2009/08/14 by Tim Schwanen, Mei‐Po Kwan · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Historical Geography and Geographical Thought #Urban Planning and Governance #Social Science and Policy Research #Futures contract #Underpinning #Critical geography #Sociology #Epistemology #Focus (optics) #Social science #Human geography #Historical geography #Economics #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1080/00330120903103072
openalex publication_date 2009/08/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Criticisms of quantitative geography have a long history in our discipline. Since the emergence of early Marxist geography, the advent of new theoretical traditions has been accompanied by sustained and sometimes vigorous critiques of spatial analysis. In this introductory article to the second focus section on critical quantitative geographies, we discuss the accuracy of some of the criticisms about the use(s) to which spatial analysis is put and about the philosophical presumptions underpinning quantitative geographies. We argue that spatial analysis and critical geographies should not be considered mutually exclusive of one another—although this does not mean that numbers and critical geographies are entirely comfortable with one another. We suggest that critical geographies cannot dispense with numbers and visualizations based on numerical information. We hope that the articles collected here will inspire geographers to engage with numbers and statistics to challenge inequality and imagine alternative futures.