Feminist geography

Feminist geography is a sub-discipline of human geography that applies the theories, methods, and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society, and geographical space. Feminist geography emerged in the 1970s, when members of the women's movement called on academia to include women as both producers and subjects of academic work. Feminist geographers aim to incorporate positions of race, class, ability, and sexuality into the study of geography. The discipline has been subject to several controversies. The geography of women examines the effects geography has on gender inequality and is theoretically influenced by welfare geography and liberal feminism. Feminist geographers emphasize the various gendered constraints put in place by distance and spatial separation (for instance, spatial considerations can play a role in confining women to certain locations or social spheres). In their book Companion to Feminist Geography, Seager and Johnson argue that gender is only a narrow-minded approach to understanding the oppression of women throughout the decades of colonial history. As such, understanding the geography of women requires a critical approach to questions of the dimensions of age, class, ethnicity, orientation and other socio-economic factors. An early objection to the concept of geography of women, however, claimed that gender roles were mainly explained through gender inequality. However, Foord and Gregson argue that the idea of gender roles emerges from a static social theory that narrows the focus to women and portrays women as victims, which gives a narrow reading of distance. Instead, they claim that the concept of the geography of women is able to display how spatial constraint and separation enter into the construction of women's positions. In 2004, theorist Edward Said critiqued the idea of geographical spaces in such a context where actions on gendered practices of representation are fabricated through dominant ideological beliefs.

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Geography

Geography (from Greek: γεωγραφία, geographia. Combination of Greek words 'Geo' (The Earth) and 'Graphien' (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be.

Political geography

Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures. Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of the state at the centre, the study of international relations (or geopolitics) above it, and the study of localities below it. The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory.

Quantitative revolution

The quantitative revolution (QR) was a paradigm shift that sought to develop a more rigorous and systematic methodology for the discipline of geography. It came as a response to the inadequacy of regional geography to explain general spatial dynamics. The main claim for the quantitative revolution is that it led to a shift from a descriptive (idiographic) geography to an empirical law-making (nomothetic) geography. The quantitative revolution occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change in the method behind geographical research, from regional geography into a spatial science.

Covers geographic information systems, digital representation, spatial analysis, societal interactions, and the role of models in understanding territories.