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challenge to humanism, and most ‘new
cultural geography’ is characterized bypost-
humanismsof various sorts. Theorists ofpost-
structuralismwould further suggest that the
perception ofhuman agencyso promoted in
humanistic geography is a product of dominant
discourse. Feminist geographers have shown
how these dominant discourses create an
image of normal subjecthood that is white,
male, bourgeois, heterosexual and able-bodied,
an image that can only be maintained as coher-
ent through the exclusion of all that is ‘Other’
(seefeminist geographies). Thus, a whole
range of others are denied full subjectivity and
agency (Alcoff, 1988). The exposure of the fic-
tion of coherent subjectivity has also led some to
turn topsychoanalytic theoryto seek to
understand unconscious motivations for ac-
tions, something overlooked by many humanis-
tic geographers who regarded human agency as
the result of conscious decisions (but again,
there were exceptions, such as Seamon’s
‘body-ballets’). Recent developments of post-
humanism, or what Whatmore (2004) has
called ‘more-than-human’ geographies, have
sought to populate the world with agents other
than humans (seeactor-network theory).
Although these critiques have meant that
the influence of humanistic geographyper se
has waned since the 1980s, many of its argu-
ments are still key to current debates in human
geography. Recent critique of the cultural turn
insists that geographers’ enthusiasm for dis-
course andrepresentationhave drawn them
away from ‘the more ‘‘thingy’’, bump-into-
able, stubbornly there-in-the-world kinds of
‘‘matter’’ (the material)’ (Philo, 2000a, p. 33).
New cultural geographers’ presentations of
landscapes as already structured through dis-
course draw attention from the variety of cor-
poreal practices as instances of how ‘senses of
landscape and self are mutually configured’
(Wylie, 2005, p. 239). Wylie (2005) talks in
terms of a ‘post-phenomenology’ in which
human agency is reconnected withnetworks
of non-human agents, through which place
and experience emerge. jshSuggested reading
Adams, Hoelscher and Till (2001); Buttimer
(1993); Cloke, Philo and Sadler (1991); Mels
(2004); Seamon (1979).humanities Emerging ineuropeduring the
Renaissance from medieval scholastic study of
the seven liberal arts (i.e. thequadriviumof
arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy,
and thetriviumof rhetoric, logic and gram-
mar), the humanities today denotes both anapproach to knowledge and a specific set of
disciplines (see alsohumanism).
Asanapproachtoknowledge,thehumanities
are (still) characterized by broadlyhermen-
eutic or interpretive methods and work
through cycles of criticism rather than the
establishment of theory and scientific law
(seelaw, scientific), although concepts, the
rule of evidence and logical argument are vital
to their practice. Expressions of this include
privileging the monograph or essay rather than
the research paper as the preferred style of
scholarly communication, individual author-
ship, and the use of the footnote or endnote
rather than the ‘Harvard’ referencing system,
suggesting ‘conversation’ rather than progres-
sive and cumulative advance of knowledge
(Smith, J., 1992a). The humanities thus fore-
ground the active role of the author in the con-
struction of knowledge and understanding
(Cosgrove and Domosh, 1993).
Thehumanitiesdisciplinesconcernthestudy
of distinctively human actions and works; for
example history, philology (language,litera-
ture, linguistics),philosophy, theology and
studies of Antiquity. The principal goals of the
humanities are both active and contemplative:
they were long regarded as fundamental to the
educational preparation of rulers, but their suc-
cess was gauged in part by the degree of self-
knowledge and self-reflection they produced in
the student (Grafton and Jardine, 1986).geog-
raphy, sometimes characterized as the ‘eye’ of
history, as history in turn was proclaimed
‘queen’ of the humanities, has a long record as
a humanities discipline, initially because it
based its knowledge of the world upon the au-
thority of ancient texts and subsequently, as
exploration, autopsy andempiricism dis-
placed such authority, because it entailed the
comparative study of places and peoples.
The evolution of modern geography as a
university discipline has been strongly affected
by both natural science and social science
epistemologiesand methods, althoughhis-
torical geography’s natural allegiance with
history has continuously if contentiously sus-
tained geography’s connection with a key hu-
manities discipline. Therhetoricof ‘science’
within geography has long tended to subordin-
ate a broader humanities tradition, although
recent studies ofscienceas a social, irredeem-
ably human practice have not only drawn in
some measure from the humanities but also
interrupted the authority of science understood
as objectivism. The values and value of
humanities scholarship have also been margin-
alized by geography’s postwar focus onGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 358 1.4.2009 3:18pmHUMANITIES