英国流行人文地理学导论教材之评述与借鉴

REVIEW OF THE POPULAR INTRODUCTORY HUMAN GEOGRAPHY TEXTBOOKS IN BRITAIN:WITH COMPARISON TO THE AMERICAN COUNTERPARTS

选取英国时下流行的两本人文地理学概论教材《人文地理概论》和《人文地理学导论:21世纪的议题》,分析了他们的优缺点,并与美国的同类教材进行了比较。《人文地理概论》基于后现代主义的理念,采用30人的大团队,全新的结构(基础+论题+背景三部分),试图展示当代人文地理学的多样性。后一本教材则以问题为导向,采用21人的大团队,充分利用地图、表格、照片、热点知识窗,用手册性著作的写法,全面展示了当代人文地理学的研究主题;缺点是视觉冲击力不够,缺乏对有关研究取向历史发展的论述。

Two British introductory textbooks of human geography are selected to review： Introducing Human Geography and An Introduction to Human Geography： Issues for the 21st Century. They are mainly written by British human geographers, and also for the British market. They are quite different from the former counterparts, such as Approaching Human Geography and The Place of Geography. Introducing Human Geography is based on the postmodernism philosophy, and a large group of thirty human geographers with totally new structure of textbook in order to fully illustrate the diversity of contemporary human geography. The chapters in the textbook are short, but there are many long citations and many pictures, maps and summaries, and the further readings at the end of the chapters are well selected with good and short commentary. An Introduction to Human Geography： Issues for the 21st Century is an issue-oriented introductory human geography textbook. It is written by twenty-one human geographers, with many good maps, plates and spotlights and case studies. It is like a companion, because of the depth of the chapters, the textbook can be read after the course and be used by related courses, such as ＇World Regional Geography＇ or a course devoted to ＇Issues in Human Geography＇. The major sections focus on the important issues facing the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but they are also related to major sub-disciplines in human geography. There are many good qualities in the two British textbooks from which we can learn a lot （to update regularly, to be based on research publications, to use material with different presentation style, to make index, to make comments on further readings, to stick to the academic norms） and make our similar textbooks more compatible with the counterparts in North America and the UK.