Geografía y Ambiente en América Latina

Geography, through various schools - particularly the Anglo-Saxon and the French, bases of Latin American geographic thought - has weighed the full or mixed study of the society-nature relationship, so longed for by other disciplines in recent decades. With this historical consideration, new approaches and procedures, the discipline is oriented towards the relocation of the environment as a key sustenance of geography, both in its human and physical aspects. Geography in its environmental emphasis runs the risk of becoming another "physical geography", more attractive to both locals and foreigners, but limited to already well-traveled approaches, including the use of tools for field observation and analysis of derived information. For this reason, it is necessary to continue arguing and discussing about it, since the "from where" the great questions that guide scientific activity and its relationship with society are formulated remains to be resolved. In this sense, this work ponders the central role of geography as a social science (and not of the earth), in a structure of vertical integration whose vertex would be raised from social science (including the vision of those disciplines that turn towards geography for their interest in space), offering analytical and technical tools to answer the questions asked at the higher level.