Philosophy of Geography

Geography is experiencing a 'moral turn' in its research interests and practices. There is also a flourishing interest in animal geographies that intersects this turn, and is concurrent with wider scholarly efforts to reincorporate animals and nature” into our ethical and social theories. This article intervenes in a dispute between Michael Dear and Richard Symanski. The dispute is over the culling of wild horses in Australia, and I intervene to explore how geography deepens our moral understanding of the animallhuman dialectic. (...) I begin by situating the inquiry into ethics and animals in geography. Next, I provide a synopsis of Dear and Symanski's comments on 'animal rights', followed in 'turn by discussions of moral value and value paradigms. I then introduce a value paradigm termed geocentrism as a geographical account of our moral relations to animals. Finally, I discuss the wider significance of this debate for geographical ethics, moral philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

Human cognitive acts are directed towards entities of a wide range of different types. What follows is a new proposal for bringing order into this typological clutter. A categorial scheme for the objects of human cognition should be (1) critical and realistic. Cognitive subjects are liable to error, even to systematic error of the sort that is manifested by believers in the Pantheon of Olympian gods. Thus not all putative object-directed acts should be recognized as having objects of their own. (...) Broadly, the objects towards which human cognition is directed should be parts of reality in a sense that is at least consistent with the truths of natural science. But such a scheme should also be (2) comprehensive: it should do justice to each sort of object on its own terms, and not attempt to eliminate objects of one sort in favour of objects of other, more favoured sorts. Linguistic and other forms of idealism, as well as Meinongian theories, which assign to each and every referring expression or intentional act an object tailored to fit, yield categorial schemes which fail to satisfy (1). Physicalistic and other forms of reductionism yield categorial schemes which fail to satisfy (2). What follows is a categorial scheme that is both critically realistic and comprehensive. Thus it enjoys some of the benefits of linguistic idealism and physicalism, without (or so it is hoped) the corresponding disadvantages of each. (shrink)

In his Romanes Lecture of 1907, Lord Curzon emphasized the overwhelming influence of “natural” and “artificial” frontiers in the political history of the modern world. As Barry Smith has shown, the same could be said, more generally, of the natural and artificial boundaries that are at work in articulating every aspect of the reality with which we have to deal, not only in the world of geography, but the world of human experience at large. Moreover, once the natural/artificial distinction has (...) been recognized, it can be drawn across the board: not merely in relation to boundaries but also in relation to those entities that may be said to have boundaries. If something enjoys a natural boundary, its identity and survival conditions do not depend on us; it is a bona fide, mind-independent entity of its own. By contrast, if its boundary is artificial, then the entity itself is to some degree a fiat entity, a product of our worldmaking. Here I am interested in limit case: what if, pace Curzon and pace Smith, all entities turned out to be of the latter sort? (shrink)

Local geographical terms play an important role in the formation of a toponymic system of a geographical region. Archaic vocabulary roots in the mists of time and and serves as the evidence of ancient contacts of the local population. Identification, systemic description and comprehensive analysis of toponyms contributes to linguistic and historic reseach. In this article, the substrate local geographical terminology of the Indo-Iranian origin involved in the formation of the Bashkir place names and ethnonyms is discussed. By allocating place (...) name formants, place name bases, toponymic types, the autor attempts to identify the Indo-Iranian substratum in Bashkir geographical terminology and to define its role in formation of place names. As the study shows, substrate geographic appellatives of the Indo-Iranian origin are abundantly represented in the Bashkir toponymy. Some of them are preserved only as the part of Bashkir geographical names, for example, the Bashkir hydronyms Abdon, Avzyan, Avryuz and many others originated from a geographical appellative av/aw ‘water‘. Some geographical terms of Indo-Iranian origin have survived in the dialects of the Bashkir language and are currently spoken by dialect speakers, e. g., beshә, and bÒ¯zhәk. The basis of the Bashkir toponymic system is comprised mainly by substrate geographical terms of Indo-Iranian origin, which became toponyms during their functioning in the language. (shrink)

Face à la diversité et à la complexification des modes de formalisation, une épistémologie des méthodes scientifiques doit confronter directement ses analyses à une pluralité d’études de cas comparatives. C’est l’objectif de cet ouvrage. -/- Aussi, dans une première partie, propose-t-il d’abord une classification large et raisonnée des différentes fonctions de connaissance des théories, des modèles et des simulations (de fait, cette partie constitue un panorama d’épistémologie générale particulièrement poussé). C’est ensuite à la lumière de cette classification que les deux (...) parties centrales analysent et distinguent les assises conceptuelles et épistémologiques des principaux types de formalisation en géographie avant et après l’ordinateur (théories des localisations, modèles gravitaires, loi rang-taille). En employant toujours la même méthode analytique et comparative, la dernière partie se concentre sur l’explication épistémologique des trois révolutions computationnelles récentes : l’analyse des données, la présentation des données et enfin l’analyse par simulation computationnelle. -/- Au travers de cette enquête approfondie, la géographie apparaît non seulement comme une discipline carrefour, ayant pour cela donné des exemples de presque tous les types de modèles scientifiques, mais aussi comme une science innovante en termes épistémologiques. Car ce qui a d’abord été pour elle un frein à la formalisation -– sa sensibilité au caractère multifactoriel comme à la dimension irréductiblement spatiale des phénomènes sociaux – et qui l’obligea longtemps à inféoder ses théories et modèles à des disciplines plus aisément formalisables comme la géomorphologie, l’économie, la sociologie, la démographie, ou bien encore la thermodynamique et la théorie des systèmes, devient aujourd’hui un atout dès lors que, parmi les sciences humaines et sociales, elle peut développer une épistémologie non seulement pluraliste mais aussi combinatoire et intégrative. -/- Préface de Denise Pumain (Université Paris 1). (shrink)

Explorations of the boundaries between human culture and non-human nature have clear ethical dimensions. Developing both from philosophical arguments about the value of such boundaries and recent empirical work following the traffic across them, we seek to complement these discussions through a consideration of how these boundaries can be enacted by ourselves, as researchers, and the methods we employ. As part of an agenda seeking to reconsider organic agency within geographical narrative, we have been exploring different techniques for documenting the (...) ways in which such agencies are encountered. Specifically, we are interested in plants and the ways in which they might be researched in new ways by human geographers. Based on two particular pieces of research into human-plant dealings, our aim is one of exploring their lively presence as part of a performative environmental ethics enacted, in part, through the very practice of the research encounter. (shrink)

In Transamazônica Paraense places do not exist in the geographical representations that shows the road, a regional and territorial domination project. The goal is to consider the emergency between -places to the road made of migrants from different geohitories that “ whether vicinam” and the implications of this context to the world of readings of/ on transamazônica geographicity. The experienced research focus is on the Vicinal of Adam, between Pacajá and New Repartimento (PA). Settlement Rio Cururuí. Methodologically, we start from (...) action-research, audiovisual recording of interviews with residents in their places, life histories and documentary survey interpreted the existential phenomenological contribution and concluded: a) the geographical debate, the educational plan, tends to declare the absence of They are living on the edge Transamazônica or “strip”; b) the sense of place is not strictly localizable or remarkable is not stable, constituting limit-spaces-s; c) Another language emerges from the between-place with the creative potential of communicative actions to clarify anding at multiple scales. (shrink)

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in (...) the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

There are many advantages and disadvantages to central locations. These have shown themselves in the long course of European history. In times of peace, there are important economic and cultural advantages (to illustrate: the present area of the Czech Republic was the richest country in Europe between the two World Wars). There are cross-currents of trade and culture in central Europe of great advantage. For, cultural cross-currents represent a potential benefit in comprehension and cultural growth. But under threat of large-scale (...) conflict, these locations have proved extremely dangerous. Historically, Germany and Austria may be regarded as having had two chief models of their relationships to Europe. In the Holy Roman Empire, Germany was at the center of an aspiring “universalistic” European cosmopolitanism. (In some ways similar to the present situation of the European Union.) Austria maintained a great multi¬cultural empire, until it was destroyed in the First Word War. Generally, middle-European powers have promoted the integration of European diversity, when peace and stability have been plausible objectives. But when European diversity has declined toward ethnic or national conflict, Germany has drawn away from Europe and into itself, seeking inner unity and distinctness to protect it against possible combinations of enemies. This is true of central Europe generally, in degree, but interest often centers on Germany. Generally, central Europe is a cultural pressure cooker. (shrink)

Extended entities have boundaries of two different sorts: those that do, and those that do not correspond to physical discontinuities. Call the first sort (coastlines, the surface of your nose) bona fide boundaries; and the second (the boundary of Montana, the boundary separating your upper from your lower torso) fiat boundaries. Fiat boundaries are found especially in the geographic realm, but are involved wherever language carves out portions of reality in ways which do not reflect physical discontinuities. These ideas are (...) applied to the treatment of cognitive categorization, of the semantics of vagueness, of Quine’s indeterminacy thesis, and of standard ontological problems such as Tibbles’ tail. (shrink)

Se plantea el problema de la existencia de una campo científico -el geográfico - para el cual existen candidaturas e disciplinas determinadas como la Geografía Física, La Humana, la R egional y la Universal, etc. Se plantea la diferencia entre ciencias naturales y humanas, así como entre ciencias texonómicas y ciencias mereológicas, como marcos de análisis para las ciencias geográficas.

Abraham Ortelius and Gerhard Mercator respectively assembled two of the earliest and most influential map collections in the western world. Ortelius’ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum and Mercator’s Atlas sive Cosmographicae exemplify the emerging drive in the six teenth century toward collecting and communicating ever-increasing knowl edge about the natural world. However, on close examination the two collections bear as many differences as similarities. This paper addresses these differences and suggests that a comparison between their schemas reveals that the distinctions between Ptolemy’s (...) geography, as adescription of place, and cosmography, as the construction of space, are two different forms of knowledge in early modern science. (shrink)

In the 1980s, teenagers came to dominate the last bastions of public spaces on the sprawling suburban landscape: the shopping mall and the arcade. Teenagers’ presence and the sense of their domination of those spaces from media and popular culture initiated new regimes of regulation with distinct consequences. Through tactics designed to combat the disruptive presence of teens, including use of closed-circuit video monitoring, professionalization of private security staffs, and strict municipal oversight, mall owners, concerned parents, and local political leaders (...) created systems of insistent and pervasive policing of mall space. That surveillance not only undermined the very nature of the space as public but also nearly eliminated teens from shopping centers while facilitating their reintegration into the supposed safety of the home. (shrink)

The modern city is the cradle of human activity, and through it humankind has both the ability to strip the planet of life and the ability to create thriving social and ecological systems. Strategic and interactive urbanisms that nurture multifarious ways of being in the world need to be formulated to save the natural world from ecological disaster. This paper traces the genealogy of the city from the unexplored wilderness to the to the conflux of technology and nature on city (...) streets. Following the work of Neil Smith and William Cronon, this paper finds the roots of the urban system in the social construction of nature. Considering Martin Heidegger’s thoughts on technology along with David Harvey’s analysis of the urban system, it argues that city-building is a technē, an art which allows humankind to be at home with the world. As a part of this project, an interactive web application for gathering images and stories about urban spaces was created to provide a tool for citizen urbanism. The application, The Department of Civic Images, engages people in a dialogical urbanism that encourages citizens to see their environment as an intricate and valuable life network. (shrink)

Historical accounts of the practice of smallpox inoculation in the late eighteenth century invariably make a distinction between the widespread general inoculations carried out within small rural parishes and the partial inoculations in urban centres such as London, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds. This distinction, moreover, is generally reinforced by concluding that the rural inoculation programmes were ‘highly effective’ or ‘successful’ in contrast with the urban inoculation schemes, which are often seen as ‘marginally effective’ or indeed ‘failing’. Success or failure tends (...) to be judged by the impact which inoculation had upon reducing mortality from smallpox, but as a result of this demographic focus the motives behind the implementation of urban inoculation have been overlooked. My paper readjusts this balance by looking more closely at motives and by judging success in relation to aims. To achieve this I have taken a new approach towards the history of smallpox inoculation as a whole, and portray the basic idea of giving a person smallpox in order to confer subsequent immunity as being modified in the hands of different people throughout the course of the century. Hence it is possible to trace the development of inoculation from a folk practice carried out within the home with the aim of protecting individuals, to large-scale general inoculations of an entire community, which aimed to eradicate the disease altogether. (shrink)

When people inhabit a city, they situate themselves and are situated through the intersections of infrastructure and technical systems, and the particular domains and modalities of occupation – settlement and work – that are configured by them. At the same time, people are also inhabited by the city, as a kind of possession, endowment, and series of conundrums. People figure themselves out through figuring arrangements of materials, of designing what is available to them in formats and positions that enable them (...) particular vantage points and ways of doing things. What it is possible for people to do with each other is largely a question of what it is that exists between them, and how this ‘between’ can be shaped as active points of reference, connection and anchorage. Infrastructure exerts a force – not simply in the materials and energies it avails, but also the way it attracts people, draws them in, coalesces and expends their capacities. If territory is a bundle of political technologies for measuring, administering and regulating the scope of what it is possible to do in the city, then other inventive political technologies are also at work in the making of urban life. (shrink)

During the last four decades, the general shift towards flexible accumulation of capital has led to a growing requirement for an increased mobility of labour which greatly affects the restructuring of post-industrial cities today. Using a historical perspective to enlighten the contrast with the period of industrialization when urban planning was, on the contrary, aimed at fixing a large workforce within the city, I argue that the current transformations of urban landscapes one can observe within French cities signal a consequent (...) shift in the regulation of mobilities in the French post-industrial cities. The tactics aiming at regulating the mobilities at a narrow scale have disappeared in favour of a strategy aiming at adapting the city to the requirements of time and space compression through a simultaneous acceleration and rescaling of the daily mobilities. This shift in the regulation of urban mobilities reflects the recent evolution of the nature of urban power of the French post-industrial cities. (shrink)

The recent phenomenon of the export zone attracts scholarly attention primarily for its economic and political logics, yet it is as a cultural phenomenon that the Zone may ultimately signal its transformational role in the trajectory of state sovereignty and the global urban imagination. This article approaches the phenomenon of the Zone as a key location for understanding the social and cultural impact of globalization on urban space. It conceptually locates the trajectory of the export-oriented zone and its analogues to (...) understand how, in little over 40 years, the phenomenon of the Zone experienced a rapid and veritable institutionalization as part of the topography and imagination of globalization. The first part traces the contours of the Zone as a territorial strategy that re-scales national economic and political space and enables the networked models of distributed production so critical to the global economy. The second part critically supplements the standard account by re-thinking the Zone as an incipient urban form — the Ex-City — that incorporates classically modernist fantasies in the context of contemporary logics of sovereignty and accumulation. (shrink)

This article introduces the themes and theoretical concerns of a special section that explores the various ways the specificities of the Mumbai attacks serve as a metonym for issues found in other urban sites within the conditions, concerns and vulnerabilities of globalization-as-urbanization and does so through the rubric of the city-as-target. As urbanization grows exponentially in unforecastable ways, the likelihood of violent urban targeting of many different kinds — state-sponsored, paramilitary, sectarian, economic, racial, tribal, etc., to name but a few (...) — grows as well. Mumbai is a specific event, but it is also the common-place, the cityscape that is our daily lives and quotidian existence rendered unusual in all the expected ways. With Mumbai, the article argues, one does not necessarily see the future of the urban, but rather a reminder of what the urban has always been, even from the great walled cities of antiquity: a target. There is an imperative, then, to rethink urban space at all levels. The pieces in this section consider immaterial and material aspects of the city: its plan, infrastructure , buildings and dwellings, polity and policy, protection and penetration. The technologies and technicities involved in the attacks, as well as the specific historicity, reveal a great deal about the Mumbai events, as well as revealing potential modes of engagement with cities in the present and future. (shrink)