Harm de Blij’s Why Geography Matters: More Than Ever explains the necessity of geographic knowledge in today’s society and the need to further expand interactions within the United States and other countries. This novel expands on the economic, cultural, physical, and political geography of our nation. De Blij outlines on the importance of geographic thought by focusing on climate change, terrorism, the rise of states, and development in Africa.. I believe that while geography has proven to make a noticeable difference in the knowledge of our vast world, it will require an extensive amount of effort in order to make geography known.
The land is beautiful In all regions the temperatures, people, landforms, cultures are all different but they all feel the same. This world is a marvelous place it is different than all of the other planets in the world and it is the most unique. The geography and environment influenced the cultural development of the indigenous people in the three different regions California, Eastern Woodlands, and the Great Plains.
Growing up, I have always had an interest in geography and thinking about different countries and what makes them the way that they are. I have not been in a geography class since middle school and Human Geography was a class that made me think about things I have never thought of before. The readings of both Kropotkin and Mackinder brought up very interesting points, some that conflict and others that agree. Each author writes in a way that stimulates and makes you think about geography and certain topics in different ways which I find to be very rare in writings from this time period. Discussing Kropotkin’s and Mackinder’s general ideas, points they disagree or agree on, and my own views on the topic will all be discussed in this final paper.
In his book Understanding Cultural Geography, Places and Traces (2010), Anderson argues that cultural geography contributes to and affects place. He states that: “cultural life does not take place in a vacuum. ”(1) Instead various "things ideas, practices, and emotions occur within a context" (1). Anderson defines the interest in this context as the study of geography.
We’ve all identified at least one place as our haven. Whether that is home, the neighborhood pond, or even the cave that everyone avoids. This place holds a special meaning where one seeks refuge from the complexity of the world. There is one word that describes our attachment to this location. Geography.
The systems are often interwoven on the landscape. For instance, how many times have you seen a river run through a city? The physical system is the river itself, the path it takes, and the landforms it influences. Geographers focus on location more than any other factor when investigating issues on the local or global level. So, what is geography?
From the Paleolithic Age to today’s Information Age, humans have always been connected to nature. Geography’s contribution to humans can be seen from the base when humans started migrating out of Africa. Historic events and time periods comprising the Trail of Tears and Ancient Egypt were also affected by Earth’s geography. The relationship of humans and nature is evident during the Old Stone Age.
The five themes of geography are location, place, human/environment interaction, movement, and regions. Geographers use these themes in many ways to organize information about the Earth. For example, they use movement to explain how people, goods and ideas get from one place to another. It also helps because geographers can understand the relationship among places and to understand cultural changes. Then geographers could use region to make comparisons between places and cultures.
Does Physical Geography Affect Human Interaction Over the hundreds of years since the human race evolved, people have migrated to different parts of the world. There they would set up societies,and develop cultures, such as beliefs in order to make sense of the world around them. Each new developments may differ depending on their physical geography. Studies taken by historians and others who study human interaction in the past, have concluded that physical geography does help develop one's society causing it to be an extremely important because it could make or break a society.
Five Themes of Geography Random Island This represents location because it shows the coordinates of the place, which continent it’s in and which hemisphere it’s in.
Finally, the last topic I chose to write about is behavior geography, since it is a very relevant topic that influences the mental maps we have created for ourselves. In “Intro to geography” by Dahlman Renwick behavioral geography is described as, “how our perception influences our behavior” (Renwick, 268) and the images one visualizes when thinking of these perceptions is our “mental map.” Behavioral geography greatly influences one’s mental maps of locations. As people have formed many ideas about specific areas based on factors such as other opinions, what the mass media displays, the median income of a town, crime rates, and the person’s beliefs. For example, several people generate mental maps about cities even if they have never visited
Many people think that geography solely deals with societal boundaries and human interactions. Some of these people might denounce geography to a social science, separating this field from the hard sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology. To fully understand the scientific credibility of geographers, it is important to note that while some geographical studies focus on human elements, many other geographical studies explore the natural world through the use of questions, observations, and experiments; otherwise known as the scientific method. In the 1930s Alexander McAide wrote, “Our school geographies fifty years ago began to describe customs and manners… and so brought in the human factor. We may define geography today as ‘all that pertains to human environment.’”
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 of human geography (Marsh). There are some debates about whether these two branches are related to each other, but in recent years more and more people believe that they have close relationship, especially when it comes to the human activity and natural disaster. This paper will mainly talk about the three cases. The author intends to illustrate the environment has great influence on people’s life, taking the Guangdong province as examples, as well as explain the global warming has serious threatened the ecosystem. 2.
Throughout time, geography have affected many countries and affected things like the way they develop. Geographic factors have had a huge role in countries cultures and the lifestyle of the people. A country like Egypt have developed during the years because of their geography. They developed in many ways as advanced systems for building pyramids, natural resources. They thrived economically because of this and culturally.
Physical geographers apply the positivist approach in trying to understand the physical world. Bennett defines positivism as “a philosophy of meaning, of what you say that something is true, when you offer it as something which others must also accept because it is, according to some allegedly neutral standard true” (2009, 310). In this paper the way in which geographers use the positivist theory to understand the physical world will be discussed along with the advantages and limitations of using this method. There are a host of factors involved in the positivistic approach to physical geography. Physical geography is viewed by many as being hands on work with less theory.
