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Introduction: Geography in today’s world
Geography is a discipline that studies spatial patterns in the human and physical world.
Geographers examine where and how the human and natural features of the Earth’s surface are
distributed, how they relate to each other, and how they change over time. Geographers examine
patterns that exist on Earth’s surface, such as the distribution of language or vegetation cover. They
attempt to explain such patterns, how they are changing, and what might they become. Many jobs
require a geographic understanding. For example, urban planners need to be aware that cities
contain people with varied preferences, traditions, fears, and desires; they are constantly moving
around, interacting with one another, and having impacts on their urban environment. Disciplines
such as history, sociology, economic, politics, and environmental science increasingly view
difference among places as a crucial feature of understanding the human condition,. They give
significance to the research carried out by the geographers.
Geography is a unique discipline encompassing both the physical and social sciences. Physical
geography includes natural environmental processes across Earth’s surface that results in the
distribution of climate varieties, plant ecologies, soil types, mountain formation, and river action,
among other patterns. In addition, physical geography increasingly examines the impacts of human
actions on earth’s natural environments. Human geography is the study of the distribution of
people and their activities (economies, cultures, politics, and urban changes). World regional
geography is an integrative analysis of the relationship between the human and the physical.
Consider what is would be like if you grew up in a different country. How might that affect the
language you speak, your family’s religious preference, the food you eat, the music you listen to, or
the schools you attend? How might the weather and other environmental conditions affect you?
What might be different about you? Might your views of world issues and possible solutions differ
from what they are now? What might be the same? These are the sorts of questions geographers ask
about people and the places where they live. Geographic literacy is increasingly essential because
people are connected and interacting on unprecedented and still increasing levels.
Fig. 1: Selected subfields of geography.
These are the main subject areas in human
and physical geography and their links with
the most closely related disciplines in the
social and natural sciences.
Elements of Geography
What characterize geography? In an important exercise, the National Geographic Society
commissioned a team of geographers to identify the core features of the discipline of geography.
The team came with what are known as the six elements of geography. These elements summarize
what geographic research and education involve today and what distinguishes geography from other
fields. They are as follows:
1. The world in spatial terms. Geography studies the relationships between people, places, and
environments by mapping information about them into a spatial context.
2. Places and regions. The identities and lives of individuals and peoples are rooted in
particular places and in human constructs called regions.
3. Physical patterns. Physical processes shape earth’s surface and interact with plant and
animal life to create, sustain, and modify ecosystems.
4. Human systems. People are central to geography; human activities, settlements, and
structure help shape the earth’s surface and humans compete for control of the earth’s
surface.
5. Environment and society. The physical environment is influenced by the ways in which
human societies value and use the earth’s physical features and processes.
6. Use of geography. Knowledge of geography enables people, places, and environments over
time—that is, of the earth as it was, is, and might be.
Objectives in Learning World Geography
Mindful of the six essential elements of geography and the comprehensive task of introducing the
entire world, [our course attempts to achieve four objectives]:
1. To understand important geographic problems and their potential solutions. As the home of the
humankind, the earth requires maintenance; it has some problems that need attention and can be
remedied. Many of these problems are environmental, and like geography in general, world regional
geography is very concerned with environmental problems and their solutions. Some of these, such
as climate change, are global issues that may be addressed with global agreements, like the Kyoto
Protocol. Others are national and international.
Many regional and international security problems have roots that are environmental. Why can’t
some countries feed themselves? In some cases, their populations have exceeded their resource
base. What are their prospects then? The least appealing outcome is that famine will lower the
population. Another unsavory option for the country is to aggressively seek resources of others.
You will see many examples of countries that have felt pushed into a corner by agricultural failure,
debt, or geographic constrictions have lashed out against their neighbors or threatened them (the
situation of North Korea comes immediately to mind). Another option is for rich countries to assist
the country in need. As the world’s sole superpower, what can the United States do to help a
country that is in trouble? As a major financial power, the country can help by investing in
education, employment, and infrastructure, for example. But should it help? Some authorities have
insisted that Americans should feel no obligation to do so. But if Americans decide to be engaged,
there are achievable solutions available.
2. To learn to make connections between different kinds of information as a means of understanding
the world. To understand the problems of North Korea, for example, you must consider many
variables, including resources, population, economic development, ethnicity, history, and geopolitical interests. Is that too much information for you to take in? Not if you have the right tool
with which to filter and synthesize the information. World regional geography is that tool.
Geography is all about making connections. Using geography’s holistic and integrative approach in
a regional framework, you will look at relationships between places and people. You will be using
information, techniques, and perspectives from both the natural sciences and the social sciences.
You will become familiar with issues in political science, history, economics, anthropology,
sociology, geology, atmospheric science, and many other areas. You will pull these issues and
perspectives together and find the links between them. In short, you will be doing geography.
In the future, you will be more likely to interact with the world with new wisdom that can be
rewarding both professionally and personally. More complete knowledge of the world—good
geography—is good business. If you end up working in a business environment, chances are you
will be among the best informed of your colleagues when it comes to the cultural and physical
settings of a particular place, and that knowledge may offer you new professional opportunities.
3. To understand current events. You should become bale to pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV
news with a greatly enhanced understanding of the issues underlying the world’s news. Incidents of
violence in the Middle East, earthquakes in the western Pacific, and outbreaks of bird flu are not
random, unpredictable events but instead are rooted in consistent, recognizable problems that have
geographic dimensions. You should find it very satisfying to feel like something of an expert on a
problem that appears in the news.
4. To develop the ability to interpret places and read landscapes. Studying geography, you are
concerned both with space—the precise placement of locations on the face of the earth—and with
place—the physical and cultural context of a location. Place is much more subjective than location,
because it often is defined by the meanings of a particular location; for example, your perception of
what New York is like may be different from those of your friend and may be shaped by personal
experience in the Big Apple or by photographs or movies you have seen. In this book, there is much
discussion of the “sense of place” that individuals and groups have about various locations and
regions. Perception of place can have a very strong influence on how we make decisions and
interact with others. Perception of place can even have strong impact on world events. In the Middle
East, for example, you will see how Jewish and Muslim perceptions about the sanctity of places
within a few meters of each other in Jerusalem play a regular role in both conflict and peacemaking
in the Middle East and beyond.
Geography of Regions
Our world of closer connections among peoples and places and increasingly rapid changes focuses
on regional geography. A region is an area of Earth’s surface with physical and human
characteristics that distinguish it from other places. Regions vary in geographic scale from major
divisions of the world (world regions) to single countries and parts of countries; metropolitan
regions, for example, are areas that focus on large cities and their suburbs. Regional geography
evaluates differences and similarities within and between defined areas, or regions, of Earth’s
surface.
Three types of regions are used by geographers. Each is helpful it its own way in conveying
information about different parts of the world:[4]
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A formal region (also called a uniform or homogenous region) is one in which all the
population shares a defining trait or set of traits. A good example is an administrative
political unit such as a country or a state, where the regional boundaries are defined and
made explicit on a map.
A functional region (also called a nodal region) is a spatial unit characterized by a central
focus on some activity (often an economic zone). At the center of a functional region—a
good example is the distribution area for a metropolitan newspaper—the activity is most
intense, while toward the edges of the region, the defining activity diminishes in importance.
A vernacular region (or perceptual region) is a region that exists in the mind of a large
number of people and may play an important role in cultural identity but does not
necessarily have official or clear cut borders. Good examples are concepts of the Midwest
and the Rust Belt in the United States. These regional terms have economic and cultural
connotations, but 10 people might have 10 different definitions of the qualities and
boundaries of these regions. Vernacular regions, constructed by individuals and cultures,
serve as shorthand for place and regional identity, helping us organize, simplify, and make
sense of the world around us.
Criteria for Regions
The spatial division of world into geographic realms (based on a combination of physical and
human factors, these are the most comprehensive divisions of the inhabited world but are not
standard) establishes a broad global framework, but for our purposes a more refined level of spatial
classification is needed. This brings us to an important organizing concept in geography: the
regional concept. To establish regions within geographic realms, we need more specific criteria.
Area. Given these different dimensions of the same region, we can identify properties that
all regions have in common. To begin with, all regions have area. This observation would seem
obvious, but there is more to this idea than meets the eye. Regions may be intellectual constructs,
but they are not abstractions: they exist in the real world, and they occupy space on the earth’s
surface.
Boundaries. It follows that regions have boundaries. Occasionally, nature itself draws sharp
dividing lines, for example, along the crest of a mountain range or the margin of a forest. More
often, regional boundaries are not self-evident, and we must determine them using criteria that we
establish for that purpose. For example, to define a citrus-growing agricultural region, we may
decide that only areas where more than 50 percent of all farmland stands under citrus trees qualify
to be part of that region.
Location. All regions also have location. Often the name of a region contains a locational
clue, as in Amazon Basin or Indochina (a region of Southeast Asia lying between India and China).
Geographers refer to the absolute location of a place or region by providing the latitudinal and
longitudinal extent of the region with respect to the earth’s grid coordinates. A far more practical
measure is a region’s relative location, that is, its location with reference to other regions. Again,
the names of some regions reveal aspects of their relative locations, as in Eastern Europe and
Equatorial Africa.
Homogeneity. Many regions are marked by a certain homogeneity, or sameness.
Homogeneity may lie in a region’s human (cultural) properties, its physical (natural) characteristics,
or both. Siberia, a vast region of northeastern Russia, is marked by a sparse human population that
resides in widely scattered, small settlements of similar form, frigid climates, extensive areas of
permafrost (permanently frozen subsoil), and cold-adapted vegetation. This dominant uniformity
makes it one of Russia’s natural and cultural regions, extending from the Ural Mountains in the
west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. (See formal region)
Regions as Systems. Other regions are marked not by their internal sameness but by their
functional integration—that is, the way they work. These regions are defined as spatial systems and
are formed by the areal extent of the activities that define them. Take the case of large city with its
surrounding zone of suburbs, urban-fringe countryside, satellite towns, and farms. The city supplies
goods and services to this encircling zone, and it buys farm products and other commodities from it.
The city is the heart, the core of this region, and we call the surrounding zone of interaction the
city’s hinterland. But the city’s influence wanes on he outer periphery of that hinterland, and there
lies the boundary of the functional region of which he city is the focus.
Interconnections. All human-geographic regions are interconnected, being linked to other
regions. We know that the borders of geographic realms sometimes take on the character of
transition zones, and so do neighboring regions. Trade, migration, education, television, computer
linkages, and other interactions blur regional boundaries. These are just some links in the fastgrowing interdependence among the world’s peoples, and they reduce the differences that still
divide us. Understanding these differences will lessen them further.
Making and Remaking of Regions
Interactions and flows between places produce five dynamic aspects of regional evolution.
People Create Regions. People living in a region determine its characteristics. Human actions at
crucial phases of history set a region apart from other regions. People living inside or outside a
region, often helped by the media or government propaganda; generate their own images of a
region’s role or identity. Inhabitants may define relations with other regions as friendly or “other”.
Although physical environments often give character to a region through climate, natural resources,
or topographic features, human actions are more important in defining regions. For example, people
live in different ways in similar natural environments. Dry land inhabitants include the wandering
herding tribes of the Sahara, farmers in Pakistan using the irrigation canal systems built by British
engineers in the late 1800’s, and those living today in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles. Looked at
from another perspective similar city landscapes in the United States occur across different types of
natural environments.
Regions Shape People’s Activities. A region is an environment for human activities. It affects
events both inside and outside its boundaries. A two-way process continuously shapes regions.
People are the main forces in creating distinctive regions but are affected by the regional
characteristics that others before them established. Over long periods, some regional characteristics
are perpetuated, causing local cultural traits and social habits to emerge.
People Remake Regions. Regions—and their boundaries—may change over time, instigated by
shifting flows of people, information, capital, technology, or political ideas. For example, in the
1880’s, European colonial powers divided Africa into the country units that, by and large, still exist.
These boundaries had nothing to do with traditional African land units, but once established, they
provide new shapes in which Africans see themselves and behave.
Individuals and small groups often influence the course of changes in regions and countries, For
example, the former Soviet Union arose out of a 1917 revolution that brought Vladimir Lenin and
later Joseph Stalin to power. In he early 1930’s, Stalin’s practices industrialized the Soviet Union
and made independent farmers work in cooperative state farms. The centralized, Moscow-based
government dictated the products to be made and the crops to be grown. Huge shifts of economic
activities and massive population migrations followed, altering regions within the Soviet Union. In
the late 1980’s break-up of the Soviet bloc and the development of the new Russia in the 1990’s,
new leaders from Mikhail Gorbachev to Vladimir Putin played major roles.
Regions Interact with Other Regions. No region is an isolated entity. For example, people living in
the coastal towns of China make goods that are sold in the United States. Many migrated from
inland rural areas to work in factories built since the 1980’s, often financed by money from
multinational corporations based in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Japan. Such workers still
depend on local farms for their food, and they are subject to a cultural heritage handed down in their
communities and to Chinese government controls determined in Beijing. Their lives depend on the
flows of people, information, capital, technology, and ideology among regions inside China.
Events such as media news reports, human rights legislation, or action on gender issues spread their
influence from major global centers to local regions and sometimes rebound in other direction. The
world’s remotest regions, even the upper Amazon River basin of Brazil, are affected by external
demands such as the search for mineral resources , influxes of settlers looking for land, and visits by
enterprising tourists. Changes I one region affect other regions; when world markets for peanuts and
cotton collapsed and drought struck northern Nigeria, many people abandoned their farms and
moved into urban areas in other parts of the country.
Some places affect surrounding regions by their role in funneling trade through narrow ocean-route
throughways. For example, the materially wealthier countries defend the passage of their ships
through global choke points such as the Strait of Gibraltar, the Suez (Egypt) and Panama Canals,
the Straits of Hormuz 9entrance to the Persian Gulf), Dardanelles, and Bosporus (entrance to the
Black Sea in Turkey), and the Malacca Strait (near Singapore) to maintain access to their markets
and raw material sources.
Regions Are Used by Those in Power. Regional character may reflect the actions of powerful
governments or non-governmental institutions such as multi-national corporations. Central planning
under Communist governments in the former Soviet Union industrialized rural areas on a major scel
even north of the Arctic Circle. Groups of people were moved around the Soviet Union as a result
of perceived state security risks. In the European Union, the outlying countries, such as Portugal
and the Republic of Ireland, have their economies stimulated by EU investments in new jobs in
factories, often built for American and Asian multinational corporations.
Regions and Globalization
Increasing global connectivity through technological changes in communications and transportation
support the analysis of regional geography in the context of global trends. Older studies of the
“spaces of places” are now combining with studies of the “spaces of flows”.
Globalization and Localization
Two geographic trends help us understand what makes regions unique as a result of the increasing
flows among them: globalization and localization.
Globalization, in its simplest form, is the increasing level of interconnection among people and
places. Economic globalization involves the integration and exchange of capital, technology, and
information across country borders. It also affects society culture, politics, and the natural
environment. It could be argued that globalization began with the European discoveries in the late
1400’s or even earlier; but the speed and intensity of globalization, especially in terms of world
trade and the flow of financial investments, increased markedly beginning in the 1900’s. Few
people used the term “globalization” before 1990, but it is now mentioned daily in media. It is an
essentially geographic phenomenon.
Localization stems from established local identities existing prior to the intrusion of globalization
forces. Such identities respond to globalization as an increasing or a strengthening of local traditions
in resistance to the global diffusion of human practices. The “local” scale is any place less than
global in size, including countries, regions within countries, and wider regions that include group of
countries.
The rapid and widespread acceptance of the “globalization” theme by politicians, members of the
media, special interest groups, and academia, among many others, created substantial confusion
over precise meanings. Some people assume pervasive globalization is already overriding country
and smaller community boundaries and interests. They consider globalization as either a great
opportunity for a more cohesive world or a danger to cultures, economies, politics, and
environments. Others think the term is overused and unjustified when country governments remain
the dominant political entities and when cultural awareness and identities remain strong.
Facets of Globalization
Increasing global connections promote intensified flows of ideas, goods, and people worldwide. The
variety of such flows produces increasingly complex societies in which trends of global significance
may override local experiences.
 The spread of ideas, technologies, crime, and diseases. Most materially poor countries wish
to modernize to catch up with the materially wealthy countries. Technology transfer through
improved communications and transportation is basic to such progress. The forces that ease
the flow of modernizing technology, however, also facilitate terrorism, together with drug,
armament, and slave trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
 Flows of goods and services. Trade in raw materials, food products, manufactured goods,
and services increased rapidly in the amount and speed of transactions in the late 1900’s.
Space-time compression in transportation and communications enhanced the central control
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of economic activities both goods and services. Supermarket foods, clothing, electronic
products, and vehicles come from an increasing number of countries, often marketed by
multinational corporations of U.S., Asian, or European origin.
Human mobility. Millions of people displaced by warfare and oppression gather in refugee
camps or become asylum seekers in foreign countries. Executives of multinational
companies “commute” worldwide. Wealthy people vacation at exotic places. Materially
wealthier countries attract those willing to work for low wages, while their better-paying
jobs attract people with good education. Such workers from materially poorer countries
often send part of their relatives at home. However, this migration also produces a brain
and skills drain because of the loss of potential leaders and skilled workers.
Shifts in dominant ideologies, especially religious or political beliefs. The increasing
openness of the Chinese economy from the late 1970’s and the breakup of the Soviet Union
in1991 significantly diminished the global influence of communism. Military dictators in
other countries also fell from power. Their centrally controlled governments were inwardlooking and resistant to external influences. Through the 1990’s, democratic ideas spread
and more countries had open elections. More were increasingly involved in international
affairs. Furthermore, religious and other cultural forces such as language and tradition
became as significant as political dependence, particularly in many materially poor countries
and those in economic transition from centrally controlled governments and economies.
The access to and availability of images and messages through the media of TV, film, the
Internet, and print. In the entertainment industry, worldwide screening of U.S. movies and
TV programs may disseminate images of the Western “good life.” Increasingly, however,
challenges to Western dominance come from the film industries of India and other countries
such as Egypt and South Korea. The Internet and access to the World Wide Web enable
international and local firms, political groups, and leisure interests to have exposure outside
the control of individual countries. Print media (newspapers, magazines, and books) are
increasingly controlled by international consortia.
Uncontrollable negatives. The global spread of ideas, communication, faster transportation,
and the resultant lower levels of control by countries leads to an expansion of arms, drugs,
and people trafficking that have huge financial rewards, encourage and fund terrorist
activities, and take advantage of complex and changeable routes to market.
Facets of Localization
In many parts of the world, local voices and identities have become more confident and significant
in reacting to globalization forces ion the last 20 years. Globalization changes relationships between
the geographic interactions more complex. Geographic fragmentation is more frequent than global
amalgamations. Many facets of localization, including material polarization between globalized
activity and the “black holes” or rural marginalization and exclusion, maintain and enhance
differences among places. Even within materially wealthy countries, contrasts remain between
richer and poorer people and in particular between male and female opportunities. Democracy,
welfare programs, and decolonization, together with pressure from workers and consumers for
much of the 1900’s, made the world more equal; but this began to change in the 1990’s as economic
activities moved from the country (place) basis to realms of wider interaction (flows). Such moves
to inequality work against any trends toward “one world.” Features of localization include:
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Political nationalism that seeks to preserve the uniqueness of countries, groups of countries,
and smaller regions within countries. Within the countries of the European Union, national
identities slow political integration.
Separatist groups within countries and across borders such as the Basque people on the
Spain-France border, seek local sovereignty.
Customs and practices preserve local identities despite globalizing forces. Western pop
music has a worldwide circulation, but variants in Africa, Asia, and Latin America strongly
reflect local attitudes and traditions. Indeed, fear of globalization’s effects has caused a
resurgence and newfound pride in local customs and practices.
Ethnic and religious differences continue to be significant factors in forging or challenging
community and international relationships. Large cities such as London are increasingly
becoming multicultural. Large cities such as London are increasingly becoming
multicultural. Urban diversity is often viewed as a positive phenomenon when it manifests
in restaurant diversity or the celebration of cultural heritage festivals. The same urban
diversity may create spatial cleavages and tensions as different communities compete for
territory in the urban environment.
Resistance to the visible economic penetration of global capital and Western-style business
practices around the world affects many local communities who may rebel against a
perceived intrusion into local traditions.
Localization commonly involves political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental factors.
The global and local scales of human activity are closely linked; it is increasingly difficult to
establish a culture in isolation from global influences. In the 1990’s, the Taliban regime in
Afghanistan attempted to establish a culture in isolation from the rest of the world. Its leaders took
political control of most Afghanistan and imposed a strict form of Islam, forcing out other religious
groups and Western influences. Using the isolation to support al-Qaeda terrorists however put the
Taliban into conflict with wider global interests and led to its downfall in 2001.
Some commentators are optimistic about global processes’ ability to improve the lot of poor
countries. Others are pessimistic and see a growing global disorder.
Measuring Globalization
A globalization index provides a measure of the degree to which a country is involved in global
forces. One approach ranks countries by four groups of data sets:
 Political engagement indicators, including membership in international organizations to
United Nations Security Council missions, ratification of multinational and international
treaties, and government transfer (payments and receipts).
 Technology measures, such as the number of Internet users, Internet hosts, and secure
servers for encrypted transactions.
 Personal contact indicators, such as international travel and tourism, international telephone
traffic, cross-border nongovernmental remittances, and personal transfer (including from
workers abroad).
 Economic integration measures, such as trade flows, portfolio capital flows, foreign direct
investments, and investment income.
Of the top 20 “globalized” countries, 13 are in Europe, accompanied by Canada, the United States,
Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Jordan. Hong Kong, which is a special autonomous region
of The People’s Republic of China, is also ranked in the top 20. The United States’ rank was raised
by its dominance of technology, but was held back by a low level trade proportional to overall
output, few remittances from abroad and poor implementation of international treaties. The top
ranking of Singapore highlights the absence of any countries from Africa, East and South Asia, or
Latin America, in the top 20. The top 20 countries have major involvement in the economic,
personal contact, and technology groups as well as the political, while the lowest ranking 10
countries have little outside the political involvement. This study also detected strong links between
globalization rank, longer life expectancies, and better lives for women.
Five themes in understanding diversity and globalization
1. Geography Matters: Environment, Regions and Landscapes. Geography is one of the most
fundamental sciences, a discipline awakened and informed by a long-standing human curiosity
about our surroundings and the world environment.
Human-Environment Interaction. Three overarching questions form the foundation of this
relationship:
 Where and under what conditions does nature control, constrain, or disrupt human activities,
and what kinds of societies are most vulnerable to these environmental influences?
 How have human activities affected natural systems such as the world’s climate, vegetation,
rivers, and oceans, and what are the consequences of these actions?
 Is there evidence that humans can live in balance with nature so that human use of natural
resources might be sustainable over a long period of time? Or is environmental damage an
inevitable consequence of human settlements?
Areal differentiation and Integrations. Geography can be considered the spatial science, charged
with the study of Earth’s space or surface area, the uniqueness of places, and the similarities
between them. Systematically describing and explaining the differences that distinguish one area
from others is known as areal differentiation. One question that is asked here is: “Why is one part
of the Earth humid and verdant while another just a few hundred kilometers away is an arid desert?”
Geographers are also interested in the interconnections between different areas and how they are
linked. This concern is one of areal integration,or the study of how places interact with each other.
How and why are the economies of Singapore and the United States closely intertwined even
though the two countries are situated in entirely different physical, cultural, and political
environments? These questions are becoming increasingly important because of the world linkages
inherent in globalization.
Regions. Geographers make sense of the world by compressing and synthesizing vast amounts of
information into spatial categories based on similar traits called regions. Sometimes, the unifying
threads of a region are physical such as the Sahara Desert or the Amazonian rain forest. Other times,
the threads are more complex, combining economic an cultural traits, as in the use of the word
Midwest for the central United States.
Space into Place: The Cultural Landscape. Human beings conceptually transform space into
distinct places that are unique and heavily loaded with meaning and symbolism. A common tool for
the analysis of place is the concept of cultural landscape, which is, simply stated, the visible
material expression of human settlement, past and present. Such landscape is a tangible expression
of the human habitat.
Increasingly, we see the uniqueness of places being eroded by the homogenous landscapes of
globalization—shopping malls, fast-food outlets, business towers, theme parks, industrial
complexes.
Scales: Global to Local: Geographers work at different scales. While some may concentrate on
analysis of a local landscape—perhaps a single village in southern India—others will focus on a
broader regional picture, examining, for example, all of southern India. Others do research on a still
larger global scale, perhaps studying emerging trade networks between southern India’s center of
information technology in Bangalore and North America’s Silicon Valley, or investigating how
India’s monsoon might be connected to and affected by the Pacific Ocean’s El Niño.
This ability to move between different scales—global, regional, local—is critical for understanding
contemporary world regional geography because of the way globalization links all people and
places.
2. Population and Settlement: People on the land. Global population growth is one of the most
vexing issues facing the world. With more than 6.4 billion humans on Earth, we currently add
another 72.5 million each year, or about 8, 261 new people each hour. About 97 percent of this
population growth takes place in the developing world, especially in Africa, South and East Asia,
and Latin America. Because of such rapid population growth, perplexing questions dominate
discussions of all global issues. Can these countries absorb the rapidly increasing population and
still achieve the necessary economic and social development to ensure some level of well-being and
stability for the total population? What role should the developed countries play in addressing those
population issues now that their own populations have nearly stabilized?
The demographic transition. Population growth changes over time. Historically, in Europe, North
America, and Japan, growth declined as countries became increasingly industrialized and urbanized.
From historical data, demographers generated the demographic transition model, a four-stage
conceptualization that tracks changes in birthrates and death rates through time as population
urbanizes.
In such model Stage 1 is characterized by both high birthrates and death rates, leading to a very
slow rate of natural increase. In Stage 2, death rate falls dramatically while birthrates remain high,
producing a rapid rise in the rate of natural increase (RNI), which depicts the annual growth for a
country or region as a percentage increase. This is produced by subtracting a population’s number
of deaths in a given year from its annual number of births to find the net number added through
natural increase.
Stage 3 is the transitional stage in which people apparently become aware of the advantages of
smaller families in an urban and industrial setting. At Stage 4, a very low RNI results from a
combination of low birthrates and very low death rates. As a result, there is very little natural
population increase.
Migration patterns. Today, about 125 million, or 2 percent, of the total world population can be
considered migrants of some sort. Estimates suggest that this figure may increase by some 4 million
annually. Much of this international migration is directly linked to the new globalized economy, for
half the migrants live either in developed world or in those developing countries with vibrant
industrial, mining, or petroleum extraction economies.
Settlement geography. This gives insight into the profound changes resulting from globalization:
whether people are leaving the countryside or staying; whether they are moving to a small town or
large cities; whether jobs from new plants and factories are decentralized into the countryside or
agglomerated around large cities; whether mechanization is replacing farm workers who then must
seek other options in other places; whether civil and ethnic strife ravage the countryside, forcing
people to flee as refugees; whether the rural environment is viable and productive or degraded.
Taken together, a settlement pattern can express a sense of a place, the uniqueness of a landscape,
and the nature of the home territory of a specific group of human beings in this complex world.
3. Cultural coherence and diversity: The geography of tradition and change. The geography of
cohesion and diversity entails an examination of tradition and change, of language and religion, f
group belonging and identity, and of those complex and varied currents that underlie and pervade
twenty-first-century ethnic factionalism and separatism.
Culture in a globalizing world. Given the diversity of culture around the world, coupled with the
dynamic changes associated with globalization, traditional definitions of culture must be stretched
somewhat to provide a conceptual framework applicable to the new millennium. The varied
expressions of culture is germane to the study of world regional geography because they tell us
much about the way people interact with their environment, each other, and the world.
When cultures collide. Cultural change often takes place within the context of international tensions.
Sometimes one cultural system will replace another; at other times resistance will stave off change.
More commonly, however, a newer, hybrid form of culture results that is an amalgamation of two
cultural traditions. Historically, colonialism was the most important perpetuator of these cultural
collisions; today, globalization in its varied forms can be thought of as major vehicle of cultural
collision and change.
 Cultural imperialism is the active promotion of one cultural system at the expense of
another. The most severe examples of this happened during the colonial period when
European cultures spread worldwide, sometimes overwhelming, eroding, and even replacing
indigenous cultures.
 Cultural nationalism is the reaction against cultural imperialism. It is a process of
protecting and defending a cultural system against diluting or offensive cultural expressions
while at the same time actively promoting national and local cultural values.
 Cultural syncretism or hybridization is the most common product of cultural collision. It
is the blending of forces to form a new, synergistic form of culture.
Language and culture in global context. Language and culture are so intertwined that, in the minds
of many, language is the characteristic that best differentiates and defines cultural groups. Language
does not only bring people together but also sets them apart.
Individual languages often have very distinctive forms associated with specific regions and these
are called dialects. When people from different cultural groups cannot communicate directly in their
native languages, they often agree upon a third language to serve as a common tongue, or lingua
franca.
A geography of world religion. Another extremely important and often defining trait of culture
groups is religion. Recent ethnic violence and unrest in far-flung places such as the Balkans,
Afghanistan, and Indonesia illustrate this point. Additionally, widespread missionary activity with
its resulting conversions has both spread certain religions and aggravated religious tensions between
certain groups.
Universalizing religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, attempt to appeal to all
peoples regardless of location or culture; these religions usually have a proselytizing or missionary
program that actively seeks new converts. In contrast are the ethnic religions, which remain
identified closely with a specific ethnic, tribal, or national group. Judaism and Hinduism, are
usually regarded as ethnic religions because they normally do not actively seek new converts.
4. Geopolitical framework: Fragmentation and unity. The term geopolitics is used to describe and
explain the close link between geography and politics. More specifically, geopolitics focuses on the
interactivity between power, territory, and space at all scales from the local to the global.
While wide-ranging international conflicts remain a nagging concern of diplomats and governments
(particularly in South Asia where the proliferation of nuclear weapons has inflamed historical
animosities), perhaps more common are strife and tension within—rather than between—nationstates. Civil unrest, tribal tensions, terrorism, and religious factionalism have created a new fabric
and scale of political tension.
Global terrorism. In geopolitical terms, global terrorism demands a new way of looking at the
world to understand the attacks and to assess the profound implications of that terrorism. More to
the point, many experts argue that global terrorism is both a product of as well as a reaction to
globalization.
Nation-states. A conventional starting point for examining political geography is the concept of the
nation-state. The hyphen links to diverse concepts, the term state, which is a political entity with
territorial boundaries recognized by other countries and internally governed by an organizational
structure, with the term nation, which refers to a large group of people who share numerous cultural
elements, such as language, religion, tradition, or simple cultural identity, and, more importantly,
view themselves as forming a single-political community. The nation-state, then, is ideally a
relatively homogenous cultural group with its own fully independent political territory.
Centrifugal and centripetal forces. Cultural and political forces acting to weaken or divide an
existing state are called centrifugal forces, because they pull away from the center. Many have
already been mentioned: linguistic minority status, ethnic separatism, the desire for territorial
autonomy, along with disparities in income and well-being. Separatist tendencies in Frenchspeaking Quebec (Canada) are a good example. Counteracting these dissipating forces are those that
promote political unity and reinforce the state structure. These centripetal forces could include a
shared sense of history, a need for military security, an overarching economic structure, or simply
the advantages that come from a larger political apparatus that builds and maintains the
infrastructure of highways, airports, and schools.
Boundaries and frontiers. A key component of the definition of a state is that its territory is
demarcated by borders recognized by a large number of other states. Although these boundaries
may be one of the most recognizable features of a world map, the issue of agreed-upon borders is
often complicated and contentious.
A cursory glance at the world political map reminds us that boundaries come in many forms. Some
are drawn along physical features such as mountain ridges, rivers or coastlines. Ethnographic
boundaries, which follow cultural traits such as language and religion, have long been a model for
international politics because they complement the ideal of the nation-state. In contrast, geometrics
boundaries are perfectly straight lines, drawn without regard for physical or cultural features that
usually follow a parallel of latitude or a meridian of longitude. Historically, geometric boundaries
often were drawn by colonial powers as a convenient way of quickly demarcating spheres of
influence.
Colonialism and decolonization. One of the overarching themes in world regional geography is the
waxing and waning of European colonial power over much of the world. Colonialism refers to the
formal establishment of rule over a foreign population. A colony has no independent standing in the
world community, but instead is seen only as an appendage of the colonial power.
Decolonization refers to the process of a colony’s gaining or regaining control over its territory and
establishing a separate, independent government. As was the case with the Revolutionary War in
the United States, this process often begins as a violent struggle.
International and supranational organizations. As another attribute of globalization, international
organizations increasingly link two or more states for the express purpose of military, economic,
political, or environmental cooperation. At the top of this organizational chart, of course, is the
United Nations (UN), which has increasingly become a major peacekeeping force on the
international scene.
A supranational organization is defined as an organization of states linked by a common goal,
within which individual state power may be reduced to achieve the organization’s goals. Put
differently, the higher goals of the supranational organization may often necessitate a reduction in
state sovereignty by individual members. Perhaps the best example is the European Union (EU),
which began as an economic union, and which has expanded its powers so that it now holds
elections, has a parliament, promotes a common monetary currency, and works toward reducing
border formalities between member states.
5. Economic and social development: The geography of wealth and poverty: The pace of global
economic change and development has accelerated dramatically in the last several decades. As a
result, we now talk about global assembly lines, outsourcing, transnational corporations, commodity
chains, and international electronic offices. Few regions of the world are untouched by these
changes. The overarching question, however, is whether the positive changes of economic
globalization outweigh the negative.
More- and less-developed countries. Until the last century, economic development was centered in
North America, Japan and Europe, while most of the rest of the world remained gripped in poverty.
This uneven distribution of power led scholars to devise a core-periphery model of the world
economy. According to this model, the United States, Canada, western Europe, and Japan constitute
the global economic core of the North, while most of the areas to the south make up a lessdeveloped global periphery. All the G-8 countries—the exclusive club of the world’s major
industrial nations made up of the United States, Canada, France, England, Germany, Italy, Japan,
and Russia—are located in the northern hemisphere core. Another assumption of this core-periphery
model is that the developed core achieved its wealth primarily by exploiting the periphery, either
through historical colonial relationships or through more recent economic imperialism.
Another term, the Third World, is often used to refer to the developing world. This phrase carries
connotations of a low level of economic development, unstable political organizations, and a
rudimentary social infrastructure.
Indicators of economic development. The term development and growth often are used
interchangeably when referring to international economic activities. There is, however, value in
keeping them separate. Development has both qualitative and quantitative dimensions. A dictionary
definition uses the phrases such as “expanding or realizing potential; bringing gradually to a fuller
or better state.” When we talk of economic development, then, we usually imply structural changes,
such as shift from agricultural to manufacturing activity, with accompanying changes in the use of
labor, capital, and technology. Along with these changes are assumed improvements in standard of
living, education, and even political organization.
Growth, in contrast, is simply the increase in size of a system. The agricultural or industrial output
of a country may grow, as it has for India in the last decade and this growth may—or may not—
have positive implications for development. Many expanding economies have experienced
increased poverty.
Economic development is traditionally measured by looking at a country’s Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) plus its net income from abroad. These two factors constitute the Gross National Income or
GNI (formerly referred to as gross national product or GNP). Another determinant of economic
development is GNI per capita, which is dividing the GNI by the country’s population. An
important qualification to these GNI per capita data is the concept of adjustment through
purchasing power parity (PPP), which gives us a comparable figure for a standard “market
basket” of good and services purchased with the local currency.
Indicators of social development. Although economic growth is a major component of
development, the conditions and quality of human life in this rapidly changing world are of equal
interest. The standard assumption is that economic development and growth will spill over into the
social infrastructure so that there will also be a concomitant improvement in public health, working
conditions, gender equality, and education must be supported with objective data. For that reason,
we include several measures of social development.
Life expectancy – the average length of life expected at birth for a hypothetical male or female
based upon national death statistics. Under age 5 mortality, which is the measure of the number of
children who die per 1,000 persons, is another important indicator of social conditions. The first 5
years are a time of high vulnerability to nutritional deprivation, infection, disease, accidents, and
other human tragedies. Adult literacy rates, given for both men and women, provide two kinds of
information relevant to the social development of a country. In general, higher rates of illiteracy
usually are products of low levels of national investment in education, which does not bode well for
participation in a globalizing world. Second, gender disparities also can be evident in these data.
In many countries, women play a prominent role in economic life; thus, data on the percentage of
females in the labor force are important.
The vision of sustainable development. As the environmental and social costs of globalized
economic development become increasingly apparent, the notion of sustainable development is
being widely discussed by international aid workers, development planners, environmentalists, and
community groups. This term can be defined simply as an agenda of economic change and growth
that seeks a balance with issues of environmental protection and social equity so that the short-term
needs of contemporary society do not compromise the future.
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Rowntree, L. et al. (2006). Diversity amid globalization: World regions, environment,
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