The Dictionary of Human Geography

privileged experience (Hartsock, 1983;
Harding, 2004; see alsosituated knowledge).
Such concerns have made for lively debate
withinhuman geography, but epistemology
is also implicit within much historical theoriz-
ing in the discipline. One of the most import-
ant threads throughout the long history of
geography (seegeography, history of) and
its attendantphilosophyhas been an argu-
ment over the relative merits of generality
and particularity. This seemingly abstract bin-
ary relates to concrete knowledge production
insofar as ‘general geography’ is distinct from
‘specific geography’ (as Bernhardus Varenius,
1622–50, termed it: seechorology), and on
that distinction rests the question of how
much emphasis should be given over to the
search for trans-contextual scientific laws.
The answer hinges to some extent on whether
geographycan claim to be a mature science,
one whose knowledge is objective, explana-
tory, rational and orderly. In the 1950s and
1960s, adherents to spatial science and
regional geography fought over various
aspects of these qualities (seenomothetic
and idiographic), but that debate was
eclipsed byhumanistic geography’s outright
reversal of the polarities fastened on to the
objectivity–subjectivityopposition. Through
its attention tohermeneutics, the interpret-
ationofsubjectiveexperienceandconceptssuch
assense of place, humanistic geographers
reversed direction on decades of ‘scientism’ in
geography, and paved the way for geographical
critiques informed by feminism and post-
structuralism.

Most recently, post-structuralist geography
has seen a shift in epistemological emphases,
from (1) a trenchant critique of knowledge
claims that puts all matter into question
through a constructivist epistemology to (2) a
materialization of epistemology through an
anti-essentialist assertion of ontology (cf.
essentialism):

(1) Through the exploration of foreigncon-
tinents, the naming of their spaces after West-
erners and other Western spaces, and the

mapping of those spaces in such a way that

Western prejudices and power relations became

inscribed upon their landscapes (see also

orientalism), attention has long focused on

the role thatcartography,explorationand

geography played in processes of Western

colonialismduring Enlightenment and post-

Enlightenment modernity (Mitchell, 1988;

Gregory, 1994). Pervasive within the latter,

mapping practice (Pickles, 2004) came to be

based on a detached or ‘bird’s eye’ (Schein,

1993) perspectivalism that Dixon and Jones

(1998) summarize as follows:

. Cartesian perspectivalism, ‘which lineates the
world with respect to a central point’ (see
alsocartesianism);
. ocularcentrism, ‘which privileges vision from
an elevated vantage point from which the
world may be surveilled in its totality’ (see
alsosurveillance;vision and visuality);
and
. theepistemology of the grid, ‘a procedure for
locating and segmenting social life so that it
may be captured, measured, and interro-
gated’ (seecartographic reason).

Epistemologically, this view lent itself to a

conceit of representation and to what

Mitchell (1988) and Gregory (1994) callthe

world as exhibition:the power to know and

control space rests in the capacity to visualize,

demarcate and survey, all parts of a grid episte-

mologythatcolonizes spacesjustasitdominates

mainstream geography. These epistemological

inquiries led many in the 1990s to debate

the relative importance ofmaterialismand

discoursein the production of social space.

In many cases, post-structuralism’s represen-

tational instabilities and uncertainties trump-

ed the apparently self-evident bedrock

ontologies found in materialist theories such

asmarxism.

(2) Recently, some thinkers have begun

to investigate how knowledge works beyond

representation. In many ways, this work hark-

ens back to the studies of emotional and

sensational connections to places highlighted

under humanistic geography, though these

tended to connect interiorized and subjecti-

vized feelings to the representational idea of

place. Instead, the current work draws heavily

upon Gilles Deleuze’s critique of representa-

tion as a hindrance to understanding the

world, which, ontologically, articulates pro-

cesses of ‘pure difference’ beyond, prior

or even contrary to the orders or similitude

and resemblance at work in representation.

key epistemological binaries

Objectivity Subjectivity

Explanation Interpretation

Order Complexity

General Particular

Rational Emotional

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 207 1.4.2009 3:17pm

EPISTEMOLOGY