INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Chapter 1

What Is Human Geography?

The study of •How people make places•How we organize space and society •How we interact with each other in places and across space•How we make sense of others and ourselves in our locality, region, and world

Globalization

A set of processes that are• Increasing interactions• Deepening relationships• Heightening

interdependencewithout regard to country

borders

A set of outcomes that are

• Unevenly distributed• Varying across scales• Differently manifested

throughout the world

Impact of individual, regional, national scales on processes and outcomes of globalization

What Are Geographic Questions?

• The spatial arrangement of places and phenomena (human and physical)

– How are things organized on Earth?– How do they appear on the landscape?– Where? Why? So what?

• No place “untouched by human hands” or activity• Human organization of communities, nations, networks• Establishment of political, economic, religious, cultural systems

Spatial Distribution

• Spatial distribution and pattern• Processes that create and sustain a

distributionMap of Cholera Victims in London’s Soho District in 1854

Patterns of victim’s homes and water pump locations key to the source of the disease

Five Themes of Geography

• Location• Human-environment

interaction• Region• Place• Movement

Place

Sense of place: Infusing a place with meaning and emotion

Perception of place: Belief or understanding of what a place is like, often based on books, movies, stories, or pictures

Where Pennsylvanian students prefer to live

Where Californian students prefer to live

Perception of Place

Movement

Spatial interaction: The interconnectedness between places, depending upon

• Distance• Accessibility• Connectivity

Elizabeth J. Leppman

Cultural LandscapeThe visible human imprint, the material character of a place

Religion and cremation practices spread with Hindu migrants from India to Kenya

Sequent OccupanceLayers of imprints in a cultural landscape reflecting years of differing human activity

Apartments in Mumbai, India Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: African,Arab, German, British, Indian “layers.” Apartments replaced earlier single-family houses

Why Do Geographers Use Maps, and What Do Maps

Tell Us? Types of maps• Reference maps

– Locations of places and geographic features

– Absolute locations• Thematic maps

– Degree of an attribute– Pattern of distribution– Movement– Relative locations

Reference Map

Thematic Map

Location

• Absolute location– Precise location using a coordinate system– Latitude and longitude most common– Measured by geographic positioning

systems (GPS)

• Relative location– Location in relation to something else– Changes over time with changing

circumstances

Mental Maps Maps we carry in our minds of places we have been and places we have heard of

Activity SpacesThe places we travel to routinely in our rounds of daily activity

Remote Sensing and GIS

Satellite image Photograph

Hurricane Katrina, 2005: Area of impactand destruction

Geographic Information System (GIS)

Computer hardware and software that permit storage and analysis of layers of spatial data

Why Are Geographers Concerned with Scale and

Connectedness?

• Scale: Territorial extent of something• Varying scales of observations

– Local– Regional– National– Global

Scale

The Power of Scale

• Influence of processes operating at different scales

• Context of a phenomenon in what is happening at different scales

• Political use of scale to change who is involved or how an issue is perceived

Regions

Formal region: Defined by a common characteristic, whether physical or cultural, present throughout

e.g., German-speaking region of Europe

Functional region: Defined by a set of social, political, or economic activities or interactions

e.g., an urban area, city and suburbs

RegionsPerceptual Region: Ideas in our minds,

based on accumulated knowledge of places and regions, that define an area of “sameness” or “connectedness”

Culture

• The whole tangible lifestyle of peoples, but also their prevailing values and beliefs

• Cultural trait: A single attribute of a culture

• Cultural complex: A combination of traits• Cultural hearth: Area where a culture

began and from which it spreads• Independent invention: A culture trait

that began in several places

Diffusion

• The process of the spread of an idea or innovation from its hearth to other areas

• Factors that slow or prevent diffusion– Time-distance decay– Cultural barriers

Types of Diffusion

• Expansion diffusion: Idea or innovation spreading outward from the hearth– Contagious: Spreads

to next available person– Hierarchical: Spreads

to most linked people or places first

– Stimulus: Promotes local experiment or change

Types of Diffusion

• Relocation diffusion: Movement of individuals who carry an idea or innovation with them to a new, perhaps distant locale

: A. B. Murphy: H .J. de

Blij

Kenya

Paris, France

What Are Geographic Concepts, and How Are They

Used in Answering Geographic Questions?

• Ways of seeing the world spatially that geographers use in answering research questions

• Old approaches to human-environment questions– Environmental determinism (has been rejected by

almost all geographers)– Possibilism (less accepted today)

• New approaches to human-environment questions– Cultural ecology– Political ecology