Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • Publication
    Life experience as catalyst for disciplinary communication - Adventures in Dialogue 1977-1985
    (University of Lund, Sweden, 1986)
    An international dialogue project was initiated by Anne Buttimer (Clark University, Worcester, Mass., USA) and Torsten Hägerstrand (Lund University, Lund, Sweden) during academic year 1977-78, in an attempt to explore alternative approaches to communication between specialists in science and humanities, and also between professional experts and public interests. Video taped interviews with senior and retired scholars and professionals who shared insights from their own career experiences, focussing particularly on the “dream and reality” of their research, action, and/ or planning projects, constituted the core of this process. Interviews were shared with audiences of people from various academic and non-academic fields and were meant as catalysts for dialogue on issues of common concern, as well as evokers of critical self-reflection on the viewer’s own field of practice. Original interviews and audience responses were then to be shared with colleagues in other countries who might, in turn, send back the fruits of their own experiments. A wide range of individuals, mostly from Europe and America, participated in this process and over 100 recordings were made during the period 1978 to 1985. These recordings vary in quality and not all have been used in the systematic manner envisioned in the proposal. Their contents, however, have been explored as research data on questions regarding creativity and context, and the history of ideas and their concrete applications in society. These recordings should be regarded primarily as valuable archival material, potential catalysts for further dialogue, or resource bases for research on knowledge and lived experience. In many cases transcripts have been edited and printed, priority being placed on those recordings where technical quality is poor, or where studio permission for wider circulation has not been granted.
      174
  • Publication
    Erewhon or Nowhere Land
    (D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979)
    I.INTRODUCTION: Throughout a century of Western social thought, mankind's perennial enquiry into the where, when, and how of life has yielded a rich legacy of speculation. From the ebullient satire of Butler's Erewhon (Butler 1872) and the idealism of utopian fiction, the angry critique of Existentialist and Marxist philosophy and the resounding protest of popular song, evidence abounds that the human spirit remains undaunted in its desire to not only grasp the course of' events but also to ameliorate and control the conditions of life. The increasing rate and complexity of change in our day renders the challenge to rationality so overwhelming that at times it becomes difficult to pause, reflect, and evaluate the latent assumptions and implications of scholarly effort. Barriers to communication between separate worlds of scholarship, too, prevent the flow of insight between different specialized perspectives, or the restoration of harmony between the YIN and the YANG of human reason.
      233
  • Publication
    Integration in geography: Hydra or Chimera?
    (Waterloo: University of Waterloo Department of Geography, 1986)
    Integration: how many and diverse are the connotations of this word! Emotional responses can range from fascination to panic. For about a century now, geography texts have held up “integration” as a Holy Grail, a nec plus ultra many today believe that if the discipline is to survive in the future it must reintegrate its many branches, project an integrated self-image and bolster its claims to an integrated image of the world. Well, how has such rhetoric worked in the past? Have geographers fare better with integrated or dispersed world views? And regardless of intellectual preference, what has geography gained or lost through efforts to align its research and teaching with ongoing societal interests? Can integration make monsters? I’d like to introduce here two imaginary creatures, the Hydra and the Chimera, hoping that they may raise some doubts and queries about the issue of integration in geography.
      203
  • Publication
    Mirrors, masks and diverse milieux
    (Routledge, 1990-01-12)
    Was Ihr den Geist der Zeiten heist Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln… (Faust) (And what you call the Spirit of the Ages Is that the spirit of your learned sages The times a-mirroring…) At Columbus, Ohio, where the Association of American Geographers met in 1965, there was obviously something new in the air. Eminent geographers and psychologists charmed a packed auditorium with ideas about environmental behaviour and perception. This new frontier was to welcome not only interdisciplinary research, but it was also to offer a common focus of curiosity to geographers of both ‘man-land’ and ‘spatial’ traditions. Why, even the age-old impasse between ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ orientations could be transcended. Some 17 years later in San Antonio, Texas, the same Association hosted sessions on environmental perception. One caught a glimpse of the volume and variety of research which the intervening years had produced and, even more, one noted the drama of a selective migration of ideas back and forth across the Atlantic: Marxist, positivist, phenomenological, and structuralist approaches were juxtaposed, not always too harmoniously.
      186
  • Publication
    Values in Geography
    Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching. And he said: No man can reveal to you aught but what which already lies half asleep in the drawing of your knowledge. The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind… For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man. Gibran, The Prophet Who, today, would not hesitate to attempt a published statement on “values in geography”? Perhaps someone thoroughly versed in moral philosophy, or someone imbued with what C. Wright Mills calls the “sociological imagination”; or perhaps someone convinced that geography is, or should be, “value free”. I am none of these. Each time I attempt to articulate a statement on the subject, I am overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy, and lack courage to face the ambiguities surrounding the question Why should I, scarcely tend years since beginning graduate work in geography and caught in some unique value dilemmas in my own life, write on this subject? It is from a conviction of the present need for discussion of the question, and an assurance that it is as important now to raise issues as to resolve them.
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