Human Geography

1

Introduc tion to Human Geography

1CHAPTER

Field Note Awakening to World Hunger

KENYA

SU DA

N ETHIOPIA

TANZANIA

UGANDA

SO M

AL IALakeTurkana

INDIAN OCEAN

Lake Victoria

0° Equator

40°E

Kericho

Masai Mara

Dragging myself out of bed for a 9:00 A.M. lecture, I decide I need to make a stop at Starbucks. “Grande coffee of the day, please, and leave room for cream.” I rub my eyes and look at the sign to see where my coffee was grown. Kenya. Ironically, I am about to lecture on Kenya’s coffee plantations. Just the wake-up call I need.

When I visited Kenya in eastern Africa, I drove from Masai Mara to Kericho and I noticed nearly all of the agricultural fi elds I could see were planted with cof- fee or tea (Fig. 1.1). I also saw the poor of Kenya, clearly hungry, living in substan- dard housing. I questioned, “Why do farmers in Kenya grow coffee and tea when they could grow food to feed the hungry?” Trying to answer such a question sheds light on the complexities of globalization. In a globalized world, connections are many and simple answers are few.

Figure 1.1 Kericho, Kenya. Tea plantations established by British colonists in western Kenya. © H. J. de Blij.

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Source: Fouberg, Erin H., Alexander B. Murphy and Harm J. Di Blij. 2012. Human Geography: People, Place and Culture, 10th edition. Wiley-Blackwell.

2 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

On its face, such a huge problem might seem easy to solve. Take the total annual food production in the world, divide it by the world’s population, and we have plenty of food for everyone. Yet, one-seventh of the world’s popula- tion is seriously malnourished. The vast majority of the 1 billion malnourished people on Earth are women and children, who have little money and even less power.

Figure 1.2 shows how food consumption is currently distributed-unevenly. Comparing Figure 1.2 with Figure 1.3 shows that the wealthier countries also are the best fed and that Subsaharan Africa (the part of Africa south of the Sahara Desert)

Figure 1.2 World Food Program Hunger Map, 2011. Classifi cations designate the proportion of the population malnourished. The World Food Program estimates just under 1 billion people worldwide are malnourished. Courtesy of: United Nations World Food Program 2011.

CANADA

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GREENLAND

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ECUADOR

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Data not available

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10–19%

WORLD HUNGER 2011 PERCENTAGE OF UNDERNOURISHED

POPULATION BY COUNTRY

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Awakening to World Hunger 3

is currently in the worst position, with numerous countries in the highest catego- ries of hunger and malnourishment.

The major causes of malnourishment are poverty (inability to pay for food), the failure of food distribution systems, and cultural and political prac- tices that favor some groups over others. Where food does reach the needy, its price may be unaffordable. Hundreds of millions of people subsist on the equiv- alent of one dollar a day, and many in the vast shantytowns encircling some of the world’s largest cities must pay rent to landlords who own the plots on which their shacks are built. Too little is left for food, and it is the children who suffer most.

Is solving hunger as simple as each country growing enough food to feed its people? Do the best-fed countries have the most arable (farmable) land? Only 4 percent of Norway is arable land, and more than 70 percent of Bangladesh is arable

GREENLAND

ICELAND

IRELAND

UNITED KINGDOM

PORTUGAL SPAIN

FRANCE

NETH.

GER. POLAND

ITALY

SWITZ. AUST. ROM.

BULG.

ALB. GREECE TURKEY

CYPRUS

HUNG.

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

DENMARK

ESTONIA

LITHUANIA

LEBANONMOROCCO

WESTERN SAHARA

ALGERIA LIBYA

TUNISIA

EGYPT

SUDAN

SOUTH SUDAN

CHAD NIGER

MALIMAURITANIA

ETHIOPIA

DJIBOUTI

ERITREA

SOMALIA

SENEGAL

GUINEA-BISSAU GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA

GHANA

IVORY COAST

TOGO BENIN

NIGERIA

CAMEROON

BURKINA FASO

CENTRAL AFRICAN REP.

THE CONGO

CONGO GABONEQUATORIAL

GUINEA

UGANDA KENYA

TANZANIA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

ANGOLA ZAMBIA

MALAWI

MOÇAMBIQUEZIMBABWE

BOTSWANA NAMIBIA

SOUTH AFRICA LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

MADAGASCAR

MAURITIUS

COMOROS

LATVIA

BELARUS

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

RUSSIA

GEORGIA ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

KAZAKHSTAN

KYRGYZSTAN TAJIKISTAN

MONGOLIA

IRAN

CHINA IRAQ

SYRIA

JORDANISRAEL KUWAIT

SAUDI ARABIA

QATAR BAHRAIN

U.A.E.

OMAN

YEMEN

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

INDIA

NEPAL

SRI LANKA

BHUTAN

BANGLADESH MYANMAR (BURMA)

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

LAOS VIETNAM

TAIWAN

MA LA YS I A

BRUNEI

PHILIPPINES

INDONES I A PAPUA NEW

GUINEA

AUSTRAL I A

NE W ZE ALAND

JAPAN

N. KOREA

S. KOREA

NEW CALEDONIA

VANUATU

SOLOMON ISLANDS

FIJI

SINGAPORE

SLOV.

MACE.

CRO. BOS.

CZ. REP. SLVK

GAMBIA

BELG.

EAST TIMOR

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MONT. KOS.

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4 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

land (Fig. 1.4). Despite this disparity, Norway is wealthy and well fed, whereas Bangladesh is poor and malnourished. Fortunately for the Norwegians, they are able to overcome their inadequate food production by importing food. Unfortunately for the Bangladeshis, two-thirds of their country is fl ooded each year during monsoon season. The monsoon rains are good for rice production, but they make survival a daily challenge in Bangladesh.

If a poor country has a small proportion of arable land, does that destine its population to a lifetime of malnourishment? It depends on the place. Of all the land classifi ed as arable, some is much more productive than others. For example, only 8 percent of Kenya’s land is arable, but the land in the western highlands is

Figure 1.3 Per Capita Gross National Income (in U.S. dollars) (GNI), 2009. Data from: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2011.

CANADA

UN I TED STATES

U.S. (Alaska)

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EL SALVADOR

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

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ECUADOR

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WORLD - PER CAPITA GROSS NATIONAL INCOME, 2009

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Data not available

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Adequate

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Very low

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Awakening to World Hunger 5

some of the most productive agricultural land in the world. Do the Kenyans sim- ply not produce enough food on their lands? Is that what accounts for their mal- nutrition rate of over 30 percent? No, hunger in Kenya depends much more on what they produce, who owns the land, and how Kenya is tied into the global economy.

Kenya’s most productive lands, those in the western highlands, are owned by foreign coffee and tea corporations. Driving through the open, luxury-crop-covered slopes, I saw mostly Kenyan women working the plantations. The lowland plains are dotted by small farms, many of which have been subdivided to the point of making the land unviable. Here, an even higher proportion of the people working the lands are women, but the lands are registered to their husbands or sons because, by law, they cannot own them.

GREENLAND

ICELAND

IRELAND

UNITED KINGDOM

PORTUGAL SPAIN

FRANCE

NETH.

GER. POLAND

ITALY

SWITZ. AUST. ROM.

BULG.

ALB. GREECE TURKEY

CYPRUS

HUNG.

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

DENMARK

ESTONIA

LITHUANIA

LEBANONMOROCCO

WESTERN SAHARA

ALGERIA LIBYA

TUNISIA

EGYPT

SUDAN

SOUTH SUDAN

CHAD NIGER

MALIMAURITANIA

ETHIOPIA

DJIBOUTI

ERITREA

SOMALIA

SENEGAL

GUINEA-BISSAU GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA

GHANA

IVORY COAST

TOGO BENIN

NIGERIA

CAMEROON

BURKINA FASO

CENTRAL AFRICAN REP.

THE CONGO

CONGO GABONEQUATORIAL

GUINEA

UGANDA KENYA

TANZANIA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

ANGOLA ZAMBIA

MALAWI

MOÇAMBIQUEZIMBABWE

BOTSWANA NAMIBIA

SOUTH AFRICA LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

MADAGASCAR

MAURITIUS

COMOROS

LATVIA

BELARUS

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

RUSSIA

GEORGIA ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

KAZAKHSTAN

KYRGYZSTAN TAJIKISTAN

MONGOLIA

IRAN

CHINA IRAQ

SYRIA

JORDANISRAEL KUWAIT

SAUDI ARABIA

QATAR BAHRAIN

U.A.E.

OMAN

YEMEN

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

INDIA

NEPAL

SRI LANKA

BHUTAN

BANGLADESH MYANMAR (BURMA)

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

LAOS VIETNAM

TAIWAN

MA LA YS I A

BRUNEI

PHILIPPINES

INDONES I A PAPUA NEW

GUINEA

AUSTRAL I A

NE W ZE ALAND

JAPAN

N. KOREA

S. KOREA

NEW CALEDONIA

VANUATU

SOLOMON ISLANDS

FIJI

SINGAPORE

SLOV.

MACE.

CRO. BOS.

CZ. REP. SLVK

GAMBIA

BELG.

EAST TIMOR

SERB.

MONT. KOS.

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Tropic of Cancer

Arctic Circle

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6 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

As I drove through the contrasting landscapes, I continued to question whether it would be better for the fertile highlands to carry food crops that could be consumed by the people in Kenya. I drove to the tea processing center and talked to the manager, a member of the Kikuyu ethnic group, and asked him my question. He said that his country needed foreign income and that apart from tourism, exporting coffee and tea was the main opportunity for foreign income.

As part of an increasingly globalized economy, Kenya suffers from the com- plexities of globalization. With foreign corporations owning Kenya’s best lands, a globalized economy that thrives on foreign income, tiny farms that are unproduc- tive, and a gendered legal system that disenfranchises the agricultural labor force and disempowers the caregivers of the country’s children, Kenya has multiple fac- tors contributing to poverty and malnutrition in the country. In addition to these structural concerns, Kenyan agro-pastoralists, especially in the northeast, have

Figure 1.4 Percent of Land That Is Arable (Farmable), 2008. Data from: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 2011.

CANADA

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U.S. (Alaska)

GREENLAND

MEXICO

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EL SALVADOR

HONDURAS

NICARAGUA

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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

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Awakening to World Hunger 7

suffered higher rates of famine since a drought began in the region in 2006. Agro- pastoralists raise crops and have livestock and therefore struggle against drought as well as livestock diseases and political confl ict.

To solve one of the structural problems in Kenya raises another. If Kenyans converted the richest lands to cash crop production, how would the poor people be able to afford the crops? What would happen to the rest of Kenya’s economy and the government itself if it lost the export revenue from tea and coffee? If Kenya lost its export revenue, how could the country pay loans it owes to global fi nancial and development institutions?

Answering each of these questions requires geographic inquiry because the answers are rooted in the characteristics of places and the connections those places have to other places. Moreover, geographic fieldwork can provide tremendous insights into such questions. Geographers have a long tradition of fi eldwork: they go out in the fi eld and see what people are doing, they observe how peoples’ actions and reactions vary across space, and they develop maps and other visualizations that help

GREENLAND

ICELAND

IRELAND

UNITED KINGDOM

PORTUGAL SPAIN

FRANCE

NETH.

GER. POLAND

ITALY

SWITZ. AUST. ROM.

BULG.

ALB. GREECE TURKEY

CYPRUS

HUNG.

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

DENMARK

ESTONIA

LITHUANIA

LEBANONMOROCCO

WESTERN SAHARA

ALGERIA LIBYA

TUNISIA

EGYPT

SUDAN

SOUTH SUDAN

CHAD NIGER

MALIMAURITANIA

ETHIOPIA

DJIBOUTI

ERITREA

SOMALIA

SENEGAL

GUINEA-BISSAU GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA

GHANA

IVORY COAST

TOGO BENIN

NIGERIA

CAMEROON

BURKINA FASO

CENTRAL AFRICAN REP.

THE CONGO

CONGO GABONEQUATORIAL

GUINEA

UGANDA KENYA

TANZANIA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

ANGOLA ZAMBIA

MALAWI

MOÇAMBIQUEZIMBABWE

BOTSWANA NAMIBIA

SOUTH AFRICA LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

MADAGASCAR

MAURITIUS

COMOROS

LATVIA

BELARUS

UKRAINE

MOLDOVA

RUSSIA

GEORGIA ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

KAZAKHSTAN

KYRGYZSTAN TAJIKISTAN

MONGOLIA

IRAN

CHINA IRAQ

SYRIA

JORDANISRAEL KUWAIT

SAUDI ARABIA

QATAR BAHRAIN

U.A.E.

OMAN

YEMEN

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

INDIA

NEPAL

SRI LANKA

BHUTAN

BANGLADESH MYANMAR (BURMA)

THAILAND

CAMBODIA

LAOS VIETNAM

TAIWAN

MA LA YS I A

BRUNEI

PHILIPPINES

INDONES I A PAPUA NEW

GUINEA

AUSTRAL I A

NE W ZE ALAND

JAPAN

N. KOREA

S. KOREA

NEW CALEDONIA

VANUATU

SOLOMON ISLANDS

FIJI

SINGAPORE

SLOV.

MACE.

CRO. BOS.

CZ. REP. SLVK

GAMBIA

BELG.

EAST TIMOR

SERB.

MONT. KOS.

20°

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Tropic of Cancer

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8 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

them situate and analyze what they see. We, the authors, have countless fi eld experi- ences, and we will share these with you to help you understand the diversity of Earth’s surface and show how global processes have unique outcomes in different places.

Solving major global problems such as hunger or AIDS is complicated in our interconnected world. Each solution has its own ramifi cations not only in one place, but also across regions, nations, and the world. Our goals in this book are to help you see the multitude of interconnections in our world, to help you recog- nize the patterns of human geographic phenomena that shape the world, to help you understand the uniqueness of place, and to teach you to ask and answer your own geographic questions about this world we call home.

Key Questions For Chapter 1 1. What is human geography? 2. What are geographic questions? 3. Why do geographers use maps, and what do maps tell us? 4. Why are geographers concerned with scale and connectedness? 5. What are geographic concepts, and how are they used in answering

geographic questions?

WHAT IS HUMAN GEOGRAPHY? Human geographers study people and places. The

fi eld of human geography focuses on how people make places, how we organize space and society, how we inter- act with each other in places and across space, and how we make sense of others and ourselves in our localities, regions, and the world.

Advances in communication and transportation technologies are making places and people more inter- connected. Only 100 years ago the fastest modes of trans- portation were the steamship, the railroad, and the horse and buggy. Today, people can cross the globe in a matter of days, with easy access to automobiles, high-speed rail- roads, airplanes, and ships.

Economic globalization and the rapid diffusion of ele- ments of popular culture, such as fashion and architecture, are making many people and places look more alike. Despite the push toward homogeneity, our world still encompasses a multitude of ways in which people identify themselves and others. The world consists of nearly 200 countries, a diver- sity of religions, thousands of languages, and a wide variety of settlement types, ranging from small villages to enormous global cities. All of these attributes come together in differ- ent ways around the globe to create a world of endlessly diverse places and people. Understanding and explaining this diversity is the mission of human geography.

Because the world is so interconnected, we cannot look solely at the characteristics of individual places.

Instead, we must recognize that places all over the world are fundamentally affected by the “globalization” of many phenomena. Globalization is a set of processes that are increasing interactions, deepening relationships, and accel- erating interdependence across national borders. It is also a set of outcomes that are felt from these global processes— outcomes that are unevenly distributed and differently manifested across the world.

All too often, discussions of globalization focus on the pull between the global, seen as a blanket covering the world, and the local, seen as a continuation of the tra- ditional despite the blanket of globalization. Geographers are well placed to recognize globalization as something signifi cantly more complex. Geographers employ the concept of “scale” to understand individual, local, regional, national, and global interrelationships. What happens at the global scale affects the local, but it also affects the individual, regional, and national, and simi- larly the processes at these scales infl uence the global. Reducing the world to “local” and “global” risks losing sight of the complexity that characterizes modern life. In this book, we study globalization, but as geographers we are sensitive to the fact that the same globalized process has different impacts in different places because no two places are the same. Moreover, whenever we look at something at one scale, we always try to think about how processes that exist at other scales may affect what we are looking at, and vice versa (see the discussion of scale later in this chapter).

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What Are Geographic Questions? 9

Globalizing processes occur at the world scale; these processes bypass country borders and include global fi nancial markets and global environmental change. However, the processes of globalization do not magically appear at the global scale: what happens at other scales (indi- vidual, local, regional, national) helps create the processes of glo- balization and shape the outcomes of globalization.

Some argue that the impacts of globalization are exag- gerated, but as geographers Ron Johnston, Peter Taylor, and Michael Watts explain, “Whatever your opinion may be, any intellectual engagement with social change in the twenty fi rst century has to address this concept seriously, and assess its capacity to explain the world we currently inhabit.” We integrate the concept of globalization into this textbook because processes at the global scale, processes that are not confi ned to local places or national borders, are clearly changing the human geography of the planet. At the same time, as we travel the world and continue to engage in fi eldwork and research, we are constantly reminded of how different places and people are from one another—processes at the individual, local, regional, and national scales con- tinue to change human geography and shape globalization.

No place on Earth is untouched by people. As people explore, travel, migrate, interact, play, live, and work, they make places. People organize themselves into communi- ties, nations, and broader societal networks, establishing political, economic, religious, linguistic, and cultural sys- tems that enable them to function in space. People adapt to, alter, manipulate, and cope with their physical geo- graphic environment. No environment stands apart from human action. Each place we see is affected by and created by people, and each place refl ects the culture of the people in that place over time.

Imagine and describe the most remote place on Earth you can think of 100 years ago. Now, describe how globalization has changed that place and how the people there continue to shape it and make it the place it is today.

WHAT ARE GEOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS? Geographers study human phenomena such as lan-

guage, religion, and identity, as well as physical phenom- ena such as landforms, climate, and environmental change. Geographers also examine the interactions between humans and environment. Human geography is the study of the spatial and material characteristics of the human- made places and people found on Earth’s surface; physical

geography asks similar questions about the natural envi- ronment. Human and physical geographers adopt a similar perspective but focus on different phenomena.

Geographer Marvin Mikesell once gave a shorthand defi nition of geography as the “why of where.” Why and how do things come together in certain places to produce particu- lar outcomes? Why are some things found in certain places but not in others? How do the characteristics of particular places shape what happens? To what extent do things in one place infl uence those in other places? To these questions, we add “so what?” Why do differences across geographic space matter? What role does a place play in its region and in the world, and what does that mean for people there and else- where? Questions such as these are at the core of geographic inquiry—whether human or physical-and they are of critical importance in any effort to make sense of our world.

If geography deals with so many aspects of our world, ranging from people and places to coastlines and climates, what do the various facets of this wide-ranging discipline have in common? The answer lies in a perspective that both human and physical geographers bring to their stud- ies: a spatial perspective. Whether they are human geog- raphers or physical geographers, virtually all geographers are interested in the spatial arrangement of places and phe- nomena, how they are laid out, organized, and arranged on the Earth, and how they appear on the landscape.

Mapping the spatial distribution of a phenomenon can be the fi rst step to understanding it. By looking at a map of how something is distributed across space, a geog- rapher can raise questions about how the arrangement came about, what processes create and sustain the particu- lar distributions or patterns, and what relationships exist between different places and things.

Maps in the Time of Cholera Pandemics In medical geography, mapping the distribution of a dis- ease is the fi rst step to fi nding its cause. In 1854, Dr. John Snow, a noted anesthesiologist in London, mapped cases of cholera in London’s Soho District.

Cholera is an ancient disease associated with diarrhea and dehydration. It was confi ned to India until the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1816 it spread to China, Japan, East Africa, and Mediterranean Europe in the fi rst of several pandemics, worldwide outbreaks of the disease. This initial wave abated by 1823, but by then cholera was feared throughout the world, for it had killed people everywhere by the hundreds, even thousands. Death was horribly convul- sive and would come in a matter of days, perhaps a week, and no one knew what caused the disease or how to avoid it.

Soon a second cholera pandemic struck. It lasted from 1826 to 1837, when cholera crossed the Atlantic and attacked North America. During the third pandemic, from 1842 to 1862, England was severely hit, and cholera again spread into North America.

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10 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Figure 1.5 Cases of Cholera in the Soho District of London, England, 1854. Adapted with permission from: L. D. Stamp, The Geography of Life and Death, Cornell University Press, 1964.

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When the pandemic that began in 1842 reached England in the 1850s, cholera swept through the Soho District of London. Dr. Snow mapped the Soho District, marking all the area’s water pumps—from which people got their water supply for home use—with a P and marking the residence of each person who died from cholera with a dot (Fig. 1.5). Approximately 500 deaths occurred in Soho, and as the map took shape, Snow noticed that an especially large number of those deaths clustered around the water pump on Broad Street. At the doctor’s request, city author- ities removed the handle from the Broad Street pump, making it impossible to get water from that pump. The result was dramatic: almost immediately the number of reported new cases fell to nearly zero, confi rming Snow’s theory about the role of water in the spread of cholera.

Dr. Snow and his colleagues advised people to boil their water, but it would be a long time before his advice reached all those who might be affected, and in any case many people simply did not have the ability to boil water or to wash hands with soap.

Cholera has not been defeated completely, however, and in some ways the risks have been rising in recent years rather than falling (Fig. 1.6). People contract cholera by eating food or water contaminated with cholera bacteria.

Figure 1.6 Cholera in Haiti, 2010. Artibonite and Centre departments have been hard hit by the cholera outbreak in Haiti, in part because the Artibonite River is contaminated by cholera bacteria and in part because of the large number of Haitians displaced from Port-au-Prince who have fl ed to camps in Artibonite and Centre. Data from: Centers for Disease Control, 2011. http://www. bt.cdc.gov/situationawareness/haiticholera/map_1.asp

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Cholera bacteria diffuse to broader areas because once one person has cholera it can be spread through his or her feces. In an impoverished area with no sanitary sewer sys- tem, the person’s feces can easily contaminate the water supply. Even in places with sanitary sewer systems, chol- era contamination occurs when rivers, which are typically the water supply, fl ood the sanitary sewer system.

We expect to fi nd cholera in places that lack sanitary sewer systems and in places that are fl ood prone. In many of the teeming shantytowns of the growing cities of the developing world, and in some of the refugee camps of Africa and Asia, cholera remains a threat. Until the 1990s, major outbreaks remained few and limited. After remain- ing cholera-free for a half century, Europe had its fi rst reappearance of cholera in Naples in 1972. In 2006, a cholera outbreak in Angola, in southern Africa, spread quickly throughout the country. When heavy rains came to West Africa in 2010, an outbreak of cholera killed 1500 peo- ple in Nigeria alone.

A cholera outbreak in the slums of Lima, Peru, in January 1991 became a fast-spreading epidemic (regional outbreak of a disease) that touched every country in the Americas, infected more than 1 million people, and killed over 10,000 in the region. The outbreak in Peru began when the ocean waters warmed off the coast of Peru. Cholera bacteria live on plankton in the ocean, and the warming of the ocean allowed the plankton and cholera to multiply. Fish ate the plankton, and people ate raw fi sh, thus bringing cholera to Peru.

In the slums of Peru, the disease diffused quickly. The slums are densely populated and lack a sanitary sewer system large enough to handle the waste of the population. An esti- mated 14 million Peruvians were infected with cholera, 350,000 were hospitalized, and 3500 Peruvians died during the outbreak in the 1990s. Peruvians who accessed health care received clean water, salts, and antibiotics, which com- bat the disease.

In January 2010, an earthquake that registered 7.0 on the Richter scale hit Haiti, near the capital of Port au Prince. Months later a cholera outbreak started in the Artibonite region of Haiti (Fig. 1.6). Health offi cials are not certain whether the outbreak began in the multiple refugee camps or elsewhere. The disease diffused quickly through the refugee camps and by October 2010 reached the capital city of Port au Prince. Scientists worry that the cholera outbreak in Haiti will be long lasting because the bacteria have contaminated the Artibonite River, the water supply for a large region. Although purifying water through boiling and thoroughly washing hands prevent the spread of cholera, water contam- inated with cholera and a lack of access to soap abound in many neighborhoods of world cities. A vaccine exists, but its effectiveness is limited, and it is costly. Dr. Snow achieved a victory through the application of geographical reasoning, but the war against cholera is not yet won.

The fruits of geographical inquiry were life-saving in Snow's case, and the example illustrates the general advan-

tage that comes from looking at the geographic context of events and circumstances. Geographers want to understand how and why places are similar or different, why people do different things in different places, and how the relationship between people and the physical world varies across space.

The Spatial Perspective Geography, and being geographically literate, involves much more than memorizing places on a map. Place loca- tions are to geography what dates are to history. History is not merely about memorizing dates. To understand his- tory is to appreciate how events, circumstances, and ideas came together at particular times to produce certain out- comes. Knowledge of how events have developed over time is thought to be critical to understanding who we are and where we are going.

Understanding change over time is critically impor- tant, and understanding change across space is equally as important. The great German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that we need disciplines focused not only on particular phenomena (such as economics and sociology), but also on the perspectives of time (history) and space (geography). The disciplines of history and geography have intellectual cores defi ned by these perspectives rather than by subject matter.

Human geographers employ a spatial perspective as they study a multitude of phenomena ranging from political elections and urban shantytowns to gay neigh- borhoods and folk music. To bring together the many subfi elds of human geography and to explain to non- geographers what geographers do, four major geograph- ical organizations in the United States formed the Geography Educational National Implementation Project in the 1980s. The National Geographic Society published their fi ndings in 1986, introducing the five themes of geography. The fi ve themes are derived from geography’s spatial concerns.

The Five Themes The fi rst theme, location, highlights how the geographical position of people and things on Earth’s surface affects what happens and why. A concern with location underlies almost all geographical work, for location helps to establish the context within which events and processes are situated.

Some geographers develop elaborate (often quantita- tive) models describing the locational properties of particular phenomena—even predicting where things are likely to occur. Such undertakings have fostered an interest in loca- tion theory, an element of contemporary human geography that seeks answers to a wide range of questions-some of them theoretical, others highly practical: Why are villages, towns, and cities spaced the way they are? A geographer versed in location theory might assess where a SuperTarget should be

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12 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

built (downtown or in a suburb), given the characteristics of existing neighborhoods and new developments, the median income of people, the locations of other shopping areas, and the existing and future road system. Similarly, a geographer could determine the best location for a wildlife refuge, given existing wildlife habitats and migration patterns, human set- tlement patterns, and road networks.

A spatial perspective invites consideration of the rela- tionship among phenomena in individual places—including the relationship between humans and the physical world. Thus, the second of the fi ve themes concerns human- environment interactions. Why did the Army Corps of Engineers alter Florida’s physical environment so drastically when it drained part of the Everglades? Have the changes in Florida’s environment created an easier path of destruction for hurricanes? Why is the Army Corps of Engineers again changing the course of the Kissimmee River, and what does that mean for farmers around the river and residential devel- opments in the south of Florida? Asking locational ques- tions often means looking at the reciprocal relationship between humans and environments.

The third theme of geography is the region. Phenomena are not evenly distributed on Earth’s surface. Instead, features tend to be concentrated in particular areas, which we call regions. Geographers use fi eldwork and both quantitative and qualitative methods to develop insightful descriptions of different regions of the world. Novelist James Michener once wrote that whenever he started writing a new book, he fi rst prepared himself by turning to books written by regional geographers about the area where the action was to occur. Understanding the regional geography of a place allows us to make sense of much of the information we have about places and digest new place-based information as well.

The fourth theme is represented by the seemingly simple word place. All places on the surface of Earth have unique human and physical characteristics, and one of the purposes of geography is to study the special char- acter and meaning of places. People develop a sense of place by infusing a place with meaning and emotion, by remembering important events that occurred in a place, or by labeling a place with a certain character. Because we

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Figure 1.7 Desirable Places to Live. Where Pennsylvanian and Californian college students would prefer to live, based on questionnaires completed by college students. Reprinted by permission of: P. R. Gould and R. White, Mental Maps. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986, pp. 55 and 58.

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What Are Geographic Questions? 13

Figure 1.7 (continued)

experience and give meaning to places, we can have a feel- ing of “home” when we are in a certain place.

We also develop perceptions of places where we have never been through books, movies, stories, and pic- tures. Geographers Peter Gould and Rodney White asked college students in California and Pennsylvania: “If you could move to any place of your choice, without any of the usual fi nancial and other obstacles, where would you like to live?” Their responses showed a strong bias for their home region and revealed that students from both regions had negative perceptions of the South, Appalachia, the Great Plains, and Utah (Fig. 1.7). What we know shapes our perceptions of places.

The fi fth theme, movement, refers to the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet. Movement is an expression of the interconnectedness of places. Spatial interaction between places depends on the distances (the measured physical space between two places) among places, the accessibility (the ease of reaching one loca- tion from another) of places, and the transportation and com- munication connectivity (the degree of linkage between loca- tions in a network) among places. Interactions of many kinds shape Earth’s human geography, and understanding these interactions is an important aspect of the global spatial order.

Cultural Landscape In addition to the fi ve themes, location, human- environment, region, place, and movement, landscape is a core element of geography. Geographers use the term landscape to refer to the material character of a place, the complex of natural features, human structures, and other tangible objects that give a place a particular form. Human geographers are particularly concerned with the cultural landscape, the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape. The geographer whose name is most closely identifi ed with this concept is former University of California at Berkeley professor Carl Sauer. In Sauer’s words, cultural landscapes are com- prised of the “forms superimposed on the physical land- scape” by human activity.

No place on Earth is in a “pristine” condition; humans have made an imprint on every place on the planet (Fig. 1.8). The cultural landscape is the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the land- scape. We can see the cultural landscape in the layers of buildings, roads, memorials, churches, fields, and homes that human activities over time have stamped on the landscape.

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14 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Figure 1.8 Glacier National Park, United States. © Alexander B. Murphy.

Field Note “Hiking to the famed Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park brings one close to nature, but even in this remote part of the United States the work of humans is inscribed in the landscape. The parking lot at the start of the six-mile trail, the trail itself, and the small signs en route are only part of the human story. When I hiked around the turn in this valley

and arrived at the foot of the glacier, I found myself looking at a sheet of ice and snow that was less than a third the size of what it had been in 1850. The likely reason for the shrink- age is human-induced climate change. If the melt continues at present rates, scientists predict that the glacier will be gone by 2030.”

Any cultural landscape has layers of impressions from years of human activity. As each group of people arrives and occupies a place, they bring their own technological and cultural traditions and transform the landscape accordingly. Each new group of residents can also be infl uenced by what they fi nd when they arrive and leave some of it in place. In 1929, Derwent Whittlesey pro- posed the term sequent occupance to refer to these sequential imprints of occupants, whose impacts are lay-

ered one on top of the other, each layer having some impacts on the next

The Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam provides an interesting urban example of sequent occupance. Arabs from Zanzibar fi rst chose the African site in 1866 as a summer retreat. Next, German colonizers imprinted a new layout and architectural style (wood-beamed Teutonic) when they chose the city as the center of their East African colonies in 1891. After World War I, when

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Why Do Geographers Use Maps, and What Do Maps Tell Us? 15

the Germans were ousted, a British administration took over the city and began yet another period of transfor- mation. The British encouraged immigration from their colony in India to Tanzania. The new migrant Asian population created a zone of three- and four-story apart- ment houses, which look as if they were transplanted from Bombay, India (Fig. 1.9 left and right). Then, in the early 1960s, Dar es Salaam became the capital of newly independent Tanzania. Thus, the city experienced four stages of cultural dominance in less than one century, and each stage of the sequence remains imprinted in the cultural landscape.

The cultural landscape can be seen as a kind of book offering clues into each chapter of the cultural practices, values, and priorities of its various occupiers. As geogra- pher Peirce Lewis explained in Axioms for Reading the Landscape (1979), “Our human landscape is our unwitting autobiography, refl ecting our tastes, our values, our aspi- rations, and even our fears, in tangible, visible form.” Like Whittlesey, Lewis recommended looking for layers of history and cultural practice in cultural landscapes, adding that most major changes in the cultural landscape occur after a major event, such as war, an invention, or an economic depression.

Geographers who practice fi eldwork keep their eyes open to the world around them and through practice become adept at reading cultural landscapes. Take a walk around your cam- pus or town and try reading the cultural landscape. Choose one thing in the landscape and ask yourself, “What is that and why is it there?” How might the existence of that thing infl u- ence the future development of the neighborhood? Take the time to fi nd out the answers!

WHY DO GEOGRAPHERS USE MAPS, AND WHAT DO MAPS TELL US? Maps are an incredibly powerful geographic tool, and

cartography, the art and science of making maps, is as old as geography itself. (For details on cartography, see Appendix A at the end of this book.) Maps are used for countless pur- poses, waging war, promoting political positions, solving

Figures 1.9, left and right Mumbai, India (left) and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania (right). Apartment buildings through- out Mumbai (formerly Bombay), India, are typically four stories with balconies. In Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, this four-story walkup with balconies (right) stands where single-family African dwellings once stood, refl ecting the sequential occupance of the city. © Alexander B. Murphy.

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16 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

medical problems, locating shopping centers, bringing relief to refugees, and warning of natural hazards, to name just a few. Reference maps show locations of places and geographic features. Thematic maps tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon.

Reference maps focus on accuracy in showing the absolute locations of places, using a coordinate system that allows for the precise plotting of where on Earth something is. Imagine taking an orange, drawing a dot on it with a marker, and then trying to describe the exact location of that dot to someone who is holding another orange so she can mark the same spot on her orange. If you draw and number the same coordinate system on both oranges, the task of drawing the absolute location on each orange is not only doable but simple. The coordinate system most frequently used on maps is based on latitude and longitude. For example, the absolute location of Chicago is 41 degrees, 53 minutes North Latitude and 87 degrees, 38 minutes West Longitude. Using these coordinates, you can plot Chicago on any globe or map that is marked with latitude and longitude lines.

The establishment of a satellite-based global posi- tioning system (GPS) allows us to locate things on the sur-

face of Earth with extraordinary accuracy. Researchers col- lect data quickly and easily in the fi eld, and low-priced units are encouraging fi shers, hunters, and hikers to use GPS in their activities. New cars are equipped with GPS units, and dashboard map displays help commuters navigate traffi c and travelers fi nd their way. Geocaching is an increasingly pop- ular hobby based on the use of GPS. Geocachers use their GPS units to play a treasure hunt game all over the world. People leave the treasures (“caches”) somewhere, mark the coordinates on their GPS, and post clues on the Internet. If you fi nd the cache, you take the treasure and leave a new one. Many mobile phones and “smart” devices are also equipped with GPS units, and applications such as Google Maps have helped to spread the use of GPS even further.

Relative location describes the location of a place in relation to other human and physical features. Descriptors such as “Chicago is on Lake Michigan, south of Milwaukee” or “Chicago is located where the cross-coun- try railroads met in the 1800s” or “Chicago is the hub of the corn and soybean markets in the Midwest” are all descriptors of Chicago relative to other features. In the southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and western Indiana region, all major roads lead to Chicago (Fig. 1.10).

Figure 1.10 All Major Roads Lead to Chicago. Network of Midwestern roads that lead to Chicago, refl ecting the dominance of Chicago in the region. © E. H. Fouberg, A. B. Murphy, H. J. de Blij, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Why Do Geographers Use Maps, and What Do Maps Tell Us? 17

Within this region, people defi ne much of their lives rela- tive to Chicago because of the tight interconnectedness between Chicago and the region. Northwestern Indiana is so connected to Chicago that it has a time zone separate from the rest of Indiana, allowing people in northwestern Indiana to stay in the same time zone as Chicago.

Absolute locations do not change, but relative loca- tions are constantly modifi ed and change over time. Fredericksburg, Virginia, is located halfway between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, Virginia. Today, it is a suburb of Washington, D.C. with commuter trains, van pools, buses, and cars moving commuters between their homes in Fredericksburg and their workplaces in metro- politan Washington, D.C. During the Civil War, several bloody battles took place in Fredericksburg as the North and South fought over the land halfway between their wartime capitals. The absolute location of Fredericksburg has not changed, but its place in the world around it, its relative location, certainly has.

Mental Maps We all carry maps in our minds of places we have been and places we have merely heard of; these are called mental maps. Even if you have never been to the Great Plains of the United States, you may have studied wall maps and atlases or come across the region in books, magazines, and newspapers frequently enough to envision the states of the region (North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) in your mind. Regardless of whether you have visited the Great Plains, you will use your mental map of the region. If you hear on the news that a tornado destroyed a town in Oklahoma, you use your mental map of the Great Plains region and Oklahoma to make sense of where the tornado occurred and who was affected by it.

Our mental maps of the places within our activity spaces, those places we travel to routinely in our rounds of daily activity, are more accurate and detailed than places where we have never been. If your friend calls and asks you to meet her at the movie theater you go to all the time, your mental map will engage automatically. You will envision the hallway, the front door, the walk to your car, the lane to choose in order to be prepared for the left turn you must make, where you will park your car, and your path into the theater and up to the pop- corn stand.

Geographers who study human-environment behav- ior have made extensive studies of how people develop their mental maps. The earliest humans, who were nomadic, had incredibly accurate mental maps of where to fi nd food and seek shelter. Today, people need mental maps to fi nd their way through the concrete jungles of cities and suburbs.

Geographers have studied the mental map forma- tion of children, the blind, new residents to cities, men, and women, all of whom exhibit differences in the forma- tion of mental maps. To learn new places, women, for example, tend to use landmarks, whereas men tend to use paths. Activity spaces vary by age, and the extent of peo- ples’ mental maps depends in part on their ages. Mental maps include terra incognita, unknown lands that are off- limits. If your path to the movie theater includes driving past a school that you do not go to, your map on paper will likely label the school, but no details will be shown regard- ing the place. However, if you have access to the school and you are instead drawing a mental map of how to get to the school’s cafeteria, your mental map of the school will be quite detailed. Thus, mental maps refl ect a person’s activity space, what is accessible to the person in his or her rounds of daily activity and what is not.

Generalization in Maps All maps simplify the world. A reference map of the world cannot show every place in the world, and a thematic map of hurricane tracks in the Atlantic Ocean cannot pinpoint every hurricane and its precise path for the last 50 years. When mapping data, whether human or physical, cartog- raphers, the geographers who make maps, generalize the information they present on maps. Many of the maps in this book are thematic maps of the world. Shadings show how much or how little of some phenomena can be found on a part of the Earth’s surface, and symbols show where specifi c phenomena are located.

Generalized maps help us see general trends, but we cannot see all cases of a given phenomenon. The map of world precipitation (Fig. 1.11) is a generalized map of mean annual precipitation received around the world. The areas shaded in burgundy, dark blue, and vibrant green are places that receive the most rain, and those shaded in orange receive the least rain on average. Take a pen and trace along the equator on the map. Notice how many of the high-precipitation areas on the map are along the equator. The consistent heating of the equator over the course of the entire year brings consistent pre- cipitation to the equatorial region. At the scale of the world, we can see general trends in precipitation, such as this, but it is diffi cult to see the microscale climates of intense precipitation areas that are found throughout the world.

Remote Sensing and GIS Geographic studies include both long- and short-term environmental change. Geographers monitor Earth from a distance, using remote sensing technology that gathers data at a distance from Earth’s surface.

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18 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Remotely sensed data are collected by satellites and air- craft and are often almost instantaneously available. After a major weather or hazard event, such as the 2011 fl oods in the Mississippi River Valley, the unprece- dented hurricane season in the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 (which included Hurricane Katrina), or the 2010 earth- quakes in Haiti and Chile, remotely sensed data show us the major areas of impact (Fig. 1.12). A remotely sensed image surveys the damage of the earthquake,

and photos taken on the ground show the impact and destruction (Fig. 1.13).

In states that restrict foreign access or that do not reliably allow foreign aid to enter the country, remote sensing can help geographers understand the physical and human geography of the place. Google Earth is a free, web-based user-friendly set of remotely sensed images from around the world woven together and acces- sible to anyone with Internet access. You can think of

Figure 1.11 Average Annual Precipitation of the World. A generalized map of the mean annual precipi- tation received around the world. © H. J. de Blij, P. O. Muller, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Google Earth as a quilt of remotely sensed images, taken all over the world, coming from several sources, and sewn together. As a result, the resolution (the measure of the smallest object that can be resolved by the sensor, the degree of detail) of the images (each piece of the quilt) differs from place to place.

Remotely sensed images can be incorporated in a map, and absolute locations can be studied over time by plotting change in remotely sensed imagery over time. Advances in

computer technology and data storage, increasing accessibil- ity to locationally based data and GPS technology, and soft- ware corporations that tailor products to specifi c uses have all driven incredible advances in geographic analysis based on geographic information systems (GIS) over the last two decades. Geographers use GIS to compare a variety of spatial data by creating digitized representations of the environment (Fig. 1.14), combining layers of spatial data, and creating maps in which patterns and processes are superimposed.

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20 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Figure 1.12 Concepcion, Chile. Satellite image of the cities of Concepcion and Hualpen, Chile hours after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake occurred in 2010. The damage to the city is not noticeable in this satellite image except for the smoke plume from an oil refi nery in the lower left corner. © NASA/Science Source/Photo Researchers, Inc.

Figure 1.13 Concepcion, Chile. Chile has broadly adopted engineering and architecture practices that lessen the impact of earthquakes. Although the 2010 earthquake caused over $30 billion worth of damage, it could have been much worse without these building practices. Most of the damage in Concepcion was to residential buildings like this one. © AP/Wide World Photos.

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Why Do Geographers Use Maps, and What Do Maps Tell Us? 21

Figure 1.14 Two Representations of St. Francis, South Dakota. (left) panchromatic raster satellite image collected in 2002 at 10 m resolution during a grassland wildfi re; (right) vector data— rivers, roads, cities, and land use/land cover digitalized from the image. Courtesy of: Joseph J. Kerski using ArcGIS software from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc.

Geographers also use GIS to analyze data, which can give us new insights into geographic patterns and relationships.

Geographers use GIS in both human and physical geographic research. For example, political geographers use GIS to map layers showing voters, their party registra- tion, their race, their likelihood of voting, and their income in order to determine how to draw voting districts in con- gressional and state legislative elections. In this case, a geographer can draw a line around a group of people and ask the computer program to tally how many voters are inside the region, determine what the racial composition is of the district, and show how many of the current political representatives live within the new district’s boundaries.

Geographers trained in GIS employ the technol- ogy in countless undertakings. Students who earn undergraduate degrees in geography are employed by software companies, government agencies, and busi- nesses to use GIS to survey wildlife, map soils, analyze natural disasters, track diseases, assist fi rst responders, plan cities, plot transportation improvements, and fol- low weather systems. For example, a group of geogra- phers working for one GIS company tailors the GIS software to serve the branches of the military and the defense intelligence community. The vast amounts of intelligence data gathered by the various intelligence agencies can be integrated into a GIS and then analyzed spatially. Geographers working in the defense intelli- gence community can use GIS to query a vast amount of intelligence, interpret spatial data, and make recom- mendations on issues of security and defense.

The amount of data digestible in a GIS, the power of the location analysis that can be undertaken on a computer platform, and the ease of analysis that is possible using GIS software applications allow geographers to answer compli-

cated questions. For example, geographer Korine Kolivras analyzed the probability of dengue fever outbreaks in Hawaii using GIS (Fig. 1.15). The maps Kolivras pro- duced may look as simple and straightforward as the chol- era maps produced by Dr. John Snow in the 1800s, but the amount of data that went into Kolivras’s analysis is stagger- ing in comparison. Dengue fever is carried by a particular kind of mosquito called the Aedes mosquito. Kolivras ana- lyzed the breeding conditions needed for the Aedes mos- quito, including precipitation, topography, and several other variables, to predict what places in Hawaii are most likely to experience an outbreak of dengue fever.

A new term of art used in geography is GISci. Geographic information science (GISci) is an emerging research fi eld concerned with studying the development and use of geospatial concepts and techniques to examine geographic patterns and processes. Your school may have a program in GISci that draws across disciplines, bringing together the computer scientists who write the programs, the engineers who create sensors that gather data about the Earth, and the geographers who combine layers of data and interpret them to make sense of our world.

Use Google Earth to fi nd a place where a humanitarian cri- sis is occurring today (such as Haiti or Pakistan) and study the physical and human geography overlaid on Google Earth in this place. How does studying this place on Google Earth change your mental map of the place and/or your under- standing of the crisis?

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Guest Field Note The diffusion of diseases carried by vectors, such as the Aedes mosquito that transmits dengue, is not solely a result of the envi- ronmental factors in a place. I use disease ecology to understand the ways in which environmental, social, and cultural factors interact to produce disease in a place. Through a combination of fi eldwork and geographic information systems (GIS) modeling, I studied the environmental habitat of the Aedes mosquito in Hawaii and the social and cultural factors that stimulated the outbreak of dengue in Hawaii.

When I went into the fi eld in Hawaii, I observed the diver- sity of the physical geography of Hawaii, from deserts to rain- forests. I saw the specifi c local environments of the dengue outbreak area, and I examined the puddles in streams (Fig. 1.15A) in which the mosquitoes likely bred during the 2001–2002 dengue outbreak. I talked to public health offi cials who worked so hard to control the dengue outbreak so that I better understood the local environmental factors contributing to the disease. I visited a family that had been heavily affected by dengue, and I saw their home, which, by their choice, lacked walls or screens on all sides. In talking with the family, I came to understand the social and cultural factors that affected the outbreak of dengue in Hawaii.

I created a GIS model of mosquito habitat that considered not only total precipitation in Hawaii (Fig. 1.15B), but also seasonal variations in precipitation (Fig. 1.15C) and temperature (Fig. 1.15D), to help explain where the Aedes mosquito is able to breed and survive on the islands. I also studied seasonal fl uctuations in streams and population distributions in creating my model of dengue potential areas (Fig. 1.15E).

The GIS model I created can now be altered by public offi cials in Hawaii to refl ect precipitation and temperature variations each year or to incorporate new layers of environmental, social, and cultural data. Offi cials will be able to better predict locations of dengue outbreaks so they can focus their efforts to combat the spread of the disease.

Credit: Korine N. Kolivras, Virginia Tech

Figure 1.15 A Maui, Hawaii. Aedes mosquitoes breed in artifi cial and natu- ral water containers, such as the standing puddles left behind when streams dry up during a drought as shown in this pho- tograph along the northeast coast of Maui.

Figure 1.15 D Average February minimum temperature.

Figure 1.15 E Dengue potential areas.

Figure 1.15 B Total annual precipitation.

Figure 1.15 C Average June precipitation.

22

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Why Are Geographers Concerned with Scale and Connectedness? 23

WHY ARE GEOGRAPHERS CONCERNED WITH SCALE AND CONNECTEDNESS? Geographers study places and patterns at a variety of

scales, including local, regional, national, and global. Scale has two meanings in geography: the fi rst is the dis- tance on a map compared to the distance on the Earth, and the second is the spatial extent of something. Throughout the book, when we refer to scale we are using the second of these defi nitions. Geographers’ interest in this type of scale derives from the fact that phenomena found at one scale are usually infl uenced by what is hap- pening at other scales; to explain a geographic pattern or process, then, requires looking across scales. Moreover, the scale of our research or analysis matters because we can make different observations at different scales. We can study a single phenomenon across different scales in order to see how what is happening at the global scale affects localities and how what is happening at a local scale affects the globe. Or we can study a phenomenon at a par- ticular scale and then ask how processes at other scales affect what we are studying.

The scale at which we study a geographic phenom- enon tells us what level of detail we can expect to see. We also see different patterns at different scales. For example, when we study the distribution of material wealth at the scale of the globe (see Fig. 1.3), we see that the countries in western Europe, Canada, the United States, Japan, and Australia are the wealthiest, and the countries of Subsaharan Africa and Southeast Asia are the poorest. Does that mean everyone in the United States is wealthy and everyone in Indonesia is poor? Certainly not, but on a global-scale map of states, that is how the data appear.

When you shift scales to North America and examine the data for States of the United States and the provinces of Canada (Fig. 1.16), you see that the wealthiest areas are on the coasts and the poorest are in the interior and in the extreme northeast and south. The State of Alaska and the province of the Northwest Territories have high gross per capita incomes that stem largely from oil revenues that are shared among the residents.

By shifting scales again to just one city, for example, metropolitan Washington, D.C. (Fig. 1.17), you observe that suburbs west, northwest, and southwest of the city are the wealthiest and that suburbs to the east and southeast have lower income levels. In the city itself, a clear dichot- omy of wealth divides the northwest neighborhoods from the rest of the city. Shifting scales again to the individual, if we conducted fi eldwork in Washington, D.C., and interviewed people who live below the poverty line, we would quickly fi nd that each person’s experience of pov- erty and reasons for being in poverty vary-making it diffi -

cult to generalize. We would fi nd some trends, such as how women in poverty who have children cope differently than single men or how illegal immigrants cope differ- ently from legal immigrants, but no two individual cases are the same.

Because the level of detail and the patterns observed change as the scale changes, geographers must be sensitive to their scale of analysis and also be wary of researchers who make generalizations about a people or a place at a particu- lar scale without considering other scales of analysis.

Geographers’ concern with scale goes beyond an interest in the scale of individual phenomena to a concern with how processes operating at different scales infl uence one another. If you want to understand the confl ict between the Tutsi and the Hutu people in Rwanda, for example, you cannot look solely at this African country. The Rwandan confl ict was infl uenced by developments at a variety of different scales, including patterns of migration and interaction in Central Africa, the economic and polit- ical relations between Rwanda and parts of Europe, and the variable impacts of globalization-economic, political, and cultural.

Geographers are also interested in how people use scale politically. Locally based political movements, such as the Zapatistas in southern Mexico, have learned to rescale their actions-to involve players at other scales and create a global outcry of support for their position. By taking their political campaign from the local scale to the national scale through, for example, protests against the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and then effectively using the Internet to wage a global campaign, the Zapatistas gained attention from the world media, a feat relatively few local political movements achieve.

Geographer Victoria Lawson uses the term jumping scale to describe such rescaling activities. She compares the ways in which Western countries, multinational cor- porations, and the World Trade Organization take prod- ucts and ideas created in Western places and by Western corporations and globalize all rights to profi ts from them through intellectual property law. Efforts to push European and American views of intellectual property on the globe negate other local and regional views of products and ideas. To the West, rice is a product that can be owned, privatized, and bought and sold. To East Asians, rice is integral to culture, and new rice strains and new ideas about growing rice can help build com- munity, not just profi t. Lawson explains that taking a single regional view and jumping scale to globalize it can serve to legitimate that view and negates other regional and local views.

Regions Geographers often divide the world into regions for analysis. Many colleges offer a course in world regional

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24 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

geography that compares and contrasts major regions of the world. In this book, we use examples from all over the world, but our focus throughout is on a thematic approach to human geography. Nongeographers use some form of the regional idea all the time, even in everyday conversation. When you plan or dream of a vacation in the Rockies, or a hiking trip in New England, or a cruise in the Caribbean, you are using regional notions to convey what you have in mind. Used this way, regions serve as informal frames of reference.

In geography, a region constitutes an area that shares similar characteristics. To identify and delimit regions, we must establish criteria for them. The criteria we choose to defi ne a region can be physical, cultural, functional, or perceptual.

When geographers choose one or more physical or cultural criteria to define a region, they are looking for formal regions. A formal region is marked by homogeneity in one or more circumstance or phenom- enon. A formal physical region is based on a shared

Figure 1.16 Median Family Income (in U.S. dollars), 2009. Data from: United States Census Bureau and Census Canada, 2010.

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Why Are Geographers Concerned with Scale and Connectedness? 25

physical geographic criterion, such as the karst region of China (Fig. 1.18).

A formal region has a shared trait, it can be a shared cultural trait or a physical trait. In a formal cultural region, people share one or more cultural traits. For example, the region of Europe where French is spoken by a majority of the people can be thought of as a French-speaking region. When the scale of analysis shifts, the formal region changes. If we shift scales to the

world, the French-speaking formal region expands beyond France into former French colonies of Africa and into the overseas departments that are still associ- ated politically with France.

A functional region is defi ned by a particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it. Places that are part of the same functional region interact to create connections. Functional regions have a shared political, social, or economic purpose. For example, a

Figure 1.17 Median Family Income (in U.S. dollars), 2009. Data from: United States Census Bureau, 2010.

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26 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

city has a surrounding region within which workers commute, either to the downtown area or to subsidiary centers such as offi ce parks and shopping malls. That entire urban area, defi ned by people moving toward and within it, is a functional region. Thus a functional region is a spatial system; its boundaries are defi ned by the limits of that system. Functional regions are not necessarily culturally homogeneous; instead, the people within the region function together politically, socially, or economically. The city of Chicago is a functional region, and the city itself is part of hundreds of func- tional regions-from the State of Illinois to the seventh federal reserve district.

Finally, regions may be primarily in the minds of people. Perceptual regions are intellectual constructs designed to help us understand the nature and distribu- tion of phenomena in human geography. Geographers do not agree entirely on their properties, but we do con- cur that we all have impressions and images of various regions and cultures. These perceptions are based on our accumulated knowledge about such regions and cultures. Perceptual regions are not just curiosities. How people think about regions has infl uenced everything from daily activity patterns to large-scale international confl ict. A perceptual region can include people, their cultural

traits, such as dress, food, and religion; places and their physical traits, such as mountains, plains, or coasts; and built environments, such as windmills, barns, skyscrap- ers, or beach houses.

But where is this Mid-Atlantic region? If Maryland and Delaware are part of it, then eastern Pennsylvania is, too. But where across Pennsylvania lies the boundary of this partly cultural, partly physical region, and on what basis can it be drawn? There is no single best answer (Fig. 1.19).

Major news events help us create our perceptual regions by defi ning certain countries or areas of countries as part of a region. Before September 11, 2001, we all had perceptions of the Middle East region. For most of us, that region included Iraq and Iran but stretched no farther east. As the hunt for Osama bin Laden began and the media focused attention on the harsh rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, our regional perceptions of the Middle East changed; for many, the region stretched to encom- pass Afghanistan and Pakistan. Scholars who specialize in this part of the globe had long studied the relationship between parts of Southwest Asia and the traditional “Middle East,” but the connections between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the rest of the Middle East were almost invisible to the general population.

Figure 1.18 Guilin, China. The South China Karst region, bisected here by the Li River outside Guilin, is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. © Alexander B. Murphy.

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Figure 1.19 Mid-Atlantic Cultural Region. One delimitation of the Mid- Atlantic culture region. Adapted with permission from: H. Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968, p. 39.

The problem of defi ning and delimiting perceptual regions can be approached in several ways. One is to con- duct interviews in which people residing within as well as outside a region are asked to respond to questions about their home and cultural environment. Zelinsky used a dif- ferent technique; he analyzed the telephone directories of 276 metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada, noting the frequency with which businesses and other enterprises use regional or locational terms (such as “Southern Printing Company” or “Western Printing”) in their listings. The resulting maps show a close similarity between these perceptual regions and culture regions identifi ed by geographers.

Among the perceptual regions shown in Figure 1.20, one, the South, is unlike any of the others. Even today, fi ve generations after the Civil War, the Confederate fl ag still evokes strong sentiments from both those who revere the fl ag and those who revile it.

A “New South” has emerged over the past several decades, forged by Hispanic immigration, urbanization, movement of people from other parts of the United States to the South, and other processes. But the South, espe- cially the rural South, continues to carry imprints of a cul- ture with deep historical roots. Its legacy is preserved in language, religion, music, food preferences, and other tra- ditions and customs.

If you drive southward from, say, Pittsburgh or Detroit, you will not pass a specifi c place where you enter this perceptual region. You will note features in the cultural landscape that you perceive to be associated with the South (such as Waffl e House restaurants), and at some stage of the trip these features will begin to dominate the area to such a degree that you will say, “I am really in the South now.” This may result from a combination of features in the culture: the style of

Perceptual Regions in the United States Cultural geographer Wilbur Zelinsky tackled the com- plex task of defi ning and delimiting the perceptual regions of the United States and southern Canada. In an article titled “North America’s Vernacular Regions,” he identi- fi ed 12 major perceptual regions on a series of maps (sum- marized in Fig. 1.20). When you examine the map, you will notice some of the regions overlap in certain places. For example, the more general term the West actually incorporates more specifi c regions, such as the Pacifi c Region and part of the Northwest.

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Figure 1.20 Perceptual Regions of North America. Adapted with permission from: W. Zelinsky, “North America’s Vernacular Regions,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1980, p. 14.

Why Are Geographers Concerned with Scale and Connectedness? 27

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houses and their porches, items on a roadside restaurant menu (grits, for example), a local radio station’s music, the sound of accents that you perceive to be Southern, a succession of Baptist churches in a town along the way. These combined impressions become part of your over- all perception of the South as a region.

Such cultural attributes give a certain social atmo- sphere to the region, an atmosphere that is appreciated by many of its residents and is sometimes advertised as an attraction for potential visitors. “Experience the South’s warmth, courtesy, and pace of life,” said one such com- mercial, which portrayed a sun-drenched seaside land- scape, a bowing host, and a couple strolling along a palm- lined path.

The South has its vigorous supporters and defend- ers, and occasionally a politician uses its embattled history to arouse racial antagonism. But today the South is so multifaceted, diverse, vigorous, and interconnected with the rest of the United States that its regional identity is much more complicated than traditional images suggest (Fig. 1.21). This serves as an important reminder that per- ceptual regions are not static. Images of the South are rap- idly changing, and perceptions of the South as a region will change over time.

Regions, whether formal, functional, or percep- tual, are ways of organizing humans geographically. They are a form of spatial classifi cation, a means of handling large amounts of information so we can make sense of it.

Culture Location decisions, patterns, and landscapes are funda- mentally infl uenced by cultural attitudes and practices. Culture refers not only to the music, literature, and arts of a society but to all the other features of its way of life: pre- vailing modes of dress; routine living habits; food prefer- ences; the architecture of houses and public buildings; the layout of fi elds and farms; and systems of education, gov- ernment, and law. Culture is an all-encompassing term that identifi es not only the whole tangible lifestyle of peo- ples, but also their prevailing values and beliefs. Culture lies at the heart of human geography.

The concept of culture is closely identifi ed with the discipline of anthropology, and over the course of more than a century anthropologists have defi ned it in many different ways. Some have stressed the contributions of humans to the environment, whereas others have empha- sized learned behaviors and ways of thinking. Several decades ago the noted anthropologist E. Adamson Hoebel defi ned culture as:

[the] integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not the result of biological inheritance . . . cul- ture is not genetically predetermined; it is noninstinc- tive . . . [culture] is wholly the result of social invention and is transmitted and maintained solely through com- munication and learning.

Guest Field Note Montgomery, Alabama

Located in a predominately African American neighborhood in Montgom- ery, Alabama, the street intersection of Jeff Davis and Rosa Parks is sym- bolic of the debates and disputes in the American South over how the past is to be commemorated on the region’s landscape. The Civil War and civil rights movement are the two most important events in the history of the region. The street names commemorate Montgomery’s central role in both eras, and they do so in the same public space. Montgomery was the site of the fi rst capital of the Confederacy in 1861 while Jefferson Davis was president. The Alabama capital was also the site of the 1955–1956 Montgomery bus boycott that launched the civil rights movement. The boycott was sparked by Rosa Parks’s arrest after she refused to give up her seat on a city bus when ordered to do so by a white person. Most of my research examines the politics of how the region’s white and African Americans portray these separate heroic eras within the region’s public spaces, ranging from support for and against fl ying the Confederate fl ag to disputes over placing statues and murals honoring the Civil War and the civil rights movement on the South’s landscape.

Credit: Jonathan Leib, Old Dominion University

Figure 1.21

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Why Are Geographers Concerned with Scale and Connectedness? 29

Hoebel’s emphasis on communication and learning antic- ipated the current view of culture as a system of meaning, not just a set of acts, customs, or material products. Clifford Geertz advanced this view in his classic work, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), which has infl uenced much recent work in human geography. Hence, human geographers are interested not just in the different pat- terns and landscapes associated with different culture groups, but in the ways in which cultural understandings affect both the creation and signifi cance of those patterns and landscapes.

Cultural geographers identify a single attribute of a culture as a culture trait. For example, wearing a turban is a culture trait in certain societies. Many men in the semiarid and desert areas of North Africa, Southwest Asia, and South Asia wore turbans before the birth of Islam. The turbans protected the wearers from sunlight and also helped distinguish tribes.

Not all Muslim men wear turbans, but in some Muslim countries, including Afghanistan, wearing tur- bans is popular because either religious or political lead- ers (in the case of Afghanistan, the Taliban) prescribe it for men. Today, turbans often distinguish a man’s status in society or are worn as a sign of faithfulness to God. In many Muslim countries, including Egypt and Turkey, men rarely wear turbans. The appearance of turbans in other Muslim countries varies a great deal. For instance, in Yemen men who cover their heads typically wear kalansuwa, which are caps wrapped in fabric. In Palestine, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, men who cover their heads typically wear kaffi yeh, which are rectangular pieces of cloth draped and secured on the head.

Wearing turbans is not a cultural trait limited to Muslims. In the United States, most men who cover their heads with a turban are Sikhs, which is a separate religion from Islam. In the Sikh religion, men are required to keep their hair uncut. The common practice is to twist the hair and knot it on top of one’s head and then cover it with a turban. The Sikh religion began in the 1500s, and in the late 1600s, the tenth guru of the religion taught that wearing a turban was a way to demonstrate one’s faithful- ness to God. As the turban example exhibits, culture traits are not necessarily confi ned to a single culture. More than one culture may exhibit a particular culture trait, but each will consist of a discrete combination of traits. Such a combination is referred to as a culture complex. In many cultures, the herding of cattle is a trait. However, cattle are regarded and used in different ways by different cul- tures. The Maasai of East Africa, for example, follow their herds along seasonal migration paths, consuming blood and milk as important ingredients of a unique diet. Cattle occupy a central place in Maasai existence; they are the essence of survival, security, and prestige. Although the Maasai culture complex is only one of many cattle-keep- ing complexes, no other culture complex exhibits exactly

the same combination of traits. In Europe, cattle are milked, and dairy products, such as butter, yogurt, and cheese, are consumed as part of a diet very different from that of the Maasai.

A cultural hearth is an area where cultural traits develop and from which cultural traits diffuse. Often a cultural trait, for example the religion of Islam, can be traced to a single place and time. Muhammad founded Islam in the 500s c.e. (current era) in and around the cities of Mecca and Medina on the Arabian Peninsula. Other culture traits, such as agriculture, can be traced to several hearths thousands of years apart. When such a trait devel- ops in more than one hearth without being infl uenced by its development elsewhere, each hearth operates as a case of independent invention.

Connectedness through Diffusion Geographer Carl Sauer focused attention on how ideas, specifi cally the innovation of agriculture, spread in Agricultural Origins and Dispersals. Based on geography and archaeological evidence, Sauer established that MesoAmerica independently invented agriculture, adding it to the hearths of agriculture in Europe, Africa, and Asia. When ideas, people, or goods move across space, this process of dissemination is called cultural diffusion.

In 1970, Swedish geographer Torsten Hägerstrand published pioneering research on the role of time in the dif- fusion process. Hägerstrand’s research revealed how time, as well as distance, affects individual human behavior and the diffusion of people and ideas. Sauer and Hägerstrand’s fascinating research attracted many geographers to the study of diffusion processes. Geographers are still using principles of diffusion to model movement and diffusion through GIS and other geographic techniques.

Whether diffusion of a cultural trait occurs depends, in part, on time and distance from the hearth. The farther a place is from the hearth, the less likely an innovation will be adopted. Similarly, the acceptance of an innovation becomes less likely the longer it takes to reach its potential adopters. In combination, time and distance cause time- distance decay in the diffusion process.

Not all cultural traits or innovations diffuse. Prevailing attitudes or cultural taboos can mean that cer- tain innovations, ideas, or practices are not acceptable or adoptable in particular cultures. Religious teachings may prohibit certain practices or ideas, such as divorce, abor- tions, or contraceptive use, on the grounds of theology or morality. Some cultures or religions prohibit consump- tion of alcoholic beverages, and others prohibit consum- ing certain kinds of meat or other foods. Prescriptions cultures make about behavior act as cultural barriers and can pose powerful obstacles to the spread of ideas or innovations.

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30 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Expansion Diffusion When a cultural trait, such as a religion, spreads, it typi- cally does so from a hearth. Islam’s hearth was on the Arabian Peninsula, and from there, Islam diffused to Egypt and North Africa, through Southwest Asia, and into West Africa. This is a case of expansion diffusion, when an innovation or idea develops in a hearth and remains strong there while also spreading outward. Geographers classify diffusion processes into two broad categories: expansion diffusion and relocation diffusion. In the case of expansion diffusion, an innovation or idea develops in a hearth and remains strong there while also spreading outward (Fig. 1.22).

Expansion diffusion takes several forms. The sili- con bands that are different shapes and colors, like an animal, a football, or a continent, and that stretch into bracelets are called Silly Bandz. Robert Croak, a busi- nessman from Toledo, Ohio, invented the bands in 2008 after seeing similar rubber bands produced by a Japanese company when he was at a trade show in China. The vast

majority of Croak’s marketing came from contagious diffusion, a form of expansion diffusion in which nearly all adjacent individuals and places are affected. One child had Silly Bandz, and the next day, many more children in his classroom would have the bracelets.

Croak already had a company, Brainchild Products, that sold silicon awareness bracelets, and he worked with his Chinese supplier to create Silly Bandz. Croak trade- marked the name and launched a website in the summer of 2008. Without spending any money on marketing, Croak started a Facebook page. Between the website and the Facebook page, the demand for Silly Bandz diffused conta- giously and quickly. Business Week reports the company that once shipped 24 boxes a day out of its Toledo headquarters now ships 1500 boxes a day. Croak reports Silly Bandz are “carried in approximately 18,000 stores in 25 states.”

Although several other competitors quickly entered the market, the demand for Croak’s Silly Bandz increased in stores. Croak now offers Silly Bandz in partnership with celebrities and companies, including Justin Bieber.

A . C o n t a g i o u s D i f f u s i o n

B . H i e r a r c h i a l D i f f u s i o n

Hearth

Early diffusion

Later diffusion

Important person or place

No diffusion

LEGEND

Figure 1.22 Contagious and Hierarchical Diffusion. © E. H. Fouberg, A. B. Murphy, H. J. de Blij, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Why Are Geographers Concerned with Scale and Connectedness? 31

In addition to the contagious diffusion on the play- ground and in the classrooms, the diffusion of Silly Bandz, as opposed to a competing brand, is going to be greatest around the 18,000 stores in 25 states that sell this particu- lar product. The stores create a hierarchy, a structure to the diffusion of the innovation, in this case a particular brand of bracelets.

Instead of Silly Bandz on their wrists, many Major League Baseball players now wear necklaces. The colorful necklaces are not made of silicon. They are made of a nylon fabric that matches their uniform and is imbued with titanium. The baseball players, including Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins, Joba Chamberlain of the New York Yankees, and Josh Beckett of the Boston Red Sox, wear titanium necklaces sold by Phiten. Phiten is a Japanese company with corporate stores in Honolulu, Hawaii, Torrance, California, and Seattle, Washington.

Formed in 1983, the Phiten Company uses what it calls aqua technology to disperse titanium throughout the nylon fabric it uses to make necklaces and bracelets. Phiten supporters believe the titanium helps restore bal- ance and allows the fl ow of energy through fatigued mus- cles. The company’s website states that wearing a Phiten will “restore normal relaxation” for customers. Phiten not only sells necklaces and bracelets, but also compression sleeves and shorts, athletic tape, patches, and even bed- ding infused with aqua metals, typically titanium.

The diffusion of Phitens from its hearth in Japan to the United States began with a sport the two countries share: baseball. In 2001, New York Yankee Randy Johnson traveled to Japan and saw baseball players wear- ing titanium necklaces. He started wearing a Phiten, and other Major League players in the United States soon followed. The custom caught on hierarchically, from team to team and contagiously from player to player. In an article published by CBS News, a regional sales man- ager for Phiten in Seattle is quoted as saying “I’d say about three-fourths of the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins players use them.” Baseball players adopted the custom because they believe the titanium helped allevi- ate muscle pain.

An idea such as a new fashion or new genre of music may not always spread throughout a contiguous population. For example, the spread of Crocs footwear is a case of hierarchical diffusion, a pattern in which the main channel of diffusion is some segment of those who are susceptible to (or adopting) what is being dif- fused. In the case of Crocs, founder Scott Seamans found a clog manufactured by a Canadian company that was created out of the unique croc resin material. Seamans, an avid sailor, put a strap on the back and holes for drainage. He and two co-founders of the crocs company based the company in Boulder, Colorado, had the shoes manufactured, and sold them at boat shows in 2002 and 2003. Crocs footware diffused from boating

enthusiasts to gardeners to the American public- becoming especially popular among children, who adorned their crocs with Jibbitz, or charms designed for crocs. The hierarchy of boaters, gardeners, and then the contagious diffusion that followed helps explain the rapid growth of the crocs brand, which had revenues of over $800 million in 2007.

A third form of expansion diffusion is stimulus dif- fusion. Not all ideas can be readily and directly adopted by a receiving population; some are simply too vague, too unattainable, too different, or too impractical for immedi- ate adoption. Yet, these ideas can still have an impact. They may indirectly promote local experimentation and even- tual changes in ways of doing things. For example, the dif- fusion of fast, mass-produced food in the late twentieth century led to the introduction of the hamburger to India. Yet the Hindu religion in India prohibits consumption of beef, which is a major cultural obstacle to the adoption of the hamburger (Fig. 1.23). Instead, retailers began selling burgers made of vegetable products. The diffusion of the hamburger took on a new form in the cultural context of India. With expansion diffusion, whether contagious or hierarchical, the people stay in place and the innovation, idea, trait, or disease does the moving.

Relocation Diffusion Relocation diffusion occurs most frequently through migration. When migrants move from their homeland, they take their cultural traits with them. Developing an ethnic neighborhood in a new country helps immigrants maintain their culture in the midst of an unfamiliar one. Relocation diffusion, in contrast, involves the actual movement of individuals who have already adopted the idea or innovation, and who carry it to a new, perhaps dis- tant, locale, where they proceed to disseminate it (Fig. 1.22). If the homeland of the immigrants loses enough of its population, the cultural customs may fade in the hearth while gaining strength in the ethnic neighbor- hoods abroad.

Once you think about different types of diffusion, you will be tempted to fi gure out what kinds of diffusion are tak- ing place for all sorts of goods, ideas, or diseases. Please remember that any good, idea, or disease can diffuse in more than one way. Choose a good, idea, or disease as an example and describe how it diffused from its hearth across the globe, referring to at least three different types of diffusion.

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32 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Figure 1.23 left and right New Delhi, India (left) and Jodhpur, India (right). Hindus believe cows are holy, and in India, evidence of that can be seen everywhere from cows roaming the streets to the menu at McDonald's. In 1996, the fi rst McDonald's restaurant opened in New Delhi, India (left), serving Maharaja Macs and Vegetable Burgers with Cheese. In Indian towns, such as Jodhpur (right), cows are protected and share the streets with pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists. © Douglas E. Gurran/AFP/Getty Images (left) and (c) Alexander B. Murphy (right).

WHAT ARE GEOGRAPHIC CONCEPTS, AND HOW ARE THEY USED IN ANSWERING GEOGRAPHIC QUESTIONS? Geographic concepts include most of the boldfaced

words in this chapter, such as place, relative location, men- tal map, perceptual region, diffusion, and cultural land- scape. In doing geographic research, a geographer thinks of a geographic question, one that has a spatial or landscape component, chooses the scale(s) of analysis, and then applies one or more geographic concepts to conduct research and answer the question. Geographers use fi eld- work, remote sensing, GIS, GPS, and qualitative and quan- titative techniques to explore linkages among people and places and to explain differences across people, places, scales, and times.

Research in human geography today stems from a variety of theories and philosophies. To understand what geographers do and how they do it, it is easiest to start by defi ning what geography is not. Today’s geography is not environmental determinism.

Rejection of Environmental Determinism The ancient Greeks, fi nding that some of the peoples sub- jugated by their expanding empire were relatively docile while others were rebellious, attributed such differences

to variations in climate. Over 2000 years ago, Aristotle described northern European people as “full of spirit... but incapable of ruling others,” and he characterized Asian people (by which he meant modern-day Turkey) as “intelligent and inventive... [but] always in a state of sub- jection and slavery.” Aristotle attributed these traits to the respective climates of the regions-the cold north versus the more tropical Mediterranean.

Aristotle’s views on this topic were long-lasting. As recently as the fi rst half of the twentieth century, similar notions still had strong support. In 1940, in the Principles of Human Geography, Ellsworth Huntington and C.W. Cushing wrote:

The well-known contrast between the energetic people of the most progressive parts of the temperate zone and the inert inhabitants of the tropics and even of intermediate regions, such as Persia, is largely due to climate. . . the people of the cyclonic regions rank so far above those of the other parts of the world that they are the natural leaders.

Huntington and Cushing suggest climate is the critical factor in how humans behave. Yet what constitutes an “ideal” climate lies in the eyes of the beholder. For Aristotle, it was the climate of Greece. Through the eyes of more recent commentators from western Europe and North America, the climates most suited to prog- ress and productiveness in culture, politics, and tech- nology are (you guessed it) those of western Europe and

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What Are Geographic Concepts, and How Are They Used in Answering Geographic Questions? 33

the northeastern United States. Each of these theories can be classifi ed as environmental determinism, which holds that human behavior, individually and col- lectively, is strongly affected by, even controlled or determined by, the physical environment.

For a time, some geographers attempted to explain the location of major cultural hearths as solely a func- tion of environment. Quite soon, however, certain geographers doubted whether these sweeping general- izations were valid. They recognized exceptions to the environmental determinists’ theories. For example, the Maya civilization in the Americas arose in a tropical cli- mate that most assumed was incapable of complex cul- tures. They argued that humanity was capable of much more than merely adapting to the natural environment. The many environmentally determinist theories that explain Europe as “superior” to the rest of the world because of the climate and location of the region ignore the fact that for thousands of years, the most techno- logically advanced civilizations were found outside of Europe in North Africa, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

Chipping away at deterministic explanations helped move the geographic study of the relationships between human society and the environment in different direc- tions. Everyone agrees that the natural environment affects human activity in some ways, but people are the decision makers and the modifi ers-not just the slaves of environmental forces. People and their cultures shape environments, constantly altering the landscape and affecting environmental systems.

Possibilism In response to environmental determinism, geographers argued that the natural environment merely serves to limit the range of choices available to a culture. The choices that a society makes depend on what its members need and on what technology is available to them. Geographers called this doctrine possibilism.

Even possibilism has its limitations, partly because it encourages a line of inquiry that starts with the physical environment and asks what it allows. Human cultures, however, frequently push the boundaries of what is “envi- ronmentally possible” through their own ideas and inge- nuity, and advances in technology. In the interconnected, technologically dependent world we live in today, it is possible to transcend many of the limitations imposed by the natural environment.

Today, much research in human geography focuses on how and why humans have altered environment, and on the sustainability of their practices. In the process, the interest in cultural ecology—an area of inquiry concerned with culture as a system of adaptation to and alteration of

environment, has been supplemented by interest in polit- ical ecology, an area of inquiry fundamentally concerned with the environmental consequences of dominant political- economic arrangements and understandings (see Chapter 13). The fundamental point is that human societies are diverse and the human will is too powerful to be deter- mined by environment.

Today’s Human Geography Human geography today seeks to make sense of the spa- tial organization of humanity and human institutions on Earth’s surface, the character of the places and regions created by people, and the relationships between humans and the physical environment. Human geography encom- passes many subdisciplines, including political geography, economic geography, population geography, and urban geography. Human geography also encompasses cultural geography, which incorporates a concern with cultural traits such as religion, language, and ethnicity.

Cultural geography is both part of human geogra- phy and also its own approach to all aspects of human geography. Cultural geography looks at the ways culture is implicated in the full spectrum of topics addressed in human geography. As such, cultural geography can be seen as a perspective on human geography as much as a component of it.

To appreciate more fully the vast topics researched by human geographers, we can examine the multitude of careers human geographers pursue. Human geographers have titles such as location analyst, urban planner, diplo- mat, remote sensing analyst, geographic information sci- entist, area specialist, travel consultant, political analyst, intelligence offi cer, cartographer, educator, soil scientist, transportation planner, park ranger, and environmental consultant. All of these careers and more are open to geographers because each of these fi elds is grounded in the understanding of places and is advanced through spa- tial analysis.

Choose a geographic concept introduced in this chapter. Think about something that is of personal interest to you (music, literature, politics, science, sports), and consider how whatever you have chosen could be studied from a geographical perspective. Think about space and location, landscape, and place. Write a geographic question that could be the foundation of a geographic study of the item you have chosen.

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34 Chapter 1 Introduction to Human Geography

Summary Our study of human geography will analyze people and places and explain how they interact across space and time to create our world. Chapters 2 and 3 lay the basis for our study of human geography by looking at where people live. Chapters 4–7 focus on aspects of culture and how people use culture and identity to make sense of themselves in their world. The remaining chapters examine how people have created a world in which they function economically, politically, and socially, and how their activities in those realms re-create themselves and their world.

Geographic Concepts fi eldwork human geography globalization physical geography spatial spatial distribution pattern medical geography pandemic epidemic spatial perspective fi ve themes location location theory human-environment region place sense of place perception of place movement spatial interaction

distance accessibility connectivity landscape cultural landscape sequent occupance cartography reference maps thematic maps absolute location global positioning system geocaching relative location mental map activity space generalized map remote sensing geographic information

systems rescale formal region

functional region perceptual region culture culture trait culture complex cultural hearth independent invention cultural diffusion time-distance decay cultural barrier expansion diffusion contagious diffusion hierarchical diffusion stimulus diffusion relocation diffusion geographic concept environmental

determinism possibilism cultural ecology political ecology

Learn More Online About Careers in Geography www.aag.org http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2005/spring/art01.pdf About Geocaching www.geocaching.org About Globalization and Geography www.lut.ac.uk/gawc/rb/rb40.html

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Watch It Online 35

About John Snow and His Work on Cholera http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow.html About the State of Food Insecurity in the World www.fao.org About World Hunger www.wfp.org About Google Earth www.googleearth.com

Watch It Online About Globalization www.learner.org/resources/series180.html#program_descriptions click on Video On Demand for “One Earth, Many Scales”

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