The place of phenomenology in Humanistic Geography as a Human-Centric approach

Abstract

It is a significant question whether today’s unknown places are the same as the unknown places of previous years. Geography, one of the key aims is to discover unknown places, has diverse approaches and paradigms to give clear answers about grasping the meaning of places. Humanist geography, which emerged as a reaction to the rigid approach of the spatial science in the 1970s and 1980s, provides new insights into the way we employ the concepts of geography. Although humanistic geography is a critique about positivism and has the diverse approach of the various philosophies such as, idealism phenomenology, and existentialism, the phenomenology was most central to the study of humanistic geographer. This paper is a modest contribution to the ongoing discussions about the relationship between phenomenology and poststructuralist geographies. Undoubtedly, as there is not a single understanding of phenomenology, geographers have diverse interpretations about both the phenomenology and the relationship between phenomenology and geography. In conclusion, it was the main purpose of the paper to draw attention to the idea that thinking of phenomenology gives opportunities to see the diverse way of doing geography.