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| YI-FU TUAN'S HUMANISTIC GEOGRAPHY AS A MIRROR OF CHINESE HUMAN GEOGRAPHY |
| YE Chao |
| College of Geographic Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China |
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Abstract Yi-Fu Tuan's humanistic geography takes a significant position in Anglo-American human geography, and attracts many ordinary readers. On the contrary, many Chinese human geographers often lack deep awareness on Tuan and humanistic geography, the relative and special researches on them are not enough.On Yi-Fu Tuan's thought and humanistic geography, there are three questions put forward by some Chinese human geographers:is it a geography? can it spread and popularize? what does it do for Chinese human geography? This article answers the three questions, explains and explores the Tuan's ideas, methodology and wisdom. As a mirror reflecting the development of China's human geography, Tuan is not only a pioneer which initiate a school, but also a great humanism thinker. He is admirable because of the insistence on humanistic geography more than 40 years. His methodology is based on the experience which means senses (such as smell, taste and touch), emotion and thought, and he stresses a cross-disciplinary humanism method integrating history, culture and other humanities. Tuan often use some interesting cases and the elegant languages to discover and pass a profound concept or theory, which makes his thought known and learned widely. Tuan's wisdom have mainly three points:Sensitivity and insight, full of imagination, and self-reflection,and the last is very important for humanistic geographer. Tuan's thought and humanistic geography should be studied and promoted by Chinese human geographers in order to make up the lack of humanism. For Chinese academic, it is high time that try their best to study and popularize Tuan's thought and humanistic geography to China.
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Received: 10 May 2014
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2014, Vol. 29 
