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INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN
GEOGRAPHY
Chapter 1
What Is Human Geography?
The study of
•How people make places
•How we organize space and society
•How we interact with each other in places
and across space
•How we make sense of others and
ourselves in our locality, region, and world
Globalization
A set of processes that are
• Increasing interactions
• Deepening relationships
• Heightening
interdependence
without regard to country
borders
A set of outcomes that are
• Unevenly distributed
• Varying across scales
• Differently manifested
throughout the world
Impact of individual, regional, national scales on processes
and outcomes of globalization
What Are Geographic Questions?
• The spatial arrangement of places and
phenomena (human and physical)
– How are things organized on Earth?
– How do they appear on the landscape?
– Where? Why? So what?
• No place “untouched by human hands” or activity
• Human organization of communities, nations,
networks
• Establishment of political, economic, religious,
cultural systems
Spatial Distribution
• Spatial distribution and pattern
• Processes that create and sustain a distribution
Map of Cholera Victims
in London’s Soho District
in 1854
Patterns of victim’s homes
and water pump locations
key to the source of the
disease
Five Themes of Geography
• Location
• Human-environment
interaction
• Region
• Place
• Movement
Place
Sense of place: Infusing a
place with meaning and
emotion
Perception of place: Belief
or understanding of
what a place is like,
often based on books,
movies, stories, or
pictures
Perception
of Place
Where Pennsylvanian
students prefer to live
Where Californian
students prefer to live
Movement
Spatial interaction: The
interconnectedness
between places,
depending upon
• Distance
• Accessibility
• Connectivity
Elizabeth J. Leppman
Cultural Landscape
The visible human imprint, the material character of
a place
Religion and
cremation
practices spread
with Hindu
migrants from
India to Kenya
Sequent Occupance
Layers of imprints in a cultural landscape
reflecting years of differing human activity
Apartments in Mumbai, India
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: African,
Arab, German, British, Indian “layers.”
Apartments replaced earlier singlefamily houses
Why Do Geographers Use Maps,
and What Do Maps Tell Us?
Types of maps
• Reference maps
– Locations of places and geographic features
– Absolute locations
• Thematic maps
– Degree of an attribute
– Pattern of distribution
– Movement
– Relative locations
Reference
Map
Thematic
Map
Location
• Absolute location
– Precise location using a coordinate system
– Latitude and longitude most common
– Measured by geographic positioning systems
(GPS)
• Relative location
– Location in relation to something else
– Changes over time with changing
circumstances
Mental Maps
Maps we carry in our minds of places we
have been and places we have heard of
Activity Spaces
The places we travel to routinely in our
rounds of daily activity
Remote Sensing and GIS
Satellite image
Photograph
Hurricane Katrina, 2005: Area of impact
and destruction
Geographic
Information
System (GIS)
Computer hardware
and software that
permit storage and
analysis of layers of
spatial data
Why Are Geographers Concerned
with Scale and Connectedness?
• Scale: Territorial extent of something
• Varying scales of observations
– Local
– Regional
– National
– Global
Scale
The Power of Scale
• Influence of processes operating at different
scales
• Context of a phenomenon in what is happening at
different scales
• Political use of scale to change who is involved or
how an issue is perceived
Regions
Formal region: Defined by a common characteristic,
whether physical or cultural, present throughout
e.g., German-speaking region of Europe
Functional region: Defined by a set of social,
political, or economic activities or interactions
e.g., an urban area, city and suburbs
Regions
Perceptual Region: Ideas in our minds, based on
accumulated knowledge of places and regions,
that define an area of “sameness” or
“connectedness”
Culture
• The whole tangible lifestyle of peoples, but also
their prevailing values and beliefs
• Cultural trait: A single attribute of a culture
• Cultural complex: A combination of traits
• Cultural hearth: Area where a culture began and
from which it spreads
• Independent invention: A culture trait that began
in several places
Diffusion or Cultural Diffusion
• The process of the spread of an idea or innovation
from its hearth to other areas
• Factors that slow or prevent diffusion
– Time-distance decay – the declining level in
acceptance of an idea or innovation with
increasing time & distance from its point of
origin
– Cultural barriers – Prevailing (existing) cultural
attitude rendering certain ideas unnacceptable
or unadoptable in that culture
Types of Diffusion
• Expansion diffusion: Idea
or innovation spreading
outward from the hearth
– Contagious: Spreads to
next available person – by
contact from person to
person
– Hierarchical: Spreads to
most linked people or
places first
– Stimulus: Promotes local
experiment or change – a
cultural adaptation is
created
Contagious Diffusion
Contagious Diffusion
Hierarchical Diffusion
Stimulus Diffusion
Stimulus Diffusion
Stimulus Diffusion
Types of Diffusion
• Relocation diffusion:
Paris, France
Movement of individuals who carry
an idea or innovation with them to
a new, perhaps distant locale
Kenya
: H .J. de Blij
: A. B. Murphy
Types of Diffusion
• Relocation diffusion: Movement of individuals who
carry an idea or innovation with them to a new, perhaps
distant locale
Kenya
: H .J. de Blij
: A. B. Murphy
What Are Geographic Concepts, and
How Are They Used in Answering
Geographic Questions?
• Ways of seeing the world spatially that
geographers use in answering research questions
• Old approaches to human-environment questions
– Environmental determinism (has been rejected by
almost all geographers)
– Possibilism (less accepted today)
• New approaches to human-environment questions
– Cultural ecology
– Political ecology