Pure geography

Johannes Gabriel Grano's career as a geographer spanned the first half of the twentieth century. In the 1920s he began to develop a highly original methodology of landscape geography, based on the idea that the real object of geographical research should be the environment as perceived by the senses and regions constructed on the basis of these perceptions. It was from this starting point that he created the doctrine he called "pure geography". First published in German (1929) and then in his native Finnish (1930), Grano's Pure Geography is regarded by many geographers as one of the classic works in the field. Although only small fragments of the work have ever been translated into English, generations of British and American scholars have drawn upon or been influenced by Grano's remarkably forward-looking ideas. What we now refer to as "environmental perception," for example, has its roots in this book, and many publications in behavioral and humanistic geography from the 1960s onward are built, sometimes unknowingly, on Grano's prescient observations. Long out of print, this widely acclaimed classic is now available for the first time in English translation.