Study of the History of Geographical Ideas

Two recent books on the history of geographical ideas, by A. G. Isachenko of Leningrad University, and by Preston James of Syracuse University, are reviewed in the general context of the need for a textbook for courses now being taught at Soviet universities. The Isachenko book is criticized on the ground that it reduces the history of geographical ideas to a history of physical geography, ignoring the impact of human activity. James, who deals with the history of geographical ideas as a whole, is praised for having included a chapter on the new geography in the Soviet Union and on the innovative aspects of theoretical geography, such as systems theory, spatial systems, diffusion on studies, etc. In the reviewer's opinion, the two books need to be examined critically in connection with preparation of a text for a Soviet university course on the history and methodology of geography.     

Problems of General Economic Regionalization at the Present Stage

Professor Ryabchikov, Dean of the Geography Faculty of Moscow University, finds that Soviet teachers colleges are adequate to supply geography teachers to the middle schools, especially in view of a gradual reduction of the number of class hours devoted to geography in those schools. He sees the primary function of university geography as the training of specialized geographers for industry, agriculture and other segments of the national economy. Universities are therefore urged to reorganize their curricula from the present somewhat academic approach to a greater practical and applied content that would benefit graduates in their new jobs. The author calls on universities to strengthen their ties with industry by taking advantage of the Soviet system of contractual research for production organizations.     

THE GEOGRAPHY OF OCEANS AND ITS BASIC PROBLEMS

The study of oceans as a subfield of geography has gained acceptance in the Soviet Union. Some universities have introduced courses in marine geography, and geographers have participated in oceanographic research voyages. An effort is made here to define the place of a marine geography within the geographic discipline as a whole, to set the spatial limits for geographical investigations of the oceans and to suggest problem areas suitable for geographical analysis. In keeping with the Soviet dichotomy, physical and economic geographic problems are distinguished. Physical-geographic problem areas would include study of oceanic water masses; large-scale interaction between oceans and atmosphere; study of island environments, and the biogeography of oceans. Economic geographic problems would focus both on theoretical aspects, such as spatial regularities in human activities related to oceans, and on applied aspects, providing a sound basis for economic development of ocean areas.     

The Present State and Tasks of Higher Geography Education

The author discusses the teaching of geography in universities and teachers colleges of the Soviet Union, noting that the majority of graduates are being assigned to geography teaching in middle schools. He gives data on the distribution of students by day, evening, and correspondence divisions; problems in teaching methods; the organization of field practice; and the limited number of degree holders in geography.     

Fifty Years of Development of Soviet Geographic Thought

A review of trends in Soviet geography covers the increasing specialization of physical-geographic disciplines and attempts to integrate physical geography through landscape-study techniques and the theory of a physical-geographic envelope of the earth. Economic geography has focused on regionalization problems and the formation of territorial-production complexes. The controversy over the content of geography is reviewed, and cartography and regional geography are viewed as frameworks for the generalization of geographic information. The new constructive school of Soviet geography is described.     

Health geography in Canada: where are we headed?

This paper overviews the emergence of medical/health geography in Canada. The paper discusses the key questions that Canadian health geographers have explored in the past two decades, how these enquiries have featured in the field and how they contribute to the wider discourse of human geography. It also addresses questions on emerging themes and where Canadian health geography will go in the years ahead. With shifting health landscapes in terms of changes in social, political and physical environments, and changes in health care restructuring, Canadian health geographers are entering a new phase of research, teaching and policy. The complexity of the questions that health geographers seek to address means it is necessary to continue to highlight the policy implications of their findings. Health geographers need to emphasize the public agenda through interdisciplinary research and by continuing to work with geographers in other subfields.     

Some Results of the Second National Interagency Conference on Population Geography

Population geography in the Soviet Union is found to be developing mainly in breadth without adequate theoretical gounding. Because of the growing interest in mathematical methods, which have yet to demonstrate their real research value, long-tested traditional methods (statistical, comparative, cartographic) are being neglected. The usefulness of large conferences as compared with small meetings on a specific topic is questioned. The present active interest in population geography is resulting in neglect of other branches of economic geography in the Soviet Union.     

Geographical Aspects of Public Health

A review of Soviet research in medical geography stresses that in addition to study of the geography of disease and its causes of propagation, Soviet medical geographers are also concerned with identifying the natural factors that have a beneficial effect on the health of man. Five current research trends are outlined. For previous material on medical geography, see Soviet Geography, October 1962.     

On the Study of the History of Geographical Ideas

The author rebuts the criticism by Yu. G. Saushkin that the book Razvitiye geograficheskikh idey [The Evolution of Geographical Ideas] is in effect a history of physical geography rather than a history of geography as a whole. Isachenko contends that concepts of natural science have been at the root of geography throughout its history and it is therefore natural for a history of geographical ideas to deal predominantly with the ideas of physical geography. Far from having ignored human geography, Isachenko contends, his book traces the anthropocentric school through its various stages of development. Only the survey of Soviet geography was restricted to physical geography, the author says, because Soviet geography consists of two virtually independent disciplines and the author happens to be a physical geographer viewing his discipline as the foundation of all geography.     

Official Report

Under the Soviet Union's school reform of 1959, teachers colleges have been called upon to prepare geography-biology teachers for Soviet middle schools instead of specialized geography teachers and specialized biology-chemistry teachers. The article discusses the problems that teachers colleges face in shifting from the earlier narrow training programs to the new broad curriculum designed to train geography-biology teachers.     

POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY IN THE USSR

Development of the field of political geography in the USSR is surveyed, beginning with its early roots in the late 19th Century and early Soviet period and ties to foreign area studies and historical geography in the 1950s. Activities of the 1980s are described in terms of university-level course offerings, research at universities and research institutes, and theoretical and methodological publications. Concluding sections survey current research trends (electoral geography, developing countries, the ocean, reassessment of geopolitics) and outline general theoretical issues and major questions for future research. An extensive bibliography follows (translated by Jay K. Mitchell, PlanEcon, Inc., Washington, DC 20005).     

The Geography of Population and the Geography of Services

In discussing a methodology for a geography of services, a new branch of Soviet geographic research, the authors propose geographically meaningful classifications of services, the use of value and labor-input indicators, the problem of a typology of service regions, and other aspects of research in this new discipline. The geography of services is found to be closely related to population geography because of the correlation between the distribution of services and the distribution of population.     

On new Directions in the Development of Soviet Economic Geography

A review of new research areas in Soviet economic geography distinguishes three categories of topics in terms of the level of advance and the volume of research being done. The most viable new areas, with a large number of studies, include the resource-oriented approach to economic geography and the systems approach to settlement geography. In other research areas, such as the geography of services and the geography of land use, only the first steps are being made. The lag in land-use studies behind the West is explained in terms of the large territory of the USSR, which is said to have made this type of research unnecessary until recently. The potentialities of some research areas are only just beginning to be perceived, notably in the case of studies on spatial value relationships, involving regional accounts and balance of payments.     

THE 1929 MEETING OF SOVIET GEOGRAPHY TEACHERS: A KEY EVENT IN THE HISTORY OF SOVIET ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

A Soviet economic geographer who participated in a 1929 conference of geography teachers describes the antecedents, the atmosphere and the proceedings of this crucial meeting in a stormy period of the discipline. It was a landmark in the history of Soviet economic geography in marking the beginning of the end of the old sectoral-statistical approach and inaugurating the new regional school led by N. N. Baranskiy.     

Soviet Geographers at the 19th International Geographical Congress

Reviewing the contribution of Soviet geographers at the Stockholm congress, the author makes a plea for more papers on economic geography and on integrated problems in geography. He denies that a trend toward greater emphasis on specialized disciplines is characteristic of Soviet geography. He criticizes some Soviet geographers for preparing what Saushkin considers misleading summaries of papers presented by foreign geographers.     

“Methodological Clashes in Moscow” as Misinterpreted by an American Geographer

David Hooson of the University of British Columbia is accused of prejudiced interpretation of the Soviet discussion of V. A. Anuchin's book Teoreticheskiye problemy geografii and of open hostility toward the Marxist basis of Soviet geography. The authors reject Hooson's suggestion that there may be a growing rapprochement between Soviet and American geography, and they reassert the fundamental political orientation of Soviet geography. In the authors' view, the only useful contact between the two sides must be sought in what they call a complete and objective exchange of information and opinion.     

Problems of Geographical Education in the USSR

Geography education in the Soviet Union is found to lag behind advances in geography as a research discipline. Courses in both elementary and secondary schools and at the college and university level are overloaded with factual material at the expense of theoretical problems and general concepts. An essential requisite for improving the content of geography education is better training of geography teachers. Soviet geography teachers are now being trained mainly in the combined geography-biology faculties of teachers colleges. Combined training in more than one teaching discipline is essential because a teacher trained in geography alone would not have a full teaching load of 18 hours a week in most schools. However, the geography-biology combination does not appear to be optimal because the emphasis in biology is no longer on botany and zoology, as in the past, but on human physiology and genetics, with less relevance to geography. It is recommended that geography as a teaching discipline be combined with other subjects of instruction having greater relevance to geography teaching, possibly chemistry, physical education or foreign languages. Less emphasis on fact-loaded regional courses and more stress on systematic courses is recommended, together with training in mathematical techniques.     

SOCIO-ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY IN THE WEST AT A TURNING POINT

The decade of the 1970s is viewed as a turning point in the development of socio-economic geography in the West. An increasingly sociological focus has been accompanied by strong criticism of the traditional foundations of human geography and economic geography. A radicalization of socio-economic geography has involved several contradictory trends and periods. A symptomatic and important aspect, from the Soviet point of view, has been increasing interest on the part of some Western scholars in Marxist theory and in the work done by Soviet geographers in socio-economic geography.     

The understated turn: Emerging interests and themes in Canadian posthumanist geography

Posthumanist geography is a broad tradition incorporating a range of intersecting theoretical approaches including assemblage theory, actor-network theory, new materialisms, affect theory, neo-vitalism, political ecology, post-phenomenology, and non-representational theory—as well as contributions from a number of theoretically progressive subject fields such as new mobilities, relational thinking, sensory and performance studies, biosocial and biopolitics studies, and science and technology studies. The specificities of and differences between these traditions and fields aside, common to posthumanism is a scepticism of human exceptionalism. Here, the sovereign human subject is decentred, and in doing so, posthumanist work acknowledges the agencies of a full array of human and non-human actors and forces. Recognizing that there are important “geographies to (the discipline of) geography,” this paper identifies and reviews some of the key posthumanist interests and themes that have emerged over recent years quietly and organically in Canadian geography, namely posthumanist (i) Indigenous geographies; (ii) animal and natures geographies; (iii) health, wellbeing, and disability geographies; (iv) affective and atmospheric geographies; and (v) non-representational and creative methodologies. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the nature and strengths of Canadian posthumanist geography, and on some possibilities for future advancement.