Theory and Methods Critical Essays in Human Geography

This volume tackles the complex terrain of theory and methods, seeking to exemplify the major philosophical, social-theoretic and methodological developments - some with clear political and ethical implications - that have traversed human geography since the era of the 1960s when spatial science came to the fore. Coverage includes Marxist and humanistic geographies, and their many variations over the years, as well as ongoing debates about agency-structure and the concepts of time, space, place and scale. Feminist and other 'positioned' geographies, alongside poststructuralist and posthumanist geographies, are all evidenced, as well as writings that push against the very 'limits' of what human geography has embraced over these fifty plus years. The volume combines readings that are well-known and widely accepted as 'classic', with readings that, while less familiar, are valuable in how they illustrate different possibilities for theory and method within the discipline. The volume also includes a substantial introduction by the editor, contextualising the readings, and in the process providing a new interpretation of the last half-century of change within the thoughts and practices of human geography.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Spatial Science and Its Critics: A geographic methodology, William Bunge; Sensations and spatial science: gratification and anxiety in the production of ordered landscapes, D. Sibley; Retheorizing economic geography: from the quantitative revolution to the 'cultural turn', Trevor J. Barnes. Part II Marxist Geography and Its Early Reconstructions: Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary theory in geography and the problem of ghetto formation, David Harvey; The socio-spatial dialectic, Edward W. Soja; The matter of nature, Margaret Fitzsimmons. Part III Humanistic Geography and Its Early Reconstructions: Humanistic geography, Yi-Fu Tuan; Practising humanistic geography, Susan J. Smith; Prospect, perspective and the evolution of the landscape idea, Denis Cosgrove. Part IV Agency and Structure: Human agency and human geography, Derek Gregory; Human agency and human geography revisited: a critique of 'new models' of the self, Steve Pile; Space and causality, or whatever happened to the subject?, Benno Werlen. Part V Time, Space, Place and Space-Time: Social reproduction and the time-geography of everyday life, Allan Pred; Geography and the realm of passages, Erik Wallin; Politics and space/time, Doreen Massey. Part VI Scaling Human Geographies: Is there a place for the rational actor? A geographical critique of the rational choice paradigm, Trevor J. Barnes and Eric Sheppard; Beyond state-centrism? Space, territoriality and geographical scale in globalization studies, Neil Brenner; Human geography without scale, Sallie A. Marston, John Paul Jones III and Keith Woodward. Part VII Feminist and Other 'Positioned' Geographies: The geography of women: an historical introduction, Alison M. Hayford; Changing ourselves: a geography of position, Peter Jackson; Postcolonialising geography: tactics and pitfalls, Jenny Robinson; I lost an arm on my last trip back home: black geographies, Katherine McKittrick. Part VIII Poststructuralist Geographies: Geography and power: the work of Michel Foucault, Felix Driver; Understanding diversity: the problem of/for 'theory', Linda McDowell; My dinner with Derrida, or spatial analysis and poststructuralism do lunch, D.P. Dixon and J.P. Jones III; Poststructuralist geographies: the essential selection, Marcus A. Doel. Part IX Posthumanist Geographies: Inhuman/nonhuman/human: actor-network theory and the prospects for a nondualistic and symmetrical perspective on nature and society, Jonathan Murdoch; The body as 'place': reflexivity and fieldwork in Kano, Nigeria, Heidi J. Nast; Making connections and thinking through emotions: between geography and psychotherapy, Liz Bondi; From born to made: technology, biology and space, Nigel Thrift. Part X Limits to Human Geography: Hemming the way, Gunnar Olsson; Coming out of geography: towards a queer epistemology, Jon Binnie; Neo-critical geography, or, the flat pluralist world of business class, Neil Smith; Name index.

Chris Philo was appointed to a Chair in Geography at the University of Glasgow in 1995. His research interests concern the historical, cultural and rural geographies of mental ill-health, as well as social geographies of 'outsiders'; children's geographies; new animal geographies; historical and contemporary figurations of public space; Foucauldian studies and the history, historiography and theoretical development of geography