Essay on Applied Geography | Geography

In this essay we will discuss about the evolution of applied geography.

James and Martin (1972, 10) have identified five different kinds of questions of geographic character:

(1) There are “generic” questions that have to do with the content of Earth space but that cannot be effectively answered without a framework of concepts to guide the separation of the relevant from the vast complexity of the irrelevant.

(2) There are “genetic” questions that have to do with the sequences of events leading from past situations through geographic changes to present condition; these are studied by the methods of historical geography.

(3) There are “theoretical” questions that deal with the formulation of empirical generalizations or general laws, perhaps even with basic theory, and with the methods of drawing logical deductions.

(4) There are “remedial” questions that have to do with the application of geographic concepts and skills to the study of practical economic, social, or political problems.

(5) There are “methodological” questions that have to do with experiments in new methods of study, new techniques of observation and analysis or new cartographic methods.’

The fourth ‘remedial’ questions of geographic character are of special significance as they necessarily point out to the application of geographical knowledge and skills to the study of practical problems of government or business.

It was as early as in 1896 that Hugh Robert Mill, one of the contemporaries of Sir Halford J. Mackinder, drew up a plan for using the sheets of the Ordnance Survey (1 inch to the mile) as basis on which to plot categories of land quality and land use for all of the British Islands.

In 1900, he provided sample studies of two sheets to demonstrate the utility of such detailed field-mapping. Mill’s attempt may be thought of as being the first such attempt to apply geographical skill to land use vis-a-vis land quality mapping, but his proposal was ignored by the British geographers of his period. However, the idea that Mill developed finally echoed in Dudley Stamp’s celebrated work during the 1930s.

It needs to be mentioned here that Hugh Robert Mill’s heritage with regard to the mapping of potential land quality based on the 1 inch to the mile sheet of Ordnance Survey, was given a concrete expansion in regional studies in Great Britain by sociologist Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932). Although not a geographer himself, Geddes had a major influence on British geography, especially in the field of regional survey, regionalisation and applied geography.

Field study—observation and recording in the field—was basic to his teaching. This led on to what Geddes called ‘regional survey’, embracing place, work and folk; it is alternatively described as geography, economics and anthropology, or as environment, function and organism.

Geddes saw an important application of regional survey in regional planning. He was rather impatient with geographers who defined their subject as a ‘descriptive science’, which tells us whether Geography should be an ‘applied science’ which tells us what ought to be.

In this way, visionary planners Ebenezer Howard with his model of suburban land use and functional structure attempted to plan garden cities, and this had significant influence on British geographical thought before World War I, and finally laid the foundations for studies in applied geography which have continued ever since.

Geddes influenced the study of regionalisation. A more direct and explicit reflection of Geddes’ idea was found in the work of Charles B. Fawcett (1883-1952). In his book, The Provinces of England (1919), Fawcett incorporated somewhat ‘obscure’ ideas of Geddes into workable form, and made one of the first identifications of ‘functional regions’.

However, the main translator of Geddesian thought into geography was Herbert J. Fleure (1877-1969) who rendered Geddes’ ideas accessible and acceptable to geography. Even Andrew J. Herbertson’s (1865-1915) scheme for a division of the world into natural regions reflected Geddes’s influence.

One concept derived from the work of Geddes was that of the regional survey of potential land quality and land use as a basic input plans for economic development. This was the concept that Hugh Robert Mill was believed to have developed in 1896 and 1900, and Geddes made it more expressive and applicable.

L. Dudley Stamp in 1930s translated Mill-Geddes’ ideas into his workable paradigm for the regional survey of potential land quality and land use. He organised and directed the first British land utilisation survey during 1930s, employing some 22,000 school children in the mapping of landuse on a scale of 1/2500 in their home district under the supervision of school and university teacher.

One of the most important geographic thoughts that developed during the interwar period was the application of geographic concepts to politics. This has given the German name Geopolitik (geopolitics). According to Karl Haushofer, who pioneered Geopolitik in Germany, it was the art of using geographical knowledge to give support and direction to the policy of a state. Geopolitik was later conceived of as ‘applied’ political geography.

The transformation of political geography into Geopolitik (geopolitics) in Germany in 1920s was a real manifestation of the remedial character of geography for Germany that sought for the application of geographical skill to the study of the political problems of interwar Germany with regard to its geographical space.

The very concept of ‘lebensraum’, in Germany during that period, was necessarily aimed at making the application of geographical principles more operational in the pursuit of national interest concerning the acquisition of more territories. Instead of calling it applied political geography, the German geographers of contemporary Germany preferred the words ‘Geopolitik’ to other comparable words.

At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, geographical concepts and principles were applied in re-drawing the map of the post-World War I Europe. In fact, it was the American geographers who played the key role under Isaiah Bowman and Mark Jefferson.

The former was given the title of Chief Territorial Specialist of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace and the latter was appointed as Chief Cartographer. Several maps were prepared on scale of 1/1,000,000 or 1/3,000,000.

These were the general maps of Europe as a whole or the somewhat more detailed maps of the Balkans. But there were also a great number of very large- scale maps, such as the map of Alsace-Loraine on a scale of 1/250,000. All these maps were used at the Paris Peace Conference for the study of various boundary proposals.

In fact, the boundaries of Europe were re-drawn on the basis of these maps prepared for the purpose. At the Paris Conference, the map became everything. A major part of the work was in the field of cartography in which a map-making programme of unprecedented size and detail was thus undertaken.

Thus, there are two instances in Europe in which geographic principles were applied to resolve political problems – application of geography to sustain the state policy of territorial aggrandisement, called Geopolitik in Germany; and application of geographic vis-a-vis cartographic principles for re-drawing the boundaries of Europe at the Paris Peace Conference.

However, it cannot be an exaggeration if it is said that both referred to the reasonability of ‘applied political geography’. But at the same time, one of them caused the development of the other, i.e. the re-drawing of boundaries of Europe at the Paris Peace Conference led on to the development of German Geopolitik because the realignment of boundaries had placed Germany at great ‘spatial’ disadvantage.

To quote James and Martin (1972, 343), ‘As the number of professionally trained geographers increased, a certain proportion of the younger generation—then as now—expressed impatience with theoretical studies and demanded that geographic investigations be clearly relevant to the practical problems involving public or private policy. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were some geographers who were disenchanted with the experiments with field methods applied to small areas, and there was a demand for some tangible connection with the ‘overriding’ economic, social, or political problems of the day. There was no clear answer to the question about how one might demonstrate a tangible connection, so each scholar who decided to use geographical studies for practical ends had to formulate his own justification. The result was the appearance of a wide variety of studies in what might be called “applied geography”, in the sense that the purpose was to provide the basis for planning remedial action.’

The first large breakthrough in the use of professionally trained geographers to study practical problems came during World War I and its aftermath. During the 1920s and 1930s, not only were certain wartime projects continued and completed, but new kinds of applied research were undertaken.

A large number of geographers were called into both military and civilian services during World War II, and since then the application of geographical knowledge and skills to the solution of practical problems has grown rapidly.

Though there is a general belief that the root of the development of applied geography lay with the work of Robert Hugh Mill of Britain in 1896, but there was a section of geographers who strongly felt that it was in Prussia that the usefulness of geography for practical purposes was first realised.

Geography was potentially useful for both commercial and military reasons in a world of imperial rivalry. In France, this usefulness was expressed in the creation of many commercial geographical societies in the decade following the defeat of Germany.

Geography’s usefulness was known in Germany after the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. The Prussian State education bureaucrats must have thought there was some value to a geographic perspective in Germany in 1874. The government in unified Germany imposed geography on universities with the objective that the subject would be useful for its particular purposes at that time. 

A section of geographers strongly believed that, ‘neither Alexander Von Humboldt nor Ritter was in any direct sense the creator of modern geography as a university discipline. Their ideas were used by the creators so that they could become symbolic founding fathers but their impact was limited’.

The question that was raised was as to who were the creators of modern geography? The answer was, the creators of modern geography were to be found in the bureaucracy of the Prussian State in the period immediately following the creation of the German Empire. In 1874, Kaiser Wilhelm-I decreed that all royal universities should create chairs of geography.

This political decision led to the immediate imposition of geography throughout the German universities. Hence, by the end of the nineteenth century, geography was an established discipline in the German university system. It was the practical use of geography that the state bureaucracy in Prussian State realised in their quest for fair share of colonies. In Germany, the established higher education system proved to be the chosen vehicle for the advance of geography.

These developments in Germany, imposing geography on universities, not with the purpose of enriching the intellectual and academic quality and acceptance of the discipline, but with the purpose of the receptivity of the discipline for reasons other than intellectual/academic excellence.

While the ‘committed’ German geographers (inclined to Humboldt-Ritter geography), sought to achieve methodological and philosophical distinctiveness for their discipline so as to equalise the emerging pace of other social sciences, the state bureaucracy sought to use the discipline for the state’s requirements.

This mutual exclusiveness that developed within the discipline finally led to ‘methodological controversies’ to the extent as to have stood in the way of the discipline to be qualified as a subject for real and profound research. This controversy necessarily led to the dichotomy of ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ geography.

Pure and Applied Geography:  

Grano (1981) identifies two types of outside influences on the development of the discipline. Within, academic geographers had to be given an intellectual foundation to satisfy intellectual peers, and outside in the wider world, geography had to be justified as a useful activity on which to spend public money. These two pressures produce ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ geographies. Success in both activities is necessary for the long-term survival of the discipline.

The dichotomy of ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ in any discipline is a myth based on a theory of knowledge that claims a separation of knowledge from society. A ‘pure’ science is supposed to be an autonomous product of scientists’ researches that generates theoretical knowledge.

It is characterised by having no direct use for solving any particular problems. In contrast, ‘applied’ research is explicitly problem- oriented although it will claim to be based on the theoretical foundation set by ‘pure’ scientists.

This is particularly clear in fields of social enquiry where the emphasis has always been more on the teaching than the research function in universities. ‘Pure’ research represents a set of intellectual concepts brought together to provide the theoretical foundation of a discipline.

Geography is shown to be a ‘natural’ segment of the world of ideas. ‘Pure’ geographers define geography’s place in the civilisation of knowledge and promote the status of the discipline within academics. They produce the necessary core of ideas to justify the existence of geography. ‘Applied’ geographers accept these ideas and may use them to solve problems.

All disciplines tend to emphasise their problem- solving capacity, and applied geography is found to be in the ascendancy within geographical studies. In contrast, in a period of expanding and emerging economies and social optimism, outside pressures will diminish and academics can be expected to render less external pressure.

Geographers will be able to contemplate their discipline and feel much less guilty about this activity. The ‘burst’ of ‘pure’ geography would occur when pressures from academics would seem more threatening than pressures from the outside.

This suggests that since the creation of geography as a university discipline, and one should expect the balance between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ geography to approximate the long economic waves of the world economy.

Therefore, three ‘applied geographical’ tendencies can be assumed to have occurred:

(1) In the late nineteenth century,

(2) Between the world wars, and

(3) In early twentieth century and the post- 1945 economic boom.

Geography was created as an applied discipline by the Prussian State at the beginning of the late nineteenth century depression. Though the standard discussions of this period had emphasised the methodological debates, the discipline was very clearly balanced towards its applied aspects.

In the age of imperialism, geography was a tool of nationalism and imperialism, both political and economic. During the methodological debates, however, the seeds of ‘pure’ geography had been germinating, but culminated as a result of the widespread acceptance of region and regional synthesis as the core of a ‘new’ geography in the early twentieth century.

The first ‘pure’ geography was expressed differently in different national schools—French ‘pays’, German ‘landschaft, British ‘natural regions’, Russian ‘zones’—but there was only one core geographical philosophy based on the holism of the founding fathers – Humboldt and Ritter. In fact, the justification for geography was taken back as far as the late eighteenth century by reference to Immanuel Kant’s division of knowledge into systematic, historical and geographical parts.

The first ‘pure’ geography remained the theoretical basis of geography throughout the first half of the twentieth century. But in the inter-war depression such ‘pure’ concerns were put aside as geography was required to show its usefulness.

The most important, rather, notorious example was the transformation of (political) geography into geopolitics in Germany. In Britain, Dudley Stamp was carrying out the massive Land Utilisation Survey and generally geographers were contributing to the growth of the planning movement in many countries.

The emphasis here is on technical knowledge, and the practical communicative aspects of the first ‘pure’ geography are becoming lost. It is at this point that Hartshorne (1939) in his Nature of Geography attempts to attack on those who seek to reform the nature of geography by making the discipline more problem-oriented, more scientific and more in tune with national interests. His great work stands, therefore, as a defence of the first ‘pure’ geography in a period of emphasis on applied geographies.

Geography entered the post-War era of economic prosperity and social optimism as an academic anachronism. With the social sciences fully established as specialised disciplines of social enquiry, geography’s holistic pretensions were becoming intellectual liability.

Woolridge and East (1951, 25-26) and David (1957) attached regional synthesis as empty intellectual rhetoric. Where were the grand syntheses that were the goal of geography? They sought for the reduction in geography’s place in universities.

Such internal pressures led to the development of a second ‘pure’ geography that rejected the theory of the predecessors. It was at this stage that developed the famous Hartshorne-Schaefer debate. Regional geography was discarded/dismissed as idiographic and geographers were instructed to begin the nomothetic task of finding morphological laws.

Schaefer developed the spatial school that involved a new theoretical structure accompanied by the acceptance of statistical techniques in the ‘quantitative revolution’. In Britain, Haggett and Chorley (1967) proclaimed a ‘new model-based geography’ just as Mackinder (1887) had done two generations earlier – a second ‘pure’ geography had been created.

The ‘spatial specialist’ Schaefer had succeeded where the ‘physical specialist’ Geeland had failed and geography was dragged screaming into the twentieth century. The process of specialisation, partially held in check by the old holistic philosophy, now overwhelmed the discipline.

However, geography began to splinter apart in the manner predicted many times before by the older generations. Geographers in the Anglo- American world came to have their academic activity dominated by organised groups of specialist researchers—’study groups’ and ‘specialty groups’ respectively.

There was no particular direction before the geographers to follow as the discipline became a collection of diverse and loosely related groups of researchers.

In one sense, the recession has saved geography. Instead of having to face up to the fundamental problems of legacy of the second ‘pure’ geography, outside pressures have diverted attention back to applied geography. In the USA, ‘applied geography’ has even reached the status of being the new paradigm. There had been much discussion on the role of geography in government, in the wider job market, and of its need to consider national priorities.

Geography’s usefulness was proved in public and private fields and in individual entrepreneurship. It was found that the technical baggage associated with the spatial school constitutes a very useful set of equipment in showing how geography could contribute to solving problems today.

Computer models, modern cartography and information systems all, now make geographers as spatial analysts employable in the current session. The second ‘pure’ geography had been found, after the event, to have been positivist.

The result was the division of human geography into three broad groups:

(1) Those that largely maintained the second ‘pure’ geography,

(2) Those that developed a humanistic critique, and

(3) Those of a more radical disposition.

The first group continued to dominate as more and more applied geography was spawned. With rare exceptions they had not entered into the methodological debate, but concentrated on getting on ‘doing’ geography. The two other groups, however, seriously undermined the existing ‘pure’ geography. The humanistic pointed out to its mechanistic view of the individual and the resulting neglect of the truly human aspects.

The radicals condemned the failure to come to terms with power relations in capitalist society. The result was that ‘pure’ geography on which the current growth of ‘applied’ geography was based, however, got discredited, but with only minor overall effects.

The second ‘pure’ geography continued to underlay most activities of modern geographers who ignored the methodological controversies going on around them. It seemed that there -could be parallel with the late nineteenth century’s methodological debates. From this previous period of applied geographies, the political, commercial and colonial geographies are now largely forgotten, but the methodological debates are remembered.

It is now firmly established that the development of ‘pure’ geography takes place when there is no problem of economic recession and economic prosperity is at hand. The late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century have witnessed economic growth, and this growth has sustained high order specialised research in different social sciences, including geography.

The time was found to be conducive for the emergence of ‘pure’ geography in earlier years of present century. In this way, ‘pure’ research is generally held in higher esteem than applied research.

However, the pressures for more applied work built up in the late 1970s and through the 1980s, as a reaction to the economic recession that afflicted the countries considered here during that period. In addition, government policies towards higher education, especially in the United Kingdom, placed greater emphasis on applied work, both in terms of providing vocational and professional training for students and in the pressure to cover institutional costs through ‘earnings’ from research activity.

Thus, the debate over applied geography concerned pragmatic issues of disciplinary survival as well as concerned with regard to relevance. Now, it seems ‘certain’ that for the development of ‘pure’ geography, a sound economic prosperity with political stability is a necessity.

But when social and economic problems, such as recession, develop, the need becomes to find out remedial measures of the problems, and in a process, whatever studies are carried out, they are all applied in nature. But, it is not that all applied geographies are problem- biased. There are many instances where both ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ geography have developed side by side and in some cases they have been found to be complimentary to each other, particularly in methodological areas.

Positivist Approach and Applied Geography:

Most of the ‘applied’ works in geography in the 1970s and 1980s of the last century followed empiricist-positivist approach. Even the works undertaken before and after World War II, also revealed some positivist trends. Applied geography as information-gathering and synthesising has a substantial record of empiricist-positivist bias, starting with Stamp’s Land Utilization Survey of Britain in the 1930s and his subsequent involvement in the preparation for post-War planning.

Other aspects of land use planning were of interest to geographers in the 1930s and 1940s, and were discussed several times at the Royal Geographical Society. Similar geographical involvement occurred in the United States.

After World War II—during which geographers made many contributions as information synthesiser and gathers, the latter including the development of air-photo interpretation—landuse planning was established on a large scale, and trained geographers provided a large proportion of its personnel. ‘Many academic geographers remained active in applied works. The developments in GIS during the 1980s and 1990s have stimulated very substantial increases in mapping and enumerations’.

Smith (1985) observed – ‘the pre-dominance of remote sensing (and associated digital mapping) reflects a view of geography as a technologically sophisticated means of gathering and displaying information, in the tradition of the geographers as map-maker linked to the contemporary preoccupation with information technology … that appears to conflate the needs of the discipline with a conception of the needs of the society in which the emphasis is much more economic than social. Alongside this, various policies have been evaluated, such as those aimed at changing the distribution of industrial activity, and much of the entropy-maximising systems modeling were intended to provide procedures for the joint activities of land use and transport planning.’

Most of this work used as empiricist and (usually implicit) positivist framework. Geographers are perceived as having valuable skills in the collection and ordering of data, as in land use survey. The presentation of such data frequently assumed the existence and desirability of maintaining certain causal relationships; planning agricultural land use, for example, often assumed a clear causal link between the physical environment and agricultural productivity and that of industrial location assumed the need for efficiency via the minimisation of total travel costs.

As positivist work on the allocation of land uses and traffic flow increased, so the potential for geographic inputs to spatial planning was promoted (and many people initially trained as geographers became professional planners).

Most of this pragmatic application of technical skills, though there were some attempts to evaluate policy impacts and to develop a theory of decision-making in this context. Geographers’ empiricist-positivist role continued to be advanced, in response to economic and social crisis, and the perceived need for valid data.

Alongside those who argued for a greater commitment to applied geography in the empiricist/positive mould, and therefore for an implicit acceptance of a particular ideology, others challenged this as the best way to respond to pressing societal problems. They argued for a reappraisal of how geographers could assist in understanding the genesis of those problems rather than in the suggestion of solutions which rarely tackled the root causes.

Since applied works need to be self-explanatory in nature and predictive in character, they cannot be successful without using empiricist/positivist approach. Applied works involve the collection and reporting of information to produce particular form of explanations that necessitates the use of positivist-led methodology because the results ought to be ‘law-specific’.

A lot of empiricist/positivist-led research work was reported in the 1960s and 1970s, under the general title of factorial ecologies, application of multi-variate statistical procedures to large area matrix as a means of representing spatial variations in population characteristics. Smith (1973) and Knox (1975) had adapted factorial ecology procedures to the task of mapping social welfare in the 1970s.

Knox (1975) promoted the mapping of social and spatial variations in the quality of life as a fundamental objective for geography, to provide both an input to planning procedures and a means of monitoring policies aimed at improving welfare. He used statistical procedures to produce accurate portrayals of spatial variations in meeting these needs.

With the resultant maps, geographers must decide whether they are playing -a sufficient role in awakening human awareness of the extent of the disparities or are under an obligation to help society improve the situation.

Smith (1973) identified territorial social indicators in the American context, to measure the level of social well-being. In fact, he initiated the collation and dissemination of territorial social indicators, to illustrate the extent of discrimination by place of residence that occurred in the United States; multi­variate statistical procedures generated maps on inter-state, inter-city and inter-urban scales.

His goal was to present the basis for a better understanding of the origins of inequality as a geographical condition and of the difficulties in the way of plans to promote greater equality in human life chances.

These two works represented the geographer as delver and dovetailed, producing information on which more equitable social planning could be based. Other studies performed similar roles, and also suggested spatial policies which could lead to improvements.

Harries (1974) studied spatial variations in crime rates and the administration of justice, and argued that empiricist/positivist models of criminal pattern could assist the organisation of police work.

Shanon and Dever (1974) and Phillips and Joseph (1984) investigated variations in the provision of healthcare facilities and argued for spatial planning which would improve the services offered to the sick; Morril and Wohlenberg (1971) studied the geography of poverty in the United States, preparing both social policies—higher minimum wages, guaranteed incomes, guaranteed jobs and stronger anti-discrimination laws—and spatial policies (such as an extensive programme of economic decentralisation to a network of regional growth centres) which would alleviate this major social problem.

Bunge (1971) also prepared a ‘geobiography’ of his home area in Detroit’s black ghetto, through mapping variations in human welfare. Cox (1973) studied the urban crisis in the United States—the racial tensions and riots, municipal bankruptcies and the role of the government in the urban economy—presenting his analysis in terms of conflict over access to sources of power.

One of the major dimensions of his analysis was related to policies, designed to involve spatial reorganisation to achieve the desired equity (including metropolitan government integration), community control, population redistribution and temporal improvements.

Society-Environment Interface and Applied Geography:

Geographers have long realised the necessity of maintaining a balance in the society environment interface, so that the fragile structure of our biosphere can be kept safe and secure. For example, the nineteenth-century British scholar Mary.

Somerville, in her ‘Physical Geography’, published in 1848, expressed concern for man’s consistent exploitation of the resources, causing changes in the resource balance. George Perkins Marsh of the United States found Mary Somerville’s observations about man’s destructive use of the Earth very stimulating, and he made frequent references to her work, in his book ‘Man and Nature’, published in 1864.

In Russia, Alexander Ivansvich Voeikov in 1901, expressed concern about the destruction of the grasslands owing to overgrazing and about the destruction by supposed modifications of climate that resulted from changes in the cover of vegetation.

In America, it was not until 1905 that Nathaniel Southgate Shaler of the Harvard University and his student Louis Agassiz returned to the theme of Mary Somerville and George Perkins Marsh, concerning man’s destructive effect on Earth’s resource vis-a-vis society-environment inter-face.

And many more such works were conceptually developed in the past, for example, the work of Warren Thornthwaite in the 1930s, the work of Carl Sauer particularly, at the symposium of ‘Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth’, beside a similar but pioneering work by Cumberland in 1947.

Ehrlich and Commoner also made similar comments. The former argued for the primacy of population increase, and popularised the concept of zero population growth, while the latter claimed that technological advances and consequent rapid depletion of resources plus deposition of pollutants created the major problem. Both arguments have clear geographical components and it was stressed that geographers have a strong record of activity in resource conservation.

Nevertheless, it was said that ‘developments in geography have been such that several phases of national pre-occupation with environmental problems have not produced a general awareness of our interests and skills’.

According to Johnston (1996, 339), there were two types of work done by the geographers in the society-environment interface.

First kind is a type involved in the traditional geographical concern with description and analysis that necessarily concerned with the problems of the physical environment of urban areas.

The second type of work focused on issues of environmental management with particular emphasis on its economic aspects and on societal response to environmental hazards.

A topic of special interest was the study of leisure, of the growing demand for recreational facilities, and the impact of recreational and tourism activities on the environment. Nonetheless, Mikesell (1974) concluded that geographical contribution to environmentalism had not been clear up to 1974.

Mikesell (1974) observed that Meadows’ et al. (1972) ‘The Limits to Growth’ attracted remarkably little attention from geographers. He said that many of the social- and philosophical issues debated during the environmental crusade have not been paid adequate attention to by geographers. This conclusion of Mikesell was supported by analysis of the contents of contemporary geographical journals.

Stoddart (1987) made a powerful argument not only for more work on the society- environment interface, but also for its centrality to the whole of geographical activity. He felt geography had become diffused and lacked a central focus, and that should be – ‘Earth’s diversity, its resources, and man’s survival on the planet.

This called for a unified discipline, human and physical, in which the task is to identify geographical problems, issues of man-environment within regions—problems not of geomorphology or history or economics or sociology, but geographical problems, and to use our skills to work to alleviate them, perhaps to solve them. Focusing on the big questions, about man, land, resources, human potential, would involve geographers reclaiming the high ground.

Similar calls have been made by other geographers in response to the relevance of much that Stoddart would disregard in contemporary social science has been promoted as necessary to an appreciation of society-environment relations. Stoddart’s argument was clearly set in the cultural ecology mould.

A similar observation was made by Kates (1987), who regretted the dominance of spatial science within geography, and claimed that when environmental issues became important on the public and political agenda in the early 1970s, ‘No discipline was better suited than was geography to provide intellectual and scientific leadership.

The natural science for the environmental revolution should have been the science of the human environment. Instead, intellectual leadership was split among biology, economics and engineering … but none of these offered a truly integrated view — The theory of human environment, then, was the theory of plant or animal ecosystem, or of pervasive externalities, or of technological and managerial fixes.’

One of the major concepts that emerged from the increased concern over environmental problems in the late 1980s was sustainable development, a considerably ambiguous term which was generally taken to imply continual increases in material living standards without any diminution in environmental capacity to meet the needs of the future generations.

This was a focal concern of the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, but the difficulties of implementing global environmental policies have been over-stated and could readily be addressed, within a satisfactory time-scale, using instruments of economic policy that tended to promote continued economic development.

The tradition of C. F. White that he established in 1945, with regard to flood control and policy imperatives, continued to direct some applied works in the field, bypassing local and regional bodies. In 1965, C. F. White prepared a paper for the Bureau of the Budget on national policy options for dealing with floods and similar hazards.

The result was the establishment of the National Flood Insurance Programme, after which White used to organise annual seminars in Boulder to bring ‘public-sector’ officials and academics together ‘to discuss disaster response and mitigation policies’.

He and many others who had studied environmental policy, later contributed to its implementation through what may be called the ‘citizen -scholar’ model, which allowed the scholar ‘to choose his and her research concerns on the basis of perceived social need, but attempt to conduct the inquiry face of influence from outside the inquiry itself. The scholar is committed to social and political action as follow-up to the research, based on findings and the quality of enquiry.

White (1972) developed an approach which, according to Wescoat (1992), resembled the philosophy of pragmatism, because of the four ‘comparable’ components:

1. recognition of the precariousness of existence,

2. a pragmatic conception of the nature of inquiry—problems arise and are tackled within situations, for these are no absolute truths; hence

3. a tradition of learning from experience; and

4. a belief in public discourse and democracy.

Geographers have expressed concern about other pertinent questions, within contemporary society, such as nuclear weapons and nuclear power. They have criticised attitudes to civil defence policies and likely deaths from nuclear blasts and fall out, for example, with others setting that concern within a developing geographical contribution to peace studies, and have addressed issues relating to the siting of nuclear power stations and the transport of nuclear wastes. To Johnston and Taylor (1989), humankind is capable of very little except the destruction of the planet.

The obvious devastation caused by much of that human activity which for half-a-century had been given the small collective label of development together with such associated events as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986, had had effect of reinforcing the unease about the general direction in which humankind was found to be moving.

To be successful, humanity must act within the constraints of the environment and be aware both of its limitations and of its possibilities. Since the 1970s, the ideas of humankind as master, capable of transforming nature, has been increasingly replaced by that of humankind as a participant in an environmental totality, and as such having to treat nature with care and respect.

Environmental degradation, much of it clearly attributable to human activity, has increased a consciousness of the essential unity of the planet and the dangers of what Bunge (1989) referred to collectively as the destruction of human space. Bunge concluded that ‘this planet is not too small for peace, but it is too small for war’.

O’Riordan (1981), however, identified four conclusions with regard to liberal humanitarian tradition concerning environmentalism:

1. Modern environmentalism challenges many aspects of western capitalism;

2. It points out paradoxes rather than clear solutions;

3. It involves a conviction that better modes of existence are possible; and

4. It is a politicising and reformist movement, based on a realisation of the need for action in the face of impending scarcity and a lack of faith in the western democracies.

A new social, environmental order is required to be set forth with three possibilities – centralised, authoritarian, and anarchist, but there could be liberal option, to which O’Riordn (1981) opined, ‘we must individually and collectively seize the opportunities of the present situation to end the era of exploitation and enter a new age of humanitarian concern and cooperative endeavour with a driving desire to re-establish the old values of comfortable frugality and cheerful sharing.’

Policy and Applied Research:

Most of the studies referred to here have concerned with identifying problems and suggesting solutions. Underlying their varied approaches has been the basic thesis that geographers should be much more involved in the creation and monitoring policies.

Berry (1973) has categorised planning policies into four types:

1. Ameliorative problem-solving involves identifying problems and proposing immediate solutions, as with the removal of a traffic bottleneck. Such solutions are likely to stimulate further problems in the future, since it is only the proximate cause that is tackled (the features of bottleneck) rather than the real cause (the growth of traffic).

2. Allocative trend-modifying planning towards the future involves identifying trends, evaluating what is likely to be the best outcome of the several which they imply and then allocating resources to steer system being planned towards the end.

3. Exploitative opportunity-seeking planning with the future identifies trends and then seeks to gain the maximum benefit from them, irrespective of the possible long-term consequences. Compared to the previous category, this one has a dominantly short- term focus.

4. Normative goal-oriented – planning for the future begins with a statement of goals, a vision of the future, and then prepares a strategy which will ensure that they are achieved.

‘Relatively little policy-making is of the fourth type; most involves elements of other three, with general statements about goals, but no clear strategy regarding a foreseeable future. Some critics interpret this as meaning the geographers who become involved in policy-making and evaluation are likely to be uncritically accepting the dominant forces in society, which leads to arguments that their claimed scientific objectivity and neutrality are on (often unrealised) cloak for ideological political judgments about the nature of society. Whatever their individual motives, such geographers are acting on behalf of interest groups, private and public, whose sustenance depends on maintaining an unjust and unequal structure to society’.

Clark (1982), however, argued with the principle of policy analysis and the involvement of academics in policy-making.

He suggested that academic contributions to policy analysis should be guided by the following four propositions:

1. Academics must acknowledge their own values and beliefs in presenting alternatives and impact assessments,

2. Policy analysts must be advocates for particular causes rather than supposedly independent and objective adjudicators of knowledge,

3. Policy science should be critical of the status quo, and

4. Sponsoring institution must encourage/ advocate briefs and make those briefs accessible to the public.

Accepting these, academics who become involved in policy analysis should be considered part of the political process whose role should be to ensure that choices would be brought squarely into the open and be dependent upon the political as opposed to expert, process. Any rigorous social scientific enquiry must be based on nationally defended value judgements; objectivity, however, does not require objectivity.

Pacione (1990), on the role of urban geographers in applied work, said that practitioners have paid little attention to conceptual issues underlying what they do.

He identified the following eight principles or guidelines to remedy those failings:

1. The notion of value-free research is an illusion,

2. Towns, as examples of places, are meaningful entities on which to work,

3. A spatial perspective is of substantial value,

4. The main emphasis of applied urban geography is on problem-solving,

5. A realist position provides the context for such works,

6. Analysis must integrate various spatial scales,

7. A wide methodological tool kit of quantitative and qualitative procedures must be employed,

8. Geography must integrate funds of many disciplines.

Johnston, reacting to Pacioues eight principles or guidelines, argued that, unless Pacioue is prepared to tackle the fundamental issues of what problems are and how they can be tackled, he is unlikely to help those of us who want both an end to the problems that we currently perceived and a society which would no longer produce such problems. Few problems are solvable, which points to the need for resolution between opposing points of view, none of which have any claim to absolute truth.

According to Mitchell and Draper (1982), ‘when functioning as an advocate, a consultant, the geographer must consciously decide how to resolve a conflict which may arise regarding the promotion of one perspective versus critical assessment and balanced judgement about all viewpoints. There are also issues of ethics, when functioning as a pure researcher, the geographers must balance a concern for obtaining necessary information against a concern for respecting the dignity and integrity of those people or things being studied which also applies to relevant research. They claimed that geographers have largely ignored these ethical issues, and their professional bodies unlike those of other disciplines have promulgated no codes of conduct. Conflict is frequently likely between striving to ‘discover truth’, and respecting the rights of those being studied, however, and they advocated individual, institutional and external controls.’

Most of the critiques of the arguments for greater involvement by geographers in policy analysis are entirely sympathetic. They make a case for sensitive geographical involvement – others question the grounds for such involvement and instead focus on the development of revolutionary theory.

The latter focuses almost entirely on applied work in the tradition of positivist, empirical science, in which the goal is perceived to improve well-being through contributing to one or more of:

1. The preparation of public (i.e. state) policies,

2. The development of commercial (i.e. profit- making) strategies, and

3. The attack on environmental problems.

The nature of applied geography has been restricted by some work at the society environment interface, but most applied geography in the English-speaking world accepts, and seeks to serve, the ruling ideas.

While launching the journal Applied Geography in 1981, its founding editor following Stamp, defined it as addressing some of the great world problems, the increasing pressure of population on space, the development of the under-developed areas, or the attempt to improve living conditions.

Two decades later, these problems remain. Indeed they are growing environmental problems such as pollution, damage to wild-life, destruction of habitat, soil erosion and resource depletion; the problems of human deprivation and inequality.

Briggs (1981) identified the fundamental basis of applied geography as use of resource – ‘The exploitation of scarce resources represents a dominating theme to human existence. It is from the pursuit of these resources and from the attempt to decide between alternative policies of exploitation that not only environmental damage, but also the greater part of political, social and economic problems emerge, they can be seen as expression of Man’s inability to organize himself and his world to his best long-term advantage. To overcome that inability, the applied geographer must be brave.’

Most of the applied works undertaken by academic geographers have been commissioned by one or more arms of the public sector, and most geographers who have applied their skills in non- academic careers have probably entered the public sector too. Given the importance of the welfare state in the first four post-World War II decades, this has not been surprising.

Nevertheless, much works have already been done for private sector too, in economic geography—geographers were involved in work for supermarket, and similar companies in the United States during 1950s, others building on their expertise in spatial data handling, moved into information measurement, including some who worked in the prestigious university business schools.

The pressure on university academics to obtain more external support for research activities in the 1980s and 1990s has stimulated much more work for the private sector—a trend accentuated by the attempts to reduce the size of the provision of public sector and to increase competitiveness and efficiency in the provision of public goods. Some of this work has involved spatial analysis in various forms.

Much more of it has used geographers’ skill in spatial data handling (adding value to geocoded data) in the growing field of geodemographics, whereby marketing and other campaigns are spatially targeted to people living in areas where demand for particular goods and services is most likely to be generated.

Other work still is in the areas of resource and environmental management. In most of the developing democracies of the Third World, funds are more available to academic geographers to carry on ‘applied’ work on various social and environment-related work, including transport problems. Both, the private and public agencies have been appointing geographers because of their spatial data handling capacity for enumerative work in the areas of the planning.