Quantitative Geography: Representations, Practices, and Possibilities

Abstract

Representations of quantitative geography, both by practitioners and by others, have tended to associate quantification with empiricism, positivism, and the social and academic status quo. Qualitative geography, by contrast is represented as nonempiricist or postempiricist, sensitive to complexity, contextual, and capable of empowering nonmainstream academic approaches and social groups. Attempts to engage in debate between these positions rarely challenge this dualism, reproducing the representation of quantitative geography as logical positivism, and a dualism separating quantitative and qualitative geography. I argue that this dualism can be broken down, by deconstructing the underlying representation. I discuss why this representation came into existence and how it was stabilized; how close attention to the practices of quantitative geographers, and particularly to the evolution of these practices, reveals its inadequacies; and what new possibilities for quantitative practices emerge from this deconstruction. GIS, one of the recent manifestations around which representations of quantitative geography polarize, is used as a case study to illustrate these arguments. I pay particular attention to the question of the relevance of quantitative practices for an emancipatory human geography.

La complexité des phénomènes spatiaux

“…Elles s'apparentent davantage à des champs d'intensité et à des micro-comportements différents, mais coordonnés, qu'à des mouvements de masse entre des unités géographiques aux frontières claires et fi xes. Cette nouvelle conscience témoigne de la maturation de la géographie quantitative qui, en se déta-chant de ses prétentions scientistes, accepte et repousse progressivement ses limites (Fotheringhan et Brundson, 1999 ;Sheppard, 2001 ;Schuurman, 2003).…”

Fortschritt und Verdrängung – Ökologischer Fehlschluss und quantitative Revolution in der Geographie

“…Mit dieser Absicht wird zugleich angeknüpft an das auch in der Geographie gewachsene Interesse für die Wirkmäch-tigkeit statistischer Kalküle in der Konstruktion und Bearbeitung sozialer Wirklichkeit (Barnes und Hannah, 2001;Sheppard, 2001Sheppard, , 2014. Der Beitrag folgt der Aufforderung, Methodendiskussionen über statistische Prozeduren und die Konzeptgeschichte statistischer Verfahren nicht allein den Statistikern zu überlassen, sondern sie selbst zum Gegenstand wissenschaftstheoretischer und -soziologischer Reflexion zu machen (vgl.…”

Structure and event, networks and nodes in human geography: the 1960s revisited

“…A modern synthesis" entitled "On the beach" (Haggett, 1972) -can be haunted by events composed of specific nodes and particular networks, explicitly expunged from geography in the first sentence of Torsten Hägerstrand's 1953 Swedish original of Innovation diffusion as a spatial process ("This study is not concerned with the analysis of a specific geographic area; its object is to deal with the diffusion of innovations as a spatial process", 1967:1). A "haunting" that has recently been addressed within the discipline by a raft of papers (Barnes, 2009;Wyly, 2009; prominent earlier such attempts included inter alia Marchand, 1974;Pickles, 1995;Philo, 1998;Flowerdew, 1998 andSheppard, 2001) often culminating in statements like the following: "Quantitative geography, when integrated with a critical sensibility and used appropriately, can be a powerful tool for fostering progressive social and political change" (Kwan and Schwanen, 2009:284).…”