ON ‘TERRITORIAL CERTAINTY’ OF GEOGRAPHICAL THINKING

Abstract

The growing geopolitical and geoeconomic polycentrism of the world order presupposes the rooting ofthe idea of practical multiplicity of worldview models, including the corresponding geographical representations. Thepurpose of the article is to substantiate the ‘territorial certainty’ of geographical thinking, considered in duality: 1) differentiation of natural and socio-geographical conditions and formats of cultivation of geographical thinking; 2) themultiplicity of positionally, politically, economically, and socioculturally determined civilizational, state, ethnoterritorial,regional, and local representations of the spatial organization of society in its interaction with the environment. The articlediscusses essential trends in the evolution of geographical thinking (ecumenization and detailing, scientization and humanitarization), identifies (based on an analysis of extensive scientific discourse) its modern basic components. It isshown that the ‘territorial certainty’ of geographical thinking is the result of its territorial determinism (including theunevenness of intellectual, scientific and research activity in the field of geographical disciplines) and stratification (including knowledge of geographical structures and processes within specific territorial and social communities, their traditions, obtained in their interests). The paper highlights the main dominants of the ‘territorial certainty’ of geographicalthinking in modern Russia: ‘nature-oriented focus’, prolonged Westernization, administrative-territorial focus, Moscowcentrism, etc.). The conceptual framework for the formation of a Russian–oriented geographical picture of the world issubstantiated, which presupposes, in particular, further cultivation and replication of phenomenological, societal, geocultural, and geosophical approaches in Russian geography (primarily in its ‘human geography’)