Indigenous “Folk” Geographical Ideas and Knowledge

This paper advocates the need for studying indigenous folk geographical ideas and knowledge in addition to academic geographic ideas and knowledge to encompass all types of geographic tradition in a cross-cultural context. To date, historians of geographic ideas and knowledge in the West have mainly paid attention to Western academic geographic knowledge. Folk and academic geographic ideas and knowledge interact with and influence each other. Academic geography can benefit much from the study of various “folk” traditions. The existence of, and interactions between, the two geographic traditions among different cultures are compelling reasons for the cross-cultural study of folk geographic ideas and knowledge. This paper uses examples from Korea and the Maori people in New Zealand to argue the advantage of studying folk geographic knowledge in a cross-cultural context.