Humanistic geography is one of the major emerging themes which has recently dominated geographic writing. Anne Buttimer has been one of the leading figures in the rise of humanistic geography, and the research students she collected round her at Clark University in the 1970s constituted something of a ‘school’ of humanistic geographers. This school developed a significantly new style of geographical inquiry, giving special emphasis to people’s experience of place, space and environment and often using philosophical and subjective methodology.

This collection of essays, first published in 1980, brings together this school and offers insight into philosophical and practical issues concerning the human experience of environments. An extensive range of topics are discussed, and the aim throughout is to weave analytical and critical thought into a more comprehensive understanding of lived experience. This book will be of interest to students of human geography.

Humanistic geography is one of the major emerging themes which has recently dominated geographic writing. This collection of essays, first published in 1980, offers insight into philosophical and practical issues concerning the human experience of environments. An extensive range of topics are discussed, and the aim throughout is to weave analytical and critical thought into a more comprehensive understanding of lived experience. This book will be of interest to students of human geography.

List of Figures;  Foreword;  Acknowledgements;  Introduction;  Part One: Identity, Place and Community;  1. Social Space and the Planning of Residential Areas  2. Toward a Geography of Growing Old  3. Identity and Place: Clinical Applications Based on Notions of Rootedness and Uprootedness  4. The Integration of Community and Environment: Anarchist Decentralism in Rural Spain, 1936-39;  Part 2: Horizons of Inquiry;  5. Human Geography as Text Interpretation  6. Social Space and Symbolic Interpretation  7. Body-Subject, Time-Space Routines, and Place-Ballets  8. Home, Reach, and the Sense of Place;  Afterword:  Community, Place, and Environment;  Notes on Contributors;  Index