GEO 527 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Picket Fences, Class Conflict, Post-Structuralism
Document Summary
Lecture 1: social geogrpahy and the socio-spatial dialectic. Scientific : so there is no bias because it is all based on numbers, observer removed from observed cartesian approach, cartesian approach: there is no subjectivity in understanding things. The behavioural approach: emerged as a critique of the quantitative approach, study of people activities and decision making, example: why people shop at a certain store, phenomenology, thought process often described as peeling an onion. Before reaching the core, you need to peel all the layers. What is their biases: they assume that only their ethnicity is shopping at the store, pre-conceived notion: biases, example: poor people understand poor people better. The poststructuralist approach: the world cannot be explained by one theory, discourses meanings that are created through texts to understand the world. Science of urban spatial organization and spatial relationsips. Social geography: not one, but several geographies. They are all coming from different biases: city as an ecosystem, survival of the fittest.