Abstract
One critique of neo-determinism, which emphasizes the role of social institutions over what it mislabels “geography,” errs on the opposite side by disregarding the important role often—though not independently—played by the environment. Both the “institutions” and the “geography” approaches seek an exogenous variable that can be treated as a first cause and fail to find it, because environment and society, as geographers would stress, are interdependent and co-evolving.
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Notes
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Indeed, the philosopher Barry Smith and the geographer (Smith and Mark 2003) have asked “Do Mountains Exist?,” and answered in the negative. Mountains, they concluded, are not natural kinds that exist independently of human cognition (and thus of human goals, capacities, and purposes). The argument clearly applies by extension to such prominent variables in environmental determinism as other terrain features and varieties of weather and climate.
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Meyer, W.B., Guss, D.M. (2017). Conclusion: “‘Geography’ versus Institutions”?. In: Neo-Environmental Determinism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54232-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54232-4_6
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