ABSTRACT

It is perhaps an indication of human geography's growing maturity as a social science that after its long period of empirical tranquility and reluctance to engage methodological, let alone philosophical, issues, the subject has attempted over the past fifteen years to assimilate quantification, behavioralism and, more recently, humanism and structural marxism. This condensation of intellectual history, which in other disciplines was spread over a period of two or three times as long, has created a turbulence which, while exciting, can also be confusing, as the intellectual half-life of not only theories but also whole paradigms shrinks rapidly. In true North American fashion, obsolescence is setting in more and more speedily; North American geography, too, has its annual ritual of spring cleaning and its Easter parade of new models each April, when last year's motifs are cleared from the intellectual wardrobe. More reflective and synthetic work is clearly needed to evaluate and trace the course of distinctive research traditions, to show the nature of continuity and interrelation between them, and to place narrow debate within its broader theoretical and historical context.