assessment measure. A range of related per-
sonality assessments, such as personal con-
struct theory and the semantic differential,
were employed, and in this work geography
and psychology became close neighbours (Ait-
ken, 1991; Kitchin, Blades and Golledge,
1997). During the 1970s, in particular, this
productive interdisciplinary relationship was
developed through the annual meetings of
the Environmental Design Research Associ-
ation and in the pages of the new journal,
Environment and Behavior(seeenvironmen-
tal psychology).
Since that period, behavioural geography has
continued to diversify, even if its position has
been less elevated than in the 1960s and 1970s
when many disciplinary leaders worked in this
sub-discipline. More recent research has
included analysis of environmental learning,
spatial search, developmental issues in spatial
cognition and cartography and Golledge’s
(1993) important work with the disabled and
sight-impaired (seedisability). But some of
the lustre has left the field. In part, this may
be related to the methodological sensibilities of
post-positivist human geography. In part, it is
due to the growing conviction of the inherently
socialized nature of geographical knowledge,
which challenges the individualism of psycho-
logical models. In part, it emanates from a
suspicion of the adequacy of anepistemology
of observation and measurement that may
leave unexamined non-observable and non-
measurable contexts and ideological forma-
tions. Nonetheless, behavioural geography has
a continuing legacy, comprehensively itemized
and integrated in the massive compilation of
Golledge and Stimson (1997). dl
Suggested reading
Gold (1980); Golledge and Stimson (1997);
Walmsley and Lewis (1993).
Berkeley School Americancultural geo-
graphywas dominated until the 1980s by
Carl Sauer, his colleagues at the University of
California at Berkeley and their students.
While this type of cultural geography is no
longer important in Berkeley, it remains a re-
search tradition carried on by former Berkeley
students and their students scattered through-
out the world.
Arguably, no geographer had more influ-
ence on American geography in the twentieth
century than Carl Ortwin Sauer (1889–1975).
He received his PhD in 1915 from the Univer-
sity of Chicago, where he came under the
influence of theenvironmental determinism
of Ellen Churchill Semple. In 1923 he moved
to Berkeley, and under the influence of the
anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and R.H.
Lowie was exposed to a concept ofculture
that was to replace his earlier environmentalist
ideas. In 1925 Sauer wrote what is perhaps his
best known essay, ‘Themorphologyofland-
scape’, which strongly denounced environ-
mental determinism and suggested a method
by which cultural geographers should conduct
theirfieldwork(Sauer, 1963b [1925]). Shortly
after arriving at Berkeley, Sauer developed what
was to become a life-long interest inlatin
america, and there remains a strong connection
with the regionin the work of subsequent
generations of his students. Cultural geography,
for Sauer, was the study of the relationship
between humans and the land (see also
cultural landscape). During the latter part of
his career, he pursued two broad, rather specu-
lative historical themes. The first focused on
such questions as early humans’ use of fire and
the seashore as a primeval habitat, while the
second explored the condition of America when
Europeans first encountered it.
While giving Sauer his due, it must be
remembered that most of the ideas that he
introduced into the field – historical recon-
struction, cultural hearth anddiffusion
amongst them – were current at the time in
German geography (seeanthropogeography)
and American cultural anthropology. His
intellectual debt to Friedrich Ratzel, Otto
Schluter, Eduard Hahn and A.L. Kroeber
was immense. Sauer and his students placed
a greater emphasis upon human relationships
with the physical environment than did the
anthropologists, whose interests not only
included human–environment relations but
whose focus was on human behaviour more
generally. Wagner and Mikesell (1962) iden-
tify three principal themes that define the work
of the Berkeley School. The first is the diffu-
sion of culture traits, such as plants,animals
and house types. The second is the identifica-
tion and evolution of culture regions through
material and non-material traits (cf.sequent
occupance). The third iscultural ecology,
usually also studied in historical perspective.
Sauer’s persistent insistence on the import-
ance of an historical perspective ensured that
many American geographers referred to a dis-
tinctively hybrid cultural–historical geography.
It has been argued that the Berkeley School
adopted a reified ‘superorganic’ conception of
culture from the anthropologist A.L. Kroeber
(Duncan, 1980). After the 1980s, the Berkeley
School served as a counterpoint for NewGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_B Final Proof page 45 31.3.2009 11:01amBERKELEY SCHOOL