Realism

From Geography

Miller (2010), speaks of two general aspects to realism. One of them is the claim of existence. Sayer, (2006) tells us that ‘the most basic idea of realist philosophy is that the world is whatever it is largely independently of what particular observers think about it, and not simply a product of the human mind.’ (Sayer, 2006, p.98). In this regard realism differs from its opponent, idealism, as idealists belief that the world is a product of human knowledge.

Realism acknowledges that human beings need schemes and conceptual frameworks in order to understand the world. Yet realism argues that this, our view and perception of the world, has nothing to do with the actual form of existence of the world. To relate to an example that Sayer gives, think about early times when people thought that the world was flat. In all their knowledge and ideas in their minds, this was the truth, since they did not have the resources to gain different knowledge. Yet the world is and has always been round, also in the times when people thought it was flat. Here, Sayer (2006) differentiates between existence and description and meets up with Miller’s (2010) second aspect of realism, independence. Descriptions of the world depend on human knowledge, yet existence of the world in independent of human knowledge.

Realism views concepts and meanings as internally descriptive, which means that in order to understand a phenomenon, the understanding of the people involved in it determines what it is. This is called constitutive meanings (Sayer, 2006, p.102). Social phenomena can have different meanings to different people. Sayer (2006) exemplifies this by asking: ‘Does migration indicate the freedom of the powerful, or the desperation of the asylum seeker? (Sayer, 2006, p.104)

When it comes to social phenomena like human geography, realism does leave some space to ideas, discourses and ways of thinking in influencing societies. For example, shifts in thinking about the environment have influenced practices of companies to be ‘greener.’ However these influences of actions or shifts in thinking are argued not to be fixed and universal. Realists argue that things are ‘context-dependent’, in different settings and times, a phenomenon or action will possibly have a different outcome or effect. Therefore realism does not look for regularities and patterns as they are considered not to be uniform. (Sayer, 2006). To the statement that something is ´socially constructed´, realists would ask: ‘By whom, and of what, and with what effects?’ (Sayer, 2006, p.100). He advocated a realist approaches in human geography which implies that geographers need to have a critical relation to object of study (Sayer, 2006, p.103)

By Sabrina Willems and Anouk Soomers

Miller, Alexander, "Realism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/realism/>.

Sayer,A.(2006).Realism as a basis for knowing the world. In: Aitken, S. and Valentine, G. Approaches to Human Geography. Sage, London. pp. 98-106.