Kent Mathewson

Concepts in Human Geography

This collection explores the origins, development, and applications of the most fundamental and enduring concepts in human geography. Providing the most comprehensive examination of the field to date, nine essays on substantive concepts, such as nature, culture, space, time, region, and ecology, are flanked by seven essays on methodological concepts ranging from maps and models to feminism and postmodernism. More universal in scope, more conceptual in content, and more accessible in exposition than books on themes and contemporary debates in geography, Concepts in Human Geography makes an excellent text in advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses in geographic methods, history, and philosophy.

The Berkeley School's cultural-historical Geography: a precursor to Environmental History's emergence

No decorrer das ultimas tres decadas, a historia ambiental se tornou um subcampo reconhecido com seus proprios classicos, um grande numero de monografias notaveis, um fluxo continuo de artigos publicados e mais do que mil pesquisadores ativos em varios continentes, incluindo uma comunidade crescente na America Latina. Um olhar para alem dos limites disciplinares da historia mostra que ha tambem outras tradicoes que se enquadram perfeitamente na tematica. A geografia historico-cultural da Escola de Berkeley sob a egide de Carl Sauer talvez seja uma dessas perspectivas alternativas conhecidas. Muitos estudos de Sauer, seus alunos e colaboradores podem ser considerados pesquisas em historia ambiental; muitas delas se baseiam em materias sobre a America Latina. Neste artigo, procuramos tracar o desenvolvimento dessa corrente alternativa para a historia ambiental que se iniciou com a tese de doutoramento de Carl Sauer em 1915 e se consolidou nos anos 50, tendo sua continuidade no presente atraves dos trabalhos de diversos geografos.

James M. Blaut (1927–2000)

James Morris (“Jim”) Blaut, Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois–Chicago, died 11 November 2000 at home, at age 73. The proximate cause was heart failure. He had also been battling ...

Cultural landscapes and ecology III: foraging/farming, food, festivities

In this, the final of three reports, I focus on several themes, including early agricultureand modern farming, foodways and the often associated festivals or celebrations thatcommemorate them. I will also cover other ground, mentioning a number of disparateworks that have appeared in the past year or two that occupy the intersection of ecologyand cultural landscape study. As I discussed in the two previous reports, the themesand topics found at this site shift over time. Of the three mentioned in the title, foodgathering and production are long-standing staples in ecology and cultural landscapestudies. Food as focus of nature/culture interactions is more recent, but still has a timedepth of several decades. Festivities have enjoyed some attention by culturalgeographers since at least Kniffen’s (1951) work on agricultural fairs. For the most part,however, the topic is a new one, associated with, if not always approached from, post-structuralist perspectives.

Maya urban genesis reconsidered: Trade and intensive agriculture as primary factors

Abstract Maya scholarship, from its inception, has been characterized by a perspective that has stressed the uniqueness of Maya civilization. Specifically, it was assumed that cities did not emerge until the Post-Classic and that intensive agriculture was not practised. Attempts to explain the assumed uniqueness of Maya civilization have usually stressed religious traits. In contrast, geographers and archaeologists have recently demonstrated that the lowland Maya practised intensive agriculture and had well-developed local trade patterns. The notion that the lowland Classic Maya civilization was “non-urban” and “unique” is re-examined.

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT'S IMAGE AND INFLUENCE IN NORTH AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, 1804–2004

ABSTRACT. Alexander von Humboldt is universally identified as a key figure in laying the foundations for modern geography. His main sites of research and scholarly production were centered on Europe, Latin America, and Russia. He drew on global sources of geographical data and knowledge in constructing and producing his voluminous works. Although he only briefly knew North America firsthand—at the outset of his career, in the late spring of 1804—he maintained a lifelong interest in the realm, especially in the United States. In turn, many North American scholars were admirers and followers of his perspectives, practices, and publications. Although geography did not emerge as an institutionally based discipline in the United States until the late nineteenth century, Humboldts influence and impact on its antecedents were considerable. Contrary to conventional wisdom, his authority and influence in geography persisted well beyond Humboldts death in 1859. His vision of demonstrating natures unity in diversity and his enlightened views on social issues have continued to appeal to select sectors and actors in North American geography, especially Latin Americanists, historians of the discipline, and, more recently, proponents of an engaged, critical geography.

Cultural landscape and ecology 11: regions, retrospects, revivals

This is the second report in a series of three. The first reported on recent publications that combine a focus on cultural landscape(s) and ecological dynamics and dimensions (Mathewson, 1998). It also included a survey of coverage of cultural landscapes and ecology in Progress in Human Geography (1977– ) since its inception, and also referred to items in its predecessor, the annual review Progress in Geography (1969–76). To be sure, both categories have appeared in reports with varying rubrics over the past 30 years, but not as the titular nor main focus of them. Moreover, cultural landscape and ecology were rarely viewed in combination, and rarer still as a unity. This seems somewhat curious given that the nexus of relations, variously referred to as nature–society, human–environment, man–land and so on, constitutes one of the three or four consistent and fundamental divisions or arenas of geographic learning and labor (Agnew et al., 1996; Rediscovering Geography Committee, 1997). And within this sector, by any reasonable account, the concepts of cultural landscape and ecology are central (Turner, 1997). Whatever the past editorial rationales for this elision, a forum has now been provided. It comes at a critical time. General interest in human impacts on the global environment – past, present and future – has probably never been greater. Of course, geographers do not have exclusive proprietary claims to this immense topic, nor should they. Incre a s i n g l y, the practitioners are as apt to be enviro n m e n t a l historians, historical ecologists, landscape archaeologists and kindred specialist-synthesizers (to use Turner’s, 1989, term) as geographers. At lesser scales and finer resolutions, particularly wherein the study of cultural landscape and ecology meet and merge, a case for geographic liens (on certain neighbors’ interventions) based on provenance and development would be legitimate. In the meantime, geographers might be flattered by the mimicry, but also alert to opportunities to make it clear that Progress in Human Geography 23,2 (1999) pp. 267–281

Intellectual Relations between Historical Geography and Latin Americanist Geography

Content analysis of Geography in America (Gaile and Willmott 2003), which collects forty-seven chapters written by representatives of each of the specialty groups of the Association of American Geographers (AAG), reveals much about the recent intellectual structure of the discipline (Sluyter et al. 2006). One striking feature of that structure is the lack of intellectual connectivity, measured in practitioners named and publications cited, between the chapters of the Latin Americanist Specialty Group (LASG) and the Historical Geography Specialty Group (HGSG). Detailed comparison of the HGSG chapter and the Historical and Cultural Perspectives section of the LASG chapter addresses the character of that lack of connectivity, its causes, and some possibilities for its improvement.
 El análisis del contenido de la Geografía en América (Gaile y Willmott 2003), que recoge cuarenta y siete capítulos escritos por los representantes de cada uno de los grupos de la especialidad de la Asociación de Geografos Americanos (AAG), revela mucho sobre la estructura intelectual reciente de la disciplina (Sluyter et el al. 2006). Una característica llamativa de esa estructura es la carencia de la conectividad intelectual, mediada por los profesionales nombrados y las publicaciones citadas, entre los capítulos del grupo de la especialidad latinoamericanista (LASG) y del grupo de la especialidad de la geografía histórica (HGSG). La comparación detallada del capítulo de HGSG y de la sección histórica y cultural de las perspectivas del capítulo de LASG trata el carácter de esa carencia de la conectividad, de sus causas, y de algunas posibilidades de su mejora.


To Pass on a Good Earth: The Life and Work of Carl O. Sauer by Michael Williams, David Lowenthal, William M. Denevan (review)

This book is well-written and logically organized. The prose is clear and direct. Sentences are crisp and the paragraphs communicate effectively. The text is free of jargon and gratuitous academic baggage. The author is balanced and thoughtful in his analysis and measured in his commentary. The manuscript is enhanced by the inclusion of excellent historical and contemporary photographs, as well as several maps and diagrams. Scholars of Latin American development and urbanization will find this book to be insightful and thought-provoking as well as a useful scholarly resource.

Civic Discipline: Geography in America, 1860–1890

proposed, hypotheses tested, and treatments advanced’. That is the way to raise a wry smile from knowledgeable epidemiologists, the majority of whom never use a map, but it does not add to the credibility of the book. There are other irritants that I suspect are also more about the production than about the writing. Sometimes a detail in a colour plate is enlarged, but when this is first done the publisher forgot to enlarge the inset (p. 33 is drawn to the same size as p. 32). The English is, of course, American, but this does result in words about old London streets such as ‘mews’ being altered to ‘news’ (p. 204). It may be over enthusiastic copy-editing, but copy-editing which did not spot that both the blue and red shades in the key of one of the first figures in the book (p. 17) are labelled with the same dates, or that % in the map on p. 236 should be‰, or that the last sentence of the book on p. 279 is simply not clear English. Despite my complaints and concern over the propagation of possible myths, this remains a great work of scholarship, albeit one which also reveals fallibilities while often reporting them. But it is extremely well presented. You know that feeling when you pick up a book and it feels right, weighs right and smells right! Well, Chicago Press has certainly printed it beautifully and, regardless of my quibbles, there is nothing else that competes as well out there. It is also of interest to a wide readership, which is why I was asked to review the book for both an epidemiology journal and one concerning cultural geography! This is the best book on disease mapping in print today. Its next edition could be even better.