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From Journal of Geography,September/October 1990, pp. 202206. 1990 by the National Council for Geographic Education.

Reprinted by permission.

The Four Traditionsof Geography

William D. Pattison

Late Summer, 1990

To Readers of the Journal of Geography:

I am honored to be introducing, for a re-turn to the pages of the Journal after morethan 25 years, The Four Traditions of Ge-ography, an article which circulated widely,in this country and others, long after its in-itial appearancein reprint, in xerographiccopy, and in translation. A second round oflife at a level of general interest even ap-proaching that of the first may be too muchto expect, but I want you to know in anyevent that I presented the paper in the be-ginning as my gift to the geographic com-

munity, not as a personal property, and thatI re-offer it now in the same spirit.

In my judgment, the article continues todeserve serious attentionperhaps espe-cially so, let me add, among persons awareof the specific problem it was intended toresolve. The background for the paper wasmy experience as first director of the HighSchool Geography Project (196163)notall of that experience but only the part thatfound me listening, during numerous confer-ence sessions and associated interviews, toacademic geographers as they responded tothe projects invitation to locate basic ideasrepresentative of them all. I came away with

the conclusion that I had been witnessing nota search for consensus but rather a blindstruggle for supremacy among honest per-sons of contrary intellectual commitment. Intheir dialogue, two or more different termshad been used, often unknowingly, with asingle reference, and no less disturbingly, asingle term had been used, again often un-knowingly, with two or more different ref-erences. The article was my attempt tostabilize the discourse. I was proposing a ba-sic nomenclature (with explicitly associatedideas) that would, I trusted, permit the de-

velopment of mutual comprehension andconfront all parties concerned with the plu-ralism inherent in geographic thought.

This intention alone could not have justifiedmy turning to the NCGE as a forum, of course.The fact is that from the onset of my discom-fiting realization I had looked forward to largerconsequences of a kind consistent with NCGEgoals. As finally formulated, my wish was thatthe article would serve to greatly expedite thetask of maintaining an alliance between pro-fessional geography and pedagogical geogra-phy and at the same time to promotecommunication with laymen (see my fourthparagraph). I must tell you that I have doubts,

in 1990, about the acceptability of my wordchoice, in saying professional, pedagogi-cal, and layman in this context, but the mes-sage otherwise is as expressive of my hopenow as it was then.

I can report to you that twice since itsappearance in theJournal,my interpretationhas received more or less official accep-tanceboth times, as it happens, at the ex-pense of the earth science tradition. The firstoccasion was Edward Taaffes delivery of hispresidential address at the 1973 meeting ofthe Association of American Geographers(see Annals AAG, March 1974, pp. 116).Taaffes working-through of aspects of an in-

terrelations among the spatial, area studies,and man-land traditions is by far the mostthoughtful and thorough of any of which Iam aware. Rather than fault him for omis-sion of the fourth tradition, I complimenthim on the grace with which he set it asidein conformity to a meta-epistemology of theAmerican university which decrees the in-tegrity of the social sciences as a consortiumin their own right. He was sacrificing suchholistic claims as geography might be ableto muster for a freedom to argue the casefor geography as a social science.

The second occasion was the publicationin 1984 of Guidelines for Geographic Edu-cation: Elementary and Secondary Schools,authored by a committee jointly representingthe AAG and the NCGE. Thanks to a re-cently published letter (see Journal of Ge-ography,March-April 1990, pp. 8586), weknow that, of five themes commended toteachers in this source,

The committee lifted the human envi-ronmental interaction theme directlyfrom Pattison. The themes of placeand location are based on Pattisons

spatial or geometric geography, andthe theme of region comes from Pat-tisons area studies or regional geog-raphy.

Having thus drawn on my spatial, areastudies, and man-land traditions for four ofthe five themes, the committee could havefound the remaining theme, movement, theretooin the spatial tradition (see my sixthparagraph). However that may be, they didnot avail themselves of the earth science tra-dition, their reasons being readily surmised.Peculiar to the elementary and secondary

schools is a curriculum category framed asmuch by theory of citizenship as by theoryof knowledge: the social studies. With admi-ration, I see already in the committee mem-bers adoption of the theme idea a strategyfor assimilation of their program to the es-tablished repertoire of social studies practice.I see in their exclusion of the earth sciencetradition an intelligent respect for socialstudies purpose.

Heres to the future of education in ge-ography: may it prosper as never before.

W. D. P., 1990

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Reprinted from the Journal of Geography, 1964, pp. 211216.

In 1905, one year after professional geogra-phy in this country achieved full social iden-tity through the founding of the Associationof American Geographers, William MorrisDavis responded to a familiar suspicion that

geography is simply an undisciplined om-nium-gatherum by describing an approachthat as he saw it imparts a geographicalquality to some knowledge and accounts forthe absence of the quality elsewhere.1Davisspoke as president of the AAG. He set anexample that was followed by more than onepresident of that organization. An enduringofficial concern led the AAG to publish, in1939 and in 1959, monographs exclusivelydevoted to a critical review of definitions andtheir implications.2

Every one of the well-known definitionsof geography advanced since the foundingof the AAG has had its measure of success.

Tending to displace one another by turns,each definition has said something true ofgeography.3 But from the vantage point of1964, one can see that each one has alsofailed. All of them adopted in one way oranother a monistic view, a singleness of pref-erence, certain to omit if not to alienate nu-merous professionals who were in goodconscience continuing to participate crea-tively in the broad geographic enterprise.

The thesis of the present paper is that thework of American geographers, although notconforming to the restrictions implied by anyone of these definitions, has exhibited abroad consistency, and that this essential

unity has been attributable to a small numberof distinct but affiliated traditions, operant asbinders in the minds of members of the pro-fession. These traditions are all of great ageand have passed into American geographyas parts of a general legacy of Westernthought. They are shared today by geogra-phers of other nations.

There are four traditions whose identifi-cation provides an alternative to the compet-ing monistic definitions that have been thegeographers lot. The resulting pluralistic ba-sis for judgment promises, by full accommo-dation of what geographers do and byplain-spoken representation thereof, to greatlyexpedite the task of maintaining an alliance be-tween professional geography and pedagogicalgeography and at the same time to promotecommunication with laymen. The followingdiscussion treats the traditions in this order: (1)a spatial tradition, (2) an area studies tradition,(3) a man-land tradition and (4) an earth sci-ence tradition.

Spatial Tradition

Entrenched in Western thought is a belief inthe importance of spatial analysis, of the actof separating from the happenings of expe-

rience such aspects as distance, form, direc-tion and position. It was not until the 17thcentury that philosophers concentrated atten-tion on these aspects by asking whether ornot they were properties of things-in-them-

selves. Later, when the 18th century writingsof Immanuel Kant had become generally cir-culated, the notion of space as a categoryincluding all of these aspects came intowidespread use. However, it is evident thatparticular spatial questions were the subjectof highly organized answering attempts longbefore the time of any of these cogitations.To confirm this point, one need only be re-minded of the compilation of elaborate re-cords concerning the location of things inancient Greece. These were records of sail-ing distances, of coastlines and of landmarksthat grew until they formed the raw materialfor the great Geographia of Claudius

Ptolemy in the 2nd century A.D.A review of American professional geog-

raphy from the time of its formal organiza-tion shows that the spatial tradition ofthought had made a deep penetration fromthe very beginning. For Davis, for HenryGannett and for most if not all of the 44other men of the original AAG, the determi-nation and display of spatial aspects of real-ity through mapping were of undoubtedimportance, whether contemporary defini-tions of geography happened to acknow-ledge this fact or not. One can go furtherand, by probing beneath the art of mapping,recognize in the behavior of geographers of

that time an active interest in the true essen-tials of the spatial traditiongeometry andmovement.One can trace a basic favoring ofmovement as a subject of study from theturn-of-the-century work of Emory R.Johnson, writing as professor of transportationat the University of Pennsylvania, through thehighly influential theoretical and substantivework of Edward L. Ullman during the past 20years and thence to an article by a youngergeographer on railroad freight traffic in theU.S. and Canada in theAnnalsof the AAG forSeptember 1963.4

One can trace a deep attachment to ge-ometry, or positioning-and-layout, from arti-cles on boundaries and population densitiesin early 20th century volumes of theBulletinof the American Geographical Society,through a controversial pronouncement byJoseph Schaefer in 1953 that granted geo-graphical legitimacy only to studies of spa-tial patterns5 and so onward to a recent

Annals report on electronic scanning ofcropland patterns in Pennsylvania.6

One might inquire, is discussion of thespatial tradition, after the manner of the re-marks just made, likely to bring peoplewithin geography closer to an understanding

of one another and people outside geographycloser to an understanding of geographers?There seem to be at least two reasons forbeing hopeful. First, an appreciation of thistradition allows one to see a bond of fellow-

ship uniting the elementary school teacher,who attempts the most rudimentary instruc-tion in directions and mapping, with the con-temporary research geographer, who dedicateshimself to an exploration of central-place the-ory. One cannot only open the eyes of manyteachers to the potentialities of their own in-struction, through proper exposition of thespatial tradition, but one can also hang abell on research quantifiers in geography,who are often thought to have wandered sofar in their intellectual adventures as to havebecome lost from the rest. Looking outsidegeography, one may anticipate benefits fromthe readiness of countless persons to associ-

ate the name geography with maps. Latentwithin this readiness is a willingness to rec-ognize as geography, too, what maps areaboutand that is the geometry of and themovement of what is mapped.

Area Studies Tradition

The area studies tradition, like the spatial tra-dition, is quite strikingly represented in clas-sical antiquity by a practitioner to whosesurviving work we can point. He is Strabo,celebrated for his Geography which is amassive production addressed to the states-men of Augustan Rome and intended to sumup and regularize knowledge not of the lo-

cation of places and associated cartographicfacts, as in the somewhat later case ofPtolemy, but of the nature of places, theircharacter and their differentiation. Strabo ex-hibits interesting attributes of the area-stud-ies tradition that can hardly be overemphasized.They are a pronounced tendency toward sub-scription primarily to literary standards, an al-most omnivorous appetite for information anda self-conscious companionship with history.

It is an extreme good fortune to have inthe ranks of modern American geographythe scholar Richard Hartshorne, who haspondered the meaning of the area-studiestradition with a legal acuteness that few per-

sons would challenge. In his Nature of Ge-ography,his 1939 monograph already cited,7

he scrutinizes exhaustively the implicationsof the interesting attributes identified inconnection with Strabo, even though hisconcern is with quite other and much laterauthors, largely German. The major literaryproblem of unities or wholes he considersfrom every angle. The Gargantuan appetitefor miscellaneous information he acceptsand rationalizes. The companionship be-tween area studies and history he clarifiesby appraising the so-called idiographic con-

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tent of both and by affirming the tie of bothto what he and Sauer have called naivelygiven reality.

The area-studies tradition (otherwise knownas the chorographic tradition) tended to be ex-cluded from early American professional geog-raphy. Today it is beset by certain championsof the spatial tradition who would have one be-lieve that somehow the area-studies way of or-ganizing knowledge is only a subdepartment of

spatialism. Still, area-studies as a method ofpresentation lives and prospers in its own right.One can turn today for reassurance on this scoreto practically any issue of the Geographical Re-view, just as earlier readers could turn at theopening of the century to that magazines fore-runner.

What is gained by singling out this tra-dition? It helps toward restoring the faith ofmany teachers who, being accustomed to ad-ministering learning in the area-studies style,have begun to wonder if by doing so theyreally were keeping in touch with profes-sional geography. (Their doubts are owed alltoo much to the obscuring effect of technical

words attributable to the very professionalswho have been intent, ironically, upon pro-tecting that tradition.) Among persons out-side the classroom the geographer stands togain greatly in intelligibility. The title area-studies itself carries an understood messagein the United States today wherever there iscontact with the usages of the academiccommunity. The purpose of characterizing aplace, be it neighborhood or nation-state, isreadily grasped. Furthermore, recognition ofthe right of a geographer to be unspecializedmay be expected to be forthcoming frompeople generally, if application for such rec-ognition is made on the merits of this tradi-

tion, explicitly.

Man-Land Tradition

That geographers are much given to explor-ing man-land questions is especially evidentto anyone who examines geographic output,not only in this country but also abroad. O.H. K. Spate, taking an international view, hasfelt justified by his observations in nominat-ing as the most significant ancient precursorof todays geography neither Ptolemy norStrabo nor writers typified in their outlookby the geographies of either of these twomen, but rather Hippocrates, Greek physi-cian of the 5th century B.C. who left to pos-

terity an extended essay, On Airs, Waters andPlaces.8 In this work made up of reflectionson human health and conditions of externalnature, the questions asked are such as toconfine thought almost altogether to pre-sumed influence passing from the latter tothe former, questions largely about the ef-fects of winds, drinking water and seasonalchanges upon man. Understandable thoughthis uni-directional concern may have beenfor Hippocrates as medical commentator,and defensible as may be the attraction thatthis same approach held for students of the

condition of man for many, many centuriesthereafter, one can only regret that this nar-rowed version of the man-land tradition,combining all too easily with social Darwin-ism of the late 19th century, practically over-powered American professional geographyin the first generation of its history.9 Thepremises of this version governed scores ofstudies by American geographers in inter-preting the rise and fall of nations, the strat-

egy of battles and the construction of publicimprovements. Eventually this special bias,known as environmentalism, came to be con-fused with the whole of the man-land tradi-tion in the minds of many people. One cansee now, looking back to the years after theascendancy of environmentalism, that al-though the spatial tradition was asserting it-self with varying degrees of forwardness,and that although the area-studies traditionwas also making itself felt, perhaps the mostinteresting chapters in the story of Americanprofessional geography were being writtenby academicians who were reacting againstenvironmentalism while deliberately re-

maining within the broad man-land tradi-tion. The rise of culture historians duringthe last 30 years has meant the droppingof a curtain of culture between land andman, through which it is asserted all influ-ence must pass. Furthermore work of bothculture historians and other geographershas exhibited a reversal of the direction ofthe effects in Hippocrates, man appearingas an independent agent, and the land asa sufferer from action. This trend as pre-sented in published research has reached ahigh point in the collection of papers titled

Mans Role in Changing the Face of theEarth. Finally, books and articles can be

called to mind that have addressed them-selves to the most difficult task of all, a bal-anced tracing out of interaction betweenman and environment. Some chapters in thebook mentioned above undertake just this.In fact the separateness of this approach isdiscerned only with difficulty in manyplaces; however, its significance as a gen-eral research design that rises above envi-ronmentalism, while refusing to abandonthe man-land tradition, cannot be mistaken.

The NCGE seems to have associated it-self with the man-land tradition, from thetime of founding to the present day, morethan with any other tradition, although allfour of the traditions are amply representedin its official magazine, The Journal of Ge-ographyand in the proceedings of its annualmeetings. This apparent preference on thepart of the NCGE membersfor defining ge-ography in terms of the man-land traditionis strong evidence of the appeal that man-land ideas, separately stated, have for per-sons whose main job is teaching. It shouldbe noted, too, that this inclination reflects aproven acceptance by the general public oflearning that centers on resource use andconservation.

Earth Science Tradition

The earth science tradition, embracing studyof the earth, the waters of the earth, the at-mosphere surrounding the earth and the as-sociation between earth and sun, confrontsone with a paradox. On the one hand one isassured by professional geographers thattheir participation in this tradition has de-clined precipitously in the course of the pastfew decades, while on the other one knows

that college departments of geography acrossthe nation rely substantially, for justificationof their role in general education, upon cur-ricular content springing directly from thistradition. From all the reasons that combineto account for this state of affairs, one may,by selecting only two, go far toward achiev-ing an understanding of this tradition. First,there is the fact that American college geog-raphy, growing out of departments of geol-ogy in many crucial instances, was at onetime greatly overweighted in favor of earthscience, thus rendering the field unusuallyliable to a sense of loss as better balancecame into being. (This one-time dispropor-

tion found reciprocate support for manyyears in the narrowed, environmentalistic in-terpretation of the man-land tradition.) Sec-ond, here alone in earth science does oneencounter subject matter in the normal senseof the term as one reviews geographic tradi-tions. The spatial tradition abstracts certainaspects of reality; area studies is distin-guished by a point of view; the man-landtradition dwells upon relationships; but earthscience is identifiable through concrete ob-

jects. Historians, sociologists and other aca-demicians tend not only to accept but alsoto ask for help from this part of geography.They readily appreciate earth science as

something physically associated with theirsubjects of study, yet generally beyond theircompetence to treat. From this appreciationcomes strength for geography-as-earth-sci-ence in the curriculum.

Only by granting full stature to the earthscience tradition can one make sense out ofthe oft-repeated addage, Geography is themother of sciences. This is the tradition thatemerged in ancient Greece, most clearly inthe work of Aristotle, as a wide-rangingstudy of natural processes in and near thesurface of the earth. This is the tradition thatwas rejuvenated by Varenius in the 17th cen-tury as Geographia Generalis. This is the

tradition that has been subjected to subdivi-sion as the development of science has ap-proached the present day, yielding mineralogy,paleontology, glaciology, meterology and otherspecialized fields of learning.

Readers who are acquainted with Ameri-can junior high schools may want to makea challenge at this point, being aware that acurrent revival of earth sciences is beingsponsored in those schools by the field ofgeology. Belatedly, geography has joined insupport of this revival.10 It may be said thatin this connection and in others, American

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professional geography may have faltered inits adherence to the earth science traditionbut not given it up.

In describing geography, there would ap-pear to be some advantages attached to isolat-ing this final tradition. Separation improves thegeographers chances of successfully explain-ing to educators why geography has extremedifficulty in accommodating itself to socialstudies programs. Again, separate attention al-

lows one to make understanding contact withmembers of the American public for whomsurrounding nature is known as the geographicenvironment. And finally, specific reference tothe geographers earth science tradition bringsinto the open the basis of what is, almost with-out a doubt, morally the most significant con-cept in the entire geographic heritage, that ofthe earth as a unity, the single common habitatof man.

An OverviewThe four traditions though distinct in logicare joined in action. One can say of geogra-phy that it pursues concurrently all four of

them. Taking the traditions in varying com-binations, the geographer can explain theconventional divisions of the field. Humanor cultural geography turns out to consist ofthe first three traditions applied to human so-cieties; physical geography, it becomes evi-

dent, is the fourth tradition prosecuted underconstraints from the first and second tradi-tions. Going further, one can uncover themeanings of systematic geography, re-gional geography, urban geography, in-dustrial geography, etc.

It is to be hoped that through a widenedwillingness to conceive of and discuss thefield in terms of these traditions, geographywill be better able to secure the inner unityand outer intelligibility to which referencewas made at the opening of this paper, andthat thereby the effectiveness of geographyscontribution to American education and tothe general American welfare will be appre-ciably increased.

Notes

1. William Morris Davis, An Inductive Study ofthe Content of Geography, Bulletin of the

American Geographical Society, Vol. 38, No.1 (1906), 71.

2. Richard Hartshorne, The Nature of Geography,Association of American Geographers (1939),and idem., Perspective on the Nature of Ge-ography, Association of American Geogra-phers (1959).

3. The essentials of several of these definitionsappear in Barry N. Floyd, Putting Geography

in Its Place, The Journal of Geography,Vol.62, No. 3 (March, 1963). 117120.

4. William H. Wallace, Freight Traffic Functionsof Anglo-American Railroads, Annals of the

Association of American Geographers,Vol. 53,No. 3 (September, 1963), 312331.

5. Fred K. Schaefer, Exceptionalism in Geogra-phy: A Methodological Examination, Annalsof the Association of American Geographers,Vol. 43, No. 3 (September, 1953), 226249.

6. James P. Latham, Methodology for an Instru-

mental Geographic Analysis, Annals of theAssociation of American Geographers,Vol. 53,No. 2 (June, 1963), 194209.

7. Hartshornes 1959 monograph, Perspective onthe Nature of Geography,was also cited ear-lier. In this later work, he responds to dissentsfrom geographers whose preferred primarycommitment lies outside the area studies tra-dition.

8. O. H. K. Spate, Quantity and Quality in Ge-ography, Annals of the Association of Ameri-can Geographers, Vol. 50, No. 4 (December,1960), 379.

9. Evidence of this dominance may be found inDaviss 1905 declaration: Any statement is ofgeographical quality if it contains . . . some re-lation between an element of inorganic controland one of organic response (Davis, loc. cit.).

10. Geography is represented on both the SteeringCommittee and Advisory Board of the EarthScience Curriculum Project, potentially themost influential organization acting on behalfof earth science in the schools.