RADICAL APPROACH

Introduction

The radical approach in geography was developed in 1970s, and it came as a reaction to quantitative revolution and positivistic approach that makes geography as spatial science with emphasis on locational analysis. Welfare geography works in principle within the framework of existing economic and social system, whereas, radical geography calls for both revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice.

The causes of origin of radical movement in late 1960s in USA are as below:

1. The Vietnam war 
2. Civil riots in America
3. Vertical and horizontal inequalities
4. Unresponsive attitude of authorities for the social issues.

• Antipode (journal), 1969 – Clark University in Worcester (Massachusetts).
• Peet (1977) argued that radical geography developed as a negative reaction to the spatial science approach in geography.
• David Harvey – ‘Social Justice ad the City’ (1973) in which he presented a revolutionary theory against the spatial science paradigm.

Issues:

1. Inequality
2. Racism
3. Sexism
4. Crime
5. Discrimination against blacks, non-white and females
6. Exploitation of juveniles.
7. Poverty, hunger, houselessness etc.

Silent Features:

1. To expose the issues related to horizontal and vertical inequality, deprivation, discrimination, crime and environmental degradation in the capitalist countries.
2. To highlight the weaknesses of positivism and quantitative revolution in Geography.
3. To remove regional inequalities.
4. To oppose political centralisation and economic concentration and contrary to multinationals, they favour small-scale, self-sufficient social units, living in harmony with their natural surroundings. 
5. To criticize the feeling of imperialism, nationalism, national chauvinism and racism.
6. To bring a cultural revolution to eradicate permissiveness, sexism, discrimination against females.
7. To opposed the idea of the Superiority of the white and the west.
8. To understand the man and the environment relationship through historical materialism.
9. To prescribe revolutionary changes and solution to the social problems.
10. To develop a just, equal, tension free, peaceful and enjoyable society.

Criticism:

1. Weak theoretical base.
2. Leaning toward anarchism and Marxism.
3. Radical in topics and politics but not in theory and method of analysis.
4. Failure of radicalists to develop an appropriate model to study population-resource in an integrated way for removing regional inequalities.
5. Eviction of human agency from human history.
6. Priority to time over space.
7. Fall of communist governments based on socialistic pattern of society in erstwhile U.S.S.R and Eastern Europe during 1989-91.