Nigel Thrift
From Geography
Nigel Thrift is until today known for his view on region, time, space and action. Out of his education at Aberystwyth and Bristol Thrift has become one of the world's leading human geographers and social scientists. His current research spans a broad range of themes, such as: international finance, citities and political life, non-representational theory, affective politics and the history of time.
Besides the researchtopics mentioned above, Thrift has some other personal interests. In an interview, Thrift says the following about the main three.
"First, I am concerned with the future impacts of information and communications technology.. I have become particularly interested in current developments in robotics and software which may allow a new kind of animal to come about, and how we might have relations with these new inhabitants.
Second, I continue to work on what I call nonrepresentational theory, especially by expanding on a set of issues. So far as my interest in time is concerned, this has led me towards trying to work on geography of the precognitive realm, on what shows up in the half second or so between action and cognition. More generally, I have been working on how style, affect and politics intersect.
Third, I have been trying to present an account of modern capitalism as a new kind of formation which has as a theoretical knowledge of the economy at its heart but uses this theory as practice. In every case, what I am striving for is to use empirically rich theory to ask new kinds of question (The Banff Centre, n.d.)."
As said Nigel Thrift is still known for his view on regions an on human action within regions. Benno Werlen even mentioned that Thrift has delivered one of the most important propositions to the debates of contextual regional geography (Werlen, 2009, p3).
Thrift disagrees with the traditional approaches to regional geography as typified by Hettner, Vidal de la Blanche and Hartshorne (Werlen, 2009), this is also called the compositional regional geography. Thrift argued that the classical regional monograph provided a little more than a detailed inventory of 'physical' and 'cultural' elements, proceeding category by category (geology, soils and vegetation through to economic activities, settlements and the like) (Johnston, 1996, p111). The critique therefore lies mainly in the separation of region's into components and compartments which were seen in relation to each other. One being separated, valued and divided into categories. Trift's suggestion here focuses upon human agency,on what humans beings think and do, and he regards the regional as a contextual aspect of social practices (Werlen, 2009).
Thrift states that the region must be analysed throughout human beings (contextual regional geography). Region is the 'contextual' aspect of social practices, that where social practices come together and give character to the region (Werlen, 2009, p3). The traditional view on the region is not adjusting to the speed of the development of social life (Werlen 2009, p3). Thrift assumes that a region can be seen a spatial context, it is something within and through which people live (Werlen, 2009, p6). According to Thrift a region is for all social issues a homogeneous enitity, it is not fixed for all times. Spatial structures are expressions of social structures mediated by action. It is power relations that determine how spatial structures can be used.
Thrift & Werlen
Where Nigel Thrift disagrees with traditional geography, and tries to give an alternative to traditional regional geography, also his work is being argued and discussed. Benno Werlen mainly agrees with Thrift his theory but also calls for an further ongoing movement on three main points:
1) Design a new framework based on social theory that is compatible with the mentioned changes to social and spatial ontologies.
2) Both traditional and Thrift his contextual regional geography should be reorganized in an appropriate way.
3) The new action-centered approach ought to offer new horizons for empirical geographical research. (Werlen, 2009, p3).
References
Biography (n.d.) Vinddatum: 18 oktober 2010, op: http://nigelthrift.wordpress.com/biography/
Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. & Whatmore, S., (2009). The Dictionary of Human Geography. London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Nigel Thrift, (n.d.) Vinddatum 11 oktober 2012, op: http://www.banffcentre.ca/faculty/faculty-member/374/nigel-thrift/
Werlen, B., (2009). Everyday Regionalizations. Amsterdam: Elsevier
Contributors
Published by Evelien de Beer and Richard Huttinga
Links addded by Aafke Brus --AafkeBrus 17:50, 24 October 2011 (CEST)
Page enhanced and image inserted by Aafke Brus --AafkeBrus 19:28, 24 October 2011 (CEST)
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