Regional geography
From Geography
Before the Second World War and the quantitative revolution in the science of geography in Europe and North America, regions were understood as naturally occuring geographical entities. These happenings made people understood regions as models which could be used tot give statistical order to geographical space. During the 1990's a new geographical approach emerged, which is called the New Regional Geography (Whitehead, 2007, p.141). In this type regional geogrpahy, regions are understand not as isolated internally integrated spaces, but to explore how regions are made through social, economical and political relations with other regions. It also sees regions as socially constructed spatial categories. Furthermore, regional geography is the study of the variable character of places in the world, usually with an emphasis on their Human Geography (Gregory, D. et al., 2009). It is usually traced back to Strabo's conception of chorology as the disciplined description of the parts of the earth (Gregory, D. et al., 2009). 'This research orientation is generally lacked a robust concept of individual agency or an interest in how geography might contribute to an understanding of 'being-in-the-world' (Entrikin, 1976; in Aitken & Valentine, 2006, p. 31). It represents social and economic relations, but is more focused on the cultural and political relations in spatial categories as spatial realities. Regional geography pays attention to the unique characteristics of a particular region such as natural elements, human elements, and regionalization which covers the techniques of delineating space into regions. Traditionally this form of geography referred to its object of study as a pre-given entity. This has changed in recent times and geographers such as Anthony Giddens and Nigel Thrift see regional geography as a contextual analysis of the social and economic processes of different regions. Because of this change in regional geography there are now two types of regional geography:contextual regional geography and compositional regional geography. Compositional is seen as the traditional regional geography, whereas contextual is seen as the answer to its flaws and as the more modern regional geography. Whereas social and economic processes are being analyzed for years, relatively new aspects of regional geography are environmental processes. These processes have launched themselves, due to the growing awereness regarding the environment.
References
Aitken, S. & Valentine, G. (2006). Approaches to Human Geography. SAGE publications Ldt, London.
Thrift, N. (1983). On the determination of social action in space and time. Environment and Planning D. Society and Space 1, 23--56.
Werlen, B. (2009). Everyday Regionalizations. In: International Encyclopedia for Human Geography. Elsevier.
Whitehead, M. (2007). Spaces of sustainability. Geographical perspectives on the sustainable society. Routledge.
Contributors
Published by --SamanthaHazlett 17:16, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
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