ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the contributions of historical materialism and humanism, which we see as complementing each other in many ways, have often opposed each other. The time has come for urging both out of their parallel courses, in an examination of the possibility for both dialogue and reconstruction. The issues discussed may require a very fundamental alteration of our theories, of the concepts through which we see life. Historical materialism, gave us a connected totality, one which exposed the layers of relations, the complex of constraints and conditions in which the individual was embedded and through which the individual was created as a social being. This myopia assured that our growing expertise at criticism of positivism was also put to good use in our first attempts at communication. Historical materialists move towards a concept of history centred on 'human agency' and humanists have developed a concept of human situated more firmly in what Ted Relph calls the geographical imagination.
