FRONTIERS' SPATIAL MEANING AND THEIR RESEARCH FRAMEWORK IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
JIN Xiao-zhe1, LIN Tao1, WANG Mao-jun2
1. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;
2. College of Resources Enviorment & Tourism, Capital Normal University, Beijing 100037, China
Abstract：Frontier is a key to understand the national spatial structure, which is as important as the capital and core region. Unlike the time narrative paradigm in history, American and European geographers have paid a lot of attention to the frontier research based on spatial dimensionality. The frontier research has inspired the construction of geography theoretical frameworks. Chinese geography research on frontier began in ancient times, but the research was mainly in physical and regional geography field for the county to explore and develop the frontier region. Human geography is becoming the periphery in the Chinese frontier research field in which history perspective is mainstream today. So renaissance and strengthening of frontier study on human geography are very indispensable.
Fontier is a historical and relative concept, which in different county has different meanings. The conventional frontier concept in China only refers to the territory frontier which is close to national boundaries. So the conventional territory fontier can not embody multi-meaning of frontier and hinder the development of China's frontier research in geography. Through reviewing frontier concept, the authors consider that it is very necessary to extend the meaning of the Chinese frontier concept. According to different spatial constituents and functions of frontier, the authors classify frontier concept into three types: politic frontier including territory frontier and benefit frontier, cultural frontier and settlement frontier, which are defined from political, cultural and regional development perspective respectively. As the spatial representation of sovereign dominion of a country, the territory frontier is opposite to upcountry and close to national borders. As the spatial representation of sovereignty and benefit of a country, the benefit frontier is a abroad strategic controll area for gainnig maximal nation benefit; As the representation of the integration of culture landscape difference and culture identification, cultural frontier mainly refers to minority districts where there are different cultural landscapes from core culture area. As the representation of capital territorial expansion, settlement frontier is between settled area and unsettled area.
Finally, based on different spatial meanings and characters of frontiers, the authors put forward a research framework which is embeded into human geography, and make linkages between politic frontier and politic geography, culture frontier and culture geogrpahy and settlement frontier and region development research. The authors also propose three dimensions, perspective and main content of frontier research in human geography respectively.
金晓哲, 林涛, 王茂军. 边疆的空间涵义及其人文地理研究框架[J]. 人文地理, 2008, 23(2): 124-128.
JIN Xiao-zhe, LIN Tao, WANG Mao-jun. FRONTIERS' SPATIAL MEANING AND THEIR RESEARCH FRAMEWORK IN HUMAN GEOGRAPHY. HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, 2008, 23(2): 124-128.
