THE CULTURAL DIMENSION IN ACTIVE GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

In this paper I will attempt to illustrate briefly the importance of the cultural dimension in geography, and especially, as suggested by the convention programme, in those geographical studies theorised and applied by myself, as well as, I believe, by other colleagues and their younger assistants at the Economics Faculty of the University of Novara, as evidenced by their experience and by their research programmes currently under way. These experiences may be aggregated into two groupings, which in and of themselves express two methodologies, interconnected and inseparable, of approaching geography and its objectives. These would in fact highlight the importance of the following cultural values: 1) the geographic representation of our world, as produced historically, particularly with regard to regional development; 2) geographic planning, that is to say, voluntary or applied geography. In both the representation and the planning of the territory, culture in its multiple manifestations can be considered both as an object (or component of the territory), as in a true cultural geography, and as a factor (or determinant of the territory). It is on the latter aspect, that is to say on the explicative function of cultural variables, that I wish to treat especially in this brief statement; either because cultural studies have had in recent years increasing influence on other geographies, and particularly in economic geography, or because a socalled cultural “approach” seems to have become fashionable, such that this meeting of the UGI Commission has been entitled “the cultural turning-point in geography”.