Deconstructing three periods of geographical thought in Brno

Abstract

This article deals with ways of geographical thought at academic institutions in Brno. The paper analyses texts using the deconstruction method. The selected texts come from authors interested in human geography or the theory of geography. This study focuses on the period from the establishment of the first Department of Geography at Masaryk University to the turn of the millennium, which brought a significant personnel and institutional break. The article identifies three crucial developmental phases. The first of these phases concerns the interwar period, which was characterised by the emancipation of human geography as a distinct discipline, particularly with regard to settlement/urban geography. The following phase was characterised in particular by its emphasis on calculable objective space and also by the Marxist ideological background that formed the basis of economic geography. The last of the described phases is characterised by the decentralisation of academic geography in Brno and its epistemological differentiation. The result is a comprehensive view of the long-term development of geographic thought at Brno institutions.