地理学はしばしば「空間の学」と称される．これは斯学が空間なる概念を根本対象あるいは方法，すなわち理論上の基礎として遇していることを意味するが，その重用とは裏腹に，現今の地理学的空間は確乎たる意義を失し，ただその名のみが無数の概念を覆う事態に陥っている．本研究は，この空間概念の混乱という理論上の危機を打開すべく，事物の本質的な結果のみを重んじるプラグマティズムに範を取り，演繹法を用いた分析によって地理学的空間概念の一般的性格を見出した．その際には，空間に関する古典論から基本的な4類型を示し，中でも地理学理論に深く関係する3類型を分析した．結果，地理学においては空間を物質そのものとみなす傾向が甚だ強く，加えてそれらの大半が可視的な性質を伴っていることが理解された．さらに，この一般的性格が，空間論の興隆と同時期に衰微したラントシャフト概念と共通する特徴をもつ，一種の後継概念と目される点についても指摘した．

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David Harvey (The Johns Hopkins University) visited Japan from 13 to 30 October 1994, by invitation of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. On this occasion the Working Group “Theories and Tasks of Social Geography” (head: Yoshiaki Takatsu, Niigata University), one of the research commissions of the Association of Japanese Geographers, organized this symposium. The attendance of approximately 300 members suggested growing interest among Japanese geographers in research on the relationship between space and society.
Harvey's keynote speech was preceded by the presentations of four Japanese scholars: Masami Fujii (Gauss) pointed out that Harvey had needed positivism only because he needed explanation in geography; Noriyuki Hirai (Hitotsubashi University) noted Harvey's intention to discover the social relations behind economics in his treatment of Marxian economics and crisis theory; Jun Kainuma (Nagoya University) explained how Harvey came to be an authentic heir to Henri Lefebvre's conception of space in his critique of postmodernism; and Keiichi Takeuchi (Komazawa University) examined Harvey's position in the development of “geographical thought” and discovered continuity in Harvey's work from the early 1970's until now.
The full text of Harvey's keynote speech and a summary of the discussions that followed are available in Series B of the Geographical Review of Japan, Vol. 67, No. 2, 1994.

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Empirical researches of New Shopping Streets within the inner city consider old buildings to be incubators for starting up new shops. Based on this insight, this article explores the relationships between built environments and entrepreneurs. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, land-owners, and estate agents in Kyojima, an ex-industrial district of east Tokyo, I demonstrate how building tastes have worked as alternative channels in human networks.

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Human geography’s contributions in policy arenas have long been discussed within the discipline. Although policy (re) turn debates emerged after the late 1990s, the author suggests it is important to examine not only the current situation of policy-oriented geographical studies, but also their long-term development and evolution. In this paper, the author traces and analyzes policy-oriented studies in British medical and health geography since the 1980s, when quantitative and policy science approaches came to be severely criticized and various alternative approaches developed in British geography.

Since the 1980s, the dominant research in these areas were, first, studies seeking fundamental explanations and primarily depending on political economic/Marxist approaches, and second, studies strongly influenced by humanistic geographies and various social theories, including the so-called cultural turn movement, with focuses on differences and particularities. These developments shifted medical and health geographers’ attention toward factors affecting individual health, from medical affairs to non-medical (environmental, psychological, social, etc.) ones. Qualitative methods (such as in-depth interviews and discourse analyses) also came to be eagerly introduced into these areas.

In their policy-oriented research, researchers using a political economic/Marxist approach tried to “explain” the fundamental mechanism behind why health disparities emerged, leading to the introduction of certain policies. Cultural and social approaches aimed at “understanding” the more nuanced meanings of policies and their effects. On the other hand, policy “evaluation” and “design” studies were largely discarded.

In contrast, some related disciplines developed such studies, and a few medical and health geographers claimed to tackle them. Especially important, we feel, are quasi-experimental and quasi-market approaches. The former approach’s purpose is to gain evidence for effective policy intervention, exploiting naturally emerging situations. The latter seeks the effective use of market mechanisms by minimizing its faults. Thus far, these approaches have not been accepted enthusiastically.

If we hope to seek contributions to policy evaluations and development and improve the public’s health through policy interventions, we should not only develop policy evaluation and design studies, but also constructively promote the supplementary and integrative use of various approaches such as qualitative and quantitative, political-economic and cultural-social, policy science, etc.

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It is well-known that quantitative methods have made a remarkable progress in many disciplines and have brought the diversification of their study objects and the expansion of their applications. These tendencies have clearly appeared in geography. In this field it has been vigorously done to develop various kinds of techniques and appliances for obtaining geographic numerical data, to apply some of quantitative methods to them and to present the findings by these efforts in a form of model. The study along this line was made an accelerative progress by the quantitative revolution in the beginning of 1960's, so that it has greatly contributed toward the development of geography. On the other hand, this progress has met with some problems involving the limitation of quantitative techniques or methods. In addition, it has offered many important and basic themes to the discussion of geographical nature, for the techniques or methods twine closely with the geographical methodology. These themes are idiographic versus nomothetic approaches, quantitative nature as opposed to qualitative one of geographic phenomena, individual versus aggregative approaches, the distinction between correlation and causation, and the possibility for building geographic theory. Although none of these themes have been given adequate answers, it is obvious that they have set a new guideline to both fields of physical and human geography.
The quantitative works which were called Chorometry appeared in the geographical studies in Japan in 1930's. Some of these studies have continuously been done in the field of physical geography, wheares in the field of human geography they were ceased due to the insufficient research for data and the method of analysis. In the recent quantitative studies, however, this shortcoming is fairly but not completely swept off.
The aim of this symposium is to discuss the three questions described below.
(1) What kind of efficiency and limitation the quantitative methods have in terms of geographic studies?
(2) How should the study concerning methods to solve various geographical problems be located in the field of geography?
(3) How could the study mentioned above be related with the nature of geography?
The members of the symposium consisted of twenty-four reporters and commentators, four chairmen, two organizers and a great number of participants. Although there had been some discussions concerning with three questions through the session, there were much left to be discussed.
Twelve papers presented were in the following:
(1) K. Kashiwaya pointed out that model experiment was of much efficient in the case of being difficult to obtain the data of landform development, and he showed the model of gully evolution, which was characterized by considering two parameters, such as the inertial force of water and the resistant force of soil.
(2) M. Pukuda reviewed some applications of harmonic analysis to the landform studies and offered the results obtained in analyzing the spectral power densities of landforms in Hokkaido. He pointed out the relations of estimated spectrum to the interval of sample dots in topographic maps.
(3) M. Hirano and S. Yokota explained some possibilities of numerical analysis for geomorphological phenomena. They indicated the necessity to publish topographic digital maps and to establish a geomorphological data bank.
(4) I. Tsuchiya's concern was directed to suggest the advantages and weaknesses of measuring the surface temperature by the infrared radiation thermometer as a technique of remote sensing. He explained this direction by showing an example of measurements of snow surface temperature in the eastern slope of Mt. Hoken in Nagano Prefecture.
(5) K. Yamabe first showed a hydraulic model to evaluate the fluidity of sea water on the basis of the residence time of fresh water.

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近年,技術的イノベーションを地理的視点から考察する研究が,地理学および隣接分野において注目を集めている.本稿は,そうした研究を展望し,研究手法や説明枠組みによって整理した後,イノベーションを産業集積論や都市論との関連から検討した.結果は,以下の3点に要約される.第1に,イノベーションの地理的考察は,特許や論文を用いて知識のスピルオーバーやネットワークを捉える定量的方法から,質問票やインタビューによる質的方法までさまざまな手法で行われており,それぞれの長所と短所を認識し,相互に補完的な方法として多角的な考察をすることが必要である.第2に,制度や組織のあり方,技術の性質,距離や領域などの地理的要素という3つの相互依存的関係を認識し,かつ実証研究によって検証することが有意義であろう.第3に,都市や集積をイノベーションの文脈で考える際には,近接性だけでなく多様性,流動性と外部との結合性という要素が重要になる.

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