Unit 1 - Introduction to Human Geography

Humans Create Places
1. Sense of Place
2. Place Matters
  1. Determines our access to services, such as education, health care
    1. Where we live changes everything
3. Spatial Arrangements are Important because we can see patterns.
  1. Five Themes of Geography help us to conceptualize the spatial perspective
    1. Location
      1. The geographical osition of people and things on Earth in terms of where, how and why
    2. Regions
      1. Formal Region
        Have similar traits
      2. Functional or Nodal Region
        A particular set of activities or interactions that occur within it.
        Places that are part of the same functional region share a political, social or economic purpose
      3. Perceptual Region
        Impressions or constructs that help us to understand the distribution of a phenomenon
      4. Help us to organize a large amount of information and make sense of it.
    3. Landscape
      1. The character of a place
        Carl Sauer, Cultural Landscapes
        Derwent Whittlesey Sequent Occupance
    4. Movement
      1. Interconnectedness of places
    5. Place
      1. Placelessness is a recent phenomenon
  2. Maps - Simplify the world
    1. Reference Maps
      1. Absolute and Relative Location
    2. Thematic Maps
      1. Show the degree of one attribute or phenomenon
    3. Mental Maps
      1. The better we know our activity spaces, the more detailed these maps are.
    4. Geotechnologies include Global Positioning Systems, Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems
  3. Patterns are important and we look for patterns on maps because it helps us to understand the relationships that exist between different places and things
    1. Dr. Snow Cholera Example
We interact with others across Places
1. Globalization
  1. Is a set of process that reflect deepening relationships and interdependence among and between places without regard to borders.
    1. Are uneven across the world
2. Scale
  1. Geographers use scale to understand the interrelationships
    1. Local
    2. Regional
    3. National
    4. Global
    5. What happens at one scale can affect what happens at other scales.
      1. Can start at Global and affect Local, or can start at Local and affect Global. Not all scales need to be affected.
    6. Time Distance Decay
      1. The farther a place is from the hearth, the less likely it is to be adapted.
3. Diffusion
  1. Expansion Diffusion
    1. Contagious
      1. Occurs when nearly all adjacent individuals and places are affected
        Muhammad founded Isla in 500s around Mecca and nearly all adjacent individuals adopted the religion.
    2. Stimulus
      1. An idea might not spread throughout a population, but just affect parts of it.
        Birkenstocks
    3. Hierchical
      1. Not all ideas are readily and directly adopted by a receiving population. They may be vague, unattainable, too different or impractical, but the ideas still have an impact.
        McDonalds in India
  2. Relocation Diffusion
    1. The actual movement of individuals who have already adopted the idea or innovation and carry it to a new place.
      1. Chinatowns
  3. When people, goods, or ideas move across space
    1. Starts from a Hearth
    2. Cultural Barriers work against Diffusion
PLACE
Human-Environment Relationships
1. Everywhere on Earth has been affected by humans
Includes Change over time
1. Geography Through History
  1. Categorize, Classify
    1. Environmental Determinism
      1. Possibilism
        Regional Geography
        Spatial Science
        Humanistic and Behavioral
        Radical and Marxist
        Geography and Identity
        Postmodernism
        Starting in the 1980s postmodernism began to challenge assumptions about the nature of truth and knowledge. While this will not be explored in this course, Geographers are taking these concepts into consideration.
        Introduced the idea that gender influences Geography. Spaces and places are gendered. At times, ideas of gender are constructed and regulated in the spatial.
        Wanted to make Geography more useful and relevant. Used the spatial approach to look at social justice issue to give Geography a role in working for and reshaping society.
        Said that models and laws did not explain human reasoning for decisions. The main focus should be the human aspect of a place, including human emotions, values and desires.
        Argued that regions had too many exceptions. Geography should be about a spatial analysis that explained why phenomenon are located they way they are.
        Divided the world into natural regions by identifying phenomena that grouped themselves in distinctive ways in particular area. Places are unique.
        Response to Environmental Determinism. Humans can adapt their environments with technology. All comes back down to the physical
      2. Human behaviour is strongly influenced, maybe even controlled by the physical environment. Certain cultures decided that their climates were ideal.
    2. During age of exploration, geographers catalogued, classified and categorized. Geographers looked for underlying patterns.

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Unit 1 - Introduction to Human Geography

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