INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN
GEOGRAPHY
Chapter 1
What Is Human Geography?
The study of
•How people make places
•How we organize space and society
•How we interact with each other in places
and across space
•How we make sense of others and
ourselves in our locality, region, and world
Globalization
A set of processes that are:
- increasing interactions
- deepening relationships
- heightening
interdependence
without regard to
country borders.
A set of outcomes that are:
- unevenly distributed
- varying across scales
- differently manifested
throughout the world.
What Are Geographic Questions?
• The spatial arrangement of places and
phenomena (human and physical)
– How are things organized on Earth?
– How do they appear on the landscape?
– Where? Why? So what?
• No place “untouched by human hands” or activity
• Human organization of communities, nations,
networks
• Establishment of political, economic, religious,
cultural systems
Geography is a Science of Inquiry
• What is Cholera? Using maps to solve the Cholera Deaths
• Turn to page 21
Spatial Distribution
• Spatial distribution and pattern
• Processes that create and sustain a distribution
Map of Cholera Victims
in London’s Soho District
in 1854
Patterns of victim’s homes
and water pump locations
key to the source of the
disease
Five Themes of Geography
• Place
• Location
• Human-environment
interaction
• Movement
• Region
Place
Sense of place: Infusing a
place with meaning and
emotion
Perception of place: Belief
or understanding of
what a place is like,
often based on books,
movies, stories, or
pictures
Place Names
• Toponyms reflect the local culture
– Phoenix
– Maricopa
– Chandler
– Apache Junction
Cultural Landscape
The visible human imprint, the material character of
a place
Religion and
cremation
practices spread
with Hindu
migrants from
India to Kenya
Sequent Occupance
Layers of imprints in a cultural landscape
reflecting years of differing human activity
Apartments in Mumbai, India
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: African,
Arab, German, British, Indian “layers.”
Apartments replaced earlier singlefamily houses
Sequent Occupance
Layers of imprints in a cultural landscape that
reflect years of differing human activity.
Athens, Greece
ancient Agora
surrounded by
modern buildings
Site: Lower Manhattan Island
Fig. 1-6: Site of lower Manhattan Island, New York City. There have been many changes to
the area over the last 200 years.
Situation: Singapore
Fig. 1-7: Singapore is situated at a key location for international trade.
Perception
of Place
Where Pennsylvanian
students prefer to live
Where Californian
students prefer to live
Location
• Absolute location
– Precise location using a coordinate system
– Latitude and longitude most common
– Measured by geographic positioning systems
(GPS)
• Relative location
– Location in relation to something else
– Changes over time with changing
circumstances
Why Do Geographers Use Maps, and
What Do Maps Tell Us?
Reference Maps
- Show locations of
places and geographic
features
- Absolute locations
Thematic Maps
- Tell a story about the
degree of an attribute,
the pattern of its
distribution, or its
movement.
- Relative locations
What are reference
maps used for?
What are thematic maps
used for?
Reference
Map
Thematic
Map
Kuby Thematic Mapping of Ethnic
Distribution
• http://bcs.wiley.com/hebcs/Books?action=resource&bcsId=5267&i
temId=0470484799&resourceId=18408
Mental Maps
Maps we carry in our minds of places we
have been and places we have heard of
Activity Spaces
The places we travel to routinely in our
rounds of daily activity
Remote Sensing and GIS
Satellite image
Photograph
Hurricane Katrina, 2005: Area of impact
and destruction
Geographic
Information
System (GIS)
Computer hardware
and software that
permit storage and
analysis of layers of
spatial data
GPS
Why Are Geographers Concerned
with Scale and Connectedness?
• Scale: Territorial extent of something
• Varying scales of observations
– Local
– Regional
– National
– Global
Scale
The Power of Scale
• Influence of processes operating at different
scales
• Context of a phenomenon in what is happening at
different scales
• Political use of scale to change who is involved or
how an issue is perceived
Regions
Formal region: Defined by a common characteristic,
whether physical or cultural, present throughout
e.g., German-speaking region of Europe
Functional region: Defined by a set of social,
political, or economic activities or interactions
e.g., an urban area, city and suburbs
World
Regions
World
Regions
Regions
Perceptual Region: ideas in our minds, based
on accumulated knowledge of places and
regions, that define an area of “sameness”
or “connectedness.”
e.g. the South
the Mid-Atlantic
the Middle East
Regions
Perceptual Region: Ideas in our minds, based on
accumulated knowledge of places and regions,
that define an area of “sameness” or
“connectedness”
Culture
• The whole tangible lifestyle of peoples, but also
their prevailing values and beliefs
• Cultural trait: A single attribute of a culture
• Cultural complex: A combination of traits
• Cultural hearth: Area where a culture began and
from which it spreads
• Independent invention: A culture trait that began
in several places
The meanings of regions are often contested. In Montgomery,
Alabama, streets named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis
and Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks intersect.
Photo credit: Jonathan Leib
Movement
Spatial interaction: The
interconnectedness
between places,
depending upon
• Distance
• Accessibility
• Connectivity
Elizabeth J. Leppman
Diffusion: the process of dissemination,
the spread of an idea or innovation from
its hearth to other areas.
• What slows/prevents diffusion?
- time-distance decay
- cultural barriers
Diffusion terms
• Innovators
– The few people who
initially know about a
product or idea
• Adopters
– Those who ‘adopt’ the
product or idea after
learning about it –
could be few or many
• Laggards
– Those who may never
adopt the innovation
Barriers to diffusion
• Physical barriers in nature:
– rivers, oceans, lakes, and mountain ranges.
• Cultural:
– religious beliefs.
– language
• impedes the easy flow of ideas and fads from the United States
and English-speaking Canada to French Canadians in Québec.
• Political boundary can impede or slow down the
dissemination of disease.
• Economic factors –
– people in certain places cannot afford to purchase a new
commodity or technological innovation.
2 Types of Diffusion
• 1- Expansion Diffusion:
an idea or innovation that spreads
outward from the hearth
*There are 3 forms of expansion Diffusion:
• Contagious – spreads
adjacently/everywhere
• Hierarchical – spreads to most linked
people or places first.
• Stimulus – idea promotes a local
experiment or change in the way people do
things.
• Contagious diffusion
– Places near the origin are affected first
Hierarchical diffusion --- A phenomenon begins in one place
(often a large urban center), and then moves to another large center,
and another, until it moves to smaller centers. Hierarchical effects occur
when phenomena spread first to major cities, then to intermediate-size places, and
later to small towns and rural areas (Figure 3.3b).
Stimulus
Diffusion
Because Hindus believe cows are
holy, cows often roam the streets in
villages and towns. The McDonalds
restaurants in India feature veggie
burgers.
2- Relocation diffusion
• People move to a new area and take
their language, religion, and other
cultural items with them.
• The items being diffused leave the
original areas behind as they move to
new areas.
Example: African-Americans who moved from
the rural South to the urban North during the
mid-20th century brought blues music to
Chicago.
Types of Diffusion
• Relocation diffusion:
Paris, France
Movement of individuals who carry
an idea or innovation with them to
a new, perhaps distant locale
Kenya
: H .J. de Blij
: A. B. Murphy
Examples of Diffusion
•Religions
•Food
•Cultural trends - Music
•Plants/Animals/Insects
•Diseases
Worldwide, there are 1.4
billion followers of Islam
There are
between 5 –
7 million
Muslims in
the United
States
Diffusion of Islam
630 – 1600 AD
Starbucks.. They're everywhere
Diffusion or (in this case) Fusion of Food
• In China, the chief food
flavor used is soy
• In India, the principal
flavoring is curry
• Both spices spread or
‘migrated’
• As a result, Thai food,
influenced by both China
and India, is a blend of both
cuisines, yet uniquely Thai
Music, clothing and fads
• New clothing and music
fads
spread quickly among
major world cities such as
New York, Los Angeles,
London, Paris, and Tokyo.
• Only later do they filter
down the urban hierarchy,
Plants, Animals & Insects
• Arizona is a case
study= ‘introduction of
alien plant species’ due
to migration of people
from all over US to
Arizona
• Kudzu – from Japan
• West Nile Virus
• Africanized Killer Bees
• Kudzu resembles
soybeans or
cowpeas.
Kudzu
• Its roots can
reach a depth of
eight feet and have
a circumference of
over three inches.
• Roots are jointed & often branch every two or four feet and can form
separate, independent plants as the root joints die.
• It's one of the fastest growing plants around, with the ability to expand
as much as sixty feet in one season.
• And, it’s very difficult to control. It has taken over some areas of the US,
such as Louisiana and Mississippi
West
Nile
Virus
Distribution of
West Nile Virus:
Humans, Birds, &
Mosquitos, 2001
West Nile
Virus
Cases in
Arizona
Africanized (Killer) Bees
Diffusion of
Africanized
Bees after
their arrival
to Brazil,
South
America
Africanized
Bees travel
through
Mexico
throughout
the 1990s
Killer Bees in the United States
Where did AIDS come from & how did it
get here?
• 2 strains from east and west Africa
were identified in the early 1980s
• Similar to strain of SIV (found in wild
monkey populations)
• Earliest documented case was a man
in Kinshasa, Congo, 1959
• Researchers believe over time SIV
evolved into HIV through a process
called ‘zoonosis’ (perhaps by
butchering monkeys)
• From origins in Africa,
the virus diffused to
other parts of the world
as infected people
(unknowingly) migrated
out, or travelers to
Africa contracted the
virus and carried it
home…
• Haiti in the Caribbean –
with African cultural
heritage and
connections was one of
the first countries in the
western hemisphere
where AIDS was found
The Path of
AIDS…
Patient Zero
• HIV in the US is believed to have originated
from a flight attendant who vacationed in
Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince
• In 1981, the sexual contacts of 40 men
revealed that 8 had had direct contact with
Patient Zero, and many others indirectly
Diffusion of AIDS
• Access to AIDS
drugs differs in the
developed world vs
the developing
world
• AIDS has become a
worldwide
pandemic
AIDS in the US & Sub-Saharan
Africa
• In the US
– Homosexual males &
intravenous drug users
were among those most
commonly affected
– Now, AIDS cuts across all
sociological boundaries
(age, gender, sexual
orientation, race…)
• In sub-Saharan Africa
– HIV/AIDS primarily affects
young women (4 times as
high as the rate for men)
• For women, AIDS
progresses faster, and
they die sooner
– This greatly alters African
society
Diffusion
• The process of the spread of an idea or innovation
from its hearth to other areas
• Factors that slow or prevent diffusion
– Time-distance decay
– Cultural barriers
What Are Geographic Concepts, and
How Are They Used in Answering
Geographic Questions?
• Ways of seeing the world spatially that
geographers use in answering research questions
• Old approaches to human-environment questions
– Environmental determinism (has been rejected by
almost all geographers)
– Possibilism (less accepted today)
• New approaches to human-environment questions
– Cultural ecology
– Political ecology