Geography, world and space

The themes with which geographers have traditionally claimed to be concerned are world, environment and nature, particularly insofar as they relate to man and earth. We have seen how this relationship has recently been interpreted formally as a spatial relationship, where space is the organizing principle for geographic entities (Whittlesey, 1957). Yet this view has been challenged, notably by the schools of geography concerned less with spatial relations per se and more with the sense of place (genius loci), landscape, region, and man–environment and man–nature relationships; with the creation of particular worlds and their interpretation of man's relationship with the land. Here space and spatial relations are subsets of these relationships, not the organizing principle itself. Consequently the geographic tradition displays and retains a certain inherent tension and ambiguity with regard to its basic subject-matter and approaches to it.