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.
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 activitiets, 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.
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
Werlen, B., (2009). Everyday Regionalizations. Amsterdam: Elsevier
Gregory, D., Johnston, R., Pratt, G., Watts, M. & Whatmore, S., (2009). The Dictionary of Human Geography. London: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Biography(n.d.) Vinddatum: 18 oktober 2010, op: http://nigelthrift.wordpress.com/biography/
Contributors
Published by Evelien de Beer and Richard Huttinga
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