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made it possible to display and interro-
gate vast, spatially distributed data ar-
rays; and to modes of visual analysis
through critical readings of the spatial-
ities of art, cartography, film and
photography (seevisual methods). Yet
these methods have been unevenly devel-
oped and deployed: quantitative
methodshave always been most import-
ant in economic geography, where they
are presently undergoing a considerable
resurgence; studies inelectoral geog-
raphyhave been the principal locus of
quantitative work in political geography,
which has otherwise preferred qualitative
methods, especially incritical geopol-
itics; and cultural geography has been
almost entirely produced throughquali-
tative methods.
(2) Human geographers have also made sig-
nificant theoretical contributions. An ex-
plicit interest in theorization was a lasting
achievement of spatial science: the so-
called quantitative revolution was
often hailed as a local ‘scientific revolu-
tion’, but it was fundamentally atheoretical
revolution, and it was the commitment to
theorization that did much to constitute
human geography as a research discipline
(and en route to facilitate conversations
with other disciplines). In the 1960s there
were several calls for the development of a
distinctively geographical body oftheory:
a theoretical corpus that would be the ex-
clusive preserve of geography and thus
serve to guarantee its intellectual and in-
stitutional legitimacy. At the end of that
decade, Harvey concluded his prospectus
forExplanation in geography(1969) with
an injunction: ‘By our theories you shall
know us’. This was always an unlikely pro-
spect at best (and a dangerous one at
worst), and most human geographers –
including Harvey himself (see Castree
and Gregory, 2006) – became much
more interested in establishing the inter-
disciplinarysignificance ofplace and space
for social analysis. This has itself been an
interdisciplinary project, not least be-
cause, as Harvey has constantly empha-
sized, the incorporation of such spatial
concepts (the contextual) into conven-
tional social theory (the compositional) is
radically unsettling. What is sometimes
called ‘the spatial turn’ has thus been de-
scribed by more than human geographers:
so much so, in fact, that accounts ofland-
scape,place,regionandspacehave be-come commonplace in many areas of the
humanities and social sciences (Crang and
Thrift, 2000; Hubbard, Kitchin and Val-
entine, 2004; Warf and Arias, 2008).The developments summarized in the pre-
vious two paragraphs resulted in what Kwan
(2004) identifies as a divide – even a ‘rift’ –
between ‘spatial–analytical geographies’
invested in the development and use of quan-
titative techniques and geospatial technologies
on one side and ‘socio-cultural geographies’
involved in the development and use of critical
social theory and more qualitative methods on
the other. Kwan insists that this is unproduct-
ive: there is no direct and immediate relation
betweenepistemologyand method, she in-
sists, so that ‘the choice between critical social
theory and spatial analysis is false.’ She urges
the development of ‘hybrid geographies’ that
‘challenge the boundary and forge creative
connections between socio-cultural and
spatial–analytical geographies’ (p. 758).
Kwan’s hybrid geographies are not (quite)
Whatmore’s (2002a) hybrid geographies, but
they both speak of transcending the divisions
between the cultural, social or ‘human’ sci-
ences and the biological, physical or ‘natural’
sciences, and they both emphasize the role of
feminist theories andfeminist geographies
in ‘talking across the divide’ (cf. Kwan, 2007).
In disciplinary terms, however, what matters
most is the substantive work carried out under
the sign of human geography. Although they
are unlikely soul mates, Martin (2001b) and
Harvey (2006c) have both criticized what they
characterizeasthedeflection of human geog-
raphy from rigorous, substantive inquiry
through a fixation on, even an obsession
with, abstract philosophical and theoretical
issues. Although they were writing from op-
posite sides of the Atlantic, their complaints
were largely addressed to a British audience
and arise, in part, from recent differences in
intellectual history and institutional context. It
has become increasingly difficult to identify a
common ‘Anglo-American’ human geography
(cf. Johnston and Sidaway, 2004a,b), a devel-
opment that has coincided with an emerging
critique of Anglo-Americanhegemonywithin
the international discipline(s). If the coinci-
dence seems ironic, this last critique is about
more thanlanguage: it is about language used
to privilege particular conceptual formations.
And the criticisms made by Martin and
Harvey also arise from opposition to equally
particular philosophies and modes of theory.
philosophy was once given extraordinaryGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 353 1.4.2009 3:18pmHUMAN GEOGRAPHY