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Chapter One
Introduction: Making Sense of
Environmental Geography
Noel Castree, David Demeritt and Diana Liverman
On the evening of Monday, 31 January 1887, Halford Mackinder delivered a now
famous address to London's Royal Geographical Society. In his lecture - entitled
'On the scope and methods of geography' - he explained how and why geography
should take its place alongside other disciplines within the academic division of
labour. His strategy, at once simple and audacious, was to call that division of
labour into question. Geography, Mackinder (1887) argued, can 'bridge one of the
greatest of all gaps': namely, that separating `the natural sciences and the study of
humanity' (p. 145). He was not alone in defining geography as 'the science whose
main function is to trace the interaction of man [sic.] in society and so much of his
environment as varies locally'. At points east and west, others were doing much the
same, such as William Morris Davis in America and Friedrich Ratzel in Germany.
The three men soon occupi ... read full excerpt from A Companion to Environmental Geography ebook
