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singularity of vision that overlooks the mul-
tiple, and sometimes conflicting, approaches
that humanistic geographers have adopted.
They have drawn upon a wide range of hu-
manist philosophies, which has led to a generic
humanistic geography in addition to versions
based around essentialism, idealism,
phenomenologyandpragmatism(see also
humanism). Despite this, there are key simi-
larities in terms of the reasoning behind the
emergence in the 1970s of humanistic geog-
raphy; it was a response to what were seen as
the dehumanizing effects of bothpositivism
and structuralmarxism, in addition to pro-
moting a positive model of a humanistic geog-
raphy. Buttimer has argued that:
From whatever ideological stance it has
emerged, the case for humanism has usually
been made with the conviction that there
must be more to human geography than
thedanse macabreof materialistically motiv-
ated robots which, in the opinion of many,
was staged by the post-World War II ‘scien-
tific’ reformation. (Buttimer, 1993, p. 47)
For many humanistic geographers, the
world is primarily the sum of human experi-
ences through their encounters with ‘external
reality’, which cannot be accessed other than
through the human mind (Cloke, Philo and
Sadler, 1991). However, others were less re-
ductionist, and recognized that the ‘external’
world was mediated through subjective layers
of meaning in complex ways. Talking of
‘body–subject’ to transcend the separation of
material life from thought, Seamon (1979)
sought to capture the meaning ofplacethat
was orchestrated through the ‘pre-reflective
intentionality’ of ‘body ballets’ – the move-
ment, often unthinking and unroutinized, of
people through their environments, weaving
the rich texture of place (a view echoed by
recent returns toethnomethodologicaltech-
niques and feminist theorizations of thebody).
This is not simply anontologicalmove in
terms of focusing on individuals and their vari-
ous activities, but also a philosophical one
which puts human experience and under-
standing of the world at the centre of geog-
raphy. It further insists that all human
experience is articulated through geographical
concepts such asspace,timeandlandscape.
Drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology,
Buttimer (1976) talked of the concept of
thelifeworldto provide a sense of this in-
timacy between place and people (see also
Seamon, 1979). Thus, appropriatequalita-
tive methodsare required, as ‘[n]o decimalnotation of time, no geometric command-
ment, no camera or tape recorder could easily
articulate the experience of this lifeworld’
(Mels, 2004, p. 3). Phenomenological strands
of humanistic geography were concerned with
essences – for example, of space or experience
(Tuan, 1976b) – or with the nature of exist-
ence, elucidating previously taken-for-granted
ways of being in the world.
In their attempts to articulate the human
experience of place and landscape, some hu-
manistic geographers turned to the human-
ities, particularlyartand literature, as forms
of expression that were seen to provide in-
sights that were unavailable to the more scien-
tific gaze of the geographer (Meinig, 1983).
However, the enthusiasm of some (e.g.
Pocock, 1981) for the transcendental ability
of the artist or author to capture the essence
of human experience has been criticized for its
ignorance of the common origins of European
Renaissance artistic representation with geo-
metric knowledges of possession and control
(Cosgrove, 1984), and the nature of genres in
literature (Sharp, 2000b).
In addition to drawing the human as the
subject of geography, humanists also turned
to examine the humanity of the geographer.
The emphasis on interpretation and intersub-
jectivity that humanistic geography pro-
pounded meant that the researcher could not
be seen as ‘an individual whose humanity
stands outside the research process: as an in-
dividual who is nothing but a vessel for taking
in information, processing it and then arriving
at conclusions’ (Cloke, Philo and Sadler,
1991, p. 71). Instead, the researcher had to
acknowledge her or his role in the process of
interpretation and the production of know-
ledge, and thus Buttimer (1974) stressed the
importance ofvaluesin geography. This ne-
cessitated the adoption ofethnographicand
participatoryresearch methodologies (e.g.
Ley,1983; Western, 1992) and experiments
with writing styles to move away from sterile
scientificlanguage(e.g. Olsson, 1991).
Because humanistic geography emphasized
experience and humansubjectivity, it tended
towards idealism and voluntarism, and as a
result has been criticized, particularly by
marxist,realistandstructurationistthe-
orists for overplaying the freedom that individ-
uals have to act and for tending to focus on the
micro-scale at the expense of important struc-
tural connections (although, in both cases,
note E.P. Thompson’s socialist humanism).
Despite superficial similarities, thecultural
turnin human geography has offered a criticalGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 357 1.4.2009 3:18pmHUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY