The Dictionary of Human Geography

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necessary for effective management of the

national project of world leadership (Gendzier,

1985). In thecold warera, some of the first

areas of major concern were ineurope,but

area studies programmes were also quickly

developed for regions ofasia(including the

middle east) and the rest of the so-called

third world(Cumings, 1998). Although the

intention of the US government in funding

such programmes clearly had to do with

the need to develop knowledge useful to the

maintenance of imperial power (seeamerican

empire), the kinds of work done within area

studies came to vary widely, both methodo-

logically and politically (Wallerstein, Juma,

Keller et al., 1996).

Methodologically, area studies programmes

brought together scholars from a range of so-

cial sciences – including anthropology, applied

economics, geography, history, political sci-

ence and sociology – as well as varioushuman-

itiesand physical sciences disciplines. This

spurred a significant amount of interdisciplin-

ary collaboration and is credited by some

scholars with having helped erode disciplinary

boundaries in the post-Second World War

academy (Wallerstein, Juma, Keller et al.,

1996, pp. 36–48).

While many early Cold War studies were

animated by a desire to serve the US govern-

ment’s overseas projects – even leading

in some cases to considerable controversy

within disciplines over the appropriate role of

scholarship – many area studies programmes

also came to serve as the home base for a range

of critical scholarly endeavours that ques-

tioned these same US policies (Anderson,

1998, pp. 11–12). This was the case, for

example, in Asian studies, where a group

called the ‘Concerned Asian Scholars’ came

together during the Vietnam War, challenging

the views of Asianist scholars who supported

the US war effort. Likewise, scholarship

critical of US foreign policy agendas has fre-

quently emanated from fields such as Latin

American and Middle Eastern studies. jgi

Suggested reading

Anderson (1998); Cumings (1998); Gendzier

(1985); Said (2003 [1978]); Wallerstein, Juma,

Keller et al. (1996).

areal differentiation The study of the

spatial distribution of physical and human

phenomena as they relate to one another in

regionsor other spatial units. Also sometimes

referred to aschorology, it is, withland-

scapeandspatial analysisapproaches, often

regarded as one of the three main conceptions

ofhuman geography. Of the three, it is the

oldest Western tradition of geographical

enquiry, tracing its beginnings to the Greeks

Hecateus of Miletus and Strabo, although

the term itself only dates from the 1930s.

In Strabo’s words, the geographer is ‘the per-

son who describes the parts of the Earth’.

Description, however, has never been just tak-

ing inventory of the features of regions. The

purpose was always to relate the features

to one another to understand howplacesdif-

fer from one another and how this has come

about. As the theoretical justification for study-

ingregionsandregional geography,useof

areal differentiation has waxed and waned

down the years, with different proponents

using distinctive concepts and language.

The ‘classic’ epoch of regional geography, to

use Paul Claval’s (1993, p. 15) turn of phrase,

was reached in the late nineteenth and early

twentieth centuries, when much of the theor-

etical debate in geography was devoted to the

concept of the region. The most important

modern statement of geography as areal differ-

entiation was made in Richard Hartshorne’s

The nature of geography(1939). Though often

viewed as an argument for the uniqueness of

regions, the logic of the presentation suggests

that recognizing regions requires investigating

similarities as well as differences over space. In

the 1950s and 1960s, critics of regional geog-

raphy succeeded in marginalizing the focus

on areal differentiation as they pushed a rede-

finition of the field in terms of spatial analysis.

In the 1980s, however, the approach made

something of a comeback. But the revival is

neither directly connected to older debates

such as that between Hartshorne and his

critics, nor is it monolithic. Three positions

can be distinguished. One involves a focus on

place-making as an essential human activity.

A second sees regional differences in terms

of processes ofuneven developmentthat are

forever rearticulating the global division of

labourundercapitalism. A third attempts rec-

onciliation between the first two by seeing

places orregionsassettingsfor theinterpellation

ofhuman agencyand the conditioning effects

on it of social and environmental context.

Persisting dilemmas limit the possibility of

unifying these positions. For one thing, the

question of whether regions are ‘real’ or exist

solely in the mind of the observer continues to

wrack debate (Agnew, 1999). There are also

important differences over narrative versus

analytic modes of thinking and presentation,

the relevance of regional divisions in an

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AREAL DIFFERENTIATION