01 / Reading Guide
Reading Guide
Citation
Johnston, R. J., & Sidaway, J. D. (2016). Geography and Geographers: Anglo-American Human Geography since 1945 (7th ed.). Routledge.
Chapter Summary
The seventh edition has ten chapters and about 544 pages. Its subject is the history of human geography in the English-speaking world: the major debates, key thinkers and schools of thought, each set within the economic, social, cultural, political and intellectual changes of its time. The publisher stresses that the book draws on a wide reading of the geographical literature and attends to how geography and its history are understood, and to debates over what the discipline should study and how.
Context and Argument
The publisher describes the book as a survey of the major debates, key thinkers and schools of thought, each set within the economic, social, cultural, political and intellectual changes of its time. David Livingstone's comment on the seventh edition singles out its "wider discussions of the contexts" in which geographical endeavour was located, which he reads as showing that the historical geography of geography has come of age.
Chapter 1: The Nature of an Academic Discipline
The opening chapter takes up the nature of an academic discipline, the frame within which the later account of geography's changing identity is set.
Chapter 2: Foundations
This chapter covers the foundations on which postwar geography was built, and so sets the starting point for the changes that follow.
Chapter 3: Growth of Systematic Studies and the Adoption of "Scientific Method"
The chapter deals with the growth of systematic studies within geography and the move towards scientific method, preparing for the spatial-science chapter that follows.
Chapter 4: Human Geography as Spatial Science
Covers the movement that treated geography as a science of spatial analysis and pattern, a central episode in the postwar story.
Chapter 5: Humanistic Geography
Deals with the approach that placed human experience, meaning and place at the centre, set against the preceding emphasis on spatial analysis.
Chapter 6: "Radical" Geographies
Examines the radical critiques of the discipline and its relevance to social and political problems.
Chapter 7: Postmodernism, Poststructuralism and Postcolonialism
Discusses the later theoretical turns that questioned earlier certainties and attended to representation, difference and colonial legacies.
Chapter 8: Gendered Geographies
Treats the development of feminist and gender-focused geography.
Chapter 9: Applied Geography and the Relevance Debates
Looks at applied work and the debates over whether and how geography should be relevant to practical and social concerns.
Chapter 10: A Changing Discipline?
The closing chapter considers where the discipline stands and how it continues to change.
Key Concepts
Chapters 1–4: Discipline and Spatial Science
- Academic discipline: a field defined by shared practices, institutions and boundaries, the lens for the whole book.
- Scientific method: the adoption of systematic, science-modelled procedures in geography.
- Spatial science: geography as the analysis of spatial pattern and spatial order.
Chapters 5–10: Critique and Diversification
- Humanistic geography: an approach centred on human experience and meaning.
- Radical geography: an approach linking geographical study to social and political critique.
- Postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism: theoretical positions that challenged universal claims.
- Gendered geographies: feminist and gender perspectives on space and place.
- Relevance debates: arguments over the practical and social use of geographical knowledge.
Critical Analysis
Strengths
- Contextual history. The book places geographical ideas inside wider economic, social, cultural and intellectual change, a point stressed by the publisher and by reviewers.
- Standing in the field. A review of the fifth edition in Political Geography (Murray Low, 2004) said it had probably done more to shape human geographers' collective sense of the discipline than any other single source; for the seventh, David Livingstone called it a working map of the territory and Clive Barnett a living classic with a compelling narrative of the key intellectual shifts.
- Manageable structure. Ten chapters, one per major approach or theme, make the book easy to navigate and to use alongside a course on geographic thought.
Limitations
- Scope. As the title says, it covers Anglo-American human geography since 1945; physical geography and non-English-language traditions are not its subject.
- Length. At about 544 pages it is a large book for a first look at the history of the discipline; the shorter introductions in the course are better for a quick orientation.
- Chronology of a single tradition. The book's frame is postwar change, so earlier phases of geography appear only as foundations (Chapter 2).
Where It Fits in the Course
This is the course's detailed history of postwar human geography. Geography: A Very Short Introduction and Geographic Thought: A Critical Introduction are shorter first treatments of how geographers think; the latter ranges more widely across the history and theory of the subject. The Geographical Tradition is a historical study that runs from the age of European exploration through the late twentieth century, and so supplies the earlier background that this book takes up. Key Methods in Geography and Research Methods in Geography are methods handbooks, not histories, and are best used alongside it.
How to Use This Book
The book is aimed at undergraduate geography students and others who want to understand how the discipline reached its present state. The publisher presents it as essential reading for all undergraduate geography students; some familiarity with the main subfields of human geography makes the debates easier to place.
Read Chapters 1–2 first for the framing, then Chapters 3–7 in the order given, which follows the sequence of approaches. Chapters 8–9 can be read selectively according to interest in feminist and applied work, and Chapter 10 last. Use it as a reference when a course reading cites a school of thought, and pair each chapter with a primary text from the movement it describes.