Transactional and Transformational Theories in Behavioral Geography

Abstract

Inadequate theoretical conceptualization of person/environment relations has characterized behavioral geography as an eclectic and incoherent subfield. Past work has failed to appreciate the person/environment unity as an entity of change. A transactional/transformational perspective is adopted in this paper as a basis for understanding the relationships between the dynamics of human behavior and the dynamics of the environment. Two conceptual models are developed which provide bases for understanding (i) different modes of person/environment transformation, and (ii) human behavior as it mediates change. The potential relevance of a transactional perspective for empirical research in behavioral geography is noted.

Nonresidential Crime Attractors and Generators Elevate Perceived Neighborhood Crime and Incivilities

“…So how do these backcloth factors, along with the density, proximity, and riskiness of nonresidential land uses, shape residents' movements inside and outside their neighborhoods (Wikstrom and Ceccato 2005)? How do these backcloth patterns and activity patterns link to images of neighborhood disorder (Aitken and Bjorklund 1988) and detailed spatial templates (Brantingham and Brantingham 1981) of areas? How do these activity patterns within and beyond the neighborhood shift over time and respond to extraordinary events such as extremely serious crimes (Aitken and Bjorklund 1988)?…”

Smart Spaces, Information Processing, and the Question of Intelligence

“…We draw on the distinction between cognition and consciousness and their relationship-supported by Hayles (2017) and Shanahan (2010)-to interrogate both the evolving agency of technical systems and the complex socio-technical milieu within which (post)human consciousness is entangled. We re-frame "smart" spaces as cognitive-or as ongoing processes in the evolving spatialization of cognition-albeit in a way that is quite different from cognitive and behavioral geographers (c.f., Aitken and Bjorklund 1988). At the same time, we re-assert a role for differentiated forms of (post)human consciousness, often ignored in literature that tends to focus on forms of technical agency with little attention given to the human (Rose 2017).…”

From the Inside Looking out and the Outside Looking in: Whatever Happened to ‘Behavioural Geography’?

“…At the core of transactional constructivist approaches was a concern for the ways in which environmental meanings originate, are contested and are negotiated. However it should be acknowledged that behavioural geography's early fascination with things like mental maps meant that rather too much emphasis came to be placed on constructivism (images) and rather too little on transactions (the processes whereby constructions of the world are negotiated and brought into being) (Aitken and Bjorklund, 1988), a fact recognised in the way in which the analytical behavioural school of thought gave increasing emphasis to cognitive mapping processes and to ways of analysing such processes (Kitchin, 1994; Golledge and Stimson, 1997).…”