Geography is a science that looks into the description, distribution, and interactions of the physical, biological, and cultural aspects of the world. We study geography because it helps us to better understand our history as well as our current situations. It allows us to see how the world is laid out, however, geography is not just limited to maps. There are many other purposes of geography than just showing us where things are in the world. For example, it tells us about culture in different regions and how people interact with their environment.
If you are studying the geography of an area, you are most likely going to find things about human/environment interaction. Human/environment interaction is how people deal with their surroundings. For example, if someone goes to get water from a stream or a well, they are interacting with their environment. Human/environment interaction answers questions such as how people use their environment, why they change it, and what happens when the environment is changed.
Another theme of geography you may be studying is movement. Movement is how and why people and things move. Immigrants are people who move into a new country, and emigrants are people who are moving out of a country. An illustration of these two circumstances could be that if someone were to move from England to the United States, they would be an immigrant to the United States but an emigrant of England. These still are not all of the different parts to geography.
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.
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
4. Human Movement – Refers to the geographical study of movement in relation to the routes people take, why these movements occur, in addition to the cause/affect of human settlement.
Geography will never mean the same to me, the more I read the more I’ve learned it’ so much more than land and boundaries. What I’ve learned from this literature it seems to be the study of issues that affect people and the environment, and ways to solve the world’s problems. Geography is important because it affects all aspects of life. No matter what you are talking or thinking about geography is somehow involved. Everything in the world has a direct connection to place, location, interaction, movement, and region.
For example, the article that speaks about African migrants on their trek to Europe, would suggest that human geography is important to these migrants because they need an easier way to get from where they are to their destination. The reason that these people are making such a trek in the first place is due to poor living conditions in their homelands. Human geography can provide solutions to their problems. “A tide of humanity pours through the hills… to funnel migrants illegally from war zones and economic woes to opportunities in the West” (Bennet, Pogatchnik 1). Human geography is important to these migrants and their families to develop a better standard of living and to provide for a better life. People all the over the world can relate to the same importance of human geography as these African migrants. For example between 2005 and 2008 almost 75 million people were pushed into poverty due to food prices skyrocketing. This is a gigantic problem caused by an imposing reality. “… the world has been consuming more food than it has been producing” (Bourne Jr 1). This problem drastically impacts not only the impoverished due to rising food prices but also the middle and upper classes in developed and developing countries. Human geography plays a role in everyone’s lives when it comes to this problem. It must find a way for humans to interact with each other and the world more efficiently to provide
This semester I learned that there are four different branches of human geography. First to define the different geographies: social, has to do with society and what that regions society values. An example of this would be school systems. Cultural geographies has to do with symbolic practices and shared sets of meaning, a simple example of this could be in Italy, most people are Roman Catholic, and share those values. Political, is the type of government that county has, for example North Korea is communist. Lastly, economic, is that countries economy, for example Greece, currently is in an economic crisis.
To me, the definition of geography means that the studies of the world, and not just that it is the language, the climate and how you study the country from the land all the way to the citizen of that country. Geography also mean the statistic of a country like the GDP, literacy rate …
Geographers study the relationships between topics such as globalization, regions, mobility, nature, culture, and cultural landscapes. Human geography is centered on the study of people, places, and the relationship between people and the environment. Geographers have a way of studying the many patterns within people and the different spaces
Through reading How the States Got Their Shapes and Guns, Germs, and Steel I would define human geography as the study of how different factors such as culture, lifestyle, geography, and environment dictate where humans live and migrate. Both books are able to connect how the latter factors influence the pattern of human activity and movement.
To me, geography is simply the study of the earth. With that being said it breaks down into the study of land, weather, people, the migration of people, their role in altering nature, and the effect of nature on the people.
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the word ‘geography’ is defined as “a science that deals with the description, distribution, and interaction of the diverse physical, biological, and cultural features of the earth's surface.” This simple word with its inquisitive definition were the answer to Papua New Guinea native, Yalle’s question for Dr. Jared Diamond on the success of white people. Papua New Guinea is a country in the Pacific that has existed for over 40,000 years. Jared Diamond has spent many months with the natives, learning their way of life but has never understood why the people have not been as successful as the Europeans were. Yalle had the same question for Diamond. At first when Diamond was faced with this thought-provoking
Guns, Germs, and Steel is a well written book by James Diamond exemplifying the true meaning of human geography. One of the essentials to fully understand geography is to know about human geography, sometimes also known as cultural geography. Human geography or cultural geography, is the study of why people are where they are. Human geography is also the relationship of cultures around the world and how they relate to their origin. Throughout the book, Diamond examines the conflict of the book: why are some societies more advanced than other societies?
The Great Wall of China was made out of rocks and stamped earth in the beginning, and then lime workshop and bricks slowly started getting poplular.
Geography influences culture in many ways. A civilizations geography determines what kind of god(s) they believe in as well as influences from other cultures. These features provide a stepping stone for cultures that are solely based on geography.
Physical geography is that branch of natural science which deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere, as opposed to the cultural or built environment, the domain