Yi-Fu Tuan
From Geography
Background:
Yi-Fu Tuan was born in 1930 in China. Growing up as a son of a diplomat, he was used to moving places from a very young age. He was educated in China, Australia, the Phillipines and England (Oxford University) and moved to the US in 1951 (University of California, Berkeley) (Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine, 2004, pp 306).
In the 1970s, he had a great influence on the ways of research in geography. Tuan redefined understandings of human geography as the study of the human-environment relations (Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine, 2004, pp 306). Before that time, the human aspect of place and space was often ignored or marginalized. In 1971, he published the paper Geography, phenomenology and the study of human nature. Tuan basically absorbed the ideas of existentialism and phenomenological approach to intuitively approach human geographical topics. The experiences and observations of people of their places and environments was used to unravel geographical processes (Cloke, Philo & Sadler, 1991, p. 75). His works have mainly focussed on exploring what it is to be human. To Tuan, knowing the world meant knowing oneself, and therefore geographic discovery part of self-discovery(Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine, 2004, pp 309).
Important Works:
Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes, and Values, published in 1974. This publication deals with the way people perceive and shape their environment (Encyclopædia Britannica Online, n.d.)and human attachments to place (Hubbard, Kitchin,Valentine, 2004, pp307).
Segmented World and Self (1982): looks at the linkages between human consciousness and spatial structures.
Dominance and Affection (1984): focuses on the 'aesthetic exploitation' and mistreatment of nature.
Useful links:
References:
Cloke, P., Philo, C. & Sadler, D. (1991). Approaching human geography. The Guilford Press: London UK.
Hubbard, Phil., Kitchin, Rob.,Valentine, Gill. (eds.) (2004). Key Thinkers on Space and Place. Sage: London UK.
Geography: Influences of the social sciences. Retrieved September 7, 2011, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. [1]
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