Modern World-System & Globalization

• Geography studies places, spaces, and human-environment interactions.
• Understanding how places influence people's lives is a goal of geography
• Studying geography is aided by maps, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and spatial analysis

Places and Their Importance

• A place is a specific geographic setting with unique physical, social, and cultural attributes.
• Places change over time due to human and environmental factors.
• Social construction of places is shaped by human activities.
• People connect their identities to places to establish identity formation.
• Cultural practice varies by place through language, traditions, and customs.
• New ideas and technologies emerge in places through innovation and change.
• Places can be sites of political and social struggles and resistance/conflict.

Maps & Map Projections

• Maps are not neutral, reflecting the power, priorities, and biases of their creators.
• Maps shape worldviews by influencing how different places are perceived.
• Distortions happen because the Earth is curved, but maps are flat.
• Every map projection has pros and cons, depending on its purpose.
• The Mercator projection distorts size, making Greenland appear too big.
• The Peters projection preserves relative size but distorts shape.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

• GIS combines hardware, software, and data to analyze spatial information.
• It helps in storing, updating, and displaying geographic data.
• Examples of GIS data include coordinates (latitude, longitude, elevation), postal codes, and road networks.
• GIS helps in urban planning, disaster management, and environmental studies.

Key Concepts in Spatial Analysis

• Spatial analysis studies how things are arranged in space and how they interact.

Location

• Nominal location: Place names (e.g., Paris, Tokyo).
• Absolute location: Fixed mathematically (e.g., GPS coordinates).
• Relative location is location in relation to other places
• Site: Physical attributes (terrain, water, soil).
• Situation: Relation to human activities (near ports, highways).
• Cognitive location: Personal perceptions of a place.

Distance

• Absolute distance: Measured in units (km, miles).
• Relative distance: Measured in time, effort, or cost.
• Cognitive distance: Perceived distance (a short trip can feel long).

Space

• Absolute space: Fixed measurable points (maps, coordinates).
• Topological space: Connectivity between places (metro lines, internet networks).

Accessibility

• Depends on relative location and connectivity.
• Factors affecting accessibility include transport and communication systems.
• Accessibility is also affected by economic and social factors (cost of travel, social inclusion).

Spatial Interaction

• Spatial interaction refers to how people, goods, and ideas move between places.
• Complementarity describes demand and supply between regions
• Transferability covers cost and ability to move goods or people.
• Intervening opportunities are alternative options affecting movement.
• Spatial diffusion describes how things spread over space & time (e.g., diseases, cultural trends).

Regional Analysis

• Regional Analysis studies how places are grouped based on shared characteristics.
• Regionalization classifies places based on identity & structure.
• The Mormon region in the USA has a strong shared religious identity but coexists with other groups.
• Landscape is a "record" of society's beliefs, values, and power structures.
• It reflects history, culture, and economic changes.
• Sense of place represents personal & collective emotional connections to a place.
• It can be experienced directly (locals) or imagined (outsiders).
• Places matter because they shape our identities, cultures, and interactions.
• Maps are not neutral and reflect choices and biases.
• Spatial analysis helps study relationships between locations, distances, and accessibility.
• GIS helps in urban planning, disaster management, and environmental studies.
• Regionalization and landscape shape cultural and social experiences.

Changing Global Context (GENV 1201)

Overview of Global Change

• Historical changes in human settlements, economies, and global interactions are studied within Geography.
• Colonization, trade, and industrialization led to the rise of the modern world-system.
• Historical processes have shaped the global economy and political relationships.

The Premodern World: Early Human Settlements

• All present day geography originated from historical events.

Agricultural Hearth Areas

• Regions in which new farming techniques, cultures, and technologies originated.
• Early human societies moved from hunter-gathering to farming.
• Domestication of plants & animals led to the spread of agriculture.
• Farming led to larger populations and permanent settlements.

Food-Producing Minisystems

• Small, self-sufficient communities with reciprocal social economies.
• Key impacts included higher population density, more settlements, craft specialization.
• Also the beginning of trade between communities.

Early Empires

• Groups of minisystems under a common political system while keeping cultural differences.
• Wealth flowed from producers to elite classes via taxes.

Urbanization

• Cities developed as centers of administration, military, and trade.
• Cities helped empires maintain control and organization.

Colonization

• Physical settlement of a new territory.
• Driven by "law of diminishing returns" or need for new resources as old ones deplete.
• Resulted in unequal power relationships between the colonizers and colonized.

Legacy of World Empires

• Ancient urbanized cities remain important economic centers today.
• Trade hubs of the past evolved into modern capitalist economies.

Interdependent World Geography & World-Systems Theory

• A global network of countries connected by economic & political competition can be described as a world system.
• World-Systems Theory explains the world as an interdependent system and was created by Immanuel Wallerstein and that was then built upon by Samir Amin.

The 16th Century World-System

• Increased trade, political competition.
• also the development of Merchant capitalism.
• Improvements of shipbuilding & navigation.
• Changes in Europe that eventually gave them global influence.

European Exploration and Conquest

• The high population density and limited farmland in Europe made expansion a necessity.
• Monarchs & aristocrats competed for resources.
• Lands were occupied and coerced and enslaved labor was used to grow cash crops like sugar, cocoa, cotton, tobacco, and indigo.

Ongoing System of Dependency

• European wealth grew by exploiting territories in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
• The core (Europe) benefited from resources & labor taken from the periphery (colonized regions).

Canada's Role in the World-System

• Natural resources (whales, fur, lumber) were extracted for European profit.
• The Hudson Bay Company controlled trade, with 500+ trading posts across Canada, controlled trade.

Colonial Legacies & Black Feminist Geography

• Geography was shaped by colonial expansion.
• Mapping, trade routes, and land surveys were tools of European conquest.
• Geography is still used in militarization & political control and is part of colonial legacies.
• Eurocentric knowledge dominates academia.
• Black and Indigenous scholars remain underrepresented in the field.

Holding Geography Accountable

• Camilla Hawthorne and Brittany Meché emphasize recognizing Black, Indigenous, Feminist, Queer, and Latinx perspectives in geography.
• Key points include understanding historical injustices in the field.
• Expanding knowledge beyond a Eurocentric worldview.

Overview of Key Takeaways

• The modern world-system consists of three tiers:
• Core: Industrialized, wealthy nations.
• Semi-Periphery: Developing nations with growing economies.
• Periphery: Poor nations exploited for labor & resources.
• The Industrial Revolution enabled the rise of a global economic system.
• Core regions grew wealthy by exploiting peripheral regions through colonization.
• Globalization has caused challenges like economic inequality.
• Health & environmental issues, power imbalances between nations, and security concerns.

Changing Global Context II

Core, Periphery, and the Modern World-System

• Core Regions, often called "rich kids", are industrialized nations that control trade, technology, and global wealth due to historical exploitations.
• Peripheral Regions, considered the "underdogs", consist of colonized nations that are economically weaker and undergo resource extraction.
• Semiperipheral Regions are the "middle children", which were once poor but now have economies that exploit periphery regions, but are still controlled by core regions.

Canada: From Periphery to Semiperiphery

• Canada was not always a wealthy country and by 1900, it was considered a semiperipheral country thanks to Confederation, Railroads, Tariffs & Industrialization.
• Canada did not turn into a "core" country because of the Staples Trap, which is reliance on unprocessed raw goods.

Colonization, Imperialism, and Neocolonialism: The Unfinished Story

• Colonies were forced into "specializing" in one thing—usually raw materials, while rich nations took resources, made products, and sold them back at higher prices.
• Imperialism is not just about money, but power too, resulting from colonization that lead to Core countries expanding their empires to control resources and prevent rivals from growing.
• Neocolonialism is colonization 2.0, even after colonies gained independence, exploitation stops with International finance, and Corporations that extract resources from poorer countries all helped through Humanitarian aid & military influence.

Globalization

• The world has been connected since the 16th century, but it's faster through globalization with trade, culture, politics, and technology working together.
• Humans have altered nature for wealth, causing crises elsewhere, especially climate change, deforestation, and agriculture.
• Due to increased global connections, global pandemics spread fast.

Security and Core-Periphery Disparities

• Weapons, nuclear contamination, cyberattacks are security dangers with no borders, and this is also true of climate change.
• The gap between rich & poor is huge at all levels which makes spatial justice a neccessity, requiring fair distribution of wealth, resources, and opportunities.
• Nations are shaped by core, semiperipheral, and peripheral regions as colonization never really ended.

Population Geography

• Population geography studies the distribution of human populations, how it changes, and how it affectes societies, economies, and the environment.
• Geographers study population by looking at demography, asking where people live and why, how people interact with their environment, and what happens when population patterns change.

Data Sources

• The most basic approach involves using a census or a count of people in a country, Provides information like age but can be expensive, time-consuming, and inaccurate.
• Population is tracked through records of Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, and disease through authorities.
• Registries & Linked Databases are part of a digital record connecting tax, immigration, and health data that is more detailed but can create consern for data leak.
• Data collection can be limited by People without ID documents, War, conflict, and natural disasters or simply due to fraud and technology failures.

Factors Affecting Population Distribution

• Populations are controlled by accessibility, typography, soil fertitility, climate, water avaliability, culture or politics.
• By measuring population denisty with Crude Density and Health Care Density.

Population Composition

• Population Composition classifies the subgroups within a population into Youth Cohort (under 15 years), Middle Cohort (15-64), and an Old-Age Cohort (65+).
• A Dependency Ratio measures how much the working population supports children and the elderly.
• Age-Sex Pyramids present a breakdown of a country's population and feature a Wide base for a high birth rate or a Narrow base for low birth rate.

Population Dynamics

• Population is controlled by Birth Rates, Crude Death Rate, and Migration.
• Modern Societies develop population growth using the Demographic Transition Theory.
• This divides phases into stages, including a Pre-Industrial Stage, Transitional Stage, Industrial Stage, and Post-Industrial Stage.
• Migration is explained as The movement of people from one place to another.
• Movements can be explained by Mobility or Migration, which can involve Emigration or Immigration.

Factor influencing movement

• Factors include Push factors that make them leave, or Pull Factors that attract them to a new area.
• People can choose how to move through Voluntary or Force, to engage in Labor or Transnational Migration.
• Those displaced will be considered a refugee or Internally Displaced Persons.

Population Debates & Policies

• Population debates often surround questions of how Many People Can Earth Sustain.
• Malthusian Theory predicts that population growth would outreach food and is not sustainable.
• Some may argue instead that Overpopulation stems from uneaqual resource distribution, Political and econimic structures that influence society.

Sustainable Development Approach to population growth

• Poverty Reduction is accomplished by allowing less economic reasons for large families
• Healthcare Improvment lowers child mortality = Lower birth rates.
• Sustainable Resources are the result of less Environmental damange.

Factors influening health

• Health is tied to life quality with longer life expectance linked to high income.
• Healthcare access & income control these factors.
• In additon behaviral & structural factors also extert influence.

People & Nature Study Notes

• Humans and natures interactions can be categorized around the following:
• A combination that is a physical reality with social construct.
• The world is shaped by both a physical space and a human-made idea.
• The colonization & globalization have had the greatest impact through capitalism & industrialization.

Ways People Can View Nature

• Nature is what we define it to be and includes untouched and altered landscapes.
• Societies and nature constantly influence each other,
• Humans modify nature, nature shapes societies.
• Humans always adapted to environmental challenges through technology like farming.
• Major ways humans have impacted nature have involed more factories creating pollutions.

Enivornmental Impact

• The consumtion of natural resources can be linked to Deforestation & Fossil fuels.
• A key point is that almost Every part of Earth has been altered by humans and impacted wilderness.
• This creates concerns and Westerners often create an attitude that nature is for use by and to benifit people.
• Romanticism argues that nature is spiritual.
• Conservation argue for carefull stewardship.
• The is always Preservation to keep the environment safe and unaltered.
• These view points argue for links with Ecofeminism, Animism, and Environmental Justice to see environmental problems affect marganalised communities who need benifits and safety.

Sustainabilility

• Balances economic growth, environmental protection, and social equity.
• Affected by Capitalism which can lead to the explotiation of natural resources
• Sustainable actions work to create solutions for a decolonoised enivornment.