Social Darwinism in early twentieth century Human Geography: the case of Ellen Semple’s work Influences of Geographic Environment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2179-0892.geousp.2018.140469Keywords:
Social Darwinism, Evolutionism, Ellen Semple, Human Geography in USA, EpistemologyAbstract
The article seeks to explain the relationship between Social Darwinism, the institutionalization of Human Geography in the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century, and the epistemological and philosophical positions underlying the work Influences of Geographic Environment(1911) written by Ellen Semple (1863-1932). The book in question was one of the main comprehensive attempts at theoretical systematization of Human Geography produced in the US during the critical period of expansion of the discipline university's presence in the country. We’ll defend the hypothesis that the ideas presented by the geographer in this work clearly demonstrate that the construction of the disciplinary field in the English-speaking world took place from the internalization of intellectual positions derived from the evolutionary debate that arrived at the Human Sciences through Social Darwinism and that were favored by the geopolitical context of the rise of imperialism.
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