Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space

In this paper the history of correlation and regression analyses, both in the discipline of statistics generally and in human geography particularly, is examined. It is argued that correlation and regression analysis emerged from a particular social and cultural context, and that this context entered into the very nature of those techniques. The paper is divided into three sections. First, to counter the idea that mathematics and statistics are somehow outside the social, the arguments put forward by David Bloor and Bruno Latour suggesting that mathematical propositions arc socially constructed are briefly reviewed. Second, using the ideas of both Bloor and Latour I turn to the development of statistics as an intellectual discipline during the 19th century, and specifically to the invention of correlation and regression at the end of that period. It is argued that the development of statistics as a discipline and its associated techniques are both stamped by, but also leave their stamp on, the wider society in which they are set. Last, the importation of correlation and regression analyses into human geography which occurred in the 1950s is examined. Following my general social constructionist argument, it is suggested that because of the difference in context the correlation and regression analyses devised in the late 19th century were often inappropriate for mid-20th century spatial science.

In response to a paper by T J Barnes, published in 1998, the author accepts the same social-constructivist perspective, but argues that the structure of regression was not excessively constrained by its biometric origins. The history of regression and its use in the social sciences is examined, and the author argues that any assessment of regression in human geography must be set against this wider context.

Looking back at spatial science in the 1960s, I consider ‘the search for order’ as a case of abjection, anxiety about disorder which threatens the pure geometries of economic landscapes. This idea is developed with reference to central place studies from the 1960s, focusing particularly on the work of Woldenberg and Berry, Dacey, and Curry. Acknowledging that spatial order is a feature of economic and social life, I make a case for dialectical thinking and suggest that exploratory data analysis provides one means of examining the interplay of order and disorder.

The author addresses the potential of a multiple-methods approach in human geography, an approach to social research which has received little explicit attention in the geographical literature to date. The relationship between epistemology and methodology is outlined, and the similarities and differences between quantitative and qualitative methods are described. Some problems surrounding subjectivity and objectivity in social research are also discussed. In addition, the relationship between methods and to whom the research is communicated is considered. It is hoped that the paper will stimulate future discussion both of the theoretical implications and of the practical use of a mixed-methods approach in human geography.

In recent years quantitative geography and cartography have been devalued within human geography. This process has often been led by writers who have questioned the extent to which researchers who analyse numbers about people ignore other ways of studying society. Often examples of the ‘unsympathetic’ mapping of people's lives or the conspiratorial creation of particular statistical social landscapes are given as reasons to avoid quantitative research. In this paper I concentrate on some visual approaches to understanding society, in particular, the view of ‘human cartography’. I argue, through a series of examples, that there is much more to mapping society than simply reinforcing an image of the status quo. There are many people involved in alternative mapping, few of whom would see themselves as geographers. Perhaps human geography should consider why mapping is now so popular, how mapping is changing, and the part geography could play in redrawing the world, before dismissing mapping as a means to understanding?

Ground Truth, a set of papers, edited by John Pickles, about the social implications of GIS, has contributed to the revival of an old debate between qualitative and quantitative approaches in human geography, This paper is intended to be a contribution to the debate: reactions and reflections triggered by the book rather than a review or evaluation of it. After acceptance of some of the criticisms of GIS and quantitative geography, attempts are made to defend them against other criticisms, and the paper concludes with some hopes for how the debate will continue.

Geographical information systems (GIS) are potentially powerful devices for integrating, manipulating, and communicating information, and are acknowledged to be vulnerable to the abuse of that power. A significant debate during the 1990s has challenged GIS users to respond to the suggestion that their technology is restrictive, elitist, and antisocial. In practice, the response from the GIS profession has been muted, and the paper therefore comments on the way in which professional GIS implementation might be interpreted from different perspectives. Comparisons are drawn between analytical GIS in post-Apartheid South Africa and operational GIS in the UK public utilities. GIS is shown to be an operational or decision support engine fuelled by information flows, and in creating the organisational pathways to support these flows it unlocks gateways the defence of which has traditionally underpinned the authority of management and government. A dilemma thus emerges. On the one hand, GIS has unprecedented power to disseminate access to usable information. On the other hand, it still supports a division which generates a technocratic elite. It is suggested that information democracy lies not in information flow as a technical process, but in information management. As a consequence, it is concluded that a code of data ethics may be at least partially effective in allowing a professional response to the critics of GIS.

The author offers a critical appreciation of the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative geography, geographical information systems, and soft approaches to human geographic research. He argues the case for the revival of a scientific approach to human geography, in particular for exploiting a geoeomputational paradigm with the potential to build bridges between the different methodologies.

Although a rhetoric of sustainability is now widely used by government, nongovernmental organisations, and business in addressing the public, there is no evidence of a broad shift of behaviour in response to it. Yet most sustainability programmes at international, national, and local levels require broad public participation if they are to reach their goals. We argue that organisational communication with the public is central to defining the form of participation that is expected, and that rhetorical analysis can show relationships that are implicit in these attempts to persuade. We analyse leaflets from a range of organisations to identify some of the elements that are common between them, both in their explicit content and their implied models of participation. Then we analyse the responses in focus groups to these common appeals. Our findings show that the generalised appeals and the rhetoric of crisis tend to distance policy organisations from the immediacy and dailiness of the public's own experiences of and talk about the environment. Because of this distance, the rhetoric does little to encourage participation and practical action.

In this paper we report findings of interviews with housing benefit claimants whose eligible rent for housing benefit was less than the contractual rent ‘agreed’ with their landlord. Linking into debates about the usefulness of the concept of ‘strategy’ in social analysis, we consider whether the claimants interviewed pursued strategies in coping with the shortfalls in their eligible rent for housing benefit. Though claimants often had difficulty in pursuing ‘strategies' successfully, the research shows that most of those interviewed did try to act strategically. They were not simply the passive victims of circumstances beyond their control.