A study of Regional Geography in Western Countries

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The study by H.Morikawa originally aimed to clarify the research trends of human geography, especially of reconstructed regional geography, in English-speaking countries, following to the study of the research trends of Germany published in the last year. Such a study also corresponded to one of the research aims at the Research Center of Regional Geography of Hiroshima University and was a task of Morikawa as president of the center. Although he could not discuss on this subject with English geographers, he wrote a paper by analyzing a number of literatures as shown in contents. In addition, he fortunately could discuss on this subject with Prof. Hoekveld of Reiksuniversiteit Utrecht who is an expart of reconstructed regional geography and has developed a notable methodology of it. Consequently, he got the following results : 1) the study of reconstructed regional geography that was highly developed in English-speaking countries, is based on the remarkable regional changes in the 1970s in Great Britain, 2) the reconstructed regional geography has developed within new paradigms such as Marxist geography, humanist geography, structuration theory nad realist geography on the critic of positivist geography, and such movements have still no consensus as a new orientation of regional geography. But the concepts are common to depend on social theories, unlike the traditional regional geography, 3) although a locality study is famous in the research of new regional geography, it contains many serious problems. On the other hand, the concept of Prof. Hoekveld seems to be so important that Morikawa introduced his research and commented on it.H.Sakuno as a investigator takes an interest in the change of basic consepts between the reconstructed and traditional regional geography and studied on it in this year. As a result he found the results similar to Morikawa.