THEORETICAL PLURALISM IN ANGLO-AMERICAN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

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  • 英語圏の人文地理学における理論の多元化
  • 英語圏の人文地理学における理論の多元化〔英文〕
  • エイゴケン ノ ジンブン チリガク ニ オケル リロン ノ タゲンカ エイブン

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Abstract

Amongst the profusion of theoretical approaches in human geography developed during the past twenty five years, recent surveys have identified three major contenders, positivism, structuralism, and humanism. Positivism is associated with the quantitative revolution which began in the l96Os, and emphasises the analytic abstraction of selected variables, their measurement and manipulation in a set of statistical procedures. In contrast structuralist theory urges that the most important causal processes are not observable. All we see are superficial results of deep-seated structures, which may only be revealed by patient intellectual analysis. Though structuralism is not necessarily marxist, in human geography the two terms have become interchangable in a political economy where the deep structures are identified as the capitalist relations of production. Humanism argues that both positivism and structuralism have inadequate conceptualisations of human agency. Humanists have pointed to the pluralism of people's roles and subject positions, which vary according to class, gender, race, age, and so on. There are as a result a range of human experiences of geographical settings, a variable conjunction of place and identity. So too local geographies are more than economic geographies : the actions of the human subject cannot be collapsed to economic functions alone. These theoretical points of departure have influenced the shape of empirical research. The second part of the paper briefly reviews the literature studying inner city gentrification, that is, the movement of middle class professionals into old, inner city neighbourhoods formerly occupied by lower income groups, a movement with important implications for urban policy as well as urban theory. The initial presuppositions of the three theoretical approaches have led to quite different research traditions as each examines the same phenomenon. In the past few years some cross-fertilisation of these three perspectives has occurred. There is a hopeful tendency suggesting that a more integrated human geography is emerging, incorporating the insights of different theoretical approaches. But if the commitment to theoretical particularism is less dogmatic than in the past, the essential role of theory remains as a tool to shape the direction of empirical research and give it a wider significance.

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