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Benno Werlen
Benno Werlen (born 10 October 1952) is a Swiss geographer who is known for his action-centered approach to human geography and his concept of a Geography of Everyday Regionalizations. Werlen currently holds the UNESCO-Chair on Global Understanding for Sustainability at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena (Germany). From 1998 to 2018, he held the chair of social geography at Jena University. Werlen was a visiting professor at the Universities of Salzburg, Geneva and Nijmegen as well as a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and the University of California, Los Angeles. He has served as a panel member for the European Research Council from 2008-15, and for the French National Research Agency (ANR) in the field of Social and human sciences from 2008-12. From 2004-2016, he chaired the International Geographical Union’s commission "Cultural approach in geography", and since 2016, Werlen has been heading the commission "Global understand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Human Geography
Human geography or anthropogeography is the branch of geography that studies spatial relationships between human communities, cultures, economies, and their interactions with the environment. It analyzes spatial interdependencies between social interactions and the environment through qualitative and quantitative research methods. History Geography was not recognized as a formal academic discipline until the 18th century, although many scholars had undertaken geographical scholarship for much longer, particularly through cartography. The Royal Geographical Society was founded in England in 1830, although the United Kingdom did not get its first full Chair of geography until 1917. The first real geographical intellect to emerge in the United Kingdom was Halford John Mackinder, appointed reader at Oxford University in 1887. The National Geographic Society was founded in the United States in 1888 and began publication of the ''National Geographic'' magazine which became, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Weber
Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist and political economy, political economist, who is regarded as among the most important theorists of the development of Modernity, modern Western world, Western society. His ideas profoundly influence social theory and social research, research. While Weber did not see himself as a sociologist, he is recognized as one of the fathers of sociology along with Karl Marx, and Émile Durkheim. Unlike Durkheim, Weber did not believe in wikt:monocausal, monocausal explanations, proposing instead that for any outcome there can be multiple causes. Also unlike Durkheim, Weber was a key proponent of methodological Antipositivism, anti-positivism, arguing for the study of social action through Verstehen, interpretive rather than purely Empiricism, empiricist methods, based on a subjective understanding of the Meaning-making, meanings that individuals attach to their own actions. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, etc. It is about creating something by thinking across boundaries. It is related to an '' interdiscipline'' or an ''interdisciplinary field,'' which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge. Large engineering teams are usually interdisciplinary, as a power station or mobile phone or other project requires the melding of several specialties. However, the term "interdisciplinary" is sometimes confined to academic settings. The term ''interdisciplinary'' is applied within education and training pedagogies to describe studies that use methods and insights of several established disciplines or traditional fields of study. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Turn
The cultural turn is a movement beginning in the early 1970s among scholars in the humanities and social sciences to make culture the focus of contemporary debates; it also describes a shift in emphasis toward ''meaning'' and away from a positivist epistemology. The cultural turn is described in 2005 by Lynette Spillman and Mark D. Jacobs as "one of the most influential trends in the humanities and social sciences in the last generation." A prominent historiographer argues that the cultural turn involved a "wide array of new theoretical impulses coming from fields formerly peripheral to the social sciences," especially post-structuralism, cultural studies, literary criticism, and various forms of linguistic analysis, which emphasized "the causal and socially constitutive role of cultural processes and systems of signification." Background The cultural turn in the late 20th century is interpreted as referring to either a substantive shift in society or an analytical shift in a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intentionality
''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it has been regarded as the characteristic ''mark of the mental'' by many philosophers. A central issue for theories of intentionality has been the problem of ''intentional inexistence'': to determine the ontological status of the entities which are the objects of intentional states. An early theory of intentionality is associated with Anselm of Canterbury's ontological argument for the existence of God, and with his tenets distinguishing between objects that exist in the understanding and objects that exist in reality. The idea fell out of discussion with the end of the medieval scholastic period, but in recent times was resurrected by empirical psychologist Franz Brentano and later adopted by contemporary phenomenological philosopher Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. In addition to sociology, it now encompasses a wide array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management science, communication science and political science. Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the natural sciences as tools for understanding society, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Geography
Cultural geography is a subfield within human geography. Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy or Strabo, cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist theories of the early 20th century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment in which they develop.Peet, Richard; 1990; Modern Geographical Thought; Blackwell Rather than studying pre-determined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscapes. This was led by the "father of cultural geography" Carl O. Sauer of the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, cultural geography was long dominated by American writers. Geographers drawing on this tradition see cultures and societies as developing out of their local landscapes but also shaping those landscapes.Sauer, Carl; 192 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Geography
Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of politics, political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of State (polity), the state at the centre, the study of international relations (or geopolitics) above it, and the study of localities below it. The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory. History The origins of political geography lie in the origins of human geography itself, and the early practitioners were concerned mainly with the military and political consequences of the relationships between physical geography, state territories, and state power. In particular there was a close association with both regional geography, with its focus on the unique characteristics of regions, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Geography
Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity and factors affecting them. It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics. There are four branches of economic geography. There is, primary sector, Secondary sector, Tertiary sector, & Quaternary sector. Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topics, including the location of industries, economies of agglomeration (also known as "linkages"), transportation, international trade, development, real estate, gentrification, ethnic economies, gendered economies, core-periphery theory, the economics of urban form, the relationship between the environment and the economy (tying into a long history of geographers studying culture-environment interaction), and globalization. Theoretical background and influences There are varied methodological approaches. Neoclassical location theorists, following in the tradition of Alfred Weber, tend to focus on indust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constructivist Epistemology
Constructivism is a view in the philosophy of science that maintains that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world. According to the constructivist, natural science, therefore, consists of mental constructs that aim to explain sensory experience and measurements. According to constructivists, the world is independent of human minds, but knowledge of the world is always a human and social construction. Constructivism opposes the philosophy of objectivism, embracing the belief that a human can come to know the truth about the natural world not mediated by scientific approximations with different degrees of validity and accuracy. According to constructivists, there is no single valid methodology in science but rather a diversity of useful methods. Etymology The term originates from psychology, education, and social constructivism. The expression "constructivist epistemology" was first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy''), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus. In the , Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint for centuries until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to derive Kepler's laws of planetary motion, accoun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Structuration Theory
The theory of structuration is a social theory of the creation and reproduction of social systems that is based on the analysis of both '' structure'' and '' agents'' (see structure and agency), without giving primacy to either. Furthermore, in structuration theory, neither micro- nor macro-focused analysis alone is sufficient. The theory was proposed by sociologist Anthony Giddens, most significantly in ''The Constitution of Society'', which examines phenomenology, hermeneutics, and social practices at the inseparable intersection of structures and agents. Its proponents have adopted and expanded this balanced position.Stones, R. (2005). ''Structuration theory.'' New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Though the theory has received much criticism, it remains a pillar of contemporary sociological theory.Bryant, C.G.A., & Jary, D. (1991). Coming to terms with Anthony Giddens. In C.G.A. Bryant & D. Jary (Eds.), ''Giddens' theory of structuration: A critical appreciation'' (pp. 1-3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
