CHAPTER 1: INTRO TO HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Geography
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Rooted in Greek
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Geo - the world
Graphei - to write
Geography means "description of the world / writing about the world"
Humans exist in time and space
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Time: History
Space: Geography
Human Geography
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Studies earth's surface as a space within which human population lives
What is where? Why there? Why care?
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Studies distribution of humans and their activities on the surface of the Earth and the
processes that generate these distributions.​
Goal of Human Geography
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Studying the human world to increase our understanding of it
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Promote well-being
Trying to make sense of the world
Humans
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Adaptors
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Decision makers
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Interpret information to make decisions
More information you have the better informed decisions you make
Preference makers
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Historically and constantly adapt to environment to survive
We have preferences to how we live
Make decisions based on these
Information processors
Dynamic and diverse creatures
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195 countries, 6909+ languages, VERY diverse
Cultural diversity is same as biodiversity (POSITIVE)
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If one culture exists and it goes extinct, no culture left
Monoculture
Human diversity exists because of their environment (physical diversity)
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Canada is increasingly diverse, but also increasingly homogenizing the world
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Geographic entities
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Occupy space, with volume
Mobile
Life is a spatial search
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Constantly searching for our spaces
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Space used to communicate
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Eg. Fences, bodily distance, status
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Make things
Make cities and blow up the planet
Active agents shaping the environment
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Fences say stay out
Creative / Destructive force
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Space is power - wealthy people have lots of space
Tool makers (brain and thumbs)
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Eg. Employment, homes, vacation etc.
We shape our world
Human-environment relationship is way out of wack
Part of the environment
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Not separate
Environment
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Environs - to envelope
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Environment: that which sustains and surrounds us
We live in the biosphere
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Everywhere and everywhere is different
Physical Environment
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Studied in physical geography
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Studied in Human geography
Processes and patterns of natural features on Earth
Built Environment
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Human made features; cultural creations
Culture
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Totality of all things human made and practiced
Material Environment
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Physical tangible matter
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Eg. Buildings, cars, toothpaste, glasses etc.
Immaterial Environment
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Non-physical, tangible matter
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They are not mutually exclusive
Eg. Ideas, Languages, values, laws, gender, religion
Material and immaterial environments
You can tell a lot from a coffee cup
Landscapes - Key concept to view and question human built environments
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Land - environment that sustains and surrounds us
Scape - representation or view of
Human or cultural landscape arrangement in physical space of human
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Key landscape questions
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Made artifacts & activities
How to view the environment its people and place?
How to organize what we see?
Physical and Cultural attributes
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The natural physical landscape interacts/mixes with cultural human landscape
Observing landscape
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Many ways of viewing (scaping) a land
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Nature, habitat, wealth, history, system etc.
More ways of seeing:
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More questions
More answers
Places
How to view the environment, its people and places
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Place = location
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A physical site or location of a material object in space
Place = site of felt experience
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Space occupied over time by humans
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Gives it immaterial meanings
Sense of place
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Meanings, values, identities - home
Sense of Place created through
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Direct personal experience/observation
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Secondary sources
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Eg. homes
Eg. Paris has an identity and values associated with it through sources
Intrinsic characteristics of the site
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Eg.
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Grand Canyon - very unique with natural beauty
Eiffel Tower - unique
Old Montreal - unique
Places Matter
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Setting for daily life
Hold meanings and values to us
Influence our actions and behaviours
Allows us to express ourselves
Help form personal and group identities
SUMMARY
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Human Geography studies the complex interplay between humans & the places & landscapes
they create​
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Geographers ask: What is where? Why there? Why care?​
The goal: write about the human environment to increase our under​standing of it: Vital to our
well-being!​
CHAPTER 1 TEXTBOOK
Terms
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Physical Geography: One of two branches of geography
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Includes climate, topography, geology, soils, and ecosystems
Human Geography: One of two branches of geography
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The study of patterns and processes of the earth's natural or physical environments
The study of patterns and processes of earth's human or social environments
Includes population change, economics, cultures, politics, settlements, and human
interactions with the natural environment
Geographical (spatial) perspective: The approach that geographers utilize in their study of the
human and physical environments of the earth
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A view of observing variations in geographic phenomena on the earth's surface
Space: The areal extent of something
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Used in both absolute (objective) and relative (perceptual) forms
Spatial: Refers to space on the earth's surface
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Perception: The process by which humans acquire information about physical and social
environments
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Mental (perceptual) map: An image or spatial representation (map) of the way space is
organized, as influenced by an individual's knowledge or lived experience in that space
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Geographic Scale: The territorial extent or level of analysis, such as local, regional, and
global
Location: A particular position in space/A specific part of the earth’s surface
Used in absolute, relative, and nominal forms
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Relative (with respect to something else)
Nominal (the name of the place)
A place name
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Site: The physical attributes or characteristics of a location, including its topography,
climate, water resources, vegetation, and so on
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Situation: The geographic context of a location, relative to other locations, including its
economic, political, and social characteristics
Place: A location that has acquired particular meaning or significance
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Sense of Place: The feelings evoked by, or deep attachments to, specific locations
(places) such as home, that result from the experiences individuals associate with the
location
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Sacred Place: A location with particular significance to an individual or a group, usually
(but not necessarily) for religious reasons
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Placelessness: The nature of locations that lack uniqueness or individual character; used
for homogeneous and standardized landscapes
Region: A part of the earth’s surface that displays internal homogeneity and is relatively distinct
from surrounding areas according to certain criteria; A contiguous spatial unit
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Absolute (eg. Coordinates)
Toponym: The common name given to a location
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A way of interpreting one's lived experience
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Synonymous with geographic
Regionalization: The process of classifying locations or areas of the earth’s surface into
various regions
Types of Regions
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Formal (uniform) Region: An area (region) that possesses a certain degree of uniformity
with respect to one or more physical or cultural traits
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Eg. Country, province, state
Functional (nodal) Region: An area (region) organized around a node or focal point, and
unified by specific economic, political, or social activity
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Vernacular (perceptual) Region: An area (region) identified on the basis of the
perceptions held by people inside or outside the region, or both
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Cultural Landscapes: The characteristics or overall appearance of a particular area or
location, resulting from human modification of the natural environment
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Eg. Urban cultural landscape, rural cultural landscape, suburban cultural
landscapes etc.
Distance: A measure of the amount of space between two or more locations
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Measured in:
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Eg. Rust belt - Conservative views, likes stock car racing
Landscapes: The characteristics, or overall appearance, of a particular area or location,
comprising a combination of natural and human influences
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Eg. Schools, places of worship
Absolute terms (physical distance)
Relative terms
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Time distance - how long it takes to get there
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Psychological (perceptual) distance - Driving in good weather vs bad
weather
Economic distance - cost incurred to overcome physical distance (eg.
Uber, mailing a package)
Distribution: The spatial arrangement of geographic phenomena (e.g. people) within an area
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Density: A measure of the relationship between the number of geographic phenomena
(e.g. people) and a unit of area; typically expressed as a ratio
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Eg. People per km^2
Concentration: The spread of geographic phenomena (e.g. people) over a given area
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Clustered (Agglomerated): Occur when the distance between geographic
phenomena (e.g. people) is small
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Dispersed (Deglomerated): occur when the distance between geographic
phenomena (e.g.people) is large
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Clustering (agglomerating) occurs when geographic phenomena (e.g.
businesses) move closer together, sometimes around a nucleus
(nucleated)
Dispersion (deglomerating) occurs when geographic phenomena (e.g.
businesses) move apart from one another
Random
Uniform
Pattern: The geometric, regular, or other (i.e. random) spatial arrangement of
geographic phenomena (e.g. people) in a given area
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Diffusion: The process of geographic phenomena spreading over space and through time
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Cultural Diffusion: The process of cultural phenomena (e.g. ideas, innovations, trends,
languages) spreading over space and through time
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Hearth: The area where a particular cultural trait originates
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Expansion Diffusion: One of two basic forms of diffusion in which geographic
phenomena spread from one area to another through an additive process
Relocation Diffusion: One of two basic forms of diffusion, in which the
geographic phenomena are physically moved from one area to another, such as
through immigration or trade
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Contagious Diffusion: One of two forms of expansion diffusion in which
geographic phenomena spread rapidly and throughout an area
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Hierarchical Diffusion: One of two forms of expansion diffusion in which
geographic phenomena spread first to key people or places and then
gradually throughout the rest of a population or an area
Spatial Interaction: The nature and extent of the relationship or linkages between locations
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The extent of spatial interaction is related to the distances between locations and the
physical and intangible connections between them
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Distance Decay: The effects of distance on spatial interaction
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Generally intensity of interaction declines with increasing distance
Friction of Distance: A measure of the restraining effect of distance on human
interaction and movement
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Generally greater time and cost are incurred with increasing distance
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Accessibility: A variable quality of a location, expressing the opportunity for interaction
with other locations
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Connectivity: The direct and indirect linkages (e.g. transportation routes and
communications pathways) between two or more locations
Geographic Tools
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Map: Typically, a flat (two-dimensional) representation of the earth’s surface, or a portion of it,
and its geographic
features including people, places, and geographic phenomena
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Cartography: The art and science of making maps
Global Grid
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Latitude: The angular distance of a point on the surface of the earth, measured in degrees,
minutes, and seconds, north and south of the equator (which is assigned a value of 0°);
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Lines of constant latitude are called parallels
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Longitude: The angular distance of a point on the surface of the earth, measured in degrees,
minutes, and seconds, east and west of the prime meridian (assigned a value of 0°) which runs
through Greenwich, UK, among other places
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Time zone: A region of the earth that observes a uniform standard time
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Lines of constant longitude are called meridians
24 zones of 15 degrees longitude
Map Scale: The relationship between the size of a geographic feature on a map and the
corresponding actual size of the feature on the earth’s surface
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Ratio - eg. 1:50,000
Graphical - eg. Bar/line to show equivalent distance on earth
Textual - eg. 1 cm = 20 km
Map Projection
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Projection: A process to transform the spherical earth’s surface onto a two-dimensional map
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A process to transfer locations from the earth’s surface onto a flat map
Distorts: area, distance, shape, direction
Most common projection: Mercator Projection
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Distorts area and distance; direction and shape are true
Map Forms and Types
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Reference Map: A map portraying the absolute locations of places and geographic phenomena
(e.g. buildings) using a standard frame of reference, such as the global grid (latitude and
longitude)
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Eg. Road maps
Thematic Map: An analytical tool to illustrate and emphasize the spatial variation of a particular
theme or attribute
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Dot map: A thematic map where dots or scale-adjusted symbols represent geographic
phenomena (e.g. population)
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Chloropleth map: A thematic map using colour or shading to indicate intensity of
geographic phenomena in a given area
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Isopleth map: A thematic map using lines to connect locations of equal value with
respect to a geographic phenomenon
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Eg. population density
Eg. daily temperature
Cartograms: A thematic map where the size and shape of spatial areas are intentionally
distorted and replaced by the relative magnitude of the geographic phenomena
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Eg. a country’s wealth as measured by gross domestic product
Spatial Analysis and Geomatics Technologies
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Remote Sensing: A series of techniques used for collecting spatial data through instruments (e.g.
sensors and cameras in satellites, airplanes, and drones) that are physically distant from the
object of study
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Global Positioning System (GPS): A satellite-based system for determining the absolute location
of geographic phenomena (e.g. an address)
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Geographic Information System (GIS): A system of computer hardware and software that
facilitates the collection, storage, analysis, and display of spatially referenced data through
layered maps
Fieldwork: A means of collecting data and insight into geographic issues
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Involves the collection of information outside a laboratory, library, or workplace setting
One of the key traditions of geographic inquiry
The question of human geography:
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Charles Gritzner
What is where, why there, and why care?
CHAPTER 2: HUMAN POPULATIONS
Distributions and Patterns
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Human Geography - interested in people
Population Geography: the study of the spatial component of Demography
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Areas of focus
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Areal distribution of population
Reasons for & consequences of distribution
Implications for distributions
Growth by Numbers (2018)
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World population - 7.9 billion + 226,000 daily (1.1%)
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Population growth isn't uniform across all countries
China - 1.4 billion + 23,000 daily (0.61%)
India - 1.3 billion + 42,000 daily (1.24%)
Canada - 37 million + 1,000 daily (1.0%)
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Third of the population live in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver
Word Population Overtime
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20th century - population explosion (why?)
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Increased standard of living
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More food - Green revolution
Better healthcare
Move to the cities
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Overwhelmingly occurring in developing countries
World Population Distribution
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Very uneven
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Dense near coastal cities (lowland areas)
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Some very dense, some uninhabited, some very sparse
Early form of transportation
Water for agriculture
Food
Clustered Areas
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East Asia 25%
South Asia 21%
Europe 12%
NE USA <1%
SE Canada
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Live densely around Quebec - Windsor axis
Access to St. Lawrence river
Some more stats
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Over 50% of world are "urbanites"
Almost 90% of people live north of Equator
90% live on 20% of land - large proportion occupy a small land
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Economically beneficial
Canada Population Distribution
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One third of population live in GTA, Montreal, Vancouver
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More jobs
Mid-sized cities grow by attracting immigrants (eg. London)
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Uneven distribution of Canada's population
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Compete with other cities for immigrants
70% south of 49% parallel
87% within 160 km of US border
82% in urban centers
Divided land
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Ecumene: Permanently inhabited
Non-Ecumene: unihabited or sparsely inhabited
Measures of Population
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Core Measures
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Fertility (birth)
Mortality (death)
Migration (movement)
Fertility
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Crude Birth Rate (CBR): total number of births in a given period for every 1000 people already
living
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Issue: Does not factor who can give birth
General Fertility Rate (GFR): Actual number of live births per 1,000 women in fecund age
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Fecund age: years where woman can conceive (15-49)
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Issue: Doesn't factor in age distribution - only potential mothers
Age-Specific Fertility Rate (ASFR): Average number of children a woman in a 5 year age group
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Total Fertility Rate (TFR): Average number of children a woman will have as she passes through
the fecund years
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Issue: Replacement Rate = 2.1-2.5
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People die before reaching child-bearing age
Factors
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Biological Factors
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Nutritional well-being
Diet
Economic Factors
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Age
Having children a cost-benefit decision
Cultural Factors
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Marriage
Contraceptive use
Abortion
Mortality
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Crude Death Rate (CDR): total number of deaths in a give period for population
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Issue: Does not consider that probability of dying is related to age
Age-Specific Mortality Rate (ASMR): average number of deaths within a 5 year age group
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Usually divided by sex
Keypoint: Useful for looking for trends of premature deaths, or a rising population
Infant Mortality Rate (IMR): number of deaths of infants under 1 year old per 1,000 live births in
a year
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IMR and Life Expectancy (LE) - Reflection of overall population health
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Life expectancy: average number of years to be lived from birth
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Wealth is directly related to LE
Poverty shortens life
Rate of Natural Increase (RNI): Measures rate of population growth
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RNI = CBR - CDR
Relatively constant over years
Factors
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Life Expectancy factors are driven by socioeconomic status (SES)
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Availability of food and good nutrition
Access to healthcare and medical facilities
Working conditions
Sanitation
Level of Education
Income
In theory, CBR can be 0 - CDR can't
Government Policies for Population Problems
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Too many babies or not enough?
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Some gov'ts have nor formal policy
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Indifference
Public opinion mixed
Other gov'ts are active
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Pro-natalist
Anti-natalist
Pro-Natal Policies
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Religious domination
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Catholic or Islamic theology
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Ethnic Majority numerically overtaken by ethnic minority
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Universal Child Care Benefit: $100/month / child
Larger population for economic or strategic purposes
Canada as Pro-Natal
Child Tax Credit: Up to $320/month / child
Supplements for low income: Up to ~$500/month child
RESP Grants- $500 to start
Parental Leave- 1 Year
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Canada Pension Plan credit for stay-at-home-parents
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LDC have initiated designed to reduce fertility
Subsidized day care (Quebec, PEI, others to follow...)
Anti-Natal Policies
Overpopulation is a real danger and carrying capacity has been exceeded
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Carrying Capacity: Max population that can be supported by given level of
resources/tech
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Best solution is reduced fertility
Case Study - China
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1970's: "Later, Longer, Fewer"
1979: One Child Policy (until recent change in policy)
Population Forecast Models
S-Shaped Curve Model
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Growth process begins slowly, then increases rapidly (exponentially), then levels out at a ceiling
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Still possibility that it will be accurate by 2200
Reason for exponential growth
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Industrial revolution
Malthusian Theory - 1798
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Two Axioms
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Food necessary for human existence
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People have sex
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Population increases at a geometric rate (1, 2, 4, 8, ...)
Hypothesis
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Population growth will always create stress on the means of subsistence
Population growth = poverty
Only checks
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Food production increases arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, ...)
War, Famine, Disease
Population still grew - Caveats (technological advances)
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More food same land
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Industrialization improved well-being
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Machinery, fertilizer, crop rotation, GMO, weather forecasts
Clothing, shelter, sanitation
Transportation
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Improved accessibility to food/other goods
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Contraception
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Cheap, accessible, widely acceptable
Modern Day shows there is truth in theory
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Earth is not a limitless resource
Demographic Transition Model
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Critiques
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Western-centric
Population Movement and Migration
Mobility - The ability to move either permanently or temporarily
Migration
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Migration: The permanent movement or planned long-term relocation of residential place &
activity space
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Emigration: Migrating from a place to another
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E = exit
Immigration: the action of coming to live permanently in a foreign country
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I = in
Principal Migration Patterns
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Inter-continental: between continents or major world regions
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Push-Pull Logic
Intra-continental: within countries, same continent
Inter-regional: within your region
Rural-to-Urban: from farm to city
Why Migrate?
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People move because they consider new location to be more favourable
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Four categories
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Economic
Political
Cultural
Environmental
Drivers of Current Migration
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Communications Revolution
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Transportation Revolution
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Learn about other places in the world
Smaller world
Rights Revolution
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More regulation of international standards
Better life for migrants
Canada's Immigration
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Goal
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2021 - 401,000 immigrants
2022 - 411,000 immigrants
2023 - 421,000 immigrants
Why
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Rule of thumb - should admit 1% of population
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Covid disrupted that
Now let's ramp it up
Canada Needs Immigrants
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Demographic
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Smaller population = smaller economy
Workers, taxpayers, consumers
International Obligations
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Shrinking population
Economic
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Not replacing ourselves
Take refugees
Makes news but overall pretty small
All Canadians are:
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Summary
Indigenous, refugee, or immigrant
1. Two of the largest factors that make up population dynamics are birth and death
2. Third crucial factor is movement of population
3. As a generalization word demographic patterns are easily described within a world-system
a. High birth rates are features of periphery
b. Low birth and death rates are features of core areas
4. The discrepancy between periphery and core areas generates substantial migration
5. The most pressing issue is: how many people can the world adequately support?
CHAPTER 2 TEXTBOOK
● Less Developed World: A large group of countries (effectively the whole world excluding those
that are more developed) characterized by low standards of living and social well being
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Historically, referred to as the Third World.
More Developed World: A group of countries, including Canada, the United States, most of
Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, that are characterized by a high standard of living
and social well-being
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Often used interchangeably with the developing world
Often used interchangeably with the developed world
Historically, referred to as the First World.
Demography: the study of human population
Population Distribution
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Census: The periodic enumeration of all individuals and collection of demographic and other
data in a given country at a particular point in time (commonly every 5 or 10 years)
Distribution of World Population
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Three most prominent areas of concentration
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South-Central Asia
East Asia
Europe
Other Regional Patterns and Trends
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Africa's population is expected to increase
Population Density
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Most densely populated countries tend to be small island nations
Physiological density: Population per unit of cultivable (arable) land
Population Dynamics
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Fertility
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Fertility: A population’s natural capability of having children; also used to refer to the actual
number of live births produced by a woman
Measuring Fertility
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Crude Birth Rate
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Fecundity: A biological term for the potential capability of having children
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Refers to potential rather than actual number of live births
Total Fertility Rate: average number of children a woman will have, assuming she has children at
the prevailing age-specific rates, as she passes through her child-bearing years
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Replacement Level Fertility: The level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces
itself from one generation to the next
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Each couple has just enough children to replace themselves
TFR of 2.1-2.5
Factors Affecting Fertility
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Biological Factors
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Age
Sterility
Nutritional well-being
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Economic Factors
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Reductions in fertility are caused by economic changes
Cultural Factors
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Religion
Marriage
Contraceptives
Variations in Fertility
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More Developed
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TFR 1.6
Less Developed
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CBR 11
CBR 21
TFR 2.6
Higher fertility for low incomes and limited education
Urban areas have relatively lower fertility than rural areas
Mortality
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Mortality: Deaths as a component of population change
Measuring Mortality
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Crude Death Rate
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Doesn't factor in age
Infant Mortality Rate: The number of deaths of infants under one year old per 1,000 live births
in a given year
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Life Expectancy: Estimates the average number of years one is expected to live
Factors Affecting Mortality
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High LE = High quality of living, good working conditions, good nutrition, good sanitation, good
healthcare
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Low LE = opposite
Variations in Mortality
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Generally lower than 10 is acceptable
Reflects age structures too
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Rates are increasing in some bc aging population
Natural Increase
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Rate of Natural Increase: rate of annual population growth (world)
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CBR - CDR
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Population Momentum: The tendency for population growth to continue beyond the time that
replacement-level fertility has been reached because of the relatively high number of people in
the child-bearing years
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Doubling Time: The number of years required for the population of an area to double its present
size, given the current rate of population growth
Government Policies
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Carrying Capacity: The maximum population that can be supported by a given set of resources
and a given level of technology
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Carrying capacity isn't static
The Best Policy?
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Might just be no policy
Anti-natal policies may have not been needed - also not nice
The Composition of a Population
Age and Sex Structure
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Population Pyramids: A diagrammatic representation of the age and sex composition of a
population
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Sex Ratio: The number of males per 100 females in a population
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Varies by age
Young - more male
Middle - similar but more female
Old - more female
Global Population Aging
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Population Aging: A process in which the proportion of elderly people in a population increases
and the proportion of younger people decreases
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Results in increased median age of the population
History of Population Growth
Reasons for Growth
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Rise of Agriculture - Agricultural revolution
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Rise of Industry - Industrial revolution
The Current Situation
●
Population growth rate has decreased since 20th century but will still increase because of
population momentum
Population Projections
●
Projections
○
○
●
9.8 billion for 2050
10-12 billion stable for 2100
Limits to Growth: A view that argues that both the world population and the world economy will
collapse because of insufficient available natural resources
Explaining Population Growth
Malthusian Theory
●
Theory: A set of interconnected statements or a system of ideas that is intended to explain
something
●
Population will exceed food supply at some point
Demographic Transition
●
Demographic Transition: The historical shift of birth and death rates from high to low levels in a
population
○
Mortality declines before fertility, resulting in substantial population increase during the
transition phase
●
Migration
●
Migration: The long-term or permanent relocation of an individual or group of people from one
area to another
Why People Migrate
Push-Pull Logic
●
People move from one location to another because they consider the new location to be more
favourable
○
○
●
Push: being in an unattractive area
Pull: being aware of an attractive alternative area
Four Elements
○
Economic,
Political,
Cultural,
Environment
al
Push
Pull
Economic
Localized recession
because of
declining regional
income
Superior career
prospects and
increased regional
income
Political
Cultural or political
oppression or
discrimination
Improved personal
growth
opportunities
Cultural /
Surroundings
Limited personal, family,
career prospects
Other family members or
friends
Environmental
Disasters, such as
floods,
earthquakes, wars
Preferable environment
(climate, housing,
medical care,
schools)
○
Moorings: issues through which individuals give meaning to their lives
●
Life-Course Issues
Household/family structure
Career opportunities
Household income
Educational opportunities
Caregiving responsibilities
●
Cultural issues
Household wealth
Employment structure
Social networks
Cultural affiliations
Ethnicity
Class structure
Socio-economic ideologies
●
Spatial issues
Climate features
Access to social contacts
Access to cultural icons
Proximity to places of recreation interest
Selectivity of Migration
●
Factors of Migration
○
○
○
○
Age
Marital status
Gender
Occupation
○
●
Education
Life Cycle: The process of change experienced by individuals over their lifespans; often divided
into stages (such as childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age), each of which is associated
with particular forms of behaviour
Types of Migration
●
Primitive Migration: Specific instance of human adaptation to environmental conditions, in
which people respond to an unfavourable environment by leaving it in search of a more
favourable environment
●
Forced Migration
○
Slavery: A form of labour that is controlled through compulsion and is not remunerated
(paid)
●
●
Free Migration: person has the choice either to stay or to move
●
Illegal Migration (multiple situations)
Mass Migration: Free migrations prompted by push–pull factors that are widely experienced and
involve large numbers of people
○
Consciously violate immigration laws
Health Geographies
Distribution and Diffusion of Disease
●
Infectious Disease: Diseases that spread from human to human via bacteria or viruses
○
●
Degenerative or Chronic Disease: Diseases that are long-lasting and result from a gradual
degeneration of the body
○
●
More common today due to longer life expectancies
Epidemic: A rapid increase (beyond what is normal of relatively short duration in the # of cases
of a disease within a population
○
●
Also known as communicable disease
Ex) 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak
Pandemic: An outbreak of a disease that is of greater scope and scale (whole
country/region/world) than an epidemic
○
Ex) 1990s HIV/AIDS, COVID-19
●
Epidemiology: The study of the incidence, distribution, and control of disease in human
populations
●
Epidemiological Transition: A transition in the dominant causes of death in a population over
time
○
Typically exemplified by a relative decline in infectious diseases and an increase in
degenerative or chronic diseases
○
Omran's Three Stages of Epidemiological Transition
■
■
■
■
■
Age of pestilence and famine
Age of receding pandemics
Age of degenerative diseases
Age of delayed diseases (added later as an extension)
Fifth stage (yet to be reached)
●
Spatial Inequalities of Health
●
Health: A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being
○
Not merely the absence of disease
Health Care
●
Health care: The maintenance or improvement of human health through prevention, diagnosis,
and treatment of physical or mental illness or injury
○
○
●
Canada is hybrid public-private system
USA is also hybrid public-private (two-tiered)
More healthcare spending usually means better care
○
Not always (eg. USA)
CHAPTER 3: GLOBAL INEQUALITIES
Inequalities, Inequities and Social Justice
Difference
●
Spatial Differentiation: the uneven distribution of any condition, thing or people
○
○
Eg. More ski resorts in NA than Africa, Canada's population distribution
Acceptable or unacceptable/right or wrong
■
If wrong, becomes a moral issue
Inequality = Difference
●
Unacceptable difference
○
Unequal and unacceptable
Equity = Fairness
●
●
Promotes fairness and justice by ensuring people get access to same opportunities
●
●
●
Lack of equality
We need equity before we can ensure equality
Inequity = Unfairness
Inherent moral question of right or wrong
Spatial Inequality: The unequal distribution of some particular kinds attributes among a spatially
defined population
○
Eg. Income/other material benefits
Social Justice
●
●
Justice fairness in the way people are dealt
●
Fairness: An ideal against which we measure the practices of society
Social Justice: fairness in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities & privileges within a
society
○
●
Influenced by: Government, religion, experiences, NGOs, political party, education etc.
Asks us to defend inequities
○
○
If we cannot justify inequalities/differences/inequities/unfair treatment
We are morally obligated to rectify the situation
■
Eg. Growing number of homeless people
Spatial Justice
●
How does space sustain and challenge inequalities and inequities
○
Eg. Homelessness in Toronto vs. London
Big Questions
●
How ‘socially just’ is a society? What is ‘fair’ treatment? What kinds of inequalities can we
accept? How does space sustain & challenge inequalities and inequities? At what scale to we
begin? Global? National? Local? How do we even measure inequalities? How might geographers
help?
Less vs More Developed Worlds
Less Developed World
●
●
●
●
Low material standards of living
Low material standards of social well being
Less developed economics
'Developing world' or '3rd World'
○
Antiquated and arrogant term
More Developed World
●
●
●
●
High material standards of living
High material standards of social well being
Highly developed economics
'Developed world' or '1st world'
Measurements of Development
Various Economic Indicators
●
●
●
GDP - Gross Domestic Product
●
HDI - Human Development Index
GNI - Gross National Income
PPP - Purchase Power Parity
Various Social Indicators
○
○
○
●
●
●
Health - life expectancy
Education - years of child education
Income - GNI (Distribution)
Gender equality
Infant mortality
Life Expectancy
Causes of Global Inequalities
World Systems and Dependency Theories (pg. 97-98)
●
World Economic system
○
○
○
Core
Semi-periphery
Periphery
European Colonialism (1600-present)
●
Colonialism: The establishment & maintenance of rule (dominance) for an extended period of
time, by a sovereign power over a subordinate & alien people that is separate for the ruling
power
○
Sovereign Power: an independent, self-ruling state
Famine
●
Qualified as:
○
○
○
●
20%+ population get <2,100 Kcal/day
30%+ population - acute malnutrition
2+ deaths per 10,000 people or 4+ deaths per 10,000 children per day
Caused by:
○
○
○
○
○
○
Wars
Political conflict
Economic decline
Bad government
Weather (drought)
Climate Change
Inequalities in Canada
●
●
●
Nearly 60% of Canadians are one pay cheque away from living on the street
1 in 5 Canadian children grow up in poverty
One of the functions of Capitalism is that it concentrates wealth
○
○
Some argue for the free market
Some argue for more government control
Good News
●
●
Global poverty has been going down
Global education increased
Summary
1. Inequalities are morally unacceptable differences in size, rank, number or conditions
2. Less vs more developed countries are measured using economic and/or social-well being
measurements
3. Causes of global inequalities
a. World systems and dependency
b. Colonialism
c. Famine
4. Inequalities in Canada exist
a. Wealth distribution skewed
b. Most live pay cheque to pay cheque
c. 20% of children live in poverty
5. Good news for 2021
a. Global poverty down to 10%
b. Global deaths of children under 5 down
c. Global literacy rates highest ever
CHAPTER 3 TEXTBOOK
● Identifying Global Inequalities
1.
Development: A process that brings about changes in economic prosperity and quality
of life
■
■
●
An improvement in the material conditions of life
Measured traditionally by economic criteria, but increasingly in more holistic
ways including health, education, and so on
Development - Problems of Definition and Measurement
1.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): A monetary measure of the market value of all goods
and services produced within a country over a given time period (usually one year)
2.
Gross National Product (GNP): A monetary measure of the market value of all goods
and services produced within a country, plus those produced by individuals or
corporations (of that country) operating elsewhere, over a given time period (usually
one year)
3.
Ethnocentrism: A form of prejudice or stereotyping that presumes that one’s own
culture is normal and natural and that all others are inferior.
■
●
Eurocentrism: A view that places the historical experience of Europe (and its
descendants) as the benchmark for all comparisons; a form of ethnocentrism.
Measuring Development
1.
Gross National Income (GNI): A monetary measure of the market value of goods and
services produced within a country, plus income from investments abroad, over a given
period (usually one year)
2.
Developmentalism: An analysis of cultural and economic change that treats each
country or region of the world independently in an evolutionary manner
■
3.
An approach that assumes that all areas are autonomous and will proceed
through the same series of stages of development
Purchasing Power Parity (PPP): A tool that measures the relative cost of a common
market basket of goods and services for comparing cost of living between countries
■
4.
Useful in conjunction with aggregate macroeconomic measures of economic
activity such as gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and gross national
income (GNI) per capita.
Human Development Index (HDI): A numerical measure of how well basic human needs
are being met
■
A composite index incorporating health (life expectancy), education (years of
schooling), and income (gross national income per capita)
●
Explaining Global Inequalities
1.
Environmental Determinism: A view that cultures, and human behaviours, are directly
shaped by physical environmental circumstances; contrasted with possibilism
■
Possibilism: A view that human decision-making and adaptability, and not the
physical environment, are the primary agents of cultural change
■
●
People and cultures pursue a course of action that they select from
among a number of possibilities; contrasted with environmental
determinism
The Shape of Continents
1.
Civilization: A culture with agriculture and cities, food and labour surpluses, labour
specialization, social stratification, and state organization
2.
Diamond's Ideas
■
■
●
The America's and Africa are on a North-South axis
Eurasia is on an East-West axis
■
This allows for agricultural technologies to spread far to places of similar
climates
■
Agriculture is the precursor to the rise of civilization
World Systems and Dependency Theories
1.
Colonialism: The forceful appropriation of foreign territory; usually established and
maintained through military and political structures, also creates unequal cultural and
economic relations
■
■
Usually involves the displacement of Indigenous populations
A term usually reserved for the European variant of the process (1500–1945),
but could apply to other cultures
■
2.
Dependence: In political contexts, a relationship in which one state (or people)
is dependent on, and therefore dominated by, another state (or people)
World Systems Theory: A set of ideas centred around the notion that the world is an
interdependent system of countries linked together by an economic and political
competition that shapes relations between countries:
■
Core (more developed)
■
■
Semi peripheral (less developed)
■
■
Partially dependent on core
Peripheral (least developed)
■
3.
Benefit: receive surpluses produced elsewhere
Dependent on core but no longer colonies
Dependency Theory: A theory that connects disparities in levels of development to the
relationship between dependent and dominant states.
●
Feeding the World
1.
Undernutrition: A dietary condition in which an individual consumes a quantity of food
insufficient to sustain normal and healthy life; sometimes referred to as
undernourishment
2.
Malnutrition: An umbrella category of dietary conditions, including undernutrition and
overnutrition, in which an individual’s dietary needs are not being met, through too little
food, too much food, or the wrong balance of foods (nutrients, vitamins, protein, and so
on)
●
Refugees
1.
Refugee: An individual forced to flee their home country in the face of persecution
(religious, ethnic, political, etc.) or other threats to safety, such as war, natural disaster,
or political instability
2.
Internally Displace Person (IDP): An individual forced to flee their home in the face of
persecution (religious, ethnic, political, etc.) or other threats to safety (war, natural
disaster, political instability, etc.)
■
Unlike a refugee, they do not leave their home country
3.
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO): A non-profit enterprise that works alongside
government and international organizations to achieve development (economic,
education, health care), humanitarian (human rights), and environmental goals
■
Eg. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Oxfam, and World
Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund)
●
Natural Disasters and Diseases
1.
2.
3.
Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis
Hurricanes and Tropical Cyclones
Diseases
■
Malaria, Polio, Ebola
●
Prospects for Economic Growth
1.
Industrialization: A process of economic and social change that transforms a society
(country) from largely agricultural to industrial, involving an extensive reorganization of
the economy toward manufacturing and of society toward being urban
■
■
2.
Typically associated with an industrial revolution
Often regarded as a key step in increasing a country’s level of development.
Import Substitution: An economic strategy of domestically manufacturing goods that
were previously imported, through the aid of protective tariffs (taxation on imported
goods)
■
3.
Often used as a stimulus for industrialization.
Structural Adjustment Program (SAP): Conditional loans provided to less developed
countries by international development and lending agencies based in the more
developed world (e.g. the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), whereby
money is contingent upon the country adopting free-market policies, privatizations, and
deficit reduction (often through reduced social spending).
●
Striving for Equality, Fairness, and Social Justice
Ideas of New Economic Geography
1.
Argues that the best way to promote long term growth is to acknowledge that uneven
development is inevitable
■
2.
Critiques
■
■
●
Ignores spatial injustices
Historical exclusion that resulted in global inequalities
Millennium Development Goals (2000-2015)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
●
Develop policies that enable geographic concentration of economic activity
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
Achieve universal primary education.
Promote gender equality and empower women.
Reduce child mortality.
Improve maternal health.
Combat disease.
Ensure environmental sustainability.
Develop a “global partnership for development.”
Sustainable Development Goals (2015-2030)
1. End poverty.
2. End hunger
3. Ensure good health and well-being for all
4. Ensure quality education for all
5. Achieve gender equality.
6. Ensure availability of clean water and sanitation.
7. Ensure access to affordable and clean energy.
8. Promote decent work and economic growth.
9. Promote industry and innovation, and build infrastructure.
10. Reduce inequalities.
11. Create sustainable cities and communities.
12. Ensure responsible consumption and production.
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change.
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources.
15. Protect, restore, and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems.
16. Promote peace, justice, and strong institutions.
17. Strengthen and revitalize partnerships to achieve the goals
CHAPTER 12: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
Human-Environment Relationship
●
Humans
○
Are part of, dependant upon, are impacted by, and are impacting:
●
The Environment: That which surrounds us
Three Spheres of Earth
●
●
●
●
Atmosphere: Air
Lithosphere: Earth
Hydrosphere: Water
Biosphere: Life
○
Relatively small
■
Average 20 km thick from ocean bottom to mountain tops
Human-Environment Interactions
●
●
Environment impacts human activity
Every human activity has an impact
○
●
●
Impacting in extreme ways that surpasses environmental limits
Humans can be blind to their impact
Humans become the active and dominant agents of environmental change
○
No other force is as dominant as humans
Anthropocene
●
●
Anthropocene: The geological epoch where humans have had a significant impact
Humans are now transforming the Earth on a geological scale
○
Began July 1, 1945: 1st Nuclear Detonation - changed the geology
●
Replaces Holocene
Humans Impact:
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
Vegetation
Animals
Land
Soil
Air
Water
Climate Change
Technology, Machines, Techniques
Technology
●
Mental Activity - someone has to imagine and develop this technology
●
●
●
●
Physical Activity - you need to build it
●
Extend and improve material and immaterial culture
Change - new technology changes environment
Environment
Individual or collective action - scale of action matters a lot
Goal of Technology
○
Minimize human expenditure and make it easier:
■
Eg. Drive instead of walk, clothes instead of body heat
How does it improve our life?
●
Use of identifiable 'resources' be they natural objects, phenomena or forces
○
Resources are not, they become
Invention and Use of Machines
●
●
●
●
●
●
Combination of parts
●
The organization and arrangement of technology
Specialized function
Human control
Perform work
Diminish / replace human energy expenditure
The home is a machine too
Technique
○
●
How labour is used; the mode of execution
Cars are a massive issue
○
○
Car sales may have peaked
Electric car sales are rising
Humans as Tool Makers
Humans as Tool Maker
●
Unique brains and hands with opposable thumbs
○
Allows us to imagine and create
●
Not the only tool makers
Tool Making is a Technical Process
●
Discovery
○
●
Through recognition and observation of nature
Invention
○
○
A mental process of creating a tool
We need new tools to fight climate change
■
■
But we need to reduce consumption
There are things we need and things we want: Don't buy it if you don't need it
Major Technological Leaps and Environmental Impacts
Organized Human Labour
●
1st mega-machine, ancient idea
○
Still in use today
●
Energy to transform landscape on a huge scale
Mechanical Clock
●
●
Synchronized human activity: focus energy
●
●
●
Telegraph (1837)
●
Overcome tyranny of space:
Greater work done, greater changes
Electricity
Telephone (1876)
Power and light (1840s - 1880s)
Effects of Electricity
○
●
Communication
Overcome tyranny of darkness
○
Expanded work day
●
●
●
Increased location choices
●
●
1859 France
●
Changed Natural Physical Landscape
Boom for industry and commerce
Less humane energy expenditures
Combustion Energy
1866 Germany - first commercial vehicle
Effects of Automobile
○
○
○
○
●
Polluted air, water, land
CO2 major contributor to Climate Change
Built paved roads, bridges
Literally altered physical world
Changed the Human Built Landscape
○
○
Changed design of cities (cars not people)
20% - 40% space for cars
■
Suburbia
■
■
■
Traffic congestion
Urban sprawl
How we live, work, play, socialize
Pros of Automobile
●
●
●
●
●
●
Spatial mobility
●
●
●
●
●
●
Environmentally toxic
●
●
●
Cloud, Big data, Smart phones
●
●
●
●
Teflon pans
●
●
●
●
DDT - pesticide that made egg shells fragile (birds)
Access to health, education, jobs
Car industry jobs
Seeming convenience
Freedom to simply go
Status sign
Cons of Automobile
Cars dominate our public places
Space pigs
Deaths and mutilations
Big expense
Oil dependant
Computer Telecommunications
Transforming spatial relations
Increased environmental Awareness and knowledge base
Serendipitous Inventions
Ivory soap
Micro-wave ovens
Viagra
Unintended Consequences
CFC - pollution
Three Mile Island - Nuclear meltdown
Asbestos - Fire retardant but carcinogenic
Lesson
●
First Law of Geography
○
●
Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant
things
One cannot change on aspect of nature without directly or indirectly affecting other aspects
Systems and Ecology
●
Systems: sets of interrelated parts linked together to form a unified whole
○
○
●
Offer a simplified description of what is a usually complex reality
Ecology: Study of organisms in their homes
○
○
●
Useful to describe wide range of phenomena
Eco - oikos - house or place to lvie
Logy - logos - study of
Ecosystems: A community of living organisms (plants, animals, microbes) in conjunction with the
non-living components of their environment (air, water, soil) interacting as a system
○
○
Linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows
Network of interactions
■
■
Can be any size but exists as an overlapping web - no distinct boundary
Everything is connected = planet as ecosystem
Humans as Simplifiers of Ecosystems
●
●
Humans are active and dominant agents of environmental change
Any human change is usually simplification
○
○
●
Simplified ecosystem = more vulnerable
Eg. Monocultures
Urgent issue facing humanity: need to change the way we live inside our ecosystems
○
We are overwhelming ecosystems
Toward Sustainability
●
Sustainability: A system approach to life where environmental inputs / outputs are balanced
○
○
We cannot continue living as we do indefinitely
Requires major change
Sustainable Development
●
Our Common Future (1987)
○
●
Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generation
to meet their own needs
Economic development that accounts for social, economic, and environmental concerns
○
○
Not just profit and jobs
That isn't really the case in society
Three Spheres of Sustainability
●
●
Planet - Environmental needs
People - Social needs
●
Profit - Economic needs
○
○
Profit takes priority in the current world
Capitalism relies on infinite growth - flawed and change is needed
Contentious Issues - Sustainable Development
Relationships b/w environment and economy
●
Market forces unlikely to solve environmental problems
○
○
●
Some businesses are good and eco-friendly
Major corps are often the problem
Government intervention in market needed
○
○
Economic growth leads to reduction of environmental problems
If accompanied by good governance
●
Not welcomed by most businesses
Environmental Problems are Increasingly Affection Relationships b/w Countries
●
Paris Climate Agreement
Behaviour of Individuals as Group Members (ecocentric vs anthropocentric)
●
Econcentric
○
●
We all connected and work with nature
Anthropocentric
○
Humans are source of all values; land exists for human use; energy and resources are
unlimited
Recognize Human Impacts on Environment
●
●
●
Small, often insignificant, changes to the environment can have major impacts from scale
Technological changes related to demands for energy change environment
Lifestyles promoted by technological changes also impact environment
○
●
●
Increasing human populations are a threat to the environment
Increasing connections between regions of globe
○
●
Eg. Heating, cooling, water use
Local consequences are more likely to be global in impact
Advanced enough to have global instabilities
○
Mostly climate change:
■
Depletion of ozone layer and increasing CO2
Human Induced Global Warming
●
Product of increasing population and advancing tech
○
○
○
Burning fossil fuels
Increased fertilizer use
Increased animal husbandry
○
Deforestation
●
Changes need for a sustainable world
Economic Structural Problem Inherent in Climate Change
1. Capitalist economics must grow
2. Energy Consumption must grow
3. Fossil fuel use increases, CO2 emissions increase
4. Climate Change intensifies
How to break this chain
●
Capitalist economies need to change
○
○
●
Change economy from new material things to services
Degrowth
Fossil fuels need to change
○
Change energy source
Capitalism vs Science
●
The dominant capitalist system is scientific knowledge that seriously threatens the status quo of
capitalism and its basic premise of infinite growth and its current life blood:
○
Cheap, abundant fossil fuels to power capital and labour
●
Recipe for cultural conflict
Possible Effects of Global Temperature Changes
●
●
●
●
Melting ice-caps
Rise in sea levels (flooding)
Erratic climate (extreme weather)
Human health (infectious diseases)
Climate Change is reality
●
Evidence and science is there
Two Paths Toward Sustainability
●
Mitigation
○
●
Intervention or policies to reduce the emission or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases
Adaptation
○
Responses to changing climate and policies to reduce possible effects
●
We need more drastic action
Individual Solutions
●
Change your lifestyle
○
●
●
Less meat and dairy
Push governments and businesses for structural change
Reduce, reuse, repair, rethink, refuse, reuse, repurpose, refurbish
Need Changes to Economy and Politics
●
●
●
●
●
Demand political party have a plan to fight climate change
Advocate laws to protect environments
Support public transportation
Support renewable energy initiatives
Tax polluters (eg. Carbon tax)
Summary
- Humans and environment is a complex system
- Humans are the dominant agents of environmental change
- Simplification of ecosystems is bad news
- Key for energy future: Renewable + Reduction
- Major impacts on vegetation, animals, land, soil, water, climate
- If we change our individual and collective political-economic behaviours we can achieve
sustainability
CHAPTER 12 TEXTBOOK
Fundamental Driving Forces that Threaten our Survival
1. Small, often insignificant, changes to the environment can have major consequences if they are
repeated enough
1. Arable and pastoral activities can lead, over time, to major environmental problems.
2. Technological developments related to energy demands continually change the environment.
3. The lifestyles promoted by technological advances also work to change the environment.
4. Increasing human populations are a threat to the environment.
5. Increasing connections between different regions of the globe mean that human activities that
used to have merely local or regional consequences are now more likely to have global effects. \
1. The most obvious example is climate change
●
Holocene: The post-glacial period of earth history that began approximately 12,000 years ago
and was preceded by the Pleistocene.
●
Anthropocene: A recently coined term used to characterize the current period of earth history,
viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on the
physical environment, including climate; preceded by the Holocene
Global Perspective
●
●
System: A set of interrelated components or objects linked together to form a unified whole.
●
Ecosystem: An ecological system; comprises a set of interacting and interdependent organisms
and their physical, chemical, and biological environment
Ecology: The study of relationships between organisms (including insects, plants, mammals, and
humans) and their environments
○
Exists at a variety of spatial scales from the very local to the global.
●
Ecosphere: The ecosystem of the entire planet; sometimes used interchangeably with biosphere.
Resources
●
Stock resources: Minerals and land that take a long time to form and hence, from a human
perspective, are fixed in supply
●
Renewable resources: Resources that regenerate naturally to provide a new supply within a
human lifespan.
●
Pollution: The release of substances that degrade air, land, or water into the environment.
Environmental Concern
●
Ecocentric: A world view which emphasizes the equal value of all parts of an ecosystem rather
than, for example, placing humans at the centre, as in an anthropocentric perspective.
●
Anthropocentric: A world view which regards humans as the most important part of any
ecosystem
○
The opposing view to the ecocentric perspective
Human Impacts on Vegetation and Animals
●
Desertification: The process by which an area of land becomes a desert
○
Typically involves the impoverishment of an ecosystem because of climate change,
human impact, or both.
Earth's Vital Signs
●
Catastrophists: Those of the view that population increases and continuing environmental
deterioration are leading to a nightmarish future of environmental catastrophe, including
flooding, mass extinctions, food shortages, disease, and conflict.
●
Cornucopians: Those who argue that advances in science and technology, along with cultural
adaptation, will continue to create resources sufficient to support the growing world population
and mitigate environmental change.
Uncertainty
●
Adaptation: The process by which humans adjust individual and collective behaviour in the face
of a particular set of circumstances
○
●
Sometimes used in relation to environmental change, but applies equally to cultural
change.
Conservation: Any form of environmental protection, including preservation.
Sustainability and Sustainable Development
●
Sustainability: An approach that reflects the interdependence of the economy, the environment,
and social well-being, and the need to maintain all three components across generations.
●
Sustainable Development: Economic development that sustains the natural environment for
future generations
●
Four Principles Essential to a new attitude for a sustainable world
1. We need to recognize that humans are a part of nature. To destroy nature is to destroy
ourselves.
2. We need to account for environmental costs in all our economic activities.
3. We need to understand that all humans deserve to achieve acceptable living standards.
1. A world with poor people cannot be a peaceful world.
4. We need to be aware that even apparently small local impacts can have global
consequences.
1. This is one of the basic themes of ecology—”think globally, act locally”—and it
becomes ever-more obvious as globalization processes unfold.
CHAPTER 4: GEOGRAPHIES OF CULTURE AND LANDSCAPE
What is Culture
● Necessary to know what culture is in Critical thinking
○ Reflective and reasonable
● We are part of many overlapping cultures
Definitions of Culture
● Artistic and intellectual product of elites
○ Sometimes though of as elite or high brow
● System of shared beliefs
○ Eg. Religion, legal system, capitalism
● Capabilities and habits acquired by members of a society
○ ie. Etiquette, manners, language
Sign systems: codes (set of rules/guidelines)
● Helps us get along with each other and live
● Clothing
○ Eg. Formal/casual wear
● Food
○ Eg. Thanksgiving turkey
● Bodies
○ Eg. Body language, beauty
○ Hall's Four Spatial Zones (North America)
■ Public (3-8m)
■ Social (1-3m)
■ Personal (46cm-1m)
■ Intimate(skin-46cm)
● Manners or etiquette
○ Eg. Professional conduct differs by business, how you eat food
● Landscape
○ Learn to read, interpret, de-code the arrangement in space of human activities and
actions
○ Where we place buildings, sidewalks etc, and how we interpret it
● Totality of shared/learned "way of life"
○ Religion, language, gender, foods, ethnicity, skills, place attachment
○ Culture is nurtured not natural
■ Gender is a social construct
■ You learn language but are not born into it
The specialized behavioural patterns, understandings, adaptations, & social systems that constitute a
people’s learned way of life
● Specialized: particular kind
○ Building houses in Canada vs Thailand
● Behavioural patterns: recurring human actions
○ Suburban development, traffic jams, marriage
● Understandings: what/how we know
○ Religion, science, social science
● Adaptations: Changing ourselves and our environment to address new challenges
○ Clothing, language, technological advancement
● Social Systems: relations and practices of individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions
○ Family, school, corporate
● A people's learned way of life
○ Gender is learned
Goal of Studying Culture
● To describe and to explain the processes creating culture and cultural landscapes
● Learn about and from humanity
○ Respect differences
○ Promote peace and social justice
● Alternative is violence
Characteristics of Culture
● Human Creation
○ Invented, practiced, changed, maintained by people
● Dynamic and Constant
○ Change vs tradition
○ Eg. Weddings
■ People have always gotten married
■ Religion, food, dress, age may change
■ Sex may vary
● Scale Varies
○ Global to local
○ Eg. Olympics vs Local meets, Western is unique to London, family traditions
● Plurality
○ Many cultures within and across societies
○ Different languages, foods, languages even within cultures
● Overlaps
○ Sub-cultures overlap creating OTHER sub-cultures
○ Eg. Western -> Geography -> faculty/major etc.
● Medium of expression
○ Everything humans know, use or invent
■ Reveals something about culture
■ Material or immaterial
○ Eg. Dress communicates position and values
● Spatial
○ How space is used, organized, arranged, and ascribed meaning or identity by people
reveals culture
●
●
○ Space is a medium of cultural expression
○ Eg. Property lines and ownership, how much space you occupy vs power
Political
○ Cultural expression are 'sites of struggle'
○ Who's culture is acceptable? Where, when, by whom?
○ Battleground issues in the Culture Wars
■ Smoking
■ Same sex marriage
■ Abortion
Cultural relativity
○ Culture is relative but contestable
■ Relativity: fair interpretations (similar but different)
■ Contestable: not every way of doing or thinking is acceptable (different and
unacceptable)
○ On what grounds do you reject something
■ Need a very sound argument
Culture Landscapes
● Cultural Creations
○ Built or Human Environments (lands)
○ Ways of seeing (scapes)
● Plurality of Cultural Landscapes
○ Plurality of:
■ Cultural groups
■ Sites, areas, places, regions
■ People, activities
■ Artifacts, mentifacts, sociofacrts
■ Artifacts: the tangible thing
■ House
■ Mentifacts: ideas
■ Home
■ Sociofacts: how we organize social relations
■ Family
■ Ways of seeing
● Each Cultural Group has a landscape
○ Ethnicity
○ Religion
■ Eg. Where do they gather
○ Class
■ Eg. Homeless vs wealthy
● Separate in space
○ Cultural regions - continents
○ Genders - bathrooms
○ Political borders
● Overlap in space
○ Multiple ethnicities
● Conflict in space
○ War
○ Glass ceiling - barrier people can't seem to pass (implicit)
"Environment sustains us as creatures, landscapes reveal us as cultures"
● Landscapes are a human, cultural creation
Cultural Politics
● Dominant theme of new cultural geography
● Which marker of cultural identity are acceptable?
○ Where, when, by whom?
Which identities of culture to study
● Primary identities of culture:
○ Ethnicity/"race"
○ Religion
○ Gender
○ Age
○ Language
○ Class
○ Sexuality
○ Body
● The spatial is emphasized
○ How space is used, organized, arranged and ascribed meanings and identities by people
Space is a medium of cultural expression
● Eg. Space is historically dominantly heterosexual - changing over time
Multi-culturalism in Canada
A Fact
● Demographically we are diverse
○ Aboriginals first nations
○ Charter groups: British and French
○ Others
● Diversity due to immigration
○ Demographic needs
○ Economic needs
○ International obligations
● We need immigrants (will become more diverse)
○ 22% of Canadians are immigrants
○ Fastest way to become a PR is to have $400,000 to invest
An Ideology
●
A set of beliefs celebrating diversity
○ Commensurate with the principles of freedom, tolerance and respect for individual
differences
● Underlying assumptions
○ Society is diverse and wishes to remain so
○ All cultural groups equal
○ No one group is superior
○ Accommodation and mutual understanding will promote social harmony
○ Diversity must be actively managed, not simply tolerated
A Government Policy
● Initiated by Trudeau in 1971
○ Entrenched as policy in 1988
● Everyone is entitled to:
○ Equal treatment
○ Protection from racial discrimination
○ Equality of opportunity
○ The right to remain culturally different
A Process (political)
● Minority ethnic groups compete with central authorities and dominant cultural groups for
achievement fo certain goals and aspirations
○ Sometimes blood is spilled, usually resolved in court
○ An on-going process to resolve cultural conflicts
The Multi-Cultural Conundrum
● How much diversity can a society incorporate without losing the social cohesion needed to
function
● How might we best and peacefully share our spaces?
● Can culture be used as a defense?
○ Smoke in public, beat your spouses, deny your daughters an education
● Limits will be drawn by:
○ Legislative assembles and courts
Summary
1. Culture is a medium that has plurality of characteristics
a. Includes spatial, political, the relative and the contestable
2. Cultural landscapes are a medium of spatial and identity expression
a. Class, gender, race etc.
3. Canada’s multiculturalism is:
a. A fact
b. An Ideology
c. A government policy
d. A process
CHAPTER 4 TEXTBOOK
World Divided by Culture
●
Culture: The way of life of a society’s members, including belief systems, norms, and material
practices
○
Typically refers to language, religion, clothing, foods, forms of settlement, social
practices, and so on that differentiate one group from another.
1. Our world is divided, especially because of spatial variations in culture.
1. By culture, we mean the human ability to develop ideas from experiences and
subsequently act on the basis of those ideas.
2. Once cultural attitudes and behaviours are in place, an inevitable tendency is for them to
become the frame of reference—however inappropriate—within which all new developments in
culture are placed and evaluated.
3. One task humans may choose to tackle is to create new sets of values—in effect, to re-engineer
ourselves.
Formal Cultural Regions
●
Cultural Regions: Areas having a degree of homogeneity in cultural characteristics
○
Areas with similar cultural landscapes
●
First Effective Settlement: A concept based on the likely importance of the initial occupancy of
an area in determining later landscapes
●
Homeland: A cultural region especially closely associated with a particular cultural group
○
The term usually suggests a strong emotional attachment to place
Vernacular Cultural Regions
●
Topophilia: The affective ties that people have with particular places and landscapes
○
Literally, a love of place
●
Topophobia: The feelings of dislike, anxiety, fear, or suffering associated with particular places
and landscapes
●
North American Example
○
The nine nations
The Making of Cultural Landscapes
●
Cultural Adaptations: Changes in technology, organization, and ideology that permit sound
relationships to develop between humans and their physical environment
Cultural Diffusion
●
Gemeinschaft: A form of human association based on loyalty, informality and personal contact;
assumed to be characteristic of traditional rural village communities.
●
Gesellschaft: A form of human association based on rationality, formality depersonalization, and
anonymity; assumed to be characteristic of people in urban communities.
●
Adoption curve:
○
S-shape curve
Cultural Variables: Language and Religion
Language
●
Language: A system of communication that has mutually agreed-upon spoken and (usually)
written forms.
○
Many languages are disappearing
■
Associated with low social status so it isn't passed down
■
■
●
Natural disaster (drought, disease) triggers extinction
Globalization requires major language
Language Family: A group of closely related languages derived from a common but distant
ancestor
○
●
Nationalism: The expression of belonging to and self-identifying with a nation (a cultural group)
○
○
Goes along with a belief that a nation has the right to determine its own affair
The belief that a nation and a state should be congruent
●
Multilingual State: A country in which more than one language is spoken, in either official or
popular use
●
Minority Language: A language spoken by a minority group in a country in which the majority of
the population speaks another language
○
○
May or may not be an official language
If it isn't an official language it will often die a slow death
●
Lingua franca: An existing language that is used as a common means of communication between
different language groups
●
Pidgin: A composite language, consisting of vocabulary from two or more languages, designed to
facilitate communication and commerce between different language groups
○
Typically has a limited vocabulary
●
Creole: A pidgin language that assumes the status of a native language (mother tongue) for a
group
○
●
Relatively common in Caribbean
Exonym: A name given to a place (or group of people) by a group other than the people to
whom the name refers (or who are not native to the territory within which the place is situated)
○
Avoids issues like the gulf war that comes from place-name ambiguity
Religion
●
Religion: A social system involving a set of beliefs and practices through which people make
sense of the universe and their place within it
○
●
Ethnic Religion: A religion, usually of narrow geographic scope, that is tied to a particular ethnic
or tribal group and does not actively seek converts
○
●
Largest: Christianity
Examples include Hinduism, Judaism, Shinto, Taoism, and Confucianism
Universalizing Religion: A religion of broad geographic scope that expands and diffuses through
the active conversion of new members (via proselytizing)
○
Examples include Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism
●
Animism: A set of beliefs that attribute a spirit or soul to natural phenomena and inanimate
objects
Hinduism
●
●
Polytheistic Religion: A religion in which adherents worship more than one god (often many)
Caste: A hierarchical social rank, based solely on birth, to which an individual belongs for life and
that limits interaction with members of other castes; an element of Hindu society
Judaism
●
Monotheistic Religion: A religion in which adherents worship a single god
CHAPTER 5: GEOGRAPHIES OF IDENTITIES AND DIFFERENCE
Cultural Identities and Cultural Politics
●
Cultural identities are context dependent
○
Social and spatial setting determine whether the identity if important
Spatial is Emphasized
●
Space takes on identities of occupants
○
Cultural landscapes are based on identities of occupants
●
Explains how space is used, organized, arranged, and ascribed meanings and identities by people
Identities are Political
●
●
Whose cultural identity is acceptable?
Which cultural group's meanings, values, ways will be deemed acceptable or not?
○
Where, when, by whom, why, why not, who gets to decide
Power
●
●
An asymmetrical or unequal social relationship
The ability to influence if not determine how people act
○
○
●
●
Directly
Indirectly
The capacity of some persons to produce intended and foreseen effects on others
Exercising power
○
Subtle to direct
■
■
○
○
Direct - robbing someone
Covert to overt
Gentle to violent
■
■
○
Subtle - stickers on your car
Gentle - fence
Violent - Sign that says trespassers will be shot
Convincing to threatening
■
Convincing - advertisements
Spatial strategies of exercising power
●
Exclude - Keep people out
○
●
Include - Include people
○
●
Eg. University admissions process that excludes by grades
Eg. Businesses want inclusivity
Containment - Where we contain people
○
Eg. School yards, prisons
●
Expel - Remove people
○
●
Eg. Expelling a murderer from public space, deporting illegal immigrants
Annihilation
○
Kill the people of a cultural group
Sites of Struggle
●
Cultural landscapes and identities are sites of struggle
○
Different cultures fight for their way
Battleground issues in the culture wars
●
Abortion Religion vs Secularism Media bias Political correctness Dead white males Euthanasia
‘Race’ & intelligence Separation of church and state Creation vs Evolution Sex education in
schools Censorship Public vs Private heath care Capital punishment Lawn pesticides Global
warming Same-sex marriage Family values Smoking in public Hetero vs Homo- Genetically
altered food sexualities Cloning
●
Solutions
○
○
○
Communication
Writing into laws
Education - hate is largely based on ignorance
Culture is Politics
●
Social and power relationships are created/practiced, in over and through space
○
Cultural landscapes and identities are necessarily politically charged
The Role of Space and Place
Sites of Struggle
●
Culture is a medium made up and from people of different socio-economic-political identities
○
●
Struggle over key questions
○
●
These identities and their landscapes are sites of struggle
Where, when, why, by whom, why not, and who gets to say what is acceptable or not
Cultural differences are:
○
Contested
■
○
Negotiated
■
○
Eg. Whether they talk or not
Sustained (and/or)
■
○
Eg. Truck protests
Eg. The status quo is maintained
Different cultural groups have a different context of uneven power
Differing Spaces
●
Various individuals, groups, institutions occupy different spaces of
socio-economic-political-cultural power
○
We have varying amounts of resources
Place in Physical Space (location)
●
●
Location is a good measure of power and resources
Eg. Poor vs wealthy neighbourhood
Place in Social Space (status)
●
Eg. Male doctor vs female clerk
Place in Lived World (experience)
●
●
Your experience impact your power
●
Certain individuals and groups dominate their dominant culture
Eg. Lifestyle of the well off vs not so well off
Dominant and Subordinate Groups
○
○
●
●
Marginalized subordinant culture
Dominant impose or privilege their meanings and values on subordinants
Scale of Cultural Power
○
○
●
Upon less other individuals and groups - Subordinate groups
Most dominant - white, middle-aged, male, hetero, married
Most subordinate - Black, young, female, LGBTQ, single
Subordinate groups may wish to:
○
Remain subordinate
■
○
Strive to become dominant
■
○
Eg. LGBTQIA+
Dominant groups may wish to:
○
Remain dominant
■
○
○
Eg. Liberal party
Increase Dominance
■
Eg. Transnational corporations
Strive for inclusion of subordinant groups
■
●
Eg. Religious or socialists
Strive for acceptance by dominant group
■
●
Eg. Hell's angels don't wanna control everything
Eg. NGO's for development
Different cultural groups occupy different spaces, places and degrees of power
○
Class
○
○
○
○
Race
Ethnicity
Gender
Sexuality
Class
Position in Canadian's Capitalist Economy
Capitalist Class or 'Bourgeoisie'
●
●
Approx 3% of Canadian population
Owners of material capital
○
○
1000 people own 80% of all corporate stocks and bonds
Property owners
Middle Class or 'Petty Bourgeoisie'
●
●
●
About 17%-20% of Canadian population
Salaried employees (six figures)
Own knowledge capital
○
Professional occupations using intellectual capital
■
○
Eg. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, banks
Educated
●
Work place autonomy --> self directed
Working Class or "Proletarian'
●
●
Approx 80% of the Canadian population
Largest and most occupationally diverse
○
○
●
●
●
●
Semi-professional to minimum wage
Eg. High school teachers
Salaried or paid hourly for labour
Little or no work place autonomy
Most jobs need no post-secondary education
Many in denial - think they are middle class
Race
●
Race: The belief that human beings can be readily divided into a series of discrete races
○
○
●
Mongoloid, caucazoid, negroid
Regarded as fallacious
Races are widely regarded as political ands social construction rather than biological fact
○
Product of racism - not human genetics
●
●
Social not biological
Humans are one people
○
Skin tone is an impact of environment
Racism
●
Racism: Actions, attitudes and policies that attribute social, cultural, and cognitive characteristics
to people based solely on arbitrary physical criteria
People are Racialized
●
●
●
Through social practice in economic, political and cultural contexts
●
●
●
●
●
Discrimination
Used to label, rank, and demean others on a racist scale or superiority to inferiority
An intellectually lazy way of labelling others
Consequences of Racism
Inequality
Superior / inferior rankings
Oppression
Genocide: racial extermination
Ethnicity
Traditional Definition
●
Ethnicity; A group of individuals sharing a common language, religion, culture, nationality,
heritage or origin
Spatially Dependent
●
Becomes important marker of identity when:
○
Existing group is overtaken by another, making them a minority in their own space
■
○
Eg. Aboriginals in Canada
Existing groups enters another's space, making them a minority in this new space
■
Eg. Me in Canada
Politically Motivated
●
Becomes important marker of identity when:
○
Perceived belief that their group's traits, practices, beliefs (culture) are at risk by a
dominant other
■
○
A means to keep ethnic identity alive
■
Gender
Sex is biological
Eg. Quebec
Eg. Little Italy, Chinatown
●
Male, female
Gender is cultural
●
A socially constructed identity
○
○
We learn how to be masculine males
We learn how to be feminine females
●
Gender is between the ears, sex is between the legs
Gender is plural, fluid and changing
●
Numerous ways to be a man or a woman
○
○
Feminine man, masculine female
Eg. A Male can't menstruate but a Man can
Sexuality
Sexuality is Socially Constructed
●
●
Sex is biological
Gender is cultural
○
●
So is sexuality
How one expresses, practices and experiences one's gender, orientation, attraction, intimacy and
desires are socially determined
○
Varies over time and space
●
We learn to express our sexualities and interpret those of others
Sexuality is Plural and Fluid
●
Numerous sexual identities
○
●
Homo, bi, hetero
Fluid and changing over:
○
Time
■
○
Location
■
○
Eg. Same sex marriage
Eg. Accepted forms of PDA
One's stage of life
■
Changes over one's life
Toward Social and Spatial Justice
Key Questions about Identities
●
Who or what:
○
○
Dominates? Benefits?
Does not?
●
Why? How? Where?
○
●
Is there a more just and fair landscape we might build?
○
●
Role of space and place?
HMW share a space with the other?
Different cultural groups occupy different spaces, places and degrees of power
○
How to share and why bother?
Cultural Justice and Cultural Rights
●
Justice: An ideal against which to measure the accomplishments, the practices, the aims of
society
●
Rights
○
○
Justice defined in terms of the individual
And rights pertaining to the individual
Inequities and Differences
●
Social Justice compels us to defend inequality and unequal, unfair treatment
○
●
Inequities
If we cannot justify inequalities we are morally obliged to rectify the situation
○
○
Differences - inequalities
Unfair treatment - inequities
Spatial Justice
●
Cultural Justice: The rights to cultural differences and to be a minority
○
○
●
Eg. Gay and Straights in public
The right to occupy the same place as the majority
○
●
Necessarily involves space and place
The right to be in space
○
●
Struggle for cultural justice is part of the struggle for human rights
Eg. Marriage, CEO of a business (males)
The right to be different within, over, and through space
○
Eg. Ethnic identity
All of these rights come with obligations:
●
●
●
Respect the other
Question authority
Strive for equality
Final Thought
●
We have differences
○
We recognize similarities far outweigh our differences
●
We are all human beings
○
○
●
We many choose to demonize the other
Or we may choose to humanize the other
The alternative is violence
CHAPTER 5 TEXTBOOK
● Society: A structured system of human organization in which members of a cultural group live;
provides protection, continuity, security, and an identity for its members
●
Critical Geography: A collection of ideas and practices concerned with challenging inequalities as
these are evident in landscape
○
●
Need for geographic studies to become more emancipatory
Iconography: The description and interpretation of visual images, including landscape, in order
to uncover their symbolic meanings
○
The identity of a region as expressed through symbols
●
Representation: A depiction of the world; all such depictions are subjective in the sense that
they are affected by the identity of the person making them
●
Hegemony: A social condition in which members of a society interpret their interests in terms of
the world view of a dominant group.
●
Power: The capacity to affect outcomes; more specifically, the ability to dominate others by
means of violence, force, manipulation, or authority
The Myth of Race
●
Species: A group of organisms able to produce fertile offspring among themselves but not with
any other group
●
Race: A subspecies; a physically distinguishable population within a species
○
In the context of humans, an entirely socially constructed concept as there are no
genetically distinct subspecies of humans
●
Genocide: The organized and systematic effort of destroying a racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic,
or other minority group, through violence (killing), persecution (cultural genocide), or both
●
Racism: A particular form of prejudice that attributes characteristics of superiority or inferiority
to a group of people who share some physically inherited characteristics
●
Apartheid: The South African policy by which groups of people, as defined by the authorities,
were spatially separated between 1948 and 1994
●
Nativism: An intense favouring of the rights of native-born inhabitants over those who are
foreign born (immigrants)
Ethnicity
●
Ethnicity: A socially constructed system of affiliation, or identity, with a group of people arising
from a common ancestry, culture, or both
○
Contributes to social belonging and exclusion
●
Ethnic Group: A group whose members perceive themselves as different from others because of
a common ancestry and shared culture
●
●
Ghetto: A residential district in an urban area with a concentration of a particular ethnic group
Chain Migration: A process of movement from one location to another through time, sustained
by social links of kinship or friendship
○
Often results in distinct areas of ethnic settlement in rural or urban areas
●
Assimilation: The process by which an ethnic group is absorbed into a larger society and loses its
own identity
●
Acculturation: The process by which an ethnic group is absorbed into a larger society while
retaining aspects of distinct identity
●
Multiculturalism: A policy that endorses the right of ethnic groups to remain distinct rather than
to be assimilated into a dominant society
Gender
●
Gender: The socially constructed differences between men and women, as contrasted to the
biological and anatomical differences between the sexes; gendered differences, such as
masculinity and femininity, vary greatly over time and space
●
Feminism: The movement for and advocacy of equal rights for women and men, and a
commitment to improve the relative position of women in society
●
●
Patriarchy: A social system in which men dominate, oppress, and exploit women
●
Sexuality: A component of personal and social identity, connected to one’s sexual orientation,
preferences, and practices
Sexism: Attitudes or beliefs that serve to justify sexual inequalities by incorrectly attributing or
denying certain capacities either to women or to men
Sexuality
Geographies of Well-Being
●
Well-being: The individual or collective state of health, happiness, and prosperity
1.
Synonymous with welfare
●
Welfare Geography: An approach to human geography that documents and explains social and
spatial variations; issues of injustice and inequality are often of paramount importance
●
Measuring Well Being Indicators
1. Income, wealth, and employment
2. The living environment, including housing
3. Physical and mental health
4. Education
5. Social order
6. Social belonging
7. Recreation and leisure
●
Conditions for physical health and ability to make informed decisions concerning personal
behaviour
1. Adequate supply of food a
2. Availability of protective housing
3. Safe workplace
4. Safe physical environment
5. Necessary health care
6. Security while young
7. Relationships with others
8. Physical security
9. Economic security
10. Safe birth control and child bearing
11. Required education
Folk Culture and Pop Culture
●
Folk Culture: The practices, attitudes, beliefs, traits, and preferences held by a small but
cohesive group of people
○
●
Often viewed as traditional, homogenous, and on the margins of society
Pop Culture: The practices, attitudes, beliefs, traits, and preferences held in common by large
numbers of people who are otherwise heterogeneous, and considered to be the mainstream of
society
○
Includes aspects of fashion, food, music, recreation, use of technology, and so on
●
Locale: The setting or context for social interaction; a term that has become popular in human
geography as an alternative to place
●
Ecotourism: Tourism that is generally more environmentally sustainable and often focuses on
providing tourists with experiences that are within distinctive, and often threatened, natural
environments
○
○
Sometimes efforts are made to help support ecosystem conservation
●
●
Spectacle: Places and events that are carefully constructed for the purposes of mass leisure and
consumption
CHAPTER 6: POLITICS AND SPACE: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY
Key Concept of Political Geography
●
Politics: The struggle for power
○
●
Power to exercise control over people and the spaces they use
Political Geography: Studies the spatial dimension of human conflict and cooperation on this
plant
○
Scale of study:
■
■
○
Usually state level
Political geography studies actions of governments and institutions, not actual
people
Political Geographers are interested in how humans:
■
■
■
■
Group themselves into nations
How these nations can form the foundation of states
How states claim space as their territory
How states compete for territory and negotiate boundaries between each other
■
●
Avoid armed conflict
Human Territoriality: Strategy used by individuals, groups & organizations to exercise power
over a portion of space and its contents
○
Borders, territories and states are all human made
Characteristics of States
Nation
●
Nation: A group of people sharing a common culture/trait/identity & an attachment to some
territory
○
State may be a nation, nation may be a state
State
●
State: An area (country) & political institutions (authorities)
○
○
○
Covers a distinct space
Limits of territory are defined by boundaries to neighbouring states
Territory is ruled by one government
■
Exercises control over the territory and those that live within it
Key facts about state
●
●
●
Need defined territory where its laws are enforced
●
Nation-State: A clearly-defined large group of people who self-identify as a group and occupy a
spatially-defined territory with necessary infrastructure, social & political institutions
Need a set of laws that are in force across the territory
Need a population that enforces and follows the laws
Nation-State
○
True nation states are rare
■
Languages are a marker; if the language spoken is the same name as country
(eg. Japan, Italy)
Stateless Nation
●
Stateless Nation: Nations that do not currently have a state of their own
○
Eg
■
■
●
Basque living in Northern Spain and Southern France want to form state
Kurds living is dispersed across Turkey, Iraq, Syria
Example
○
○
Creation of Israel in 1948
Israel is a nation-state now
Multi-National States
●
●
Multi-National States: Where a state's population is formed by two or more distinct nations
Canada
○
●
French, English, First Nations
Switzerland
○
German, French, Italian
Grouping and Forms of States
Groupings
●
United Nations: 1945
○
○
○
51 founding countries
Now 197
Purpose was to keep superpowers in check
■
●
European Integration (Post WWII)
○
○
○
●
Also help poverty and stuff
European Economic Community (1957)
Commission of European Communities (1967)
Large expansion of European Union (1994)
Most concern trade blocs
○
Eg. NAFTA, ASEAN
Forms of Government
●
●
●
Democracy: Rule by the people
Monarchy: Rule by a single person
Oligarchy: Rule by a few, usually those in possession of wealth
○
Argument: Capitalist democracy becomes an oligarchy
■
■
●
Corporations and rich own the most money and can manipulate the government
Therefore run the government
Dictatorship: Oppressive and arbitrary form of rule established and maintained by force and
intimidation
○
Eg. Putin now
●
Anarchism: Rejects the concept of state and associated division of society into rulers and ruled
Principle Political Philosophies of States
●
Capitalism
○
Free Market
■
■
○
●
There are lots of checks and controls in place
Ongoing struggle of the role of the government in the economy
Limited Government intervention
Socialism
○
○
○
○
Anti-capitalism
Planned economy
Powerful government
Nationalistic
Boundaries and Boundary Disputes
Boundary
●
●
Mark the limits of a state's sovereignty
'Lines' drawn where state meet or where states; territorial waters end
○
●
Dictate sovereignty
Artificial
○
What is meaningful in one context may be meaningless in another
Forms of Boundaries
●
Physical
○
●
Cultural
○
●
Eg. River, mountain range
Eg. Language, religion
Geometric
○
Eg. 49th parallel
Types of Geometric Boundaries
●
Antecedent Boundaries: those that existed before the current cultural landscape was
established by the current population
○
○
Can be both geometric/physical
49th parallel between Canada and USA
●
Subsequent boundaries: Those that were drawn after the current cultural landscape was
established
●
Relics Boundaries: Those that are no longer functioning as such but are visible on the cultural
landscape
○
Eg. East/West Germany
International Boundaries
●
Important because:
○
Separate states from each other to avoid conflict over the extent of territorial space
Boundary Disputes
●
Positional Disputes
○
States disagreement over:
■
■
●
The way the boundary was delimited
Territorial Disputes
○
●
Interpretation of existing documents that define a boundary
Dispute over ownership
Resource disputes
○
○
●
Territorial conflict over resources
Eg. Gulf war, Water in the 21st century
Functional disputes
○
○
States disagree over policies to be applied along a boundary
Eg. Immigration policies, covid mandates
Forces of States: Cohesion and Separation
State Stability
●
Stable state is one that is solid and people believe in and follow
Centrifugal Force
●
●
●
Forces that tear a state apart
When it exceeds centripetal forces, a state is unstable
Eg. Internal divisions in language or religion, weak institutions, separatist
○
○
Biden election/insurrection
Quebec separatist movement
Centripetal Force
●
●
●
Forces that tend to bind a state together
When it exceeds centrifugal forces, a state is stable
Eg. Extensive transportation and communication infra, religion, history, language, central
institutions
○
○
Canadian railway bound us together in early days
Radio/TV (CBC promotes cohesion)
Failed States
●
●
Government that has become so weak that government cannot control it anymore
Some countries have failed because:
○
○
●
They are critically weak
No longer functioning effectively (ungoverned/misgoverned)
Failed states pose both national and global problems
○
Global security:
■
■
Safe havens for terrorists and elicit drug production (Mali)
Allow pirates to operate freely in busy shipping lanes (Somalia)
Exercising State Power
Capitalist Countries
●
●
States power is exercised through various institutions and organizations
States apparatus includes
○
Political and legal systems
○
○
●
Military or police forces to enforce state's power
Mechanisms such as a central bank to regulate economic affairs
Critical issue:
○
Need for international cooperation in solving global environmental problems
Geopolitics
●
Geopolitics: Application of geography for the purposes of increasing a states power
Classic Theories of Geopolitics
●
Heartland Theory
○
World power based on the assumption that the land-based state controlling the Eurasian
heartland held the key to world domination
○
Summary
■
■
■
○
●
He who rules Eastern Europe commands the Heartland
He who rules the Heartland commands the World Island
He who rules the world island commands the world
Eg. Hitler trying to take over Europe
Rimland Theory
○
Theory of world power based on assumption that the state controlling the area
surrounding Eurasian heartland held the key to world domination
○
Area surrounding Heartland are key
●
These theories are slightly antiquated
Geopolitik
●
Geopolitik: Study of states as organisms that choose to expand in territory in order to fulfill their
destinies as nation-states
○
Ie. Survival of the fittest - Darwinist idea
●
Often refers to Nazi ideas
Exploration and Colonialism
●
Exploration
○
Most empires began as a result of exploratory activity
■
○
Itself a geographic endeavor
Often a search for resources
○
●
Colonialism
○
Economic, social, and political activity in explored areas that became colonies were
determined by and for the exploring of power
○
Europe has owned most of the world at some post from the 1500s to 1950s
■
●
GB is the worst of them all
De-Colonization
○
Number of states in the world has increased
■
■
■
○
70 in 1938
197 in 2021
Most of these states gained independence from a colonial power
Example
■
■
Africa - carved up by European colonialists
Newest Country: South Sudan
Elections, Voting, & Place
●
Voting district boundaries
○
●
An important factor in deciding election results
Gerrymandering: The manipulation of the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to
favor one party or class
○
USA and the Republicans
War
●
War Use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity, or political
independence of another state
○
Goal
The continuation of politics by other means (Karl Von Clausewitz)
●
To achieve or defend goals of the nation by influencing the orientations, roles, objectives and
actions of other states use
Causes
●
●
Previous wars (WWI --> WWII)
Peace
○
●
Eg. Putin's war
Economics: real or perceiving need for resources of the other
○
Eg. Hitler's living space (lebensraum)
A Geographical Endeavour
●
War is the most extreme of spatial conflicts
○
●
Humans suffer and die
Necessarily requires mass movement of people, machines and resources over large areas and
distances
●
Necessarily involves controlling people by dominating space
War is a Norm of Human Behaviour
●
Of the past years, humans at peace for only 268 of them
○
●
●
Just 8%
War occurred somewhere on Earth each years of 20th century
~92% of US history is filled with conflict (war) with another country
Putin's War
Why this is Putin's War in Ukraine
●
●
●
Putin is dictator
●
●
Claims Russia doesn't feel safe from the constant threat of Ukraine
He alone initiated the use of armed force by the Russian state against Ukraine
Achieve his goal of influencing orientations, roles, objectives and actions of Ukraine by defeating
its ability to resist
Why Might Putin Do So?
Stated goal
○
To protect Ukrainians from bullying and genocide from "nazified" government
●
The president of Ukraine is Jewish
Why Unsafe
●
NATO exists to counteract the Soviet Union
○
NATO currently 30 countries
■
●
Eurasian Union
14 countries joined since 1997
○
●
5 countries including Russia
Ukraine isn't part of either but wants to join NATO
○
Russia doesn't like that
Why the reasons are Bull
●
●
No evidence of genocide or bullying
President of Ukraine is Jewish
How Might this War End
1. Worst Case Scenario
1. Full scale war between Russia and NATO
2. Unlikely
2. Best Case Scenario
1. Putin is removed by his own people
2. Unlikely bc Russians historically don't resist government
3. 2nd Best Case Scenario
1. Russian/Ukraine cease fire negotiated
4. Most Likely Scenario
1. Russia occupies Ukraine with military force
2. Ukrainians wage guerrilla warfare
CHAPTER 6 TEXTBOOK
State Creation
●
Sovereign State: A self-governing sovereign political entity with well-defined, and usually
agreed-upon, territorial boundaries; in most usage synonymous with independent country
●
Sovereignty: The supreme authority or right of individual states (countries) to control political,
economic, and social affairs within its territorial boundaries without external interference
Defining the Nation-State
●
Nation: A group of people sharing a common culture (based on language, religion, ethnicity, and
so on) and an attachment to a particular territory
●
State: A political entity with a defined territory, a permanent population, a government (often
referred to as the state) which makes decisions about internal affairs and is (usually) recognized
by other states.
●
Nation-State: A political unit (state) that contains one principal cultural group (nation) that gives
it its identity
Nationalism
●
Nationalism: the belief that a nation and a state should be congruent
1. All members of the national group have the right to live within the borders of the state.
2. It is not especially appropriate for members of other national groups to be resident in
the state.
3. The government of the state must be in the hands of the dominant cultural group.
●
Why National identity emerged as the standard criterion for state delimitation in 1800s
1. All members of the national group have the right to live within the borders of the state.
2. It is not especially appropriate for members of other national groups to be resident in
the state.
3. The government of the state must be in the hands of the dominant cultural group.
4. Nationalism is a logical accompaniment of economic growth based on expanding
technologies.
5. The principle of one state-one culture arises from the collapse of local communities and
the need for effective communication within a larger unit.
●
Multinational State: A political unit (state) that consists of two or more cultural groups (nations).
Geopolitics
●
Geopolitics: The study of state power over space (or territory) and the ability to shape
international political relations
●
Heartland Theory: A geopolitical theory of world power based on the assumption that the state
controlling the Eurasian heartland held the key to world domination.
●
Geopolitik: The study of states as organisms that choose to expand in territory in order to fulfill
their “destinies” as nation-states
Centrifugal and Centripetal Force
●
Centrifugal Forces: Factors that make it difficult to bind an area together as an effective state,
such as cultural divisions within the state
●
Centripetal Forces: Factors that pull an area together into a single unit to create a relatively
stable state
●
Federalism: A form of government in which power and authority are divided between central
and regional governments.
Boundaries
●
Cold War: A period of geopolitical confrontation without any direct military conflict between
Western (led by the US) and communist (led by the USSR) powers that began shortly after the
end of World War II and lasted until the early 1990s.
Unstable States
●
●
Succession: The act of a group (nation) formally withdrawing from a federation or political state
●
Core-periphery: The idea that states and regions are often unequally divided between powerful
cores and dependent peripheries.
●
Devolution: A process of transferring power from central to regional or local levels of
government
Irredentism: The view and assertion by one country that a minority population living outside its
formal borders (usually in an adjacent country) rightfully belongs to it culturally.
Nations and States in Europe
Role of the State
Forms of Government
●
Capitalism: A social and economic system for the production of goods and services based on
private enterprise
●
Socialism: A social and economic system that involves a shared (common) ownership of the
means of production and the delivery of services.
●
Democracy: The institution of rule over a state by the hereditary head of a family; monarchists
are those who favour this system.
●
●
Monarchy: Rule by an elite group of people, typically the wealthy.
●
Dictatorship: An authoritarian, oppressive, and antidemocratic form of government in which the
leader is often backed by the military.
●
Fascism: A political philosophy that places nationality (and often race) above the rights of the
individual and that supports a centralized (often autocratic) government headed by a dictatorial
leader.
Oligarchy: An authoritarian, oppressive, and antidemocratic form of government in which the
leader is often backed by the military
●
Anarchism: A political philosophy that rejects the state and argues that social order is possible
without a state
Socialist Less Developed States
●
Two general characteristics of socialist regimes
1. They aim to remove any and all features of capitalism, primarily private ownership of
resources, resource allocation by the marketplace, and the class structure associated
with them.
2. They have the power, in principle, to make substantial changes to society
●
Maoism: The revolutionary thought and practice of Mao Zedong (1893–1976); based on
protracted revolution to achieve power and socialist policies after power is achieved
Elections: Geography Matters
●
Gerrymandering: The realignment of electoral boundaries with the specific intent to benefit a
particular political party
●
Malapportionment: A form of gerrymandering, involving the creation of electoral districts of
differing population sizes to the benefit of a particular political party
●
Four types of local influences on voting
1. Sectional effects
2. Environmental effects
3. Campaign effects
4. Contextual effects
Geography of Peace and War
Terrorism
●
Terrorism: The threat or use of force to bring about political change
Class of Civilizations
Six basic reasons for conflict due to cultural reasons
1. Cultural differences—of language, religion, and tradition—are more fundamental than
differences between political ideologies. They are basic differences that imply different views of
the world, different relationships with a god or gods, different social relations, and different
understandings of individual rights and responsibilities.
2. As the world becomes smaller, contacts will increase and awareness of cultural differences may
intensify.
3. The ongoing processes of modernization and social change separate people from long-standing
local identities and weaken the state as a source of identity. Increasingly, various fundamentalist
religions are filling the gap, providing a basis for identity
4. The less developed world is developing its own elites, with their own—non-Western—ideas of
how the world should be.
5. Cultural characteristics, especially religion, are difficult to change.
6. Economic regionalism is increasing and is most likely to be successful when rooted in a common
culture.
CHAPTER 7/8: URBAN SYSTEMS AND STRUCTURES
Urbanism and Urbanization
Urbanism
●
-ism: refers to condition of
To be an urban settlement there must be:
●
●
●
Permanent residence
●
●
●
France - 2,000+ people
●
●
●
●
●
●
Non-farming jobs
Size (5,000+ people)
Density matters
Size Varies
Canada - 1,000+ people having a population density of 400 or more per km^2
Different countries have different measures of urban settlements
Behaviours (ways of life)
Ruling elites
Science and arts
Long-distance trade
Material wealth and goods
Technology
●
●
Social organization complex
Spatial organization complex
○
Cities are very complex spatially
Humans are an urban species
●
●
54%+ of population live in cities
●
●
Varies over space
Global mode of living
Distribution of Urban Condition
Varies over time
○
○
○
○
1900s - European Era
1950s - Urbanism shifts toward Asia
1994 - Europe disappears and Asian/American dominance
2018 - All gone from Europe
Urbanization
●
-ization: refers to the process of becoming
Urbanization occurs when
●
People movement:
○
○
To the city (inwards)
To the edges (outward)
Population Growth of Cities
●
●
Calgary is growing super fast
●
●
Cities grow overtime
Halifax is growing a lot recently during the pandemic
Area Growth of Cities
Why do they want to grow (officially annex areas)
○
○
Control growth
Infrastructure type and building codes
Lifestyle Change (Rural to Urban)
●
●
●
●
●
●
Security - need more
●
Few farms and low density housing
Public transportation - get more
Increased consumer choice
Specialized services
Variety of people met
Increased commute times
Change in Land Use and Features
●
More roads and dense living
Distribution of the Process of Urbanization
●
●
Varies over time
●
Industrial revolution provided provided impetus for rapid growth of urban centres
Varies over space
Urbanization in More Developed Regions
○
Growth involved expansion of urban areas and creation of
●
Urbanization had normal distribution of city sizes
Urbanization in Less Developed Regions
●
Urbanization started in late - Mid-20th Century
○
●
Through rural-urban migration and natural growth
Leads to more poverty
Overall
●
Most Urbanism
○
Developed world
■
■
■
●
US and Canada
Western Europe
Oceania
Most Urbanizing
○
○
○
South America
Africa
Asia
Emerging Patterns in the Global Urban System
Growth of Megacities
●
Megacity: Large city of population of 10 million or more
○
○
Primacy: primary city of nation
Centrality within national economy
●
Mega regions
Mega-cities vs Many Cities
●
●
Urban growth between mega-cities and Many smaller cities is split
Increasing number of Mega-cities
Reasons
1. Personal migration choices
1. Better consumer choice
2. Increased opportunities
2. Corporate decisions
1. Access to talent and other members in industry
3. Government decisions
1. Infrastructure decisions
2. Governments pander to cities
4. Initial and locational advantages
1. Employment, business etc.
Primacy Cities (primate cities)
●
Condition where the population of the largest city in an urban system is disproportionately large
in relation to the second-largest and third-largest cities in that system
○
Eg. Seoul, S. Korea
●
Primate city doesn't mean mega city
World Cities
●
●
Disproportionate share of world's most important business are conducted here
Economically, world cities:
○
Have headquarters TNCs
■
○
○
Influence global patterns of trade, communication, finance and technology
Are key centres for financial institutions and producer services
Serve as control centres for capital in the new international division of labour
Where did they come from?
●
Arose in response to:
○
○
Process of economic globalization
Declining friction of distance
■
■
○
Telecommunications systems
Allows for instantaneous communication
Diminishing role of the state
■
Spheres of Influence
■
■
■
■
New York influences North America
Hong Kong Influence Asia
London influences Europe
These cities influence the whole world
■
Influence of cities and businesses are more powerful than the state
Current major economic functions of world cities
●
●
●
●
Tourism
Commercial banking, investment banking, insurance
Political power
Consumption of luxury goods and mass produced goods
●
●
●
Culture, arts, entertainment
●
●
Mega city is based on population
Centres large TNCs
Advanced producer services
Mega city vs. World city
World city is based on global presence
Origins and Purposes of Cities
3 Technological Phases of Culture
Hunting and Gathering Cultures
●
●
●
9/10ths of human history
●
●
●
●
●
Farming (agri) cultures
Wandering space for survival
Were we designed for urban life?
Agricultures
8,000-15,000 cultures
Starts to grow plants, tend to animals
Required permanent space
Increase in material possessions
○
Tools, food, fences, shelter (residency)
●
Happened in many place across the world
Urban Cultures
●
●
●
6,000-8,000 years ago
Permanent settlements appeared
Reasons
○
○
Increased food production allows societies to diversify labour
Pursue other needs and wants
●
Human survival improved through advantages of urban life
Advantages of Urbanism (Key: Spatial Concentration)
●
Economics
○
●
Administrative
○
●
Easier for government, business, military, religion to organize/control masses
Social, Educational and Medical Services
○
●
Practical and efficient means to produce and distribute goods and services
Ease of access to social, educational, medical services
Built Infrastructure
○
●
Utilities
○
●
Roads, bridges, sewage, systems, dams
Water, sewage, electricity, natural gas, telephone, cable
Social Interaction
○
○
Humans needs and want each other for biological, psychological and social fulfillment
Humans are social creatures
Disadvantages of Urban Condition
●
Excessive size
○
●
Administrative Organization
○
●
15% of humans live in slums
Social Unrest
○
●
Pay and build roads
Lacking of housing
○
●
Maintain, order, health, fire and police, safety
Lack of built infrastructure
○
●
Stop/control growth
171,000 war dead (2002)
Environmental degradation
○
○
Cities are energy pigs
Eg. Air pollution, light pollution
Why Were Cities Created?
●
Economic, social, spatial reasons: Advantages are perceived to outweigh disadvantages
Where were the first cities?
●
Babylonia
○
○
Ancient Mesopotamia: 4,000-3,500 B.C.E
~200,000 population
From Herders to Urbanites
●
●
●
Commitment to space increased
Occupy smaller and denser spaces
Made and kept more and more material goods
○
○
●
You can hold onto stuff
Immobile
Increased transformation (damage) to natural environment
Models of Internal Urban Structure
●
Page 406-412
●
Urban systems and Hierarchies (pg. 286-294)
○
○
○
Concentric Zone model
Sector model
Multiple Nuclei Model
Suburbanization
●
Page 437-440
Don Mill, Toronto
●
First planned, self-contained post WWII community development in Canada
○
Planned: not naturally developed
■
○
●
Self contained: housing, services, shopping, industry
Time
○
○
●
Consistent planning principles
1957: Don Mills use to be the outskirts of Toronto - farmland
2000: Now swallowed by the city
History
○
○
○
Announced 1953
Critical and commercial success
Blueprint for subsequent suburban development
5 Planning Principles (or suburbs)
1. Neighbourhood principle
1. 4 quadrants of neighbourhoods
2. Each with a school, church, park
3. Surrounding a regional mall
2. Separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic
1. Off-street paths to parks, schools and town centre
2. Curvilinear roads, T-intersections, cul-de-sacs to slow traffic
1. Grids were pre-war
3. Modernist Architecture and Aesthetic
1. Developer controlled design, colours, materials of all buildings
2. All architects adhered to modern design
1. Ranch style
2. Clean, geometric lines
3. Unadorned aesthetic
4. Creation of Greenbelt
1. Green spaces linked to neighbourhood parks and parkland
5. Integration of Industry into community
1. Live and work in same community
1. Avoid bedroom community
2. Included high density rental townhouses and low-rise apartments
What is coming after suburbs?
●
●
People argue we can't build the city the way we have
New Urbanism
○
○
Smarter cities
Not designed for the car, but for people
○
Points to Ponder
●
●
●
●
We are now primarily urban animals
Urbanization transforms the human-environment relationship
Climate change and environmental degradation is primarily urban induced (urban culture)
Urban forms have evolved in size, shape and functions
CHAPTER 7 TEXTBOOK
An Urbanizing World
●
Urbanization: The spread and growth of cities; an increasing proportion of a population living in
urban areas (cities and towns)
●
City: A legally incorporated self-governing unit
○
●
An inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village
Suburb: A residential or mixed-use (residential and employment) area on the periphery of the
city
○
Typically displaying some degree of homogeneity in terms of economic status,
sociocultural characteristics, or built form
Urbanization in More and Less Developed Regions of the World
●
Urban area: The spatial extent of the built-up area surrounding and including an incorporated
municipality, such as a city
○
Typically assessed by some combination of population size, population density, and the
nature of residents’ employment
○
Defining urban areas in Canada:
■
■
■
●
Small population centre: 1,000 - 29,999
Medium population centre: 30,00 - 99,999
Large population centre: 100,000+
Metropolitan: A region comprising two or more functionally connected urban areas and the less
densely populated (or built-up) areas between them
○
Examples include metropolitan New York and the Greater Toronto Area
●
Urban Sprawl: The largely unplanned expansion of an urban area into rural areas
Megacity
●
●
Megacity: a metropolitan area with a population of more than 10 million
Donut Effect:
●
n
○
usually characterized by people moving out of the core or inner suburbs of a city and
moving into newer peripheral suburbs.
Origin and Growth of Cities
●
Urbanism: The urban way of life
○
Associated with a declining sense of community and increasingly complex social and
economic organization as a result of increasing size, density, and heterogeneity
●
Agricultural Surplus: Agricultural production that exceeds the sustenance needs of the producer
and is sold to or exchanged with others
Urban Hearths
1. Mesopotamia
2. Northern Egypt
3. Indus River Valley
4. Huang River Valley
5. Mesoamerica
6. Pacific Andean South America
Greece and Eastern Mediterranean
●
Acropolis: The fortified religious centre of cities in ancient Greece
○
●
The literal translation is “highest point in the city.”.
Agora: The centre of ancient Greek civic life
○
The area where public meetings, trials of justice, social interaction, and commercial
exchange took place.
The Roman Empire
●
Forum: The centre of Roman civic, commercial, administrative, and ceremonial life; combined
the functions of the ancient Greek acropolis and agora.
Pre-Industrial Europe
●
Mercantilism: A school of economic thought dominant in Europe in the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries that argued for the involvement of the state in economic life so as to
increase national wealth and power
●
Entrepot: A city, usually a port, that functions as an intermediary for trade and trans-shipment
and that exports both raw materials and manufactured goods
Urban System and Hierarchies
Central Place Theory
●
Central Place Theory: A theory to explain the spatial distribution of urban centres with respect
to their size and function.
●
Central place: An urban centre that provides goods and services for the surrounding population
○
●
Consumer Services: Services provided primarily for individual consumers, such as retail,
hospitality, food, leisure, health care, education, and social welfare
○
●
●
May take the form of a hamlet, village, town, city, or megacity
Represent approximately 50 per cent of employment in most countries of the more
developed world.
Hinterland: The market area surrounding a central place
○
The spatial area from which the providers of goods and services in a central place draw
their customers
○
Best shape = hexagon
Range: The maximum distance that people are prepared to travel to obtain a particular good or
service
●
Threshold: The minimum number of people (market size) required to support the existence of a
particular economic function
Rank Size Distribution
●
Rank-Size Distribution: A descriptive regularity among cities in an urban system
○
○
●
The numerical relationship between city size and rank in an urban system
Sometimes referred to as the rank-size rule
Equation
○
○ Px = Population of city x
○ P1 = Population of the largest city
○ R = Population rank of city x
Urban Primacy
●
Primate City: The largest city in an urban system, usually the capital, which dominates its
political, economic, and social life
○
A city that is more than twice the size of the next-largest city in the system
Global Cities
●
Business services: Services provided primarily for other businesses, including financial,
administrative, and professional activities such as accounting, advertising, banking, consulting,
insurance, law, and marketing
●
Global city: A city that is an important node in the global economy
○
○
A dominant city in the global urban hierarchy
Sometimes referred to as a world city.
Political Characteristics
●
Supranational Organization: A multinational grouping of independent states, where power is
delegated to an authority by member governments
○
Eg. UN, EU, World Bank
Cultural Characteristics
●
Gateway City: A city that is a key point of entry to a major geographic region or country for
goods or people, often via an international airport, container shipping port, or major rail centre
○
A city in which several different cultural traditions are absorbed and assimilated
CHAPTER 8 TEXTBOOK
Explaining Urban Form
●
Central Business District: The social, cultural, commercial, and political centre of the city
○
●
Usually characterized by high-rise office and residential towers, key municipal
government buildings, and civic amenities
Class: A large group of people of similar social status and income (and often culture)
○
Commonly used forms include upper class, middle class, and working class
Urban Structure
●
Urban Structure: The arrangement of land uses in cities
○
Related to urban morphology
Modelling the North American City
Concentric Zone Model
●
●
●
Ernest Burgess
Greater the distance, greater the wealth, better the house quality
Five zones
○
CBD
■
○
Zone in transition
■
■
○
Financial, commercial, entertainment
Industrial
Poor
Remaining three are residential
■
Increasing wealth, the greater the disance
●
Applies best to North American Cities
Sector Model
●
●
●
Homer Hoyt
Distance and direction from the CBD determined land usage
Transportation corridors create sectors
○
●
Growth in wedge-like fashion
Industrial grows along railroad lines
Multiple Nuclei Model
●
●
Chauncey Harris and Edward Ullman
Other nuclei beyond CBD develop
○
Eg. Airports, universities
●
Very popular
Modelling the European City
Modelling the Latin American City
Modelling the Sub-Saharan African City
●
Hard to model due to many types
○
○
○
Indigenous: Pre-colonial cities such as Addis Ababa
Islamic: Located mostly in the Saharan region (North Africa), such as Timbuktu
Colonial: Located throughout much of the extensive area colonized by Europeans, often
as capitals, mining towns, or trading centres, such as Kinshasa
○
Dual: Comprising at least two of the previous types, such as Khartoum-Omdurman
Modelling the Asian City
●
Southwest Asia/North Africa
○
●
Major central mosque
South Asia
○
Indigenous
■
■
○
And bazaar
Colonial
■
●
Trade routes
Southeast Asia
Political or economic locations
○
●
China
○
Polycentric
Rethinking Models of the City
White's Model
1. The core area, which continues to function as the heart of the city, is the site of government,
financial, and business offices. There is less retailing than previously. This zone grows upward
rather than outward.
2. Surrounding the core is a zone that was previously light industrial and warehousing. In some
cities, this second zone is stagnant, but in others it has benefited from business and residential
investment.
3. Most cities include several areas of low-quality housing, characterized by poverty and often
occupied by minority ethnic groups. Most of these areas are adjacent to the second zone,
although some are located elsewhere.
4. Much of the rest of the city consists of middle-class residences, frequently divided into relatively
distinct neighbourhoods. Although this is the largest area of the city, it is not continuous; it is
interrupted here and there by the three remaining components.
5. Scattered throughout the middle-class area are elite residential enclaves. As with the poor areas,
some of these are close to the city centre and some are suburban.
6. Various institutional and business centres, such as hospitals, malls, and industrial parks, are also
scattered throughout the middle-class area.
7. Finally, most cities grow outward along major roads, and peripheral centres largely independent
of the original city form may develop
Housing and Neighbourhoods
●
Neighbourhood: A part of the city that displays some internal homogeneity regarding type of
housing
○
●
May be characterized by a relatively uniform income level and/or ethnic identity, and
usually reflects certain shared social values
Redlining: A spatially discriminatory practice, favoured by financial institutions, that identified
parts of the city regarded as high risk in terms of loans for property purchase and home
improvement
○
Affected areas were typically outlined in red on maps
●
Filtering: A process whereby housing units transition from being occupied by members of one
income group to members of a different income group over time; downward filtering is more
usual than upward filtering.
●
●
●
Selected life cycle events that can cause residential relocation (chronological)
Factors underlying neighbourhood decline or revitalization
Gentrification: A process of inner-city urban neighbourhood social change resulting from the
in-movement of higher-income groups
○
Originates from gentry, a term referring to people of high social standing and
immediately below those of noble birth
●
●
Segregation: The spatial separation of population subgroups within the wider urban population
●
Minority Population (or groups): A population subgroup that is seen or that views itself, as
somehow different from the general (charter) population
Charter Population: The dominant or majority cultural group in an urban area; the host
community.
○
This difference is normally expressed by ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, sexual
orientation lifestyle, or even income (as in the case of the homeless or the extremely
wealthy).
●
Congregation: The residential clustering of specific populations (minority groups), usually as a
matter of choice or preference; a form of segregation
●
Involuntary Segregation: The residential clustering of specific populations (minority groups),
usually as a result of discrimination; a form of segregation
●
Visible Minority: A member of a minority group whose minority status is based wholly on the
colour of his or her skin
○
●
The Canadian government recognizes anyone that is neither white nor Indigenous as a
visible minority
Cultural Minority: A member of a minority group whose minority status is based on factors
other than skin colour, such as language, religion, lifestyle, ethnic origin, etc.
Suburbs and Sprawl
●
Suburbanization: A process through which land on the periphery of an urban area (the
rural-urban fringe) becomes urbanized over time, as people and businesses move there; the
process of suburban development
○
○
Symbiotic relationship with automobiles in North America
Single family homes
Urban Sprawl
●
Conurbation: A continuously built-up area formed by the coalescing of several expanding cities
that were originally separate
Post-Suburbia
●
●
Edge City: A centre of office and retail activities located on the edge of a large urban centre
Producer Services: Activities that offer a wide range of services to multinational and other
companies that need to respond quickly to changing circumstances, including banking,
insurance, marketing, accountancy, advertising, legal matters, consultancy, and innovation
services
○
●
In recent years, the fastest-growing sector of national economies in most of the more
developed countries
Gated Community: A high-status residential subdivision or community with access limited to
residents and other authorized people such as domestic workers, tradespeople, and visitors;
often surrounded by a perimeter wall, fence, or buffer zone such as a golf course
Inequality and Poverty
●
Cycle of Poverty: The idea that poverty and deprivation are transmitted intergenerationally,
reflecting home background and spatial variations in opportunities
Homelessness
●
Homelessness: The circumstance of being without a permanent dwelling, such as a house or
apartment
Types
●
●
●
Rooflessness: Sleeping “rough” (i.e. in the open air) is the most visible sign of being homeless.
●
Living in inadequate accommodation: Some housing is of such poor quality—overcrowded of
otherwise unfit for habitation—that it cannot be considered adequate shelter. This is the
situation of many Indigenous people living on reserves in the northern reaches of some
Canadian provinces.
Houselessness: This term applies to people who routinely sleep in shelters.
Living in insecure housing: This circumstance arises when permanent housing is unavailable,
when people are obliged to share with others, or when a person’s or family’s housing is likely to
be lost if the rent is raised or payments cannot be made.
Transportation and Communication
●
●
Mobility: The ability to move from one location to another
●
Front-office Activities: Skilled occupations requiring an educated, well-paid workforce; because
image and face-to-face contact with others is important, these activities favour prestige locations
in major office buildings in city centres
Back-office Activities: Repetitive office operations, usually clerical in nature and performed using
telecommunications, that can be located anywhere in or out of the city, including relatively
low-rent areas
Planning the City
●
Garden City: A planned settlement designed to combine the advantages of urban and rural
living; an urban centre emphasizing spaciousness and quality of life
●
Green Belt: A planned area of open, partially rural, land surrounding an urban area; an area
where urban development is restricted
●
Zoning: Legal restrictions on land use that determine what types of urban activity (residential,
commercial, industrial, and so on), and building form are allowed to take place on particular
parcels of land
Cities of the Less Developed World
●
Informal Settlement: A concentration of temporary dwellings, neither owned nor rented, at the
city’s periphery; related to rural-to-urban migration, especially in less developed countries
○
●
Slum: A heavily populated informal settlement, usually located within the urban core, and
characterized by poverty, substandard housing, crime, and a lack of sanitation, water, electricity,
or other basic services;
○
●
Sometimes referred to as a squatter settlement or shanty town
Common in less developed world cities today and in more developed world cities in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Informal Sector: A part of a national economy involved in productive paid labour but without
any formal recognition, governmental control, or remuneration
CHAPTER 9: AGRICULTURE AND FOOD
Classifications of Economic Activity
Categories of Economic Activities
1. Primary
1. Economic activities that are concerned directly with natural resources of any kind
2. Eg. Agriculture, fishing, forestry, gathering industries, extractive industries (oil
extraction)
2. Secondary
1. Economic activities that process transform, fabricate or assemble the raw materials
derived from primary activities, or that reassemble, refinish or package manufactured
goods
2. Eg. Manufacturing, processing construction, power production
3. Tertiary
1. Activities where people offer their knowledge and time to improve productivity,
performance, potential , and sustainability
2. Eg. Retailing, wholesaling, financial services, Personal and professional services
4. Quaternary
1. Economic activities that deal with the handling and processing of knowledge and
information as well as distribution
2. Eg. Education, Research, management, information technology
Model of Economic Transition.
Origin and Diffusion of "Agri"-culture
Settling and Spread of Human Activities
●
●
Originated in areas of sustenance but specific origins and diffusions uncertain
Path of spread
○
●
●
First tools were chippers (used for hunting)
●
1st revolutionary agent in human-environment relationship
Human - Environment impact negligible
Control of Fire
●
Benefits
○
○
○
○
○
Warmth
Cooking
Night vision
Improved mobility
Stronger tools
Hunting and Gathering
●
●
Originally humans food collectors not producers
Fire management impacted hunting/gathering
○
○
○
○
○
○
○
Affect animal movement
Reduced uncertainty in hunt
Cleared bush for better visibility
Increased flora and fauna diversity
Smoke out animals
Food preservation
Reduced human energy expenditure (tool)
Early Agriculture
●
Originally food collectors not food producers
○
○
○
Then systematic planting and gathering of plants and domestication of animals emerged
8,000 - 12,000 years ago
Meso-America, Mesopotamia, S.E Asia
Transformation by Agriculture
●
●
Agri-culture or "field" - "ways of doing"
Permanent occupation of specific sites
○
○
●
Necessary precursor to urban settlements
New tools invented
○
○
○
○
○
○
○
●
Ends nomadic lifestyle
Axe
Fence
Sickle
Hoe
Baskets
Pots
Permanent shelter
Population increase: more and regular food
●
Reshaping of the natural environment
○
Major change in human-environment relation
Pros and Cons of Agrarian Societies
●
Less competition for food:
○
●
●
●
●
More of it
Increased socializing (farming neighbours)
Increase material possession (not nomadic)
Bigger families needed and possible
Disadvantage
○
○
Hard work and lots of it
Territorial conflicts
Features of Contemporary Agriculture
Agriculture
●
Agriculture: the science and practice of farming, including the cultivation of the soil and the
rearing of livestock
○
●
●
Very difficult and demanding intellectually
The most widespread and space-consuming human activity on Earth
Major employment sector of global labour
Agricultural Land
●
Livestock takes lots of land
Labour Force in Agriculture
●
Only 1.4% of Canadians are farmers
World Agriculture Types and Regions
Subsistence farming
●
Primitive subsistence agriculture
○
Shifting cultivation
●
●
●
Wet rice farming
●
●
●
●
●
Mixed farming
Pastoral nomadism
Mediterranean agriculture
Commercial Farming
Dairying
Plantation agriculture
Ranching
Large-scale grain production
●
World Agricultural Regions
○
Pg. 351
Farming in Canada
●
Misleading generalization
○
○
●
Canadian agriculture is most affected by the physical environment of the country
Agriculture plays an important part in Canadian life
More useful generalization
○
Canadian agriculture is now most affected by the globalization of trade
■
Tied to global market
○
Agribusiness play an important part in Canada life
Environment Places some Limitations on Agriculture
●
●
●
Most productive agriculture land lies within 200km of US border
Total Canada's occupied farmland in 2011 is 7%
Mostly in Prairie Provinces
○
○
○
Sask = 39%
Alberta = 31%
Manitoba = 11%
Historical Development of Prairie Agriculture
●
Despite importance of physical environment, political decisions influenced by globalized trade
greatly affects farming in Canada presently
○
Boards established
■
■
●
●
Protect producers
Control production
Government heavily involved in development of farming in Prairies (19th century)
Including
○
○
Subsidized rail shipment
Collective grain marketing and distribution (the Canadian Wheat Board est. In 1925)
Recent Development in Prairie Agriculture
●
Elimination of government subsidies in agriculture
○
●
Eg. "Crow Rate" abolished in 1995
Wheat board nearly abolished
○
○
Lost monopoly in 2012
Effects doubling of transportation cost
Why were subsidies eliminated
●
To reduce overall budget deficit
●
●
To make the sector more competitive
●
●
●
Total number of farms decreasing
Direct and indirect American pressure
Canadian agriculture in a Precarious State
Farmers now comprise only about 10% of total rural population
Causes:
○
Technological advances
●
Results in lots of power to large corporations
Causes of Fundamental Changes
●
Globalization
○
○
●
Relatively low compared to EU, Japan and USA
Cash Squeeze
○
○
●
●
●
●
Falling prices for commodities
Subsidies
○
●
Reduce subsidies and open market
Increased cost of inputs
Ie. Fertilizer, gas, machines, seed, labour
Take over of small farms by supermarkets - agribusiness
Farm polarization: Those able to compete pull away from the park
Protection of farmland (ongoing)
Uncertainty
○
○
○
○
○
GMO
Diseases
Access
Prices
Climate change
Future of Farming in Canada
●
●
●
●
Increasing demand for grains from China and India
●
Increasing costs of food
Increasing demand from ethanol producers
Increasing effects of climate change
Rising costs of petroleum
Options for the Future
○
Cur ly Canadians spent less than 10% of their disposable income on food purchased in
stores
●
Encourage farmers to develop forms of food processing
○
●
●
Promote organic or niche forms of trading
Promoting alternative uses for agricultural land
○
●
●
Derelict barns for homes
Supporting city-oriented farmers' market and delivery
Promoting the production of exotic meats that are not affected by disease
○
●
Add value
Eg. Bison
Promoting the importance of farmers as "land resource managers"
○
Ie. Through a deliberate policy develop rural areas
Issues of Food Production
Challenge of Location
●
Physical
○
○
○
Climate change
■
Temp, moisture etc.
■
Depth, texture, acidity, nutrient composition etc.
Soil
Topographical relief
■
●
Technology
○
●
Don't eat certain foods
Certain foods are more prominent
Eg. Religious beliefs and ethnicity
Political
○
○
○
●
Advances in biotechnology have improved agricultural productivity
Cultural
○
○
○
●
Food is political
Who we support, where we buy from
State of policies may influence farmer's behaviour
Supply and Demand
○
○
Agricultural products are produced in response to market demand for them
Note
■
●
Canadian shield cannot be farmed
Difference between commercial/subsistence farming
Competition for land
○
Conventionally land is assigned to the use that generates the greatest profits
Paradox of Hunger in a World of Plenty
●
●
●
Currently at a global food production peak
10.9% of human population undernourished (2014)
59% of Canadians are obese or overweight
○
Lots of food waste
●
We're making a lot more food than before
GMO Key Debate Issues
●
Arguments for
○
○
○
○
●
Feed the world
Stronger crops = less pesticides
Tampering for taste
Enhanced health
Arguments against
○
○
○
○
○
Environmental risk
Smoking used to be harmless
Big business eats small farmers
Nothing tastes better than nature
GMOS are dangerous to eat
Major Food Production Challenges
●
●
●
●
●
●
Climate change
Crude prices affecting farm inputs, transportation etc.
Removal of government subsidies
Trade liberalisations
World prices
Trade and market access
○
●
●
Infrastructure
Population growth, incomes and consumption pattern changes
Conflicts
○
Eg. Ethnic, political etc.
Food production might not keep up with population growth
Glass is more than half full
●
●
●
Global food production never higher
Variety and availability is large
Glass is half full but leaking fast
○
○
More frailties exposed
Food prices go up
Global food crisis in Ukraine
●
●
Its bad
Ukraine is responsible for 10% of wheat exports in the world
○
Russia is 16%
CHAPTER 9: TEXTBOOK
The Geography of Food Production
●
Commercial Agriculture: An agricultural system in which production is primarily for sale for
profit
○
●
Typically large scale, utilizing large amounts of land and the latest technology, and highly
mechanized
Subsistence Agriculture: An agricultural system in which production is not primarily for sale, but
is consumed by the producer
○
Typically small scale, utilizing small amounts of land and limited technological inputs,
and relying on manual labour
●
Rent Ceiling: The maximum rent that a potential land user can be charged for use of a given
piece of land
●
Location Theory: A body of theories explaining the spatial distribution of economic activities
○
●
Commonly applied in agricultural, industrial, and urban contexts
Economic Rent: The surplus income that accrues to a unit of land above the minimum income
needed to bring a unit of new land into production at the margins of production.
○
Von Thunen's Agricultural Location Theory
●
Normative Theory: A theory that focuses on what ought to happen, rather than what actually
does occur
○
The aim is to seek what is rational, or optimal, according to some given criteria
●
Economic Operator: A model of human behaviour in which each individual is assumed to be
completely rational (makes sound and well-reasoned decisions)
○
●
Rational Choice Theory: The theory that social life can be explained by models of rational
individual action
○
●
Economic operators aim to maximize returns and minimize costs
An extension of the economic operator concept to other areas of human life
Satisficing Behaviour: A model of human behaviour that rejects the rationality assumptions of
the economic operator model
○
Assumes that the objective is to reach an acceptable level of satisfaction
Distance, Land Value, and Land Use
●
●
Continental and Global-Scale Patterns of Agriculture
Regional-Scale Patterns of Agriculture
○
○
Uruguay
Ethiopia
Domesticating Plants and Animals
●
Domestication: The ongoing process of selectively breeding plants and animals for specific
characteristics (abundance of fruit, hardiness of seed, protein content of meat, and so on) that
make them more useful to humans
●
Agricultural Revolution: The gradual transition of human subsistence, beginning about 12,000
years ago, from dependence on foraging (hunting and gathering) to food production through
plant and animal domestication
Possible Causes of Domestication
●
Pleistocene: The geological time period from about 1.5 million years ago to 12,000 years ago,
characterized by a series of glacial advances and retreats; succeeded by the Holocene
Agricultural Core Areas
●
●
●
●
●
Southwest Asia
Southeast Asia
Northern China
Africa
America
Evolution of World Agricultural Landscapes
Five principal technological advances
1. a second agricultural revolution associated with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the
eighteenth century
2. the development of nitrogen fertilizers in the early twentieth century
3. the “green revolution” that began in the mid-twentieth century
4. the biotechnology revolution that began in the late twentieth century and that, despite much
opposition, is proceeding apace
5. the ongoing transition in some areas from ploughing the soil prior to planting to use of no-till
strategies
Changes caused by Second Agricultural Revolution
1. development of new farming techniques, including introduction of feed crops and new crop
rotations
2. increases in crop output because of improvements in productivity
3. introduction of labour-saving machinery
4. the ability to feed a growing population
Organic Farming and Nitrogen Fertilizers
●
Neo-Colonialism: Economic and political strategies of dominance and subordination by powerful
states over others
○
Often develops after colonialism ends and the former colony achieves political but not
economic independence
Lost Animal and Plant Species
●
Landrace: A local variety of a domesticated animal or plant species that is well adapted to a
particular physical and cultural environment
World Agriculture Today: Types and Regions
Subsistence Forms of Agriculture
●
●
●
●
Shifting Agriculture: change land when you're done with it
●
●
●
●
●
Mixed Farming: various crops
Wet Rice: Slow moving water to farm rice - flatland in Asia
Pastoral Nomadism
Mediterranean Agriculture
Commercial Forms of Agriculture
Dairying: cows
Plantation Agriculture
Ranching
Large-Scale Grain Production
Global Agricultural Restructuring
●
Restructuring: In a capitalist economy, changes in or between the various components of an
economic system resulting from economic change
●
Agribusiness: A highly integrated form of transnational corporation in the agricultural, or food
production, sector
○
Typically highly capitalized, operating on a large scale (often across various regions),
corporately owned, and vertically integrated (encompassing the growing, processing,
and marketing of food).
Food Production, Food Consumption, and Identity
●
Third places: Social locations, separate from home (first places) and work (second places), where
social networking and community building takes place
○
Includes public and private spaces such as libraries, community centres, cafes, churches,
parks, and so on
CHAPTER 10: INDUSTRIALIZATION AND POST-INDUSTRIALIZATION
● Looking at secondary economic activities
The Industrial Revolution: Origin and Impact
Transformation in:
●
●
●
Ways goods are produced
●
Large use of energy source
Ways people obtained, food, clothing, shelter
Social, political, economical organization of societies
Series of Inventions (technologies) that Transformed Manufacturing
○
Primary coal
●
●
●
Development of steam engine
●
IR was triggered by rapid onset of new and stable political, legal, and economic throughout much
of 17th C Europe
●
●
●
England had long history of settlement, stability, security
Introduction of new machines
Development of new transport
Why was England First?
Had necessary cultural pre-conditions for industrialization
Luck of coal fields
○
●
Lots of coal in England
The Steam engine train
○
○
First: George and Robert Stephenson
The Rocket
Series of Inventions
Steam Machine
●
James Watt 1765, Glasgow, Scotland
●
●
Pumped water faster than water mills, humans or animals
Centralized Industrial locations:
○
Steam heat
Iron Industry
●
Steam allowed smelting iron ore to iron, faster and cheaper
○
●
Coal Mining
○
●
Replaced wood to stoke steam engines
Engineering
○
●
Booming iron industry generated innovations
Using steam and coal power 100s of new machines invented produced, repaired
Transportation
○
○
Canals
Iron Horse
■
■
Railway
38km/hr
Textile Industry
●
●
Engines speeded up conversion of rough cotton to usable thread and then weaving cloth
Textile industry generated innovations in:
○
○
Chemicals
Food processing
■
Canning the tin can 1839
Social Change
●
Rapid urbanization
○
●
March to the cities
Dramatic decrease in mortality
○
Followed by decrease in fertility
Economic Change
●
●
●
●
●
Rise of Capitalism
●
Adam Smith's, Wealth of Nations (1776)
Wage labour vs subsistence
Dependence on wage
Gains in human productivity
Higher standards of living
Political Change
○
Political Liberalism, Origins of the American Dream
●
●
Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto (1848)
Emergence of Nation-States and global empires
○
Naval power = merchant marine
Human-Environment Implications
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
Reduced energy expenditures
Technology explosion of tools
Increased material goods and waste
Decreased flora and fauna diversity
Population increase
Increased urbanization
More complex spatial organization
○
●
●
Roads, rail, shipping, telecommunications
Food collectors + food producer + food preservers
Interference and Reshaping of Human-Environment Relationship
Diffusion of Early Industrial Geographies
●
Maps
Influences of Industrial Location: Where, Why
Industry is Highly Clustered
●
Labour
○
●
Land
○
●
Flat land, large sites, correct zoning
Capital
○
●
Spatial variation in quality and quantity
Machinery, money
Other considerations
○
○
○
○
○
○
Raw materials
Transportations
Access to technology
Political environment
Agglomeration economies
Environmental
Industries have Different Distributions
●
Situations factors
○
○
Involve transporting materials to and from a factory
Transport costs of input materials vs transport costs of finished product
■
■
Situation-inputs oriented links
■
Cost is greater to ship raw materials to factory then finished goods to
market
■
Locate near raw materials
Situation-Market oriented links
■
■
■
Transport costs of final product dwarf those of raw materials
Industry is market oriented and locate near market
Break of Bulk Point
■
■
Loading and unloading costs are part of the transportation costs
Additional unloading/loading stage at the factory can be
avoided by locating the factory and the break of bulk point
■
●
Site factors
○
Result from the unique characteristics of a location
World Industrial Regions
●
Global manufacturing dominated by 3 regions
1. North America
1. Canada, US
2. Europe
1. Germany, England, Italy
3. Pacific Asia
1. Japan, South Korea, Eastern China
Where Industry is Expanding
Newly Industrializing Countries
●
NICs
○
●
●
S.Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia & Philippines
Theses countries have seen their economies accelerated in the 1970s
Set up Export Processing Zones (EPZ)
○
Attract transnational corps
Reasons Industries are Attracted to EPZs
1. Inexpensive land, building, energy, water, and transport
2. Financial concessions such as import and export duties
3. Low workplace health and safety standards and inexpensive labour force
Globalization and Industrial Geographies
Industrial Restructuring: Technological advances and globalization processes affect industries
●
●
●
Electronically controlled assembly lines
Automated tools in the production process
Transaction technologies
○
●
●
Computer based: just-in-time (JIT) inventory control
All may increase locational and organization flexibility
Circulation Technologies: Satellites and fibre optic networks are facilitating exchanging of info
and increase market size
○
Companies are able to take advantage of spatial variations in land and labour costs while
serving larger markets
○
Minimal overhead
Deindustrialization
●
Deindustrialization: Loss of manufacturing activity and related jobs in traditional industrial
regions in more advanced world
○
●
Eg. Plant closures in Ontario
Priorities
○
○
○
Cheap labour
Lower Shipping costs
If priorities are not met (eg. Ontario), industry moves
●
Advances in transportation and extractive technologies have allowed industries to overcome
some situational disadvantages
●
Changing tides
○
Labour costs are increasing in China
Case Study: Canada
Extractive Industries
●
●
Fossil fuel sources of energy
Oil, natural gas, coal
○
●
Canada has lots of oil reserves and produces lots of oil
○
●
82% worldwide energy comes from gas-oil-coal
Primarily Alberta
Oil is on its way out
○
Oil extraction is resource heavy
Key Points
1. Industry is a major human economic activity
2. Major shift in Human-Environment relations
3. Highly clustered - but geography is changing
4. Location factors are changing
5. Different industries have different distributions
6. Oil is a major Global Canadian industry
1. Contentious
7. Canada is 'de-industrializing' and moving into the tertiary and quaternary economic sectors
8. Post-industrial economy
CHAPTER 10 TEXTBOOK
Economic Activity
●
Primary Activities: Economic activities involving the identification and extraction of the world’s
natural resources, such as mining, fishing, forestry, and agriculture
●
Secondary Activities: Economic activities involving the processing, transforming, fabricating, and
assembling of raw materials (or secondary products) into finished goods
○
○
Sometimes referred to as industrial activities
Generally includes activities such as manufacturing, food processing, and construction
●
Secondary Product (goods): Products made from raw materials and used in the manufacture of
finished products, such as steel, plastic, flour, and textiles
●
Tertiary Activities: Economic activities involving the sale or exchange of goods and services
○
○
Mostly referred to as service activities
Generally include wholesale and retail trade, hospitality and food services, insurance and
banking, law, real estate, and various government services.
Further Breakdowns of Service Sector
Tertiary Expanded #1
●
Tertiary
○
●
Quaternary
○
○
●
Selling goods and services to consumers and businesses
Knowledge-based or intellectual services
R&D, media, publishing, IT, education
Quinary
○
○
High-level decision-makers
Business executives, government leaders, policy-makers
Tertiary Expanded #2
●
●
●
Personal
Business
Government Services
The Industrial Location Problem
●
Ubiquitous Goods: Products or raw materials that are found virtually everywhere
○
○
Examples include electricity or water in most of the more developed world
Energy is mostly ubiquitous
Weber's Least-Cost Industrial Location Theory
1. Some raw materials are ubiquitous; that is, they are found everywhere.
1. Example suggested by Weber are water, air, and sand.
2. Most raw materials are localized; that is, they are found only in certain locations.
1. Sources of energy fall into this category.
3. Labour is available only in specific locations; it is not mobile.
4. Markets are fixed locations, not continuous areas.
5. The cost of transporting raw material, energy, or the finished product is a direct function
of weight and distance.
1. Thus, the greater the weight or distance, the greater the cost.
6. Perfect economic competition exists. This means that the industry consists of many
buyers and sellers, and no single participant can affect product price.
7. Firms are rational economic operators interested in minimizing costs and maximizing
sales.
8. Both physical geography (climate and topography) and human geography (cultural and
political systems) are uniform.
Market-Area Analysis
●
Spatial Monopoly: The situation in which a single producer sells the entire output of a particular
good or service in a given area
Industrial Revolution
●
Industrial Revolution: The process that converted a fundamentally rural society into an
industrial society beginning in England around 1750
○
Primarily a technological revolution associated with the harnessing of new energy
sources and the use of machinery to replace manual labour
○
Associated with societal, demographic, political, economic, and urban change
Origins
●
Feudalism: A social and economic system prevalent in Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution
○
Land was owned by the monarch, controlled by lords, and worked by peasants who paid
rent for the land and were subject to the lords’ authority
Early Industrial Geography
●
Textiles
○
○
●
New uses of iron
Railways
Industrial Landscapes
○
○
○
●
Rise in factory production
Iron and Steel
○
○
●
Decline in cottage industry
Rapid population and urban growth
Factory towns rose
Heavy smoke pollution
Diffusion of Industrialization
○
Technology spread from Britain to mainland Europe, North America, Russia, and Japan
Fossil Fuel Sources of Energy
●
Largest energy user: China
●
●
●
Tied with global politics
Oil
Middle-East dominates oil production
Top 12 Countries in Oil Production and Proven Oil Reserves, 2016
○
●
Principal Oil-Consuming Countries, 2016
○
Natural Gas
●
Natural Gas: Proven Reserves, 2016
○
●
Natural Gas Consumption, 2016
○
Coal
●
Coal: Proven reserves, production, and consumption, 2017
○
World Industrial Geography
●
Global Manufacturing Key Regions
○
North America
■
■
○
Germany
France
Italy
United Kingdom
Western Russia
Ukraine
Pacific Asia
■
■
■
●
Canada
Europe
■
■
■
■
■
■
○
United States
Japan
South Korea
Eastern China
Top Manufacturing Countries (2014-2016)
○
Traditional Industrial Regions
●
●
●
●
Eastern North America
●
Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs)
Western Europe
Western Russia and Ukraine
Japan
Newly Industrializing Regions
○
●
South Korea and surrounding Asian countries
Export Processing Zone (EPZ): Industrial area with special incentives set up to attract foreign
investors, in which imported materials undergo some degree of processing before being
re-exported
Globalization and Industrial Geographies
●
Two critical dimensions
○
○
Restructuring of industrial sector
Decline in friction of distance
Fordism to Post-Fordism
●
Fordism: A highly organized system of industrial production and labour introduced by Henry
Ford in the 1920s, including the mass-production assembly line
○
Broad societal benefits including higher wages and shorter working hours resulted in
unprecedented growth in consumer spending
Industrial Restructuring
●
Post-Fordism: A global industrial system that has emerged since about 1970 and is characterized
by flexible production methods
1.
Facilitated by transnational corporations and the practice of outsourcing, many former
industrial regions have seen significant industrial decline, and newly industrializing
countries have emerged in their place.
●
Three Technological Changes of Flexible Accumulation
1. Production technologies, such as electronically controlled assembly lines and automated
tools, are increasing the separability and flexibility of the production process.
2. Transaction technologies, such as computer-based, just-in-time inventory control
systems, also increase locational and organizational flexibility.
3. Circulation technologies, such as satellites and fibre optic networks, facilitate the
exchange of information and increase market size.
●
Flexible Accumulation: Industrial technologies, labour practices, relations between firms, and
consumption patterns that are increasingly flexible.
●
Three Principal Forms of Industrial Restructuring
1. The relationship between corporate capital and labour is changing as machines replace
people, manufacturing industry declines, and transnational corporations seek locations
with low labour costs
1. (as noted in the account of export-processing zones).
2. Both the state and the public sector are playing new roles with the shift away from
collective consumption in areas such as education and health care to joint public-private
projects and deregulation.
1. Collective Consumption: The use of services produced and managed on a
collective basis.
3. There is a new division of labour at various spatial scales as the new technologies allow
Four Stages of Industrial Changes
1. Infancy: Initial primary activities and domestic manufacturing
2. Growth: The beginnings of a factory system
3. Maturity: Full-scale development of manufacturing and related infrastructure
4. Old age: Decline and inappropriate industrial activity resulting in a depressed economic region
●
Deindustrialization: Loss of manufacturing activity and related employment; generally used in
reference to traditional manufacturing regions in the more developed world.
●
Reindustrialization: The development of new industrial activity in a region that has earlier
experienced substantial loss of traditional industrial activity.
○
○
○
Increasing tendency for small firms to be more competitive
High-tech industrial activities expand rapidly in output
Expanding service industry
Information Technologies and Location
●
Transportation is less of a factor now
●
Considers:
○
○
Labour and land costs
New set of costs associated with exchanging information
Service Industries
●
●
Services have a strong tendency towards agglomeration
Economic Growth and Employment Distribution
○
●
Changing Structure of World Employment
○
Outsourcing
●
Outsourcing: A business practice of paying an outside firm to handle functions previously
handled inside the company (or government) with the intent to save money or improve quality.
●
Offshoring: The outsourcing of work to another country
○
Usually involves companies in more developed economies shifting work to less
developed economies.
Industry and Society
●
●
Changing local labour markets
Gendered Employment
Uneven Development in More Developed Countries
Explaining Uneven Development
●
●
●
Staples Theory of Economic Growth
Core-Periphery Concept
Growth manifests itself in points of growth
CHAPTER 11: GEOGRAPHIES OF GLOBALIZATION
Globalization Defined
Definitions
●
The increasing interconnectedness of peoples and places through converging processes of
economic, political, and cultural change
●
The process of reducing barriers between countries and encouraging closer economic social and
political interaction
●
●
The coming together of businesses and states
Possible through telecommunication
○
An accelerating set of processes involving flows that encompass ever-greater numbers of
the world spaces and that lead to increasing integration and interconnectivity among
those spaces
Two key points
●
●
Refers to "processes"
Geographical implications
○
Interconnection between spaces and people
Global Culture
●
Many geographers think that globalization is transforming the human world from a collection of
connected, single entity, but often very different places, into a network of multiple places of
increasing similarity
○
○
Differences are greatly reduced
Eg. Global village, global culture, homogenized world
Think about Key Concepts
●
Space
○
●
Place
○
●
Less relevant: work from anywhere
Landscape
○
●
Uniformity of suburbia
Location
○
●
Easily overcome via internet, cell phone
1 Earth collective action re climate change
Distance
○
○
Lessened or irrelevant
Eg. Online shopping
Processes and Features
Economic
●
Emergence of global communication system that link all regions on the planet instantly
○
●
●
●
Transnational corporate strategies that have created global corporations
New forms of production of goods/services
Emergence of new centers of production
○
●
●
Eg. China
Emergence of global financial systems
Emergence of new forms of technology
○
●
Traders want access to all markets
Technology leads to more technology
Market economies that replaced state controlled economies
○
Governments are becoming less important in trade
●
●
●
Plethora of planetary goods and services that have arisen to fulfill consumer demand
●
Global political institutions, and power blocs, democracy as the dominant system of governance
Global agreement that promote free trade
Global parade of capitalism
Political
○
Best for capitalist society
Environmental
●
●
Global ecosystem, global pollution, pandemics, global conservation movements and politics
Climate change
Cultural
●
Global information and trade, global education and media, promotes a global shared way of
doing and thinking
●
Global culture: homogeneous
Examples of Global Culture
●
●
●
●
●
●
Food
Clothing
Music
Computers
Buildings
Automobiles
●
●
●
City
Economic system
Form of government
Forces and Agents
Forces
●
●
Technology Change
○
Through internet, satellite communications, and other innovations have shrunk time and
space
○
But differential access
Global capitalism
○
Embrace of capitalism, neoliberal, free market policies
Main Agents or Actors
1. Transnational corporations (TNCs)
2. The state
3. Labour
1. Eg. China
4. Consumers
5. Regulatory institutions
1. Eg. G20
6. Social groups
1. Eg. NGOs
●
These actors form a network at different organizational and geographical scales
Is Globalization New
Yes and No
●
European journey of world discovery during 1400s onward
○
○
○
●
Wanted slave labour and resources
Leading to global interdependence
Creation of colonial empires
○
●
Heart of Colonialism is capitalism
Creating global trade connection and diffusion of European culture
Mass production during the Industrial Revolution
○
Created global search for raw materials
Yes
●
●
●
Global scales of activities
Greater speed
Global integration (interconnectedness)
●
●
●
●
Single globalized market (global village)
Vast consumer products
Larger participants (people and countries)
A new global division of labour
Pros and Cons
Points of View
●
The hyperglobalist position
○
○
○
○
The world is borderless
Nation-states are no longer significant actors
Consumer tastes and cultures are homogenized
Distance no longer matters
■
●
"its the end of geography"
The skeptical position
○
○
○
Newness of global economy is exaggerated
Merchants have always sought trade
Its more of an ideology now
■
■
Pro-capitalism and pro-Western world
Western world is expanding its hold onto the rest of the world.
○
Markets don't look after social needs
Pros: The Winners
●
●
●
●
●
World cities or centers of global finance, corporate decision making etc.
Communities that are able to secure a piece of global commerce
Consumers who pay less for goods coming from low-cost production abroad
Countries that have transformed their low-wage economies into destinations for firms
Contemporary Geo-economy
○
Key players: North America, Europe, East and Southeast Asia
Cons: The Losers
●
●
●
●
The unemployed who lost their job due to wage competition
Those too impoverished to participate
Those affected by pollution and harmful environmental outcomes
People who emigrate but becomes impoverished in their new destination.
○
10 year lag
■
●
Ordinary cities
Takes 10 years for immigrants to return to previous social status
○
○
Not world class
Left behind
Other Positives
●
Many benefits of capitalism
○
Wealth generated
●
●
●
Competitions allows flow of capital to poorest areas
●
●
Local cultures domesticate, indigenize, tame, imported consumer culture by giving local flavour
●
Who benefits
Increases wages in new labour markets
Promotes the spread of democracy and personal rights and freedoms
Globalization does not necessarily mean homogenization
Many cultures promote a consumer nationalism that encourages local over foreign goods
Other Negatives
○
○
●
●
Importation of political tensions
Physical mobility may make global events local
Eg. Covid-19
Environmental negatives
○
●
Telecommunications events elsewhere
Rapid spread of global diseases
○
●
Benefits unevenly distributed
Contributing to ever-widening gap between rich and poor both across countries and within
○
○
●
Private investors in more developed countries
Global transportation increases CO2 emissions and thus contributes to climate change
Global dependence weakens local self-sufficiency and resiliency
○
Many goods from across globe
■
○
No longer made locally
■
●
Wars, political unrest, disease, weather, accidents may disrupt flows
Job loss
Prioritizes export-centred economies
○
○
○
Merits of locally sustainable economies downplayed
Loss of traditional resource bases
Environmental issues
■
■
■
Rapid resource extraction
Pollution
Extraction of ecologically sensitive landscapes
●
Social unrest and political instability
○
○
○
Income gap increases social and political unrest and uncertainty
People will see the income gap leading to unrest
Eg. Brexit, America first, increased xenophobia, anti-immigration
A Middle Position
●
●
Economic globalization is unavoidable
Globalization holds both promises and pitfalls
○
●
●
Can be managed at all scales to reduce inequality and protect the environment
Efficient government and strong organizations can help address negatives
Openness can work by investing in education and social programs
Globalization is Geographical
Connections between Globalization and Geography
Time Space Compression
●
●
Intensification of worldwide social relations
●
●
●
Connections between spaces
Constraints of space on activities has reduced due to improvements in transportation and
communication technologies
Networks
A set of interconnected nodes
Networks
○
●
Finance, trade, transportation, media, etc.
Commodity chains
○
Complex network of people, labour, and production processes starting with the
extraction of raw materials from the Earth itself and ending with your purchase of the
final product
Global-Local: Glocalization
●
Places are both heterogeneous and homogeneous
○
●
Local and global
Cultural, political and economic processes have a fixedness and flow out from there
○
○
Fixedness: Remained tied to certain spaces
Eg. Hollywood and movies
Geography Still Matters
Place or local still matters
●
●
●
Daily activities
Distance has not become irrelevant
Corporations choose distinct localities to succeed
●
Communities compete by touting local geographic benefits or differences in their campaigns.
CHAPTER 11 TEXTBOOK
Introducing Globalization
●
Globalization: A complex combination of economic, political, and cultural changes that have
long been evident but that have accelerated markedly since about 1980, bringing about a
seemingly ever-increasing interconnectedness of people and places
Geography as a Discipline of Distance
●
Principle of Least Effort: Considered a guiding principle in human activities
○
For human geographers, refers to minimizing distances and related movements.
Converging Locations
●
Time- Space Convergence: A decrease in the friction of distance between locations as a result of
improvements in transportation and communication technologies.
●
Innovations: Introduction of new inventions or ideas, especially ones that lead to change in
human behaviour or production processes.
Overcoming Distance: Transportation
Modes of Transport
●
●
●
●
●
Water Transportation
Railway Transportation
Road Transportation
Air Transportation
Containerization (the shipping container)
Overcoming Distance: Trade
Factors Affecting Trade
1. Friction of distance
2. The specific resource base of a given area (needed materials are imported and surplus materials
exported)
3. The size and quality of the labour force (a country with a small labour force but plentiful
resources is likely to produce and export raw materials)
4. The amount of capital in a country (higher capital prompts export of high-quality, high-value
goods)
Regional Integration
●
Tariff: A tax or customs duty imposed on imports from other countries
Five Stages in the Process of Integration
1. Free trade area
1. Group of states that have agreed to remove artificial barriers
2. Creation of a customs union
1. Member states impose a common tariff barrier on goods from outside the union
3. A common market
1. Members adopt a common trade policy toward non-member states
4. Economic union
1. Form of international economic integration that includes common mark and
harmonization of certain policies
5. Member states have common social policies
1. Individual states may be prepared to sacrifice national identity and independence to
achieve full economic integration
Six Major Trade Blocs
●
●
●
●
●
●
ASEAN
EU
MERCOSUR
NAFTA
SAFTA
COMESA
Overcoming Distance: Transnational Corporations (TNCs)
●
Transnational Corporation (TNC): A large business organization (firm) that operates in two or
more countries
○
○
○
●
Sometimes referred to as a multinational corporation
In many cases, the head office is in a more developed country, and its
manufacturing/processing facilities are in less developed countries.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): Direct investment by a government or
transnational/multinational corporation in another country
○
●
Examples include Nike, Apple, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Samsung
Often in the form of a manufacturing or processing plant.
Revenue Data for the top 10 Transnational Corporations, 2017, and gross national incoem for 10
selected countries 2016
○
●
International Division of Labour: The current tendency for high-wage and high-skill employment
opportunities, often in the service sector, to be located in the more developed world, while
low-wage and low-skill employment opportunities, often in the manufacturing and processing
sectors, are located in the less developed world.
Overcoming Distance: Transmitting Information
The Digital Divide
●
Internet Users
○
The Rise of Social Media
●
●
There's a lot of it
Western top Social Media platforms aren't used in China
Interpreting, Conceptualizing, and Measuring Globalization
Measuring Globalization
KOF Index of Globalization
●
The Global Economic System
●
Territorial Interpenetration
○
The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944
●
Led to creation of:
○
○
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
World Bank
Recent Changes to the Global Economic System
1. Movement of capital is now virtually immediate and unregulated
2. Roles of the IMF and World Bank have expanded
3. There are several trade blocs that are essentially discriminatory and protectionist
4. Political changes in the late 1980s and early 1990s had significant economic repurcussions
Contemporary Geo-Economy Trade Flows
●
Cultural Globalization
●
●
●
Some think that homogeneous global culture will replace the multitude of local cultures
Placelessness
Globalization theses and Cultural geography
○
Political Globalization
●
Globalization theses and political geography
○
Political States in the Contemporary World
●
●
Some think nation states are unnatural and dysfunctional
Regional states: A natural economic area
Globalization: Good or Bad?
●
No conclusion
Opposing Globalization
●
Who benefits?
○
●
Prioritizing Export-Centered Economies
○
●
Exploits resources in the less developed world for demands of the more developed
world
Environmental issues
○
●
Benefits of globalization are unevenly distributed
Resource extraction
"Another world is possible"
○
Globalization isn't the only path forward
Support Globalization
●
Moral Argument
○
●
Increasing Participation in Economic Decision-Making
○
●
●
G7 became G8 became G20
Capitalism is Good and Bad
○
Competitive Capitalism: The first of three phases of capitalism, beginning in the early
eighteenth century; characterized by free-market competition and laissez-faire economic
development.
○
Organized Capitalism: The second phase of capitalism, beginning after World War II;
increased growth of major corporations and increased state involvement in the
economy.
○
Disorganized Capitalism: The most recent form of capitalism, characterized by
disorganization and industrial restructuring.
○
Alienation: The circumstance in which a person is indifferent to or estranged from
nature or the means of production
Reducing Poverty?
○
●
Best hope for eliminating poverty and fulfilling human potential
More countries are industrializing
Enhancing Mutual Respect?
○
Our future may be one of greater pluralism, more choices, and enhanced mutal respect