Nature - autonomous learning

the ‘nature’ of geography 107FURTHER READINGChapter 1 of Livingstone’s (1992) The Geographical Tradition offers an exceptionallygood discussion of ‘contextual histories’ and why they are bepreferred to ‘internalist’ ones. Heffernan (2003) offers a brief contextualhistory of early university geography.Those interested in the evolutionarycast of early geographical thinking should consult chapters 6–8 ofLivingstone’s book plus the entries on environmental determinism,Darwinism and social Darwinism in The Dictionary of Human Geography (4thedn, Johnston et al. 2000). For thorough histories of human and physicalgeography respectively see Johnston and Sidaway (2004) Geography andGeographers and Gregory (2000) The Changing Nature of Physical Geography.Fora potted history of human geography see Hubbard et al. (2002: chs 2 and3); for potted histories of physical geography Slaymaker and Spencer (1998:ch. 1), Gardner (1996), Sims (2003) or Inkpen (2004: ch. 2).The postwardebate revolving around Hartshorne and Schaefer is dealt withsuccinctly by Unwin (1992: ch. 5). Derek Gregory’s (1978) Ideology,Scienceand Human Geography (ch. 1) still offers one of the best general introductionsto spatial science, even if it generalises a little too much. Johnston (2003)and Richards (2003a) discuss human and physical geography in relationto the social and natural sciences respectively.The relevant chapters of thefollowing books offer excellent introductions to humanistic, Marxist,feminist and post-geographies: Modern Geographical Thought (Peet 1999);Dissident Geographies (Blunt and Wills 2000) and Approaching Human Geography(Cloke et al. 1991). For readers interested to know more about the thinkingof some of the geographers mentioned in this chapter a series of‘biobibliographical studies’ have been published annually since 1977.Unfortunately, apart from this chapter, there is no other single source thatdiscusses the history of geographers’ engagement with the topic of nature.Though very good, Olwig’s (1996) discussion of nature and geographyrests upon a limited definition of the term nature. Finally, Beaumont andPhilo (2004) and Eden (2003) discuss geography’s (non-)engagementwith the environmental movement and ecocentrist perspectives.