ABSTRACT
Political, social and cultural geographers are addressing their roles and relationships within academic institutions and within the communities and societies in which they live, work and study. Gottman is one of the few geographers to attend directly to the question of freedom. He continues by saying that it is not the duty of the geographer to delve into the philosophical or juridical literature on this subject, but that the geographer should be concerned with the organisation of space in restricting or broadening freedom. The elements of space and social relations have been the pivots of human geography since the rise of humanistic geography in the 1970s, a paradigm shift which emphasised the subjectivity and experiential activities of individuals in terms of their relationship with their social and physical environments. Freedom, the sense of being free, can be construed in many ways, but in all interpretations there is a freedom from a physical or metaphysical constraint or both.
