ABSTRACT
In being asked to discuss the contemporary issues upon which geographers should be focusing in their present and future research on the highly complex and variable continent of Latin America, innumerable questions of what to include face the writer. Two basic problems spring up at the outset. Firstly, for a contributor who believes in the interdisciplinary concept of ‘Area Studies’, to what extent should reference be made to continent-wide issues being discussed in economics, sociology or political science? Secondly, to what extent should the chapter refer to research methodologies and studies made by geographers from outside the United Kingdom? Should reference be made, for example, to the contributions of French geographers, with their impressive synthetic studies of individual regions or sub-regions of Latin America, such as Grenier's recent (1984) extensive regional monograph on Chiloe, the large island to the south of mainland Chile. As with Grenier's study, the regional approach is often highly appropriate for the study of an impoverished area in which the utilisation of local resources for local needs is still the major characteristic of the regional economy. Although many such regions exist in Latin America, the approach becomes distinctly less applicable to regions in which considerable interaction occurs with other regions - such as metropolitan, highly urbanised or export-economy regions.
