Humanistic approach

From Geography

“And men go about to wonder at the height of mountains and the mighty waves of sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves consider not” (Ley & Samuels, 1978, p. x)

The humanistic approach is a way of thinking in human geography; an approach that seeks to put humans at the centre of geography (Gregory et al., 2009, p. 356). Humanistic geography is a root of action theoretic approach. Human conscience and reflection refers to human action as a change. This means that people are responsible for their own changes. An approach in human geography is distinguished by; - Human awareness - Human agency - Human consciousness - Human creativity An approach in human geography distinguished by the central and active role it gives to human awareness and human agency, human consciousness and creativity; at once an attempt at ‘understanding meaning’, value and human significance of life events’ (Buttimer, 1979).

Research isn’t always 100% representative, because researchers are human beings and they are always subjected to their own perception. This makes reflection important, because you than can provide a higher level of objectivity.

The humanistic approach to geography has its roots in the Renaissance era. In this period the world view changed from centered on religion (God) into where human beings are the center of the world (see Renaissance humanism.

Modern humanistic geography emerged around 1970, as a reaction to strictly scientific positivist approaches to geography. Positivist approaches try to grasp human action in laws and models, as if geography was a ‘hard’ science like physics. Humanistic geographers however did not see this approach as the way forward for geography as a science. They argued that human action couldn’t be displayed simply as dots on a map or a bunch of statistics. The things that mattered according to these geographers were actually the meanings, values and interpretations that people give to space and place.

Also in modern forms of education the humanistic approach got trough: humanistic education was more about the development of values, norms, 'own thoughts', qualities and capacities. Education didn't concern religious concepts as 'good' or 'bad' anymore. In the humanistic approach of education the development of idividuals (and so humanity) got priority.

Well-known Humanist Geographers:

• Anne Buttimer

• Edward Relph

• Yi-Fu Tuan

References

• Aitken, S., Valentine, G. (2006). Approaches to Human Geography. Sage, London.

• Buttimer, A. 1979: Reason, rationality and human creativity. Geografiska Annaler 61B: 43-9.

• Ley, D. & Samuels, M. (1978). Humanistic geography: prospects and problems

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