Humanism

From Geography

Humanism is a discipline that flows out of the humanistic geography. Humanistic geography is an approach that is concentrating about the human being and the behaviour of the human in everyday life. The humanism believes in the skills and knowledge of humans. Simply said humanism tries to understand what geography might contribute in ‘being in the world’.

Humanistics tries to make the world a better place to live in. One of the methods to reach this goal is to mobilise the research of human minds and to ”understanding ourselves, others and the world we share” (Cosgrove, 1989).

The human being, which is really complex, has a centred position in the humanistic geography. This approach is characterised by four subjects: Human awareness, human agency, human consciousness and human creativity.

In the seventies humanistic geography becomes bigger and bigger. It first developed as a critique of the positivistic approach, which is characterized by scientific quantitative theories, models and methods (Aitiken & Valentine, 2009). In Humanism, the human gets a centred role and the human knowledge and skills are growing. Before this development the humanistic geography was a science that was very traditional. Although the gap between Humanism and science isn’t that big. In both the relation with place, plays an important role at the time.

But also the Renaissance had has it influences on the emerge of Humanism.

There are some critics about the humanistic approach in geography. Some people think humanism is fictional, Eurocentric, racist and focused on man instead of woman (Aitiken & Valentine, 2009).

References:

Aitken S, Valentine G, 2009, Approaches to Human Geography. SAGE: California, London, New Delhi, Singapore

Spatial Action, Huib Ernste, 2010

Cloke P, Philo C, Sadler D 1999, Approaching Human Geography,

Published by Robbert Vossers (4080939) Edited by Fenki Evers and Anton de Hoogh 08-09-2011 links added by Pauline van Heugten