Yi-Fu Tuan's Segmented worlds and self: Group life and individual consciousness is a seminal work of existential geography, specifically focusing on the alienation and fragmentation that characterize modern spatial experiences. Unlike Tuan's more widely recognized texts such as Topophilia and Space and Place, which celebrate the emotional and sensory bonds between humans and their environment, this book takes a critical turn to explore the darker side of human spatial existence—the processes through which individuals and communities become increasingly disconnected from the spaces they inhabit. By tracing the phenomenological trajectory of this alienating relationship, the book articulates its mechanisms through the interplay of three central concepts: the self, body perception, and horizon. This article highlights that this book departs from Tuan's other works by adopting a unique phenomenological lens. Rather than emphasizing the harmonious or affective dimensions of "being-in-the-world", it foregrounds the existential condition of alienation. The book takes a transcendental self as its philosophical starting point, inheriting and expanding upon Maurice Merleau-Ponty's theory of body perception and explores the isomorphic relationship between the enhancement of self-awareness and spatial separation, grounding his analysis in specific historical and cultural contexts. Furthermore, inspired by Levinas' concept of horizon, the book envisions a path toward reconstructing a holistic man-land relationship in the context of postmodern disembedding. Tuan extends the idea to the realm of geography, proposing that the reintegration of fragmented spaces and selves requires a revived body perception of our interconnectedness with places. To phenomenologically unravel the narrative thread within the book, to start with, this article initially contrasts Tuan's concept of self with David Ley's, placing them within the framework of two branches of humanistic geography: explications of experience and interpretations of social worlds. Tuan and Ley, as representatives of each branch, respectively view the self as transcendental versus socially constructed. Consequently, their phenomenological entry points diverge, with Tuan emphasizing body perception from Merleau-Ponty and Ley focusing on social activity drawing from George Mead's Symbolic Interactionism and Alfred Schutz's Theory of Intersubjectivity. This transcendental perspective allows Tuan's self to serve as the phenomenological subject, rather than activity or symbol. Second, guided by body perception, Tuan introduces the concept of embodiment as a bridge connecting self and space/place, concurrently forming the notions of embodied self and embodied space/place. Historically exploring the isomorphic relationship between self and space/place through the transformation of body perception, the book illustrates this relationship in three contexts: food, housing, and theater. It reveals how the heightened sense of vision, accompanied by the decline of other senses, leads to the segmentation of social space, subsequent disembedding from life worlds, and the alienation of the man-land relationship. In conclusion, this book reflects on approaches to rebuilding a holistic man-land relationship from the perspective of place horizon. Current studies of Tuan's geographical thoughts in China tend to emphasize the being-in-the-world perspective while neglecting the alienation dimension. This article proposes a simultaneous intertwining of both perspectives by exploring the latter within the book.

Marxist geography is an important school in human geography, but also has a profound influence on other disciplines. David Harvey's Social Justice and the City is the founding work of Marxist geography. This book is highly theoretical and involves many large and complex issues, and thus is also difficult to interpret. Harvey tried to understand and analyze urban(ism) problems from a holistic perspective, and innovated the theory of "social processes-spatial form". By comparing the urban research methodology between liberalism and Marxism, he concluded that the nature of theory arises from the synthesis of methods and philosophy, the nature of space lies in human practices, the nature of justice depends on the operation of the social processes, and the nature of urbanism is the needs and products of capital production. This work created the knowledge foundation of Marxist geography, forged the critical path of urban research, and opened up the growth point of contemporary Marxism. Chinese intellectuals should pay close attention to the uneven urbanism, put forward the "general urban problem" in the new development stage, insist on and strengthen the thoughts research, and make a bold theoretical revolution around contemporary issues through symptomatic reading of different classic theories.

The introduction of the relationship between humanistic geography and phenomenology is limited among Chinese geographers who mainly focus on Yi-Fu Tuan's works and opinions. David Seamon is another key figure in humanistic geographic study. By reviewing Seamon's book on A Geography of the Lifeworld: Movement, Rest and Encounter, this article aims to enhance people's understanding of humanistic geography. This book is one of the representative works of the realm, and its publication coincided with the prevalence of western humanistic geography. Through the perspective of phenomenology, Seamon explores the interaction between the experience of human body and the daily geographical world, creatively introduces concepts of body-subject and perception. He emphasizes that the place ballet based on body-subject is the result of the interaction between human and environment in a specific time and space, that is, the dynamics of time-space rhythm. The book is divided into five parts, among which the second, third and fourth parts concentrate the author's main academic views corresponding to the "movement", "rest" and "encounter" in the subtitle of the book, respectively. Phenomenology is the philosophical foundation of humanistic geography with its obscure content. This article examines cases both from the book and from our daily experiences to introduce Seamon's main ideas. In our viewpoints, first, this book makes the abstract phenomenological concepts and methods more accessible and understandable by describing abundant environmental experiences in our everyday life. For example, fingers of a pianist freely press the piano keys without seeing musical score; a person's feet can automatically adjust his or her pace according to the road conditions. Seamon calls such movements as "body ballet", which implies the movement sequence of such pre-conscious body. This review article gives an example in hand to explain how body ballet links to place ballet. In a traditional market, it is quite usual to hear peddlers' yo-heave-ho, and to see sellers weighing and packing goods, and then making change for the customers… The series of actions are the vendor's body ballet. The body ballet of both customers and vendors constitutes the place ballet of the market. Second, the content of this book may be useful for those who engage in urban planning/design and environmental education. Seamon suggests that the street pattern, porch design, and other physical space planning could enhance or weaken the integration and coordination of the place ballet in a community. As for environmental education, Seamon stresses that our attention should be paid more to the process that might lead people to sensitize to all sorts of settings. He also attempts to make people realize that ways to encounter with environments are diverse and dynamic, and even promotes to enhance the ability to observe and experience the environment with the help of technology. In this way, any individual could increase such sensitivity of his/her own, and find meanings and beauties in seemingly ordinary places. Third, it is a pity that the comparison between humanistic geography and 'scientific' modern geography has not been aroused enough attention yet, and the advantages of phenomenological research methods should been unfolded much better. Fourth, with the phenomenological attitude, there is no doubt that this article reveals the subjectivity and intentionality of the two authors.

There are many kinds of academic writing in human geography in the world, including monographs, companion, handbook, textbook, journal paper, review article, book review, and so on. But in contemporary China too much attention is focus on journal paper, particularly Anglo-American English journal papers. Textbook and popular essay are not taken seriously academic work. Against this background the writings of Dr. Tang Xiaofeng (excluding the monographs) are unique and fascinating. One of Tang's book—Yuedu yu ganzhi: Renwen dili biji—is analyzed according to the content and contribution to college geographic education. We should pay more attention to the diversity of academic works, particularly the textbooks and popular essays.