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Geography Optional 300+ Score Pack · Model answer

Comment upon the contributions of D.M. Smith in outlining ‘welfare’ as a key focus in the geographies of social well-being.

  • UPSC 2018
  • Population and Settlement Geography

Welfare geography — the study of spatial inequality in human well-being and of whether that inequality is defensible — received its founding statement from David M. Smith (1936–2021), who mapped social well-being across the United States in 1973 and codified the welfare approach in 1977.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the Geography Optional 300+ Score Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Founding Reorientation: Distribution as Geography's Central Question
  • Operationalising Social Well-being: Territorial Social Indicators
  • From Description to Norm: Rawls, Territorial Justice and the Radical Turn
  • Smith's Welfarist Route
  • Harvey's Structural Route
  • Moral Geographies: Ethics, Difference and the South African Laboratory
  • …and 1 more sections, with a conclusion

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