Quantitative Revolution

Question 1

Geography - lack of purpose?

Answer 1

• during WW2 - many geographers worked for military intelligence and planning. Used their geographical knowledge of regions and cartographic and surveying skills.
• after the war the future of geography was uncertain. Geography was at a turning point.
• geography seemed to lack a defining purpose.
• Harvard decided to close its geography department in 1948.

Question 2

The decline and fall of regional geography:

Answer 2

• after WW2 geography was fragmented and institutionally weak. This was especially the case in N. America.
• this was due to prosaic factors.
  + geography was a relatively small subject.
  + due to a sense of unease about the direction geography has taken with regional geography.

Question 3

Why did geography decline?

Answer 3

• regional geography was far too generalist - increasingly specialist knowledge was needed instead.
• scientifically weak: descriptions of places, rather than explanations of how they functioned.
• increasingly difficult to be both a human and physical geographer, at the specialist research level.
• regional geography looked obsolete and dated in an increasingly interconnected modern world.

Question 4

Hartshorne’s regional geography:

Answer 4

• geography as chorology: ‘the ultimate purpose of geography is the study of areal differentiation of the world’
• tried to define geography as the identification and classification of distinct ‘regions’.

Question 5

What was the issue with Harthorne’s regional geography?

Answer 5

• remains an unclear concept.
• refers to both
  + sub-national (midlands, East Anglia)
  + supra-national (Scandinavia, Middle East)

Question 6

Fred Schaefer:

Answer 6

• ‘geography should be about trying to formulate laws to explain spatial patterns.

Question 7

The Quantitative Revolution:

Answer 7

• In the 1950s+60s, widespread adoption of statistical analyses and mathematically-based modelling techniques.
• Marked shift during the 1950s:
  + From regional geography to systematic geography
  + Geographers as specialists – e.g. specialising in political geography, economic geography, geomorphology.
• Geographer started to become more clearly divided into H + P geography during this period.

Question 8

Paradigm shift or the changing of the guard?

Answer 8

• PS: when an academic subject radically and swiftly changes its ways of working, its world-view and self-understanding. The word ‘revolution’ implies sudden, drastic change.
• the links between Quantitative Revolution and logical positivism were implicit, more than explicit.
• the turn to QR was driven as much by social change as much as philosophical revolution.
• The QR can also be understood as the rise to prominence of a new generation of geographers, over the course of a decade or so.
• regional geographers did not become computer modellers.
• instead they gradually fell away, to be replaced by younger quantitative geographers.

Question 9

Different models/theories:

Answer 9

• agricultural land use model
• central place theory
• dark geographies

Question 10

Agricultural land use model:

Answer 10

• Established by J. H. Von Thunen.
• All things being equal, a pattern of rings will emerge around a city, with each ring denoting a particular land use
• With each progressive ring, the intensity of the type of agriculture decreases (dairy is arable to livestock)

Question 11

Central place theory:

Answer 11

• Established by Walter Christaller
• Allows geographer to predict and explain the locations of towns in a given region.
• Cities are rationally organised in a hierarchical pattern, with towns functioning as the central place of a regional community.

Question 12

Dark geographies:

Answer 12

• established by Walter Christaller.
• During WW2, he worked as a planner for Himmler’s SS.
• he applied his theories to consider the optimal planning of new territories in Eastern Europe.
• he was now producing - rather than simply explaining/predicting - a model of spatial order.
• Eastern Europe under German rule became a ‘blank space upon which hexagons could be imposed’

Question 13

When did Harvard reopen its geography department?

Answer 13

• 2006

Question 14

Conclusion:

Answer 14

• the QR occurred in the 1950s/60s - brought statistical analyses and spatial modelling into geography.
• part of a reaction against the fallings of regional geographies.
• influenced by wider social, economic and technological contexts, new geographers were doing new things with geography.
• the QR led to much new work on trade, transport, migration, etc.
• shift from regional geography to systematic geography.