Yi-Fu Tuan
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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). Though he initially began with researching on sediments in southwestern Arizona he became established as a reputed cultural geographer. During his 16 year tenure at the University of Minnesota he produced most of his influential work. From 1984 to his retirement in 1998, he was based at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, maintaining a continued interest in 'systematic humanistic geography'. Over a career spanning around 40 years Tuan has written 15 books and a number of papers known for being reflective and thought-provoking. Though Tuan himself did not work directly inside the intellectual circles in geography his career corresponded to a historical period of change in the discipline itself. (Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine, 2004, pp 306).
Key contributions
While most of his contemporaries were concerned with positivist approaches to spatial analysis, Tuan became increasingly interested in the emotional and intimate engagement of people, culture, environment and place. However, with the increasing critique to positivist spatial science in the 1970s, Tuan quickly became associated with the 'new geography' which soon emerged as 'humanistic geography'. Tuan redefined understandings of human geography as the study of the human-environment relations (Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine, 2004, pp 306). 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. A key unifying theme in all his works is seen to be an existential, experiential and holistic concept of the intimate connection between people and places, culture and geography and man's relationship with nature(Hubbard, Kitchin, Valentine, 2004, pp 306-309).
Important Works
Tuan, Y-F. (1971) 'Geography, phenomenology and the study of human nature', The Canadian Geographer 15: 181-192 Tuan, Y-F. (1974) Topophilia: A study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Tuan, Y-F. (1976) 'Humanistic geography', Annals of the Association of American Geographers 66 (2): 266-276 Tuan, Y-F. (1977) Space & Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tuan, Y-F. (1979) Landscapes of Fear. Oxford: Blackwell. Tuan, Y-F. (1996) Cosmos & Hearth: A Cosmolite's Viewpoint. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Tuan, Y-F. (1998b) Escapism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. Tuan, Y-F. (1999) Who Am I? An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind and Spirit. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press
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]
Contributors
- "page created by Boudewijn Idema" --Kolaraparna 10:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
- "page enhanced by Kolar Aparna"--Kolaraparna 10:52, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
