Qualitative methodologies in geography, contributions to the study of quality of life

MIKKELSSEN, C; DI NUCCI, J

Social Indicators Research Series

Sprimger

Año: 2015 vol. 15 p. 63 - 95

Geography is a social discipline that, at its origin, showed an epistemological and ontological basis supported by logical positivism, providing predictions through the creation of laws and theories. However, we find disciplinary relevant antecedents in the use of qualitative methodologies, mainly since the beginning of the 20th century, in French Regional Geography, in the Chicago School, in Cultural Geography, and in different discussions about Human Geography in that period.During the last decades, with the development of Humanistic Geographies (grounded in more subjective Philosophies) and critical style Human Geographies, the developed qualitative methodological field needed revision, because of the discipline itself as well as other disciplines related, especially Anthropology and Sociology.Moreover, visions of geographic space as socially lived, sensed, perceived and constructed space led Geography to think in the necessity of knowing other individual and social features for its studies, for which it started opening to new qualitative and explanatory interpretations.From this point of view, the way to grasp the meanings and uses of space in Geography departs from a set of qualitative techniques that trace three possible paths: the observation of territory utilization or the spatiality of the acts; the use of documents, contents and images that account for this; and the study and analysis of the discourse of people that occupy and build the space.In this sense, the challenge of the methodological reflection on the production of geographical knowledge as an unsettled compromise, shared with other social disciplines, sets up. In this work we are interested in reflecting on the methodological background disciplines considered in the studies of quality of life, which were specially developed from the elaboration of objective indices. Nevertheless, we want to consider that by applying certain qualitative techniques (focus groups, analysis of documents and objects, and interviews, among others) it will be possible to perceive and search other aspects of quality of life, thus contributing to understand the well-being of the population and the complexity of its knowledge.We seek to contribute to the generation of knowledge, reflecting on a theoretical-methodological approach, able to combine lifestyles, value systems, living conditions of individuals, and on the use and appropriation of space, both in an objective mode as well as in a symbolic evaluative manner.