Macrogeography and Social Science

Abstract

T HOSE who insist that in considering the phenomena of human we should let the data suggest their own terms of study have done much to impede the development of the subject. The uniqueness of every small part of the earth's surface is there to be seen: one has only to look. But general regularities and systematic relationships are not discovered by such an examination of separated localities. Geographical journals are full of examples of the microscopic approach. These studies include an admirable wealth of description, and the writers have often shown ingenuity in assembling-their facts. However, though the studies are vital for certain purposes, the very diversity of topics, and especially of methods, has made synthesis difficult and has thwarted the development of the unifying concepts that are necessary if is to achieve the status of a well-organized science. Failure to generalize has contributed to the low regard with which geographers are held in certain academic quarters. The microscopic approach to human considers human activities either regionally or topically (miscalled systematically) by means of a mass of descriptive detail, with areal differentiation often related to the nature of the area. Emphasis on local conditionality has characterized the subject in the twentieth century. But despite the admitted excellence of certain individual studies, and despite the recognition of the need for detailed consideration in certain cases, it is here submitted that there is not only room for, but an absolute necessity to develop, a new point of view in the discipline. Complete spatial accounting is a goal of microgeography. An accepted triumph is the production of a map showing the precise location of each discrete occurrence of the phenomenon studied; the dot map is of course one of the most valuable examples. Such denotations have unfortunately become thought of as alone constituting the geography of phenomena dealt with and have formed the bases for a geographical approach to knowledge. The dot map has been supplemented by the density map, but this, too, is merely

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 88 citations exist upstream.