Intro to Human Geography

Intro to Human Geography

Objectives! • Be able to explain what geography is and why it is relevant. • Identify the difference between physical and human geography. • Identify and explain the basic theories about the relationship between people and their environment. • Understand what culture and cultural ecology is.

What is Geography? • Geographers ask where things are and why – it is a spatial science. • We are concerned with globalization and local diversity, and the tension between them. • Complex discipline with a human and physical division.

Why is Geography Important?

Culture • Two aspects: – What people care about • Beliefs, values, and customs

– What people take care of • Earning a living; obtaining food, clothing, and shelter

Culture 1. A social creation. 2. It changes! Culture is dynamic. 3. It’s a complex system. We practice our culture through our interactions with others at the same time that we are impacted it.

Natural Processes • • • •

Climate Vegetation Soil Landforms

These four features are important for understanding human activities

What’s the Relationship Between People and the Environment? • Cultural Ecology - The geographic study of human–environment relationships 1) Environmental determinism – the environment causes human development • Actor-Network Theory 2) Possibilism – people have the ability to adjust to their environment

But Wait, We Change the Earth too.. 3) Humans as Modifiers • Take natural landscapes and turn them into cultural landscapes.

English Landscape by Capability Brown

The Cultural Landscape • A unique combination of social relationships and physical processes • Carl Sauer

• Each region = a distinctive landscape • People = the most important agents of change to Earth’s surface http://www.panoramio.com/map/

Integrated Systems 4) People + Earth = integrated – The Earth is a system that has different parts that interact – Humans and nature cause changes in the operations of the Earth-system

Objective • Get familiar with the five key geographic concepts, and start to apply them to real life.

Main Concepts • • • • •

Place Space Diffusion Spatial Interaction Scale

Place: Unique Location of a Feature • Location – Place names • Toponyms

– Site – physical characteristics of a place – Situation – location of a place relative to other places & political, economic, social context – Mathematical location (lat and long) A place is a specific point on Earth. Take a moment and jot down a description of a place you are from using the terms site and situation. Map of Washington State

Types of Regions – Regional Analysis • Formal (uniform) regions – Examples: voting districts, states (Virginia), English-speaking world, Bread Basket of the US, tropical climate zones

• Functional (nodal) regions – Examples: the circulation area of a newspaper, bus service areas, police service area

• Perceptual (vernacular) regions – Examples: the American South, Pacific Northwest, everywhere people love the Huskies

Formal Regions

Functional Regions Television Markets of the U.S.

King County Wastewater Service Area

Vernacular (Perceptual) Regions

Lewis Historical Society

• Think back to the place you are from—what regions is your home part of?

Spatial Association • Regions are useful because we can use them explore the correlations of events to places. • Regions can encompass an area of widely varying scales, from a small to a large portion. ex., geographers study local politics or international politics.

• Depending on the scale of the region, different conclusions may be drawn about a region’s characteristics.

Spatial Association • Examples: – Prevalence of HIV/AIDS – Impact of Sandy on 2012 Presidential Election – Relationship of Unemployment to Population Change – Plague in the United States

Space • Absolute vs. Relative space • Distribution—three features – Density – frequency with which something occurs in space. – Concentration – a feature’s spread over space. Clustered? Dispersed? – Pattern –arrangement of objects in space. Geometric? Irregular?

Spatial Variation • The changes in the distribution of a phenomenon from one place or region to another.

Spatial Interaction Refers to the connections that develop between places, for example: transportation & communication. What is globalization? Our text discusses two types of globalization: Economic and cultural

Spatial Interaction – Complementarity – when a place can supply what another place needs – Transferability – cost of moving a good and the profitability of moving that good – Intervening Opportunities – when there are places that can supply a good cheaper than other places

Spatial Interaction People, ideas, commodities move between places. • Distance decay - Tapering off of a process, pattern or event over a distance. - “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.”

Diffusion • The process by which a characteristic spreads across space and over time---but doesn’t mean it stays the same! • Hearth = place from which an innovation originates • Types of diffusion – Relocation – Expansion • Three types: hierarchical, contagious, stimulus

Connections Time Space Convergence – reduction in time it takes for something to reach another place. Globalization doesn’t change actual distance, but it can make places seem closer.

Scale Way of depicting the world in a reduced form. Two Kinds: • Cartographic scale : expresses ratio of distance on map to Earth. • Observational / methodological scale – levels of analysis. – Local, regional, national, international scales

Where Are You From? • How is the place you are from connected to other places---what is the spatial interaction like?

Review • • • • • • • •

What is geography? Why is geography relevant? Place: site, situation, mathematical location Regions: types of regions Cultural landscape, culture and cultural ecology Scale Globalization Space – Ways features are distributed and arranged, terms used to describe them • Connections: Spatial interaction, diffusion