I’m very happy that the book review I wrote for the Canadian Geographer on Yi-Fu Tuan’s Humanist Geography: An Individual’s Search for Meaning is out.
It’s a neat little book. It’s typical Yi-Fu Tuan — very phenomenological, very personal, and very philosophical. It’s a geographical work aimed at a popular audience to try to suss out the meaning of good and evil in everyday life.
What I found the most intriguing was Tuan’s usage of Buddhist philosophies and Christian theology to answer some of his questions. Indeed — and this is a bit of a spoiler alert — the end of the book is a theological meditation on humanistic geography. Because of this, my review relates what Tuan is trying to say here about humanism, morality, and phenomenology to the work in geographies of religion on how ‘grounded theologies‘ disrupt conventional narratives of the secular.
I’m very excited that this is out, and I’m also excited to let people know that I’m also working on another review of Tuan’s work, also for Canadian Geographer. The next one is called Romantic Geography. Stay tuned!
Justin K.H. Tse 