LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA

Paul Vidal de la Blache strongly influenced the future of the discipline by creating a school of thought surrounding a geography with a specifically anthropocentric vision that he defined Géographie Humaine. According to Vidal, man, intended as a society endowed with intentionality, is the agent tha...

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Main Author: Fabio Lando
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Firenze University Press 2019-11-01
Series:Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana
Online Access:https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/bsgi/article/view/542
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author Fabio Lando
author_facet Fabio Lando
author_sort Fabio Lando
collection DOAJ
description Paul Vidal de la Blache strongly influenced the future of the discipline by creating a school of thought surrounding a geography with a specifically anthropocentric vision that he defined Géographie Humaine. According to Vidal, man, intended as a society endowed with intentionality, is the agent that modifies the surface of the earth, yet his action is constrained by the environment where he operates. He hypothesizes a bidirectional relationship, consisting of impulses generated by the environment and others generated by society: such impulses interact and change over time. More specifically, the environment offers some possibilities that man and society utilize according to need and capability, following free and consciously adopted decisions. The article aims at highlighting Vidal’s epistemological foundations, substantially linked to spiritualism, contingentism, and neolamarckism, as well as how these foundations rest on five fundamental concepts: civilization and milieu are an inseparable pair whose combined action originates genres de vie, whereas landscape and region are the other inseparable pair originated by the action of a specific genre de vie. It is Febvre that will define it as Possibilistic Geography, a paradigm that will identify, up until the 1960s, the whole French geography. This paradigm will be shaken by the emergence of theoretical-quantitative geography, which, owing to its nomothetic approach, will contrast its ideographic, purely descriptive approach, which is fundamentally pre-theoretic, and fixed on the description of landscape and region.
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spelling doaj-art-1dd04f9e7d7b40a6b9bd143aeedcc7d72025-08-20T03:34:05ZengFirenze University PressBollettino della Società Geografica Italiana1121-78202019-11-01103-410.13128/bsgi.v10i3-4.542LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTAFabio LandoPaul Vidal de la Blache strongly influenced the future of the discipline by creating a school of thought surrounding a geography with a specifically anthropocentric vision that he defined Géographie Humaine. According to Vidal, man, intended as a society endowed with intentionality, is the agent that modifies the surface of the earth, yet his action is constrained by the environment where he operates. He hypothesizes a bidirectional relationship, consisting of impulses generated by the environment and others generated by society: such impulses interact and change over time. More specifically, the environment offers some possibilities that man and society utilize according to need and capability, following free and consciously adopted decisions. The article aims at highlighting Vidal’s epistemological foundations, substantially linked to spiritualism, contingentism, and neolamarckism, as well as how these foundations rest on five fundamental concepts: civilization and milieu are an inseparable pair whose combined action originates genres de vie, whereas landscape and region are the other inseparable pair originated by the action of a specific genre de vie. It is Febvre that will define it as Possibilistic Geography, a paradigm that will identify, up until the 1960s, the whole French geography. This paradigm will be shaken by the emergence of theoretical-quantitative geography, which, owing to its nomothetic approach, will contrast its ideographic, purely descriptive approach, which is fundamentally pre-theoretic, and fixed on the description of landscape and region.https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/bsgi/article/view/542
spellingShingle Fabio Lando
LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA
Bollettino della Società Geografica Italiana
title LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA
title_full LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA
title_fullStr LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA
title_full_unstemmed LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA
title_short LA GEOGRAFIA POSSIBILISTA
title_sort la geografia possibilista
url https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/bsgi/article/view/542
work_keys_str_mv AT fabiolando lageografiapossibilista