rediscovering geography new relevance for sciencr and society.docx

1、rediscovering geography new relevance for sciencr and societySummaryIn the past decade, concerns about geographic illiteracy have been the catalyst for a new focus on geography in the United States. Recent calls to do something about geographic illiteracy in this country can be traced to concerns ab

2、out U.S. competitiveness in the global economy, combined with surveys that documented an astonishing degree of ignorance in the United States about the rest of the world. There is a growing public recognition that our national well-being is related to global markets and international political devel

3、opments, to the continued prominence of environmental issues in social discourse, and to the emergence of computer and telecommunications technologies that emphasize graphic images such as maps and other spatial diagramsall of which are associated in the publics mind with geography.One result of thi

4、s increased attention is a rediscovery of the importance of geography education in the United States. Geography is identified as a core subject for American schools, on a par with science and mathematics, in a series of recent policy statements and legislative proposals for national education reform

5、. These include the report of the Charlottesville, Virginia, Summit convened by the 50 state governors and President Bush in October 1989; education reform plans of both the Bush and the Clinton administrations; and Goals 2000: The Educate America Act, passed by Congress in March 1994.Geography has

6、also been rediscovered by students. In the period 1986/1987 to 1993/1994, the number of undergraduate majors in geography grew by an estimated 47 percent nationwide and by 60 percent in Ph.D.-granting departments. Between 1985 and 1991, graduate program enrollments in geography grew by33.4 percent,

7、compared with a 15.3 percent increase in the social sciences and a 5.4 percent decrease in the environmental sciences.This process of rediscovery has been mirrored in the research community as well. Research at the frontiers of fields as diverse as planning, economics, finance, social theory, epidem

8、iology, anthropology, ecology, environmental history, conservation biology, and international relations has highlighted the importance of geographic perspectives. In particular, the importance of spatial perspectivesthrough such notions as place and scaleis being recognized in many fields, extending

9、 the influence of geography well beyond its relatively small group of professional practitioners.The increased use of perspectives, knowledge, and techniques associated with a relatively small academic discipline raises several questions for the scientific community. Most directly, what is geography

10、, and how does it connect with broad concerns of society and science? If geography is to play a more prominent role in education and decision making, do its scientific foundations need to be strengthened in order to support its expanded responsibilities?With these questions in mind, the National Res

11、earch Council established the Rediscovering Geography Committee to perform a comprehensive assessment of geography in the United States. The objectives of this assessment are:1. to identify critical issues and constraints for the discipline of geography, 2. to clarify priorities for teaching and res

12、earch, 3. to link developments in geography as a science with national needs for geography education, 4. to increase the appreciation of geography within the scientific community, and 5. to communicate with the international scientific community about future directions of the discipline in the Unite

13、d States. In addressing these issues, this report focuses on broad national and global themes in science and society, geographys potential as a perspective and a body of knowledge to help address these themes, and constraints on geographys capability as an academic discipline to respond. As examples

14、, it draws mainly on experience from within geography as a discipline, although valuable geographic work is done outside the discipline as well, because the committee was comprised very largely of professional geographers. Where possible, however, the examples are selected to illustrate the intercon

15、nectedness between disciplines that characterizes so much geographic investigation and facilitates the flow of ideas, concepts, and techniques across disciplinary boundaries.The Perspectives, Subject Matter, and Techniques of GeographyTo most Americans, geography is about place names. Concerns about

16、 geographic ignorance usually focus on peoples inability to locate cities, countries, and rivers on a world map, and geographic instruction is often equated with conveying information about remote parts of the world. From this perspective it may be a surprise to some that the discipline of geography

17、 has a great deal to say about many of the critical issues facing society in the late twentieth century.Geographers are engaged in valuable research and teaching on matters ranging from environmental change to social conflict (see Chapter 2). The value of these activities derives from the discipline

18、s focus on the evolving character and organization of the Earths surface; on the ways in which interactions of physical and human phenomena in space combine to create regions with distinctive natural and (or) social characteristics, or places; and on the influences those places have on a wide range

19、of natural and human events and processes. Such concerns are not simply exercises in expanding the encyclopedic knowledge of faraway places; they go to the heart of some of the most urgent questions before decision makers today.A central tenet of geography is that location matters for understanding

20、a wide variety of processes and phenomena. Indeed, geographys focus on location provides a cross-cutting way of looking at processes and phenomena that other disciplines tend to treat in isolation. Geographers focus on real world relationships and dependencies among the phenomena and processes that

21、give character to a place. Geographers also seek to understand relationships among places: for example, the flows of peoples, goods, and ideas that reinforce differentiation or enhance similarities. In other words, geographers study both the vertical integration of characteristics that define place

22、and the horizontal connections between places. Geographers also focus on the importance of scale (in both space and time) in these relationships. The study of these relationships has enabled geographers to pay attention to complexities of places and processes that are frequently treated in the abstr

23、act, if at all, by other disciplines.Geographys perspectives are supported by a body of distinctive techniques for observation, such as field exploration, remote sensing, and spatial sampling, and for the analysis and display of geographic data, such as cartography, visualization, spatial statistics

24、, and geographic information systems (GISs; see Chapter 4). These techniques are shared with other disciplines, but geography has contributed fundamentally to their development and improved application.The traditional tool in geography for the display of spatially referenced information is the map.

25、To many, the term map connotes a fixed, two-dimensional paper product containing point, line, and areal data. During the past generation, however, advances in data collection, storage, analysis, and display have made this traditional view obsolete. The modern map is a dynamic and multidimensional pr

26、oduct that exists in digital form, opening up new areas of research and application for geographic investigation. This research has led to the development of GISs, which, along with techniques for geographic visualization and methods of spatial analysis, facilitate an increasingly complex and contex

27、tual understanding of the world. Current research in GISs is expanding the technique to incorporate more advanced geographic concepts and analysis methods.Geographys Contributions to Scientific Understanding and Decision MakingGeography offers significant insights into some of the major questions fa

28、cing both the pure and applied sciences. In addition, as society itself is recognizing, many of the major questions facing society at the local, national, and international scales have very important geographic dimensions.Geographys traditional interest in integrating phenomena and processes in part

29、icular places, for example, has a new relevance in science today, in connection with the search for what some have called a science of complexity. In its explorations as a science of flows, geography has been a leader in understanding spatial interactions, a subject of broad interest to both science

30、 and society. Moreover, geographys long-standing concern with interdependencies among scales is relevant to discussions across the body of science of relationships between microscale (small or local) and macroscale (large or global) phenomena and processes (see Chapter 5).Geographic perspectives and

31、 techniques have found important applications in decision making in both the private and the public sectors, especially as global economic and environmental issues and modern information technologies have grown in importance. Geographers have made significant contributions to decision making at loca

32、l, regional, and global scales for a wide variety of issuesfor example, management of hazards, understanding global environmental and economic changes and their interactions with local changes, and developing effective business strategies (see Chapter 6).Strengthening Geographys FoundationsThe abili

33、ty of geographers to respond to the growing demand for its skills and perspectives is limited by several realities (see Chapter 7). Despite three decades of growth in the number of professional geographers, the geography community remains small relative to most other natural and social science disciplines. Few c