Lecture Notes: What Is Human Geography? PDF

What Is Human Geography? LECTURE 1 Preclassical Geography  The earliest geographic descriptions were maps that served as a simple yet effective means of communicating spatial information such as the location of resources, wildlife, and/or potential threats.  The world's first civiliz...

What Is Human Geography? LECTURE 1 Preclassical Geography  The earliest geographic descriptions were maps that served as a simple yet effective means of communicating spatial information such as the location of resources, wildlife, and/or potential threats.  The world's first civilization emerged in Mesopotamia (Iraq)around 4000 BCE, marked by clay tablet maps that primarily depicted local areas.  Similar geographic representations emerged encompassing regions like the Nile Valley (Egypt), the Indus Valley (Afghanistan, Pakistan and India), China, Greece (Crete, Minoan and Mycenaean), and Olmec (Mexico). Classical Geography  Greek mobility and the establishment of colonies around 1000 BCE marked a significant shift in geographic understanding and map-making.  Greek scholars initiated two major geographic traditions. The first is a literary tradition, involving written descriptions of the known world.  Notable contributors include Herodotus, who provided detailed descriptions based on extensive travels, and Aristotle, who explored relationships between latitude (lines circling the planet from east and west), climate, and population density.  Eratosthenes coined the term ‘geography’ and is often considered the father of geography. His book describing the known world and maps of the Mediterranean region and adjacent areas are significant contributions. Classical Geography  Strabo later summarized this tradition in "Geographia," an encyclopedic work detailing the entire known world to the Greeks, surviving in multiple volumes with sections on Europe, Asia, and Africa.  The second tradition is mathematical. Eratosthenes, in the second century BCE, calculated the earth's circumference, and Hipparchus introduced longitude and latitude grid lines, significantly improving map accuracy.  Ptolemy, in the second century CE, produced a world map. Although his work contained errors, it marked a substantial improvement over earlier maps and introduced mapping procedures that have endured to the present.  Despite the expansion of the Roman Empire, ancient Rome added little to geographic knowledge, emphasizing the foundational role played by classical Greek geography. Geography in China  Between the Greek era and the fifteenth century, significant geographic progress occurred in China and the Islamic world.  China produced writings describing the known world from at least the fifth century BCE.  Chinese explorers, like Chang Chi’en, ventured reaching places such as the Mediterranean, India, central Asia, Rome, and Paris, even predating Marco Polo's journey to China.  Early Chinese geography differed from its European counterpart, emphasizing a distinctive geographic perspective rooted in the integration of humans and nature. Geography in China  Unlike the European view of individuals as separate from nature, Chinese culture traditionally considered individuals as part of nature (human and physical geography).  Maps played a central role in Chinese geography during the Han dynasty.  Civil servants, serving the state, were the first Chinese map-makers, creating symbolic maps that asserted the state's territorial ownership.  This underscores the significance of maps as tools for political representation and control in ancient China. Geography in the Islamic World  As the religion of Islam founded in the seventh century CE by the prophet Muhammad (d. 632) spread, it served as a unifying force, bringing together previously disparate tribes.  Consequently, at the time when Europe was immersed in the Dark Ages, civilization flourished in Arabia (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Iraq and Jordan).  As Islamic conquests spread beyond the Arab region, the geographic knowledge base expanded to include North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal), and India. Geography in the Islamic World  By the ninth century Islamic geographers were recalculating the circumference of the earth.  Among the most notable contributions were those of al-Idrisi (1099–1180), whose book on world geography corrected many of Ptolemy’s errors and ibn-Battuta (1304–1368), who journeyed extensively in Europe, Asia, and Africa.  A third major addition to geography came from ibn-Khaldun (1332–1406), a historian who wrote at length about the relations between humans and the environment.  Maps produced by Islamic geographers centered on Arabia. Geography in the Islamic World  An important eleventh-century Arabic atlas, previously unknown to modern geographers, was discovered in a private collection in 2002 and is now housed in a library in Oxford, England.  Widely regarded as a missing link in the history of cartography, this two- volume, 96-page manuscript includes 17 maps, two of them depicting the world as it was known at the beginning of the second millennium.  The fact that some of the maps show travel routes suggests that, unlike earlier Greek and later European maps, they were intended not to represent actual landscapes, but to serve a practical purpose as memory aids for travelers. Age of European Overseas Movement  In the 15th century unprecedented European exploratory activity, driven by factors such as the desire to spread Christianity, establish trade routes, and advancements in printing technology.  The use of printing technology for map production in Europe began in 1472, allowing the rapid dissemination of information, including maps.  Additionally, the establishment of centers of geographic analysis, initiated by Prince Henry of Portugal in 1418, marked a thirst for knowledge.  These centers focused on key geographic questions, taught navigation techniques, and spurred explorations along the western coast of Africa. Mapping  The early phase of European overseas exploration marked a shift in science from being church-controlled to knowledge acquisition as a response to the needs of sea travelers.  In contrast to medieval maps that often combined fantasy and dogma, maps from the fifteenth century onward emphasized factual representation and featured the grid of latitude and longitude, aligning with the demands of sea navigation.  Gerardus Mercator, with his influential 1569 Mercator projection, addressed the challenge of representing a sphere on a flat surface. This projection, still widely used, became invaluable for sea travelers.  Abraham Ortelius, produced the first modern atlas in 1570, reflecting the significant demand for geographic knowledge through its 41 editions by 1612. Map-Making, Exploration, and Geographical Societies  Map-making was considered so important that governments began to assume responsibility for the task and in England the Ordnance Survey was founded in 1791.  The agency's name indicates its original military purpose, which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745  Largescale topographic maps, showing small areas in considerable detail, became possible with the development of exact survey techniques in eighteenth-century France.  Exploration continued and was greatly assisted by the founding of geographical societies in Paris, France (1821), Berlin, Germany (1828), London, England (1830), St. Petersburg, Russia (1845), and New York, US (1851). Physical Geography as Cause  Academic geography has continued to emphasize several areas of study:  1. physical geography as cause  2. humans and land  3. regional studies  4. and spatial analysis Physical geography as cause  Physical geography as cause known as environmental determinism, was articulated by Friedrich Ratzel, claimed that human landscapes and cultures were predominantly shaped by physical geography.  Environmental determinism, explicitly identifying physical causes and human effects, was popular in the first half of the twentieth century but never became the focus of a formal school of geography.  Ultimately, environmental determinism is now discredited, acknowledging that the relations between physical and human geography are more complex and multifaceted than a simple cause-and-effect model. Humans and land  Three scholars, Paul Vidal de la Blache, Otto Schlüter, and Carl Sauer, played pivotal roles in providing a clearer definition of geography.  Vidal developed géographie Vidalienne (concerns were the relations between humans and land, the evolution of human landscapes, and the description of distinctive local regions) around 1899.  Schlüter founded the German school of Landschaftskunde (landscape science concerns the relationship between people and their environment, with a focus on land use change and data pertaining to land resources) in 1906.  Sauer, an American, introduced and elaborated on these European ideas in North America in 1925 laying the foundation for landscape geography, which focuses on how human cultural groups transform the physical geographic landscape over time. Humans and land  The ideas of Vidal, Schlüter, and Sauer collectively reject the notion of physical-geography-as-cause, challenging environmental determinism.  Instead, they advocate for possibilism, asserting that human activity is shaped not solely by physical environments, but also by the choices humans make.  This perspective emerged around the same time as environmental determinism, gaining popularity due to scholarship on human-land relationships, instances of varied human landscapes in similar physical settings, and alignment with the prevalent belief in individual human decision-making. Humans and land  The study of landscape has been a consistent theme in human geography involving the examination of human ways of life, cultural regions, related landscapes, and the intricate relationships between human and physical environments.  Since 1970, landscape studies have evolved by incorporating new conceptual concerns associated with humanism, Marxism, feminism, and a heightened awareness of advancements in other social science disciplines, especially postmodernism.  Contemporary landscape geography encompasses both visible features, such as fields and buildings, and symbolic features, including meanings and values.  Moreover, there is an explicit acknowledgment that landscapes, like regions, both reflect and influence cultural, social, political, and economic processes. Regional studies  Regional geography, or chorology, proved to be the most popular focus during the first half of the nineteenth century.  Pioneering work by German geographers such as Richthofen and Hettner was carried into English-language geography, and there was a prevailing understanding that the ultimate task of geography was to define regions.  In America, this view was attractive for physical geographers in particular; for example, W.M. Davis produced a map of regions as early as 1899.  In 1905 the British geographer A.J. Herbertson (1865–1915) proposed an outline of the world’s natural regions. Regional studies  These developments culminated with the 1939 publication of The Nature of Geography by the American Richard Hartshorne.  Hartshorne argued forcefully for geography as the study of regions—what Hartshorne often called areal differentiation—a view that was very much in accord with prevailing American opinion and that continued to dominate geography until the mid-1950s.  Geography in the North American world by 1953 was thus characterized by two related but different emphases: analysis of the relationship between humans and land and regional studies. Regional studies  Since 1970, however, regional geography, like landscape geography, has resurfaced in a somewhat different guise and has once again become a central perspective.  Regional geography currently emphasizes the understanding and description of a particular region and what it means for different people to live there.  This emphasis reflects at least three general concerns: regions as settings or locales for human activity; uneven economic and social development between regions, including a focus on the changing division of labor; and the ways in which regions reflect the characteristics of the occupying society and in turn affect that society. Spatial analysis  Spatial analysis focuses on explaining the location of geographic facts.  F.W. Schaefer in 1953 argued that geographers should move away from simple description in regional studies to a more explanatory framework based on scientific methods such as the construction of theory and the use of quantitative methods.  The 1960s were characterized by phenomenal growth in detailed analyses based on the proposal and testing of hypotheses by means of quantitative procedures.  By 1970, regional geography was receding in popularity and spatial analysis had found a niche alongside somewhat modified versions of both the landscape and regional approaches. Spatial analysis  A central concern of spatial analysis is that the theoretical constructs it uses to explain locations are somewhat limited and hence tend to emphasize generalizations at the expense of specifics.  The topics studied by spatial analysts are mostly in the subdisciplines of economic, agricultural, settlement, urban, and industrial geography as opposed to political, cultural, or social.  This tendency reflects the influence of various economic location theories.