Humanistic school of geography

Also called: Welfare school · Topic: Human Geography: Nature, Scope and Approaches · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Human Geography: Nature and Scope"

Meaning

The humanistic school (also called the welfare school) is a 1970s approach in human geography. It puts human beings, their social well-being and their experience at the centre of geography, instead of treating them as numbers or dots on a map. It matters because it brought people back into geography after the quantitative revolution. It gives a way to study gaps in housing, health and education as questions of fairness.

Explanation

Why it arose (cause → process → result)

• Cause: the quantitative revolution (late 1950s to late 1960s)
• Geographers used statistics, mathematical models and computers to find general laws of spatial organisation (how people and activities are arranged over space).

• People were treated as numbers. Feelings, values, poverty and power were left out.

• Process: unhappiness in the 1970s

• Many geographers criticised this as a "dehumanised manner of doing geography".

• The models could not explain real social problems.

• Result: three new schools in the 1970s

• The welfare or humanistic school, the radical school and the behavioural school.
• Together they made human geography fit social and political reality.

What it studies: the NCERT focus

• Social well-being is the main concern.
• It looks at housing, health and education. It asks who gets these services and who does not.
• Geographers introduced "Geography of Social Well-being" as a postgraduate paper.

What it studies: the wider meaning (Beyond NCERT)

• It also studies human awareness, values and sense of place. Sense of place means the feelings and meanings people attach to a place.
• Yi-Fu Tuan wrote Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perceptions, Attitudes and Values (1974) [2].
• Topophilia means "love of place". It is an emotional attachment to one's surroundings. It can give short moments of happiness or a lasting feeling of belonging [2].

• Tuan is counted among the phenomenological geographers. They study how places are experienced from the inside. Studies of place attachment (people's emotional bond with a place) began with them [2].

• Anne Buttimer also wrote on humanistic geography.

• David M. Smith developed welfare geography. It asks "who gets what, where, and how?"
• It borrows ideas from philosophy (phenomenology) and welfare economics.

Its limits

• It can be subjective, because feelings and experience differ from person to person.
• Its findings are hard to generalise into laws that apply everywhere.

Where it occurs

• India: gaps between states. Differences in housing, health and schools between states are studied as questions of well-being and fairness, not just as distances or densities.
• India: village and city. Gaps in services between rural villages and cities are studied in the same way.
• University teaching: "Geography of Social Well-being" is taught as a postgraduate paper.
• World: the main thinkers are Yi-Fu Tuan (Topophilia, 1974) [2], Anne Buttimer and David M. Smith (welfare geography).

Don't confuse with

• Radical school: it uses Marxian theory (society is shaped by who owns capital and by class conflict) to find the root causes of poverty in capitalism. The humanistic school instead asks whether people's well-being and values are being met.
• Behavioural school: it studies how people perceive space and make decisions, drawing on psychology. Its key work is Kevin Lynch's mental maps (1960). Topophilia belongs to the humanistic school, not the behavioural school.
• Quantitative revolution / spatial organisation: this came before the humanistic school and was its target. It looked for general laws using statistics, and it was criticised as "dehumanised".
• Post-modernism: it came in the 1990s, not the 1970s. It doubts grand theories and stresses each local context (Edward Soja, 1989).

Prelims Hooks

• The three schools of the 1970s are the welfare/humanistic, radical and behavioural schools. Post-modernism belongs to the 1990s.
• "Geography of Social Well-being" became a postgraduate paper → welfare/humanistic school.
• Topophilia ("love of place") → Yi-Fu Tuan, 1974 → humanistic school, not behavioural [2].
• NCERT keywords: housing, health, education → humanistic. Poverty and capitalism → radical. Ethnicity, race and religion → behavioural.
• Trap: the 1970s schools arose because the quantitative revolution was "dehumanised". They did not arise as a criticism of environmental determinism.
• Chronological order: areal differentiation (1930s) → spatial organisation (late 1950s–60s) → humanistic, radical, behavioural (1970s) → post-modernism (1990s).

Mains Points

• It shows that geography's methods change with social needs.
• Abstract laws left out people.
• So the 1970s schools brought back welfare, power and perception.

• This is a ready framework for GS-I questions on the "nature and scope of human geography".

• It gives a tool for Indian regional problems.

• It maps gaps in housing, health and education between states, and between villages and cities.

• It treats these gaps as questions of fairness. This links to David M. Smith's question "who gets what, where, and how?"

• Critique and balance. The humanistic approach can be subjective and hard to generalise. A balanced answer combines quantitative tools like GIS with people-centred understanding of well-being and sense of place.

Related concepts

• Radical school of geography
• Behavioural school of geography
• Post-modernism in geography

Read more

• The 1970s schools and post-modernism