Concept of cultural geography as a science

Abstract

Cultural geography was created as a reaction to geographic determinism and a static descriptive approach in researching the characteristics of cultural elements and forms distribution in classical anthropogeography. An American geographer Carl Sauer (1925) is considered to be its founder, although its aspects were present in Anthropogeography and Human geography (Géographie humaine) before. Even today, Cultural geography is defined differently: as a strict science with its methodological apparatus, or as an aspect or way of looking in geography. Sauer has defined this science in the spirit of the possibilistic concept of geography of Paul Vidal de la Blache. In the spirit of this concept, Jovan Cvijić's Serbian anthropogeography school was developed, which also has an expressive cultural-geographical aspect. The aim of this paper is to discuss issues of subject and methodological essence of Cultural geography in the light of different approaches and directions of development.

Kulturna geografija je nastala kao reakcija na geografski determinizam i statični deskriptivni pristup u istraživanjima osobenosti rasprostranjenja kulturnih elemenata i formi u klasičnoj antropogeografiji. Njenim osnivačem smatra se američki geograf Karl Sauer (Sauer, 1925), iako su njeni aspekti bili zastupljeni i ranije u antropogeografiji i geografiji čoveka (Géographie humaine). I danas se kulturna geografija definiše različito - kao stroga nauka sa svojim metodološkim aparatom, ili kao aspekt ili način posmatranja u geografiji. Sauer je definisao ovu nauku u duhu posibilističkog koncepta geografije Pol Vidal de la Blaša. U duhu tog koncepta razvijala se i srpska antropogeografska škola Jovana Cvijića, koja takođe ima izrazit kulturno-geografski aspekt. Cilj ovoga rada je da razmotri pitanja predmetne i metodološke suštine kulturne geografije, u svetlu različitih pristupa i pravaca razvoja.