1.4: Geography is a Way to Ask Questions – Jedi MindTricks

Geographers also have a unique way of knowing what we know. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and because geographers have a unique way of thinking about questions and arriving at answers, we have a unique epistemology. Most of the time, people don’t think about how they know what they know. We don’t think about our epistemological processes, biases, and tendencies. Therefore, we don’t often know how we know, what we know.“I just know it!” is how you might respond if someone challenged you on your epistemology. For scientists, social scientists and other serious thinkers, “I just know it” is an unacceptable response. It’s important to understand one’s epistemological tendencies. You must know how you know, what you know.

Figure 1-4: Painting - The story of the blind men and the elephant illustrates how knowledge is dependent upon the perspective of the individual and the imperfect ability of anyone to understand the entire truth of any subject or circumstance. Source: Library of Congress via Wikimedia.

Geographers have a favored epistemology–it doesn’t have a name, but it does begin with a simple strategy that leads us to learn and/or understand things differently than non-geographers. When geographers seek to understand the world around them better, we have a strong tendency to frame questions and answers spatially. In other words, when geographers want to know “Why?” or “How?”, we first typically ask the question “Where?”. Privileging spatial questions in a quest to understand the world is like “Using the Force” among Jedi warriors. When geographers “Use the Force,” they ask “Where?” to understand “Why”. By doing so, geographers often come to different conclusions than non-geographers. By asking “Where?” when you want to know “Why” or “How” is the most basic of all “Jedi Mind Tricks”. Historians have a similar trick - they ask “When?” (rather than “Where?”) while seeking understanding. Still, learning to ask questions about how the world works consistently is crucial to developing a “habit of mind”; itself a crucial element in developing a disciplinary epistemology – something all college students should work to develop. Faculty in many majors do not teach students to develop disciplinary habits-of-mind. The main goal of this course is to help you develop this habit-of-mind.

Most people don’t use “The Force” and there are consequences for understanding our world. Consider for instance a conversation overhead by the author of this text some years ago on a large college campus in Illinois. I overheard two people discussing why most African-American students on that campus rode the elevator in a campus building while most white students used stairs instead. It was evident and obvious that this was occurring, but the causal reasons for this difference in behavior eluded those discussing the behaviors. One person in the conversation was quick to assign ethnicity as the primary causal factor motivating students to use or avoid elevators. A geographer using “The Force” would not have made this mistake because the geographer would have thought about the spatial aspects of the phenomenon first, and would have realized that ethnicity was probably not an important factor explaining why black and white students used elevators differently. Instead, a geographer would have asked, “where are the students who use elevators from?” Had the people discussing the question asked “Where?”, it may have occurred to them that many of the black students on that campus grew up in Chicago, where using elevators to reach the upper floors of tall residential apartment buildings was a daily ritual. The behavioral habits developed by students living in high-rise apartments lingered with students after they moved to campus, prompting them to select the elevator to navigate to upper stories on campus out of habit, even when the building was only two or three stories. Students from rural and suburban locations, on the other hand, typically lived in single-story or two-story houses, and were, therefore, more accustomed to reaching an upper floor by climbing stairs out of force of habit. To a geographer, those behavioral differences were not black and white – but spatial. Thinking that way, at least in this course, is called “Using the Force”.

By privileging matters of place and space in their quest for knowledge, geographers may bias their conclusions – arguing that location, space or place is a significant causal variable in the outcome of various phenomena. Favoring one epistemology over others is nearly unavoidable, and it is acceptable if one recognizes the biases an epistemology creates. Historians, sociologists, political scientists, economists, etc. each have their own epistemological biases. If these competing means to comprehend reality can be given a fair audience, a robust, multi-perspectival or interdisciplinary understanding of our world is possible. There is danger in discounting epistemologies unfamiliar to you – and because the US school system does a poor job of developing students’ spatial epistemology, taking a geography course and developing some measure of this unique habit of mind is a critical element in a quality, robust liberal arts education.