Editorial: Geographie als Geisteswissenschaft – Geographie in den Geisteswissenschaften

Abstract

This editorial provides the intellectual background for a themed issue that argues for a (re)consideration of human geography as a "Geisteswissenschaft". Engaging with the question of how a geography anchored in the arts and humantities might look like today, it tries to unsettle the kind of "theory-driven", post-structuralist research that has come to dominate human geography following the "cultural turn". In proposing a more thorough engagement with the potential of intrepretative, hermeneutic and phenomenological approaches, we conceptualise a "geisteswissenschaftliche" human geography as a much-needed irritation of the social scientific mainstream.