Nature - autonomous learning

102 the ‘nature’ of geographyTable 2.1 The study of ‘nature’ within and between geography’s three mainbranchesPureresearchPhysical geography Environmental geography Human geography• geomorphology• hydrology• biogeography (with soils)• climatic geography• Quarternary geographyThe non-human world/physical environmentAppliedresearchStatus quo/reformistAnthropocentricEcocentric• resourcegeography• hazardsgeography• ecologicalmodernisationresearch• sustainabilityresearchRadical/left-wing• radical hazardsgeography• rural geography• agricultural geography• TWPE• environmentalregulation andgovernanceresearch• expert + layenvironmentalknowledgesresearch• environmentalinjusticeresearchIdeas about, understandingsof, and uses of thephysical environmentMain subdisciplines• cultural and social geography• medical geographyMain approaches• second-wave feminist geography• gay and lesbian geography• anti-racist geography• subaltern geography• children’s geography• geography of the disabled‘Human nature’Identity/subjectivityThe bodyhumanly altered environment or unaltered environments. Human geography,by contrast, contains many who are suspicious of the idea that the‘facts’ of those things we call nature can ultimately speak for themselves. Italso contains those interested not in the ‘natural environment’ but in the‘unnatural environment’ created by particular societies at the level of bothimagination and reality. And, finally, it contains many who de-naturaliseunderstandings of what is sometimes thought of as ‘human nature’ (i.e.capacities of the body and mind). Overall, human geographers take ade-naturalising – even anti-naturalist – approach to their subject matter.What this means is that, over a century after the ‘geographical experiment’was initiated, there is no one overarching theory in geography that explainsthe relationships between the social and the natural worlds. Instead, we havetwo different communities of researchers operating with very differenttheories, models and methods and arriving at very different conclusionsabout ‘the nature of nature’. Sandwiched between these communities is asmaller, rather diverse cluster of human–environment researchers.For many in the discipline this is nothing short of a tragedy. For them,we live in an era when human and physical geography can fruitfullyreunite. The middle ground currently occupied by a smallish numberof geographers could, in the eyes of these commentators, become moreheavily populated if geographers focused on how proliferating local andglobal environmental problems can be ameliorated (Cooke 1992). Indeed,