Whatmore (2006)
theories enable us to return to the world with new eyes, turn familiar matters over and over, see what is familiar as strange
Barnett (2009)
Theory = any set of statements and propositions used in explanation / interpretation
- set prepositions allow us to understand the world
Harvey (1969)
Likened theory to a map
- selective portrays of the world
Hubbard et al (2002)
“It is tempting to dismiss theory, or to try to avoid it because it seems difficult. But the reality of doing geography [or thinking full stop] is that we cannot avoid theory. Theory infuses the practices of academic geography. In trying to understand the world about us, even in common-sense and non-academic ways (e.g. trying to predict who might win a political election or knowing where to shop for particular products), we are constantly employing theoretical tools and making claims or judgments about how the world works”
- consensus among geographers at any one time that there is one best way to do things has seldom been complete or stable and to pretend it has is to obliterate voices of many researchers
Aitken and Valentine (2006)
“‘Ways of knowing’ [i.e. theories ] drive not only individual research projects but also the creative potential of geography as a discipline. Philosophies and theories, as ways of knowing, are not simply academic pursuits with little bearing on how we work and how we live our lives”
Colebrook (2002)
“Concepts are not labels or names that we attach to things; they produce an orientation or a direction for thinking. A concept … is just this power to move beyond what we know and experience”
Kuhn (1970)
- paradigms = idea academic disciplines move through phases characterised by different assumptions about how thought and research practice ought to proceed
- academic episodes/trends how study world
Books of use
- This Changes Everything - Klein (2015)
- The Communist Manifesto - Marx + Engels (1848)
- The Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Wollstonecraft (1792)
- Deeds Not Words - Pankhurst (2018)
- Biased - Eberhardt (2019)
- Invisible Women - Perez (2019)
- The Shock of the Anthropocene - Bonneuil and Fressoz (2017)
- The Shock Doctrine - Klein (2007)
- The Spirit Level - Wilkinson and Pickett (2010)
- Silent Spring - Carson (1962)
- The Equality Effect - Dorling (2017)
- Gaia - Lovelock (1979)
Kwan (2004) Geography Rifts
- C20th geog rifts - separation human/physical based nature/society binary - separate spatial-analytical geog from social cultural
- geographers sought identity discipline, often involving science, purification - diversity perspective lost to enhance geog position wider social sciences community
- purification never fully successful - Haraway (1991) why can’t each side enrich each other eg. PPGIS - binary hampers creativity
- need find ways geog respectable without loosing difference. overcome divides, accept differences. Feminist geog important in doing so/ talking across divides
Martin (2013)
understand groups/belongings two ways - object-based (attention object, what is similar, create group w boundary and fixed idea - eg. twin focused on fact twin, hides difference) - vs relational (eg twin understood in relation others/ through exploration difference - concept in relation to other twins/ people not in category).
- identity is multiple - to remove something = limit/ reduce sense who you are
- object-based tradition true in colonial relations - focus exotic African other
- eg British multiculturalism - can see dominant group hold power, use dominant as standard against which to judge others or can celebrate differences
ADI OPHIR (2012)
“A term becomes a concept only when we take the time to disengage it from its daily uses in order to put it on display, wonder about its meaning, explicate it”
COLLINI (2012)
‘Being critical’ calls into question knowledge as “truth”. It recognises that things are not fixed or eternal or universal or self-sufficient
