The Ecological Dimension: Russian and American Views∗

Abstract

The most inadequately treated dimension in recent American geographical writing is the "vertical" dimension of ecological relationships. Man's impact on the land has been widely recognized, but influences from the natural environment upon man have been ignored. In Russia, however, despite the Marxist principle that economic causation is primary in social development, V. A. Anuchin has recently emphasized what I term "environmental causation." He has found "geographical determinism," or an overestimation of environmental causation, to be less dangerous than indeterminism, or the denial of causal relationships. Such views have led Anuchin to claim, contrary to Soviet tradition, that land should be given a price. Common basis exists for Soviet and Western geographers to combine an appreciation of environmental causation with forward-looking "idealistic" approaches to remaking the landscape. KEY WORDS: V . A . Anuchin, Ecological dimension, Environmental causation, Idealism, Indeterminism, Marxist geographical theory, Man-land relationships, Edward J . Tuafle. EN geography was organized as a unitury America, it operated more or less within a framework of three dimensions of space and one of time. The dimension of time entered into the physical geography which dominated the field initially, mainly in an unmeasured form, as the concept of "stage" in W. M. Davis's scheme of landform evolution. Chiefly through the work of Sauer and the Berkeley school of historical geography, the Davisian adaptation of the concept of time to physical geography was supplemented and overshadowed by an ap-v versity discipline in early twentieth cen-Accepted f o r publication 26 December 1974. Dr. Chappell is an environmental analyst f o r Osprey, Inc., 4 Greystone Road, Melrose, M A 021 76. *Part of this study was carried out while I held a research fellowship at the Russian Research Center, Harvard University, during 1973-74. The Geography Department at the University of Washington provided a favorable setting for my initial study of Soviet geographic theory in 1962. My interpretations of Marxist-Leninist philosophy, geographical and otherwise, owe a great deal to my study of Russian Intellectual History under Martin Malia, at the University of California at Berkeley during 1960-61. I also wish to thank Richard Hartshorne, whose advice has helped me think more clearly about the terminology involved in man-land theory.

Retrospective on Nature–Society Geography: Tracing Trajectories (1911–2010) and Reflecting on Translations

“…L. Turner, Hanham, and Portararo 1977;Doolittle 1984;B. L. Turner 1989), urban ecology (Entrikin 1980), ecological science (Fosberg 1976), and environmental ideas and attitudes (Tuan 1973;Chappell 1975;Bunkse 1978). These publications benefited from exchanges with the interdisciplinary realms of development studies, world systems, and political economy, in addition to ecology, urban studies, and environmental studies and philosophy.…”

The Role of the Human Mind in Environmental Relationships

“…Until recently, I thought the need to debate Leonard Guelke over the theme of Collingwoodian idealism had been exhausted with our exchange in the Annals some years ago (Chappell 1975(Chappell , 1976Guelke 1976). But his latest in a series of promotions of this approach to geographical knowledge (Guelke 1989) carries the matter considerably further.…”

“…Yet neither this thesis nor the relevant evidence is spelled out or cited. Guelke does not entertain the possibility that environmental determinism might be reevaluated and refashioned so as to avoid its less desirable features and associations, and to emphasize possibilistic, probabilistic, and stochastic interpretations of human-environment interaction-being thereupon called, perhaps, "environmental causation theory," reducing any implication of the absolute or the coldly mechanistic (Chappell 1969(Chappell , 1975.…”

The Idealist Dispute in Anglo‐American Geography

“…I have limited or omitted mention of various others, e.g. Billinge (1977), Chappell(1975), Gregory (1978). and Hufferd (1980).…”