Dutch human geography

I In defence of the field The days of human geography were numbered, as far as Dutch sociologists were concerned. Around 1960, they disputed the birthright of the field. Jolles, a leading sociologist at the time, pointed out what he called the ’degeographizing’ of society: the decreasing significance of the relations between the physical environment and the human group. According to Jolles, the modernization of society leads to ’an increasing number of human activities that take place independent of the geographic environment and that have become incorporated into a network of social ties whereby a relatively larger part of people’s social life no longer has a geographical component ’ (1960: 176, authors ’ translation). For those who cculd read between the lines, the gist of the message was unmistakable: sociology is the ’natural ’ successor to human geography. This subtle attack was perfectly legitimate from the perspective of the sociology of science. By the time academic sociology emerged, at the end of the 1950s, geography had already been comfortably established for 40 years at th