Approaches To Human Geography - Selamat Datang Di Pusat .

01-Aitken-3325(ch01).qxd111/24/200512:23 PMPage 1WAYS OF KNOWING AND WAYS OF DOINGGEOGRAPHIC RESEARCHStuart Aitken and Gill ValentineThis book is intended as an accessibleintroduction to the diverse ways of knowingin contemporary geography with the purposeof demonstrating important and strategic linksbetween philosophies, theories, methodologies and practices. As such it builds on theother books in this series: Key Concepts(Holloway, Rice and Valentine, 2003); KeyMethods (Clifford and Valentine, 2003); andKey Thinkers (Hubbard, Kitchin and Valentine,2004). Our intention is to guide beginningstudents in the sometimes complex and convoluted links between ways of knowing andways of doing geographical research. It isa philosophical reader designed to be a practical and usable aid to establishing a basis forresearcher projects, theses and dissertations. Itis an attempt to lift the seemingly impenetrable veil that sometimes shrouds philosophicaland theoretical issues, and to show how theseissues are linked directly to methodologies andpractices.The book highlights some intenselyserviceable aspects of a diverse array of philosophical and theoretical underpinnings – whatwe are calling ways of knowing. It makes acase for embracing certain ways of knowing interms of how they inform methods and practices. We believe that ways of knowing drivenot only individual research projects but alsothe creative potential of geography as a discipline. Philosophies and theories, as ways ofknowing, are not simply academic pursuits withlittle bearing on how we work and how we liveour lives.The book avoids jargon-laden, impenetrable language and concepts while not sacrificing the rigour and complexity of the ideasthat underlie geographic knowledge and theways that it is conflicted and contested. It iswritten for students who have not encountered philosophical or theoretical approachesbefore and, as such, we see the book as a beginning guide to geographic research and practice. We believe that grounding research inphilosophy and theory is essential for humangeography research because it provides a hookfor empirical work, it contextualizes literature reviews, it elaborates a corpus of knowledge around which the discipline grows, itenergizes ideas, and it may legitimate social andpolitical activism. In addition, and importantly,an understanding of philosophy and practicedirects the discipline of geography conceptually and practically towards progressive socialchange by elaborating clearer understandingsof the complexity of our spatial world.The book is split into three parts: philosophies, people and practices. In the first part,leading academics make special and partial‘cases for’ particular philosophies, and illustratetheir argument with short examples.Althoughit is far from comprehensive, the part coversa large swathe of philosophical perspectivesand highlights some of the tensions betweenvarious ways of knowing. It is not intendedto offer the student an all-inclusive guideto philosophies in geography (this is betterachieved by more specialist texts such as

01-Aitken-3325(ch01).qxd11/24/200512:23 PMPage 22ÿÿKEY APPROACHESJohnston, 1991; Cloke et al., 1991; Unwin,1992) but rather it offers practical insight intohow philosophies inform work and howresearch questions are always based onassumptions and choices between differentways of knowing.The chapters do not resolvephilosophical debates; instead they lead students to consider what choices and assumptions must be made when beginning a researchproject, and when choosing methodologies.The second part of the book places geographic thought amidst the complexity andstruggle of people contextualized in places.Within contemporary human geographythere is an emphasis on situated or contextualknowledges – which has its roots in the feminist belief that ‘the personal is political’ and critical feminist science’s challenge to traditionalconceptions of scientific practice as objectiveand disembodied (Haraway, 1991; Rose,1997).Thus personal writing is seen by manyas an important strategy to challenge the disembodied and dispassionate nature of previousacademic writing (e.g. Moss, 2001). In thesecond part, several prominent geographerswrite about the people, places and events thatshaped their personal ways of knowing. Finally,philosophy is often taught separately frommethodology, which means that students sometimes fail to recognize the connections betweentheories and practices. The final part outlinessome of these relationships and illustrates themwith examples from a range of geographicalstudies.Students beginning a research project ingeography encounter a mind-boggling arrayof methodologies and practices. Thesemethodologies and practices are linked incomplex ways to theories and philosophies.Geographical research comprising a cloudyweb of methodologies, theories, philosophiesand practices ultimately elaborates geographical knowledge. We have tried to representthis complexity in Figure 1.1, and yet this diagram structures and represents our concernstoo simply.Ways of doing are not attached to staticways of knowing but rather are changing asone set of ideas is challenged and informedby others. How we come to approach theworld through theories and philosophies –our ways of knowing – is constantly refined,challenged, rejected and/or transformed.Customarily, theoretical traditions (positivism, humanism, Marxism, feminism, etc.)have been understood to emerge and dominate geographical thinking at particular timesfor a particular period. In other words, theyhave become what Kuhn (1962) termed‘dominant paradigms’. As such, some writershave mapped out the development and adoption of different philosophic approacheswithin the discipline of geography (e.g.Johnston, 1991; Unwin, 1992) highlightingparadigm shifts – when new philosophicalapproaches emerge to challenge previousways of thinking. Johnston (1996) suggeststhat paradigm shifts are a result of generational transitions.Thus new ways of thinkingare taken up at first by younger academics;as this generation becomes established, andtakes on editing journals and writing textbooks, so their ways of thinking come to thefore. A paradigmatic approach to geographybegins in the 1950s when positivistic spatialscience emerged to challenge and supersedethe regional tradition in geography. In turnthe positivist paradigm is understood to havebeen overturned in the 1970s by otherapproaches such as behaviourial geography,humanistic geography and radical approachesincluding Marxism and feminism. In the1990s a paradigmatic perspective wouldunderstand poststructuralism as displacingthese ways of thinking.Yet, while sometimes a whole set of ideasis thrown out in light of perceived shortcomings, usually part of the thinking continuesin one form or another (see Figure 1.2).Theinstitutional framework of geography –professional organizations, journals and departmental cultures – may privilege or reinforce

01-Aitken-3325(ch01).qxd11/24/200512:23 PMPage 3WAYS OF KNOWING AND WAYS OF DOINGÿÿ3osophiesgWT h eoriesay s o f DoinGeographic Knowledgeys o f K nowinghodologieetMWasGeographic ResearchPhilP ract icesFigure 1.1Ways of knowing and ways of doingparticular fashionable ways of thinking, butthere are always dissenting voices. In reality,most ways of knowing are partial and are influx; they continue to change as geographersexamine and re-examine their strengths andweaknesses and as new ideas come along as achallenge. The discipline always includes arange of generations, and scholars who don’tact their age! The linear narrative of thedevelopment of unified paradigms thus falselycreates a sense of sequential progress whenconsensus is rarely complete or stable.Althoughthe chapters in this book are loosely orderedin relation to the genealogy of their emergence in the discipline, it is not our intentionto suggest that one displaced another. Rather,our intention is to show how each approach togeography (positivistic geography, humanisticgeography, Marxism, feminism and so on) contains within it multiple trajectories of thoughtand how each has continued to evolve whatever its paradigmatic status. Part of the excitement of doing geographical research is thecontinual struggle to make sense of thesechanging perspectives and their connections.When writing a research proposal, choicesmust be made about appropriate ways ofknowing and doing. Students must be awareof the assumptions of particular ways ofknowing, how they help raise appropriatequestions and their adequacy for addressingthose questions. Ultimately, all researchersmust be able to justify the answers they give totheir research questions and that justification

01-Aitken-3325(ch01).qxd11/24/200512:23 PMPage 44ÿÿKEY smHumanismRealismFigure 1.2Ways of knowing clash, connect and changecannot avoid philosophical and theoreticalways of knowing. In this sense, philosophy isa form of communicating not only what weknow but also how we know it. Understandingphilosophical processes as forms of communication suggests an important pedagogicalmetaphor. Elspeth Graham argues that ‘philosophy is to research as grammar is to language .just as we cannot speak a language withoutcertain grammatical rules, so we cannot conduct a successful piece of research withoutmaking certain philosophical choices’ (1997:8). Philosophy helps contextualize and justifythe answers to our research questions in waysthat communicate what we know.We can stillspeak and write without awareness of grammar, but it is always there. Grammar is a usefulmetaphor for understanding the role ofphilosophy in research projects because itsuggests that the more we know about philosophical underpinnings the better we appreciate how influential they are to our work. Ifdoing research is like the grammatical foundations of a language then, Graham (1997)notes, pushing the metaphor further, thebeginning researcher must learn the appropriate vocabulary and terms. This involvesreading and learning the vocabulary and thegrammar and syntax of the speech community you wish to join. Just as Mexica

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN13 978 0 7619 4262 7 ISBN10 0 7619 4262 9 ISBN13 978 0 7619 4263 4 (pbk) ISBN10 0 7619 4263 7 (pbk) Library of Congress Control Number available Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India Printed on paper from sustainable resources Printed in Great Britain by The .