The Shrew Environment

Bibliographic Data

ID4515958
AuthorsJuval Portugali (0000-0002-9526-6121, Tel Aviv University, corresponding author)
Year1994
Volume7
Issue2
Pages307-326
Publication date1994-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889700001708
OpenAlexW2114380318
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited40

The ArgumentThe paper begins by addressing the notions of technological pessimism, society and environment from the point of view of geography and planning. It identifies two pessimistic waves in the recent history of geography and planning thought: "technological or explanational pessimism" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and "understanding pessimism" in the late 1980s. The first is a distrust of positivist geography and rational planning to explain and control the environment; the second adds to the first a distrust of that part of social theory which in the early 1970s was thought to provide the alternative to positivism - a distrust of structuralist-Marxist-humanistic (SMH) geography and planning to understand (and thus to control intellectually) the individual, society, and the environment. The paper proposes that at the root of both types of pessimism is the essentially causal, mechanistic, and thus aspatial, property of social theory as a whole. It then examines the conjunction of Bohm's orders and Haken's synergetics as a source for optimism - not to control, but to participate and dialogue

Distrust · Economics · Epistemology · Pessimism · Political science · Positive economics · Social science · Sociology · Ecology, Conservation, and Geographical Studies · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Law · Philosophical and Historical Studies · Philosophy

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