Two Views of Diffusion

Abstract

The Hagerstrandian view of diffusion, now prevalent, is too narrow: narrow in its reliance on "information," a weak and elusive variable, and narrow in its space-time scope. A broader view is exemplified by the work of cuitural geographers like Kniffen. There is a need for a dialectical exchange between the two kinds of theoreticians. Eventually, this should lead to a more useful theory. EFORE diffusion, a landscape is empty of B a given trait. After diffusion, the trait has suffused throughout the landscape. So diffusion narrowly conceived is merely a transition. Why deem it so important?Associated with this narrow conception is a narrow theory. Diffusion is often said to be explainable in terms of a single, simple variable: information. But diffusion is an incident of culture change, and culture change is an exceedingly complex process. Why oversimplify?So we may ask: Is diffusion research too narrow? Is it overly concerned with the ephemerae of adoption? Is it simplistic? Should we not embrace a broader view: a conception of diffusion as the general process which includes the infusion and suffusion of traits in some regions and their nondiffusion in others? Perhaps the one view is merely a part of the other. If so, then spatial models of expansion diffusion should be grounded in the same body of theory as general models of geographic (and culture) change. But they are not, and-mainly for this reason-the narrow view has not been very helpful.The term, "spatial diffusion theory," has come to be associated with a fairly specific enterprise: the attempt to explain the spatial spread of an innovative trait in a region, usually with the help of mathematical models. The problem is thus diffusion in the narrow, or transitional, sense. The models are rather like twodimensional adoption curves, some probabilistic, others deterministic. The earliest models and the basic arguments were introduced more than twenty years ago by Torsten Hagerstrand.l Most Dr. Blaut is Professor of Geography at the University of lllinois at Chicago Circle in Chicago, IL 60680.1 Torsten Hagerstrand, Znnovation Diffusion as a Spatial Process (Chicago: University of Chicago of the newer models are offsprings of Hagerstrand's classic Model 111, the reasoning behind them is still mainly Hagerstrand's, and the central problem Is still the kind of expansion diffusion with which Hiigerserarid was concerned in his major work. We can with justice identify the enterprise as a whole with Hagerstrand's name. I will use the term, "Hagerstraridian diffusion," to indicate this problem and theory, and to distinguish it from another, larger, problem and another kind of theory.Hagerstrand was clearly aware, as some others are not, that spatial form is the result of cultural process. In attempting LO explain the evolving form of a diffusion, he adopted a customary theoretician's strategy of isolating a single component in the underlying process, a variable which possesses two characteristics: it appears to be important-that is, high in explanatory power; and it ...

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