This document discusses post-modernism and geography in the 21st century. It explains that post-modernism rejects absolute truths and modernist theories, instead seeing truth as contextual. In geography, post-modernism became prominent in the late 1980s and questioned existing narratives. The document then outlines some notable post-modern geographers like Edward Soja and their works. Finally, it discusses trends in 21st century geography like feminist approaches, cultural studies, GIS, development indices, and focus on climate change.

1. Towards post modernism:
Geography in the 21st century, Future of Geography
PRESENTED BY – JAMILA YASMIN

2. POST MODERNISM
MODERN
• Logical
• Rational
• Scientific
• Objective
• Grand Narratives (theories)
• Absolute Truth etc.
 Post modernism doesn’t follow modernism in a chronological order, modernism
and post modernism exists next to each other, but there is no conflict between the
two trends. Post modernism is the deconstruction of modernism.
 It’s looks at the intersubjectivity instead of the objectivity, which modernism is
focused on.
 Post modernism means changing or breaking away modernity. It is a perspective
that says that everything is contextual in this world. There is no single truth and
that world phenomena is multi-layered in nature.

3.  In the late 1980’s the post modernism became a trend in human
geography it is a movement in humanities, philosophy, arts and social
sciences.
 Post modernism is a theoretical approach to human geography, so it
questions and re-questions and constructs and re-constructs theories and
changing the narratives to meta narratives.
 This approach is born as an critique approach against modernism. The
post modernism rejects the theory of modernism.
 That means that the postmodernism doesn’t believe in the absolute truth
and that every person has it’s own truth.
 Nobody is able to doubt about others truth because life-experiences and
personal visions creates a personal truth.
 This is for every person different . Therefore nobody can be wrong about
the truth. In short post modernism seemed to throw reason itself into
doubt.

4. POST MODERN GEOGRAPHERS
The Journal Environment and Planning D. Society and Space, published first in the year 1983
the exclusively post modern theme dedicated write ups,
Michael J Dear’s – Post modern Urban planning
In the opinion of Dear :
Postmodernity is everywhere, from literature, design, art, architecture, philosophy, mass media,
clothing style, to music and television. Postmodernism raises urgent questions about place, space and
landscape in the production of social life.
Edward Soja’s – Los Angeles Post modern ‘Spatialities’ contributed a lot in post modern
intellectual discourse.
‘Post modern Geographies’ by Edward Soja, in1989 the book highly influenced by the work
of Hennery Lefebvre and M. Foucault. Soja is credited with bringing spatial back into the
focus in social theories .
Other work of eminence in the same year was by David Harvey’s ‘The condition of post
modernity’.
Edward Soja another seminal work the ‘Third Space’ published in 1996.
In this work, he harped upon ‘critical Post modernism’ where he tries to fill the gap between
post colonial theory and post modern geography, using the idea of Third space.

5. Other contributions of note worthy significance of the period were
1. David Harvey’s ‘Post modernism and the American city’ in Antipode,
2. David Ley’s ‘Post modern urbanism in Vancouver’ in Historical Geography
3. Dear’s ‘Post modern Challenge : restructuring of human Geography’ in
4. Derek Gregory’s ‘Areal differentiation and Post modern Geography’ in
Human geography
tried to further establish Postmodernism as a traditional of enquiry in Geography.

6. Geography in the 21st Century
 Geography has very diversified nature. From its origin time to recent dimensions, it has been
changing in its nature, scope and applications.
TIMELINE (2001-2021)
1. Feminist Approach
Feminist geography emphasizes the oppression of women and gender inequality. It focuses on how
gender and geographies are mutually produced and transformed, and the ways in which gender
differentiation permeates social life.
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and
the political, economic, personal and social equality of the sexes.
Feminist movement have campaigned and continue to campaign for women’s rights, including
the right to vote, run for public office, work, earn equal pay, own property, receive education,
contracts, have equal rights within marriage, and maternity leave.
Under feminist approach Gender Specific Study, Gender Empowerment Measure, GDI was
introduced .

7.  The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) is an index designed to measure gender inequality across
the global countries, based on estimates of women’s relative economic income, participation in high-
paying positions with economic power, and access to professional and parliamentary positions.
 The Gender Development Index (GDI) is an index designed to measure gender inequality.
GDI together with the Gender Empowerment Measure(GEM) , was introduced in 1995 in the Human
Development Report. The GDI is often considered a “gender-sensitive extension of the HDI. It addresses
gender gaps in life expectancy, education, and incomes.
2. Cultural Heritage and Global Culture
 Ethno-geography is the scientific study of the geographic distribution of ethnic groups.
Ethnogeography is related to geography in the broad sense by its study of the influence of
human activity and of ethnic entities as a whole.
 Cultural landscape is a term used in the fields of geography, ecology, and heritage studies,
to describe a symbiosis of human activity and environment
 Global Tourism is perhaps the largest scale movement of goods, services, and people in
history. Consequently, it is a significant catalyst for economic development and sociopolitical
change

8. Reasons for the growth of global tourism;
• Developments in technology
• Better and affordable transport
• E-services: online booking of tours and tickets
• Ease of access of information
Advantages: employment opportunities,
growth in income, development of infrastructure and facilities and preservation of local
customs and heritage.
3. GIS (Geographic Information System)
Geographic Information System has transformed from a theory to a science over the past
fifty years. What is GIS?
A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing,
checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface. GIS can show many
different kinds of data on one map, such as streets, buildings, and vegetation. This enables
people to more easily see, analyze, and understand patterns and relationships.

9. 4. Development study
 HDI (Human Development Index) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy,
education(mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon
entering the education system) and per capita income indicators, which is used to
rank countries into four tiers of human development.
 PQLI (Physical Quality of Life Index) is an attempt to measure the quality of life or
well-being of a country.
5. Climate Change
Due to developmental works and in the process of transforming society into the urban
industrialized one, we(human) degraded our environment at an extreme extent due to
which climate change, global warming became a major concern for geographers.