Remaking Human Geography

This collection of essays is concerned with developing a dialogue between humanism and historical materialism in human geography. It demonstrates a greater sensitivity towards the meaning of "making history" and the interpenetration of human agency and social structure . In many ways the essays in this collection point to a movement beyond both relativism and absolutism and the authors suggest that humanism can no longer be portrayed as a parochialism in which the day-to-day lives of particular people in specific places is the single focus of study. Traditions have moved beyond those simple reductions towards a recognition of the complexity of human geographies, towards the realization that, as Mann puts it, "societies are much messier than our theories of them".