Possibilism

From Geography

Possibilism

Possibilism is a concept that is most commonly associated with the work of the French geographer Vidal de la Blache (Johnston, Gregory, Pratt and Watts, 2000). Vidal de la Blache developed this geographical approach as a reaction to a more traditional geographical way of thinking, which is known as environmental determinism. While this latter tradition “regarded all the facets of human activity (from farming practices to political systems) as ultimately determined in character by the natural-environmental context” (Cloke, Philo & Sadler, 1991, p. 64), the former way of thinking about the relationship between people and their surroundings is shaped by the idea that “the natural environment offers possible avenues for human development, the precise one chosen being very much a human decision” (Cloke et al., 1991, p. 65). This is not to say that people are completely free to determine their own directions, but rather it assumes that there exists a “ongoing ‘dialogue’ between natural environments and the human communities they support” (‘milieux’ and ‘civilisations’), which, according to Vidal de la Blache, results in a “human world full of different genres de vie (‘lifestyles’), distinctive to particular peoples living in particular places” (Cloke et al., 1991, p. 64).

It was the French historian Lucien Febvre who elaborated further on the concept of possibilism, by writing that, when it comes to human behaviour in relation to their environment, “there are no necessities, but everywhere possibilities; and man, as a master of the possibilities, is the judge of their use. This, by the reversal it involves, puts man in the first place – man, and no longer the earth, nor the influence of climate, nor the determinant conditions of localities” (Febvre, in Johnston et al., 2000, p. 609).

It can be stated that this idea of possibilism forms an important antecedent of humanistic geography, given the common emphasis laid on “the thought and action of human beings and their ability to exert some independent control over their own destinies” (Cloke et al., 1991, p. 65), or, in other terms, on the idea of human agency.

References

- Cloke, P., Philo, C. and Sadler, D. (1991) Approaching Human Geography. London: Chapman.

- Johnston, R., Gregory, D. Pratt, G. and Watts, M. (2000) The Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th edition. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing