Cybergeo (Apr 1997)
Quatre pôles dans le champ de la géographie ?
Abstract
Geographical knowledge is here considered as a field organised around scientific geography, educational geography, applied geography and “unofficial” geographies (ie : directed to the general public). In complete opposition with the popular (in France at least) “ didactic transposition model ” (which considers school curriculum as tightly linked to the scientific geography elaborated in the Academic world) it is here defended that each of these two kinds of geographical knowledge evolve more or less independently.In fact, when adopting a broader point of view, to include not only applied but also “unofficial” geographies in the field of geographical knowledge, it appears that each of these four kinds of knowledge are developing themselves in a rather autonomous way, each of them being a pole around which a part of the general geographical knowledge is continuously built on.When educational and applied geographies contribute to the elaboration of new research orientations in the field of scientific geography and to the diffusion of its results, “unofficial” geography reflects and expresses the general public’s main interests in geography.Each of the four poles is set in a specific area where geographical knowledge is created and used, and is open to other fields of knowledge.
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