The Dictionary of Human Geography

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ends, and paid considerable attention to the

interests of the political ruler and the military

commander. Although Strabo was born in

Greece, he enjoyed the patronage of

Augustus and did most of his work in Rome,

so that hisGeography can be read as an

attempt to explain the post-Republican world

(theinhabitedworld,orecumene)tothecitizens

of the new Roman Empire (Dueck, 2000).

Chorography was not supposed to provide a

comprehensive gazeteer or regional inventory:

it was partial and purposive, and Strabo focused

on Rome and began witheuropebecause ‘it is

admirably adapted by nature for the develop-

ment of excellence in men and governments’

(van Paassen, 1957, pp. 1–32).

Strabo’s conception of geography was chal-

lenged by Claudius Ptolemaeus (or Ptolemy)

round aboutad150. In his view, the purpose

of geography was to provide ‘a view of the

whole head’ and this meant that he separated

geography from chorography, which had the

purpose ‘of describing the parts, as if one were

to draw only an ear or an eye’. As this passage

implies, for Ptolemy,grapheindid not mean

describing but drawing and, specifically, map-

ping. Ptolemy’s ‘geography’ was geodesy and

cartography, and he preferred to leave out

everything that had no direct connection with

that aim: ‘We shall expand our ‘‘guide’’ for so

far as this is useful for the knowledge of the

location of places and their setting upon the

map, but we shall leave out of consideration all

the many details about the peculiarities of the

peoples’ (van Paassen, 1957, p. 2).

The distance between Strabo and Ptolemy

could not be plainer, and it is indelibly present

in the modern constitution ofgeographytoo.

As late as the seventeenth century, Strabo

and Ptolemy continued to provide the main

models for European geography. The usual

distinction was between aSpecial Geography,

devoted to a description of particular regions,

and a General Geography, mathematically

oriented and concerned with the globe as a

whole. The premier illustration is the work

of Bernhard Varenius, who published both

studies in Special Geography and his famous

Geographia generalis, in which, for the first time,

geography sought to engage with the ideas of

Bacon, Descartes and Galileo (Bowen, 1981).

The modern case for geography as chorology

was argued most forcefully by Hartshorne

(1939), and following the subsequent debate

over exceptionalism in geography – and

despite the nuances and qualifications that

Hartshorne had registered – chorology was

often used in polemical opposition tospatial

science(cf. Sack, 1974a). But the temper of

the original version, with its acknowledgement

of the importance ofpowerand philosophical

reflection (cf. Casey, 2001, p. 683), is a force-

ful reminder of the continuing need to attend

to the politics of geographical enquiry, while

Koelsch (2004) has insisted that contempor-

ary attempts to understand the heterogeneous

geography of the world still have much to learn

from ‘the place-based, cultural–historical

model’ of Strabo. dg

Suggested reading

Koelsch (2004).

choropleth A map that portrays a single

distribution forcensus tracts, counties or

similar areal units; portrays each areal unit as

homogeneous; divides the data into discrete

categories; and typically describes spatial

variation of intensity data with a darker-

means-more sequence of greytones. Readily

rendered by mapping software, choropleth

maps can present misleading patterns when

based on count data, highly heterogeneous

areal units, inappropriateclass intervalsor

illogical sequences of colours (Brewer and

Pickle, 2002; Monmonier, 2005). Although

most choropleth maps depict quantitative

distributions such as median income or the

percentage rate of population growth, qualita-

tive choropleth maps are useful for showing

distributions such as dominant religion or

form of government. mm

Suggested reading

Monmonier (1993).

chronotope Translated as ‘time–space’ from

its origins in Greek, the term is used to desig-

nate the spatio-temporal contexts and categor-

ies embedded within a text or other cultural

artefact. The term was devised by Russian

literary theorist and philosopher Mikhail

Bakhtin (1895–1975) in the 1920s, partly

influenced by the revolutionary transform-

ation of physics by Einstein, Planck and

others, and it was subsequently imported into

literary history and cultural studies. In the

most general terms, the idea of a chronotope

acknowledges the inseparability oftimeand

spacewhile deploying their unity to material-

ize concrete cultural formations. It is perhaps

best to think of a chronotope as a kind

of matrix that allows cultural analysts to situ-

ate a work within its historico-geographical

setting in order to facilitate its interpretation.

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 83 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CHRONOTOPE