GEOGRAPHYVOLUME 91(3)PAGES 199-204Geography © 2006199Thinking GeographicallyPETER JACKSONABSTRACT: Based on a recent presentation atthe GA Annual Conference (Manchester 2006),this article presents an argument for the powerof thinking geographically, emphasising thediscipline’s grammar (its concepts and theories)as well as its vocabulary (a virtually endless listof place-names). The article makes a case forfour key concepts: space and place, scale andconnection, proximity and distance, andrelational thinking. These ideas are then put towork in addressing some of the ethicalcomplexities facing contemporary consumers,including the charitable demands of ‘caring ata distance’. The article concludes that thinkinggeographically offers a uniquely powerful wayof seeing the world and making connectionsbetween scales, from the global to the local. IntroductionWhen you meet people at a party and tell themthat you’re a geographer, they tend to ask youabout distant places, capital cities and longestrivers. In my experience, they rarely ask you aboutglobalisation, sustainability, inequality or the otherbig issues about which geographers actually havea lot to say. The public perception of geography isas a fact-based rather than conceptual discipline.This article is an attempt to challenge this TrivialPursuitview of geography; it argues against theview that our discipline is just a gazetteer of place-names or a list of imports and exports, and makesa case for the power of thinking geographically.Geography, I argue, enables a unique way ofseeing the world, of understanding complexproblems and thinking about inter-connections ata variety of scales (from the global to the local).Demonstrating the power of geographicalthinking might be one way of addressinggeography’s ‘tired and dated content’ (QCA,2005), helping to reverse the seemingly relentlessfall in student numbers, and increasing ourconfidence to take more risks in what and how weteach.A good place to start this argument is withthe distinction that David Lambert (2004) makesbetween geography’s vocabulary (an apparentlyendless list of place-names) and its grammar (theconcepts and theories that help us make sense ofall those places). But what concepts and theorieswould you choose as constituting the heart of oursubject, contributing uniquely to our under-standing of the world? The Action Plan forGeography (DfES/GA/RGS-IBG, 2006) lists fiveconcepts: place, connectedness, scale, processand skills. There are many other possibilities:inter-dependence, environment, sustainability,globalisation, etc. some of which we share withother disciplines1. My own list is slightly different(see Table 1) and is based on several pairs of rel-ated terms2. Let me present a case for the powerof these four concepts and then put them to workin the analysis of a specific geographical issue.Space and placeThe nature of space and place, and the distinctionbetween these terms, has long been debated ingeography. For Tuan (1977), place is humanisedspace, an abstract world made real throughhuman inhabitation, through the investment ofemotion and the attribution of meaning. This view has been challenged recently by Massey(2004) who argues that space is no less concrete,grounded and real than place. (We will return toher arguments later.) Harvey (1989) provides apowerful way of understanding the trans-formation of space within late-modernity through his description of the process of‘time–space compression’ by which the world ismade smaller through successive rounds ofcapitalist investment, leading to technological,social, political and, ultimately, cultural change.Some sociologists have argued that time-spacecompression is eradicating the particularity ofplace, leading to a placeless planet, or whatCastells describes as a ‘space of flows’ (1996, p.12). Others have argued against this gloomyprediction of the erosion of local distinctiveness,Table 1Key concepts in geographyspace and placescale and connectionproximity and distancerelational thinkingCONFERENCEGEOGRAPHYTHINKINGGEOGRAPHICALLYGeography © 2006200including Massey’s (1994) powerful assertion of aprogressive or global sense of place in whichplaces are characterised by porous boundariesand inter-connections rather than by fixedidentities and impenetrable borders. For Masseyand others, the distinctiveness of place is aboutthe routes that connect them with other placesand other times rather than about people’sassertions of a timeless and indissolublerootedness in a particular locality. This is, forCastree (2003), the ultimate paradox of place: thatplaces are both unique and connected to otherplaces. Scale and connectionGeographers frequently talk about a hierarchy ofscales, from the body (‘the geography closest in’)to the world, working through a series ofintermediate scales from urban to regional,national to international. An alternative, and Iwould argue a preferable, way of thinking aboutscale is to focus on the connections betweenscales. This is what Roberts refers to, using acinematic analogy, as the geographer’s capacityfor zooming in and zooming out (cited in Jackson,1996), demonstrating how decisions taken at thelocal level have global consequences and how thedecisions of global corporations have differentialeffects in different localities. An excellent exampleof this kind of analysis is Smith’s (1993) essay onhomelessness in New York where he talks aboutthe way that the plight of individual homelesspeople on the Lower East Side was a consequenceof changes taking place at a variety of other scales,including the decisions of real-estate investors,planners and city governors. The contours ofchange extend to the international scale andencompass both economic and culturalprocesses, as has been argued by Zukin (1982) inher analysis of the creation of a real-estate marketin luxury ‘loft living’ in Lower Manhattan which ledto the displacement of poorer residents inadjacent neighbourhoods such as the Lower EastSide. But Smith’s argument goes on to show thatit is not just capital that is so adept at ‘jumpingscales’ when greater profits are to be had in oneplace rather than another. Smith also shows howlocal activists in the Lower East Side were also ableto resist the seemingly relentless tide ofgentrification and displacement by showing thatwhat was happening in one neighbourhood(Tompkins Square) had the potential to unitepeople in vulnerable places elsewhere in the cityand