ZA121 Theory and practice in human geography, October 3rd, 2024
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Theory and practice in human geography – introduction to the course
Pavel Doboš

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What is going to happen in the course?
The course explores some of the ways in which geography has been positioned in relation to its
various foundations: history; philosophy; science; and culture. During geography’s engagement with
these diverse knowledge positions, it has become common to speak of geographical knowledges as
“situated knowledges”: always partial, always provisional. We will explore how this change has come
about, examine its implications, and see how it helps us to understand geography’s involvements in
the shaping of today’s world. This course is going to make a series of “visits” to intellectual
sites where human geographers have done some of their most characteristic work.

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What is going to happen in the course?
In other words, we will examine some of the key concepts in contemporary geographical inquiry:
ideas like “landscape”, “space”, “place”, “time”, “society”, “nature”, “culture”, “representation”,
“relations”, “difference”, or “affect”. We will try to understand how they have developed and
changed and how they are connected to ideas in other fields. We will explore how they have shaped
various paradigmatic and epistemological positions in geographical thought. We will also consider
their implications for the ways in which we represent other people and other places: in writing, in
visual images and maps, and in numbers and statistics. None of these constructions is innocent. Our
concepts are usually freighted with power.

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2. lecture (10th October)
Geographical traditions and their spatio-temporal origin
̶Anglofone (hegemonic) geography
̶Non-anglofone geographies
̶Post-socialist geographies
̶Post-colonial geographies
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3. lecture (17th October)
From positivist to post-positivist approaches
̶Quantitative revolution and after
̶Birth of critical and humanistic geographies
̶Qualitative methods are coming to the forefront
̶Unifying geography again?
̶More-than-human geographies
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4. lecture (24th October)
Geography and modernism: from modern to post-modern thought
̶What is modernity and postmodernity?
̶Critical geographies of postmodernity
̶Postmodern geographies
̶Epistemological elevation of multiparadigmatism
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5. lecture (31st October)
Radical geographies and the criticism of global political economy
̶Critiques of global capitalism
̶Unequal exchange
̶Unequal divisons of labour
̶Unequal distribution of profit and surplus value
̶Marxist geography, welfare geography, anarchist geography, …
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6. lecture (7th November)
Eurocentrism and Orientalism: postcolonial critiques and imaginative geographies
̶Postcolonial turn in (anglofone) geography
̶The influence of postcolonial thinkers
̶What is postcolonial, decolonial, counter-colonial?
̶The problem of the dissemination of Orientalist imaginative geographies
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7. lecture (14th November)
Landscape geography and the problem of representation
̶Problematizing the question of what landscape actually is
̶Landscape as perfomed
̶Critiques of ocularcentric representations in landscape studies
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8. lecture (21st November)
Politics of performance and affect: the imperative of being non-representational
̶From representational to non-representational geographies
̶From „dead“ to „living“ geographies
̶The concept of affect
̶Geographies as performing and affecting a life
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9. lecture (28th November)
Geography, morality, ethics
̶Moral and activist geographies
̶Descriptive and normative ethics
̶Commitments to humans, as well as non-human beings, and nature?
̶Spatial ideas of empathy, justice, emancipation, alleviation of suffering, …
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10. lecture (5th December)
Spatial opportunities that poststructuralism makes possible
̶Spatialities in writings of poststructuralist thinkers
̶Deconstruction, schizoanalysis, différends
̶The critique of pointillism
̶Space as a verb, rather than a noun -> spacing
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11. lecture (12th December)
Geographies of virtual space, big data, and the problem of internet communication
̶Spatialities of internet platforms
̶Exclusions inside digital spaces
̶Affects of software
̶Ontegenesis of space via algorithms
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12. lecture (19th December)
Critical cartographies and the cartographic reason
̶The discursive critique of maps as ideological tools
̶The critique of cartographic reason
̶New maps as counter-hegemonic tools in critical and activist mappings
̶Post-representational cartography
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