Torsten Hägerstrand

Torsten Hägerstrand
Born	(1916-10-11)October 11, 1916 Moheda, Sweden
Died	(2004-05-04)May 4, 2004 Lund, Sweden
Nationality	Swedish
Citizenship	Sweden
Alma mater	Lund University
Known for	Time geography Human migration Cultural diffusion
Awards	Lauréat Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud Outstanding Achievement Award from the Association of American Geographers
Scientific career
Fields	Geography
Institutions	Lund University

Torsten Hägerstrand (1916, Moheda- May 3, 2004, Lund), was a Swedish geographer. He is known for his work on migration, cultural diffusion and time geography.

A native and resident of Sweden, Hägerstrand was a Professor (later Professor Emeritus) of Geography at Lund University, where he received his doctorate in 1953. His doctoral research was on cultural diffusion.

In 1969, he presented a paper entitled What about People in Regional Science? to the European Congress of the Regional Science Association in Copenhagen, Denmark. This paper, published in 1970 (see references), developed two concepts:

• The need to study the individual in order to understand social and group practices. Modern cultural geographers commonly now study everyday practices on an individualistic basis, in order to understand larger scale patterns. The study of just groups creates a homogenization of reality and hides the truth.

• A link between space and time that had previously been poorly developed. Historically, social scientists had treated time as a relevant but external factor to spatial features. Hagerstrand's early work on innovation diffusion (studying the geographical spread of new technologies) made him realise that the two, though separate, were not independent of each other; they have what Lefebvre would call a dialectical relationship.

Hägerstrand's work was quantitative, which is important as the discipline of geography was, when he published his first paper in 1942, a highly descriptive subject. He developed models and statistical techniques, such as the time-space prism. His work informed the likes of Allan Pred and Nigel Thrift, who took it to the English speaking world.

Hägerstrand's work was an early factor in both the qualitative turn and the introduction of humanistic thought into geography. As the latter of these critiqued the former highly, to eventually form critical geography. Hägerstrand's later work revised his early time-geographies to include notions of embodiment and emotion. Still, his methods were critiqued by feminist geographers such as Gillian Rose, who claimed that his models showed a masculine and falsely-ordered view of the world.

Even so, development of Hägerstrand's work has continued to form part of the basis for non-representational theory, and a reappraisal of time geography from the likes of Alan Latham means that he remains an influential thinker today.

Sweden, and particularly Lund, has become a major center of innovative work in cultural geography. This is partially helped by Hägerstrand's work, which was almost entirely concentrated on the town and its surrounding region.

Honors

In 1992 Torsten Hägerstrand was awarded Lauréat Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud, the highest award in the geography research field.

He received honorary doctorates from University of Bergen, Norwegian school of economics and business administration, University of Trondheim, University of Bristol, University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow and Ohio State University. The commendation accompanying the honorary degree at Ohio State University noted that" his work on innovation diffusion, carried out in the 1950s and 1960s continues to be cited as a standard against which current research is measured' and that "this distinguished individual...inspired a generation of scholars around the world."

He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Finnish Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, and a member of Société de Géographie in France. He was also one of the founding members of Academia Europaea.

In 1968 Professor Hägerstrand received an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Association of American Geographers. In 1979 he received the Victoria Medal from the Royal Geographical Society.

Bibliography

Important works of Hägerstrand are:

• Innovation diffusion as a spatial process. Translated by A. Pred. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967).
• "On the definition of migration." (Lund: Lunds Universitets Kulturgeografiska Institution, Rapporter och Notiser, 9, 1973).
• "The impact of transport on the quality of life." (Lund: Lunds Universitets Kulturgeografiska Institution, Rapporter och Notiser, 13, 1974).
• "The domain of human geography." Directions in geography, ed. R. J. Chorley, 67-87. (London: Methuen, 1973).
• "Space, time and human conditions." Dynamic allocation of urban space, ed. A. Karlqvist et al. (Lexington: Saxon House Lexington Book, 1975)

References

• Center For Spatially Integrated Social Science
• Latham, Allan; 2003; Research, performance, and doing human geography: some reflections on the diary-photograph, diary-interview method; Environment and Planning A 2003, volume 35, pp 1993–2017
• Pred, Allan (ed.); 1981; Space and Time in Geography - Essays Dedicated to Torsten Hägerstrand; CWK Gleerup, Lund
• Rose, Gillian; 1993; Feminism and Geography; Polity Press, Cambridge

• Bo Lenntorp, Gunnar Törnqvist, Olof Wärneryd and Sture Öberg. 2004. Torsten Hägerstrand 1916–2004. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 86, 4: 325-326.

External links

• "Torsten Hägerstrand" Encyclopædia Britannica