Revolutionary and evolutionary change in human geography: a personal assessment

Many perspectives new to Anglo-Saxon human geography have been introduced into the discipline over the last twenty years. These are reviewed in terms of the impacts upon mainstream human geography of the quantitative/spatial organisation /theoretical revolutions, and the reactions against these in turn by advocates of the behavioural, liberal/relevance, Marxist and post-positivist perspectives. The review ends with a brief consideration of some contemporary approaches within human geography, particularly those seeking an understanding of the processes underpinning the relationships between agency and structure. By way of conclusion a personal assessment is given of the current standing of the discipline and the nature of the changes required of it in the 1980s.     

INTERVIEW WITH

Born in 1937, reared and educated mainly in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Demos is a leading social historian of early America. He has published a widely known account of early Plymouth, an anthology of primary sources on colonial culture, a co-edited collection of essays on family history, and numerous scholarly articles on social history and psychohistory, some of which he included in a volume on family history and public policy. He received the Frederic Bancroft Prize for his book on witchcraft. Since 1986, Demos has been Samuel Knight Professor of American History at Yale University, where he has recently completed a book on colonists and Indians. He and his wife, Virginia, were married in 1963, have two daughters, and live in Watertown, Massachusetts. This interview was conducted in Demos' office at Yale by Roger Adelson in October 1992.