Four Traditions of Geography Essay

Globals, Locals, and Mobals: In the book “The Power of Place,” Harm de Blij introduces a new viewpoint of geography. Geography is much more than the terrain and physical makeup of the world. It is the culture, education, conditions, foods, politics, language, and opportunities. These things make people and places unique, and capture the true meaning of Human Geography.

History and geography are undividable; they represent two fundamental dimensions of the same phenomenon. History is the broader field, which involves human experience from the perspective of time. Geography's concern is narrower; its main focus is on human interaction with the physical environment from the perspective of space. Therefore, it can be said that these dimensions of time and space are in a perpetual interactive feedback loop in which one dimension is affected by the other one. History is as much shaped by geography as it is by almost any other factor. The physical geography of any region is the stencil upon which its history is drawn. Knowing what the features of the stencil are, it fluently allows us to understand the history more quickly and easily.

The Five Themes of Geography are: Location – Absolute points on a map or grid or Relative to where something may be; Place – The physical and/or human characteristics of a locations; Human/Environment Interactions – How humans have impacted the landscape or environment; Relationship between places Movement – How humans interact on the earth (i.e. how they communicate over distance (short or long)) and Regions – a unit of space that has commonalities defined by physical, human and environmental geography. The Explorers of the New World may have not known what the Five Themes of Geography were but they quickly learned. Of the five themes the ones that they all took advantage of was the physical Location and Place as they learned to navigate

Geographic differences include physical and human characteristics of a society. This includes where the civilization is located, and the specific features of each landscape. In “Of Cannibals”, “the situation of their country is along the sea-shore, enclosed on the other side towards the land, with great and high mountains, having about a hundred leagues in breadth between.” (Montaigne 3). Similarly, Utopia’s ideal society is also by the ocean but it is a crescent island, that is naturally protected by rocks that surround the island (More 49). While these locations may seem to offer similar advantages, More’s island is specifically different because the maze of rocks that surrounds it. The reasoning behind this is to have the entrance to the island be a secret between the citizens. The added protection is a geographic difference that originates from cultural order.

Geography is the study of the world, how it works, and how people use and change the world as they live in it.

Geography had a tremendous impact on early civilizations, the topography of the different regions played a key role in their development and formation. This statement by Fernand Braudel “ Geography is the stage in which humanity’s endless dramas are played out” (Getz et al., Exchanges, 26) is a very moving and telling description. The terrain, whether it is natural or man made is not the end all, be all. It does however affect the stage a great deal. Mountainous areas act as blockades, which keep the societies independent, plains open up the area, and rivers enable everything to move around freely. 2

The textbook includes a reference atlas and a geography handbook which encourages learning geographic lessons in our American History. Reading skills are the main goal of the textbook’s author, which is apparent with the sections Reading Skills Handbook and the section referred to as Be an Active Reader.

1. In a compared map of the Holy Land and the state of New Jersey, there are not a lot of differences in the amount of land. Although the Holy Land does not provide important resources, people have been fighting over it throughout history.

Harm de Blij’s book, Why Geography Matters poses a central theme, which I have heard discussed multiple times. Blij argues that the American public is the most geographically illiterate society in the world. Blij blames this decline with the poorly formulated curricula in the American school systems, which ultimately originates from Washington D.C. and the people that run this country. If I had never seen this central theme in action in a classroom I would have been dumbfounded.

Conservation of our natural environment is of vital importance. Now, people should preserve nature and protect it. In addition, it is imperative to realize that, the survival of humanity and many creatures depends mainly on the state of the environment around us. As matter of fact, science place a relevant part in the conservation of the planet. Moreover, Physical geography is the study of all natural forms and processes in an environment, also, the field covers the cause and effect of human activity on the environment. “Geographers study the location and distribution of things-tangible things such as rainfall, mountains, and trees" (Hess, Darrel, Physical Geography, Third California Edition) For this reason, I decided to visit The Whittier Narrows Center. It is one of the many centers that have been established in US to conserve the most crucial asset that human beings possess, the environment. Those who study geography realize that it is important to conduct a thorough study on the center and its activities to identify what makes it such a unique site. This project is providing an insight of the center by describing its natural settings per Physical Geography. The paper will focus on the center’s location, geographical settings, weather, climate, plants and trees, soils, wildlife, terrain, local history and a site map.

1A.1.) A nation is a unified group of people with a common culture. An example of a nation without a state is the Kurds.This is because the Kurds do not have a state of their own since the Kurdish land includes parts of Iraq, Syria and Armenia and the Kurdish people are often the majority in cities in this region.

1. A metropolitan area is a core urban area of 50,000 or more people together with nearby counties that have mainly urban populations with close ties to core urban area as measured by traveling patterns. Its less-occupied surrounding regions, distribution business, organization, and housing.

In chapter five, we discussed several things on geography such as: ecology, the interaction of geography, demography, and environment. In the textbook they defined ecology as “the science concerned with the interactions between living things and their environment.” Human ecology which “is the part of ecology that deals with the way in which human societies adjusts to their environment. Ecological balance “is the term applied to the state achieved when plant or animal species, with its own characteristics and needs, has adjusted to its environment and survived, and when other species, which have likewise adjusted to the environment, prevent it from expanding indefinitely and from crowding them out. The environment is the sum `of all the external influences that impinge on the human organism. Geography is a social science that focuses on the spatial

Much of my passion for Geography is derived from the fact that it depicts relevance to all aspects of society. It is dynamic in a sense that my perception and understanding is constantly evolving with the growth in understanding and perception. What intrigues my further pursuit of geography is how Geography unlike other subjects has direct links to both human and physical attributes. By further pursuing geography at a higher education level, I wish to enrich my understanding of the wider significance of issues being faced and how it affects society on a local and global level. It is important to identify and understand the interconnecting aspects of the world around us and apply such knowledge towards a more sustainable future. Geography

As an intellectual discipline, geography is divided into the sub-fields of physical geography and human geography, the latter concentrating upon the study of human activities, by the application of qualitative and quantitative research methods.