| Abstract: | The discipline of geography needs a more clearly defined academic purpose if it is to retain and enhance its position as an essential university subject. The discipline lacks the intellectual coherence it once achieved on the basis of environmental determinism. Geographers could re-establish a coherent intellectual foundation for geography by adopting a historical-intellectual mode of enquiry focusing on human thought and ideas and re-emphasizing the central importance of the human-environment relationship as the foundation of the discipline. An understanding of human activity in the environment in relation to ideas could provide a clearer focus for the discipline of geography and give it a stronger intellectual identity. |
