Paul Vidal de La Blache (1845-1918) was a French geographer and one of the most remembered names in the history of geographical thought. His work is widely recognized for being the founder of the current of thought that came to be called Possibility, as opposed to Geographical Determinism German. Vidal was also considered the founder of the French regional school.
La Blache rejected the idea advocated by Friedrich Ratzel that characterized the German school of geography, in which the natural conditions of the environment influenced and determined human activities and life in society. For Vidal, man also transformed the environment where he lived, so that for human actions, several possibilities were possible, since these would not obey a relationship between cause and It is made.
Thanks to his training, La Blache brought to geography the importance of time and history for geographic studies. For this reason, he was considered one of the main people responsible for the spread of Human Geography, despite stating that Geography should not study man, but the environment in which he lives.
La Blache also advocated the practice of a Regional Geography. For this thinker, it would be impossible, at least for that moment, to reach totalizing visions for the reality, so that knowledge and concepts should only be applied in realities specific. Therefore, he encouraged and participated in many regional monographs, that is, studies that were concerned only with a particular region and that were characterized by being extremely descriptive.
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Therefore, the concept of region was very important in his work. In theory lablachean, this concept was associated with natural landscapes, so that a region existed in space independent of human will, scientists are only responsible for identifying them and exposing their features. This concept was later criticized, as the region came to be understood as a man-made division based on its own criteria and that, therefore, would not exist naturally, being a human intellectual construction.
Another very important concept in his work was that of lifestyle. For La Blache, regions constituted a living environment that would provide for the development of societies. With the use of natural regional resources, life in society would constitute, then, what was called by genres of life.
Based on these concepts and a method that was characterized as a sequence between observation, comparison and conclusion, Vidal became one of the biggest names in geographic science and contributed to leverage French geography to oppose and combat German geography and its intentions geopolitics.
By Rodolfo Alves Pena
Graduated in Geography
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PENA, Rodolfo F. Alves. "Vidal de La Blache"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/geografia/vidal-la-blache.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.