory and methodology. In summary, although some theories can be equivalent to paradigms (as in the physical sciences), generally, this is not the case. Philosophy is a speculative, descriptive, normative and analytical discipline that investigates the presuppositions and the scientific work of practitioners in a discipline. Philosophy evaluates what has been done, and from there, it may suggest what should be studied by a discipline. This implies that philosophy not only evaluates but also creates a framework for research. It is an evaluation of how the discipline has conducted research; what questions the researchers

have asked, and how these questions have been investigated within the framework of both normative and societal structures. Closely associated with both philosophy and paradigms is methodology. Stated briefly, a methodology is the logic of an explanation, and a methodologist is concerned primarily ‘with the logic of explanation, with ensuring that our arguments are rigorous, that our inferences are reasonable, that our method is internally coherent’. All disciplines are concerned with both explanation and prediction. In the process of explanation, philosophy comes into play in critically assessing the objectives of the explanation and how they are achieved. Theory is used to create the bases for the explanation. The figure denotes these interrelationships-

PARADIGMS IN GEOGRAPHICAL THOUGHT Geography had to confront many evolutionary and methodological problems. It passed from the descriptive and teleological phase to the quantitative, radical and dialectical materialism stage. Various methodologies have been adopted to give precise and reliable description of places in literary as well as mathematical languages. Yet, a consensus has not been reached about the nature of the discipline’ and its laws and paradigms.

Various scholars defined geography as: Hartshorne, 1959 - “Geography is concerned to provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth’s surface.” Taaffe, 1970 – “The contemporary stress is on geography as the study of spatial organisation expressed as patterns and processes.” Yeates, 1968 – “Geography can be regarded as a science concerned with the rational development, and testing, of theories that explain and predict the spatial distribution and location of various characteristics on the surface of the earth.” Major changes took place in every aspect of geographical thought during the 1950s and 1960s but there is no general consensus as to what degree the many innovations that took place during those decades fundamentally changed the discipline. Every scholar viewed at the discipline from a different perspective. Bird (1977) has argued that Kuhn has been the most influential scientific methodologist as far as geography is concerned. Mair (1986) suggests that geographers influenced by Kuhn fall into two groups. First there are those who

have used Kuhn to legitimize their propaganda for a ‘paradigm change’ within the discipline and as a weapon against the scientific ‘establishment’. Second, several geographical historiographers have tried to apply a Kuhnian model to the development of geographical thought. The paradigm concept has taken on a life of its own beyond that originally envisaged by Kuhn, and as such has been regarded as a useful ‘exemplar’ (model or teaching framework) for histories of geography.

The figure given above attempts to systematize the theoretical development of geography up to the 1950s, but it gives an incomplete and oversimplified picture as only the main concepts in the subject’s development are shown. Over the course of time, these concepts have changed in significance and connotation. In Kuhn’s terminology, until Darwin’s time geography was in its pre-paradigm period. Later on this pre-paradigm period made way for consecutive formation of paradigms by various scholars. The major paradigms in Geography can be studied as-

DETERMINISM This paradigm was established in the latter half of the nineteenth century dominated by the works of Friedrich Ratzel. Most of his ideas on human geography were published in 1882 under the title of Anthropogeographie (Volume 1). He viewed geography as ‘the connection between the natural sciences and the study of man’. He advocated environment-dominated-manresponse approach. Geographical Determinism presented the point of view that human action is determined by the physical environment. It asserts that human history, culture, society and lifestyles, development, etc are shaped by their physical environment. This approach was extended further especially in United States by scholars such as Huntington, Semple, Davis etc. 1. W. M. Davis He stated that geography was concerned with the analyses of the relationships between inorganic control and organic response. As he put it:

“any statement is of geographic quality if it contains a reasonable relation between some inorganic element of the earth on which we live, acting as control, and some elements of the existence or growth or behaviour or distribution of the earth’s organic inhabitants, serving as a response”. Based over the Darwinian concept of evolution he developed the cycle of erosion of landforms. Moreover, he tried to establish cause and effect relationships and generalisations which was one of the basic themes of determinism (Newtonian cause and effect). 2. E. C. Semple To her man, like other organisms was the product of earth as she remarked, “Man is the product of the earth's surface. This means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him to task, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him problems of navigation or irrigation and at the same time whispered hints to solution.” She also wrote a book Influences of Geographical Environment (1911) where she examined the physical factors that control the development of civilisations. 3. Ellsworth Huntington In his works The Pulse of Asia and Civilization and Climate, he described how the climate influences human occupancy and civilisation, and how the climate stimulates the development of human accomplishment. His work led to a subset in geography called climatic determinism in the early 20th century.

POSSIBILISM The foundation of Possibilism was laid down by the second volume of Anthropogeographie by Ratzel which was published in 1891, although it was brought to the front by the endeavours of French Geographer Vidal de la Blache. Unlike the inorganic control-organic response basis of the environmental determinists, Vidalian tradition minimised the influences of the environment. He led the possibilist approach in his book Tableau de la Geographie de la France (1903). Central to the works of Blache was the idea of genre de vie (way of life) that have developed in different geographic environments. Blache’s idea were developed in his later works of La France de

Vest (Paris, 1917), and in his Principles de Geographie Humaine (1922). Possibilism explains that the environment does not dictate what people would become, but rather that the environment offers the opportunities for people what they choose to be. People adapt to the different conditions the earth has to offer at different places and that is how different living conditions and habits arise. This Vidalian tradition established by Blache was essentially forwarded by his disciples in France mainly. The important scholars of possibilism include 1. Jean Brunhes Brunhes proposed a classification of geographic facts that made Blache' s concepts easier to transmit in the classroom. Brunhes wrote that the two basic maps for the study of human geography are a map of water and a map of population. It was Brunhes who enunciated the first explicit formulation of human geography as a systematic approach to the study of geography. She also tried to blend the idea of genre de vie and kulturlandschaft of Schluter to give a dynamic outlook to geography. 2. Emmanuel de Martonne He was a leading physical geographer of his time. He held physical geography to be an essential part of the scheme of geographical study of areas. He maintained a consistent interest in geomorphology and climatology. He combined this interest with regional expertise in the geography of Central Europe. One of the most influential geographers of the interwar period in Europe, de Mortonne was a strong supporter of Davisian geomorphology which he popularized in the French academic circles. His 1927 study on the identification of arid regions through the use of aridity index, was a major contribution to the study of climate. 3. H. H. Barrows He emphasised the non-recursive feedback relationship between man and the environment in his ecological conceptualisation that was in contrast to the determinist trend of the then US geography. He went to quote that the adjustments in the human lives were a matter of choice rather than being caused by physical environment. This he termed as Human Ecology. Human ecology is an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The philosophy and study of human ecology has a diffuse history with advancements in ecology, geography, sociology, psychology, anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, public health, and home economics, among others.

LANDSCAPE PARADIGM This paradigm developed after World War-I mainly through the contributions of Carl Sauer. Sauer’s ideas, in his earlier four papers, were more fully developed in ‘The Morphology of Landscape’ (1925). He rejected areal differentiation, asserting that the geographer’s role is to investigate and understand the nature of the transition from the natural to the cultural landscape, and the successive stages through which the cultural landscape has passed during its transformation. From such an exercise the geographer would identify the major changes that have occurred in an area as a result of occupancy by a succession of human groups. He went on to develop a historical framework for the study of landscape development with a focus on the patterns of human occupancy rather than on the socio-cultural agencies that generate the patterns. Sauer was a fierce critic of environmental determinism, which was the prevailing theory in geography when he began his career. He proposed instead an approach variously called "landscape morphology" or "cultural history." This approach involved the inductive gathering of facts about the human impact on the landscape over time. Sauer was influenced by Otto Schluter and Siegfried Passarge. 1. Otto Schluter Schluter propounded that the reconstruction of the original landscape (Urlandschaft) was important for the study of landscape on historical scale where the landscape was transformed by the man (Kulturlandschaft). He insisted that geographers look first at the things on the surface of the Earth that could be perceived through the senses and at the totality of such perceptions—the landscape. He objected to the chorological definition of geography, and noted that accepting the landscape as the subject matter of geography would give the field a logical definition. Schluter’s landscape morphology was a distinct form of regional geography and he insisted that geographers should consider and emphasise the form and spatial structure created by visible phenomena on the surface of the Earth as their unifying theme. All human distributions of non- material character, such as social, economic, racial, psychological and political conditions, should be

excluded from the study as ends in themselves, but they could be considered while explaining the observable landscape. 2. Siegfried Passarge He saw landscape as a spatial system which according to him was an assemblage of interrelated elements. Thus, Passarge saw landscape as a type rather than being unique. He also tried to develop a hierarchy of the unit area of landscape as follows –

Major Regions

Landschatsgebirte

Region

Sections

Slopes

REGIONAL PARADIGM This paradigm was essentially concerned with areal differentiation where geography was explained by Hartshorne as – “An accurate, orderly and rationale description of variable character of earth’s surface”. Hartshorne used the term, areal differentiation to characterise the way in which geographers dealt with the wide variety of phenomena physical, economic, and social, which exist together in area and distinguish them from other areas. The Nature of Geography was a synthesis of the works of European and American geographers, but it also provided, by incisive comments and through subsequent elucidations in papers and conferences, a geographic research viewpoint that advocated regional studies emphasising areal differentiation. Regional Paradigm was specifically associated with the chorological view of Ricthofen and Hettner. 1.Ferdinand von Richtofen He was a German traveller, geographer, and scientist. He is noted for coining the terms "Silk Road(s)" or "Silk Route(s)" in 1877.He also standardized the practices of chorography and chorology. He published his geographical, geological, economic, and ethnological findings in three volumes with an atlas, which, however, did not cover the entire field or complete the author's plan.

2. Alfred Hettner He was a German geographer. He is known for his concept of chorology, the study of places and regions, a concept that influenced both Carl O. Sauer and Richard Hartshorne. Apart from Europe, his fieldwork concentrated mainly on Colombia, Chile and Russia.

SPATIAL PARADIGM The 1950s and 1960s were periods of discontentment with the subject matter of geography, and the widespread acceptance of quantitative methods made changes and shifts in the discipline inevitable. Historically, Schaefer’s attack on exceptionalism in geography and his advocacy for a geography that is more nomothetic and based on spatial theories, may mark the inception of the spatial viewpoint in geography. This paradigm was spearheaded by F.K.Schaefer in his article Exceptionalism in Geography (1953) .Schaefer advocated the use of spatial laws as a basis for geographic explanation. He wrote “description, even if followed by classification, does not explain the manner in which phenomena are distributed over the world. To explain the phenomena one has described means always to recognize them as instances of laws.” Ullman The spatial viewpoint advocated by Schaefer was restated by Ullman in the same year. He suggested that geog...