Nigel Thrift

From Geography

Nigel Thrift is until today known for his view on region, time, space and action. Out of his education at Aberystwyth and Bristol Thrift has become one of the world's leading human geographers and social scientists. His current research spans a broad range of themes, such as: international finance, citities and political life, non-representational theory, affective politics and the history of time.

As said Nigel Thrift is still known for his view on regions an on human action within regions. Benno Werlen even mentioned that Thrift has delivered one of the most important propositions to the debates of contextual regional geography (Werlen, 2009, p3).

Thrift disagrees with the traditional approaches to regional geography as typified by Hettner, Vidal de la Blanche and Hartshorne (Werlen, 2009). Thrift argued that the classical regional monograph provided a little more than a detailed inventory of 'physical' and 'cultural' elements, proceeding category by category (geology, soils and vegetation through to economic activitiets, settlements and the like) (Johnston, 1996, p111). The critique therefore lies mainly in the separation of region's into components and compartments which were seen in relation to each other. One being separated, valued and divided into categories.

Thrift states that the regionon must be analysed throughout human beings. Region is the 'contextual' aspect of social practices, that where social practices come together and give character to the region (Werlen, 2009, p3). The traditional view on the region is not adjusting to the speed of the development of social life (Werlen 2009, p3).

Where Nigel Thrift disagrees with, and tries to give an alternative to traditional regional geography, also his work is being argued and discussed. Benno Werlen mainly agrees with Thrift his theory but also calls for an further ongoing movement on three main points.

1) Design a new framework based on social theory that is compatible with the mentioned changes to social and spatial ontologies. 2) Both traditional and Thrift his contextual regional geography should be reorganized in an appropriate way. 3) The new action-centered approach ought to offer new horizons for empirical geographical research. (Werlen, 2009, p3).

References:

Werlen, B., (2009). Everyday Regionalizations. Amsterdam: Elsevier

Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. & Whatmore, S., (2009). The Dictionary of Human Geography, 5th edition. London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.

Biography(n.d.) Vinddatum: 18 oktober 2010, op: http://nigelthrift.wordpress.com/biography/

Published by Evelien de Beer and Richard Huttinga