Human Geography

Prologue:
 We ted to describe the human world as a Landscape
o A landscape
 Exists as a result of human modification to physical geography,
includes crops, buildings, lines of communication, and other
visible material features
 Has significant symbolic content or meaning
o We interpret a landscape as the outcome of particular relationships
between humans and land
 The study of human and land together is geography
o Ecological analysis is when we relates human and physical variables
and identifies links
 Location
o A specific part of earth’s surface; an area where something is situated
 Human geographers often divide larger areas into smaller ones that have one
or more features, we called that regions
o A part of earth’s surface that displays internal homogeneity and is
relatively distinct from surrounding areas according to some criterion
or criteria
o Intellectual creations
o Much contemporary regional study focuses on this social organization
of space, on the impact of creating regions on social and economic life,
on interactions between regions, and on regional boundaries as
barrier
 Globalization – a complex set of processes with economic, political, and
cultural dimensions
 Human geography and physical geography are typically acknowledged to be
relatively distinct disciplines
 The central subject matter of human geography is human behaviour as it
affects the earth’s surface
 Defining human geography
o What is where, why there, and why care
 “Where” once the basic environmental, regional, and spatial
facts are known, the geographer focuses on understanding, or
explaining, “where there”
 “Why care” draws attention to the pragmatic nature of human
geographic: geographic facts matter because they reflect and
affect human life
 Two statements of the goal of human geography help to explain why it
remains so important:
o The function of geography is to let the future citizens know about the
conditions of the world and help them to think about the political and
social problems around the world
o Ask you to look at the world and try to make sense of it
 Human geography is practical and socially relevant discipline that has a great
deal to teach us about the world we live in and how we live in the world
 Society the where the interrelationships that connect individuals as members
of a culture
 Our world is becoming more and more integrated and interconnected
o Its not only where things are located that matter, now we also need to
focus on the connection between locations
o Focus on the relationship between human and land
o Population growth is also a key to human geography
o Worlds countries can be divided into two general groups:
 Less developed world
 Not classified as developed world, low living standard
 More developed world
 High living standard
o Inequity from places to places is also one of the topic that will be
cover-through
o Division political units is the most fundamental way in which humans
divide the world
o How the world has come to the one that we know today, how it
evolved
o Connection between each places, such as people moving from places
to places
 One example of diversity of human life how the earth’s land surface is
divided into countries
o Political world changes substantially
o More changes seem likely since the contemporary political world is
characterized by two tendencies:
 A tendency for regions to begin a process of integration
 A tendency for portions of some countries to seek a separate
political identity
 Language, religions, ethnic identities and standard of living are what differ us
from various groups
o Difference between groups of individuals
 Population total and life expectancy have increase overtime, however, birth
and death rate have been decreasing, these demographic changes reflect a
process called “modernization”
 One set of processes evident today that is causing changes in both landscape
and way of life is globalization and the rise of post-industrial society
o Our rise of the middle-class and the decline of the working class will
bring consequences to our social and economic identities
o Ex. Traditional industries are declining, the professional workforce is
growing, and the process of decentralization is accelerating
 Led to large number of people who are in disadvantaged,
unemployed, “work-poor” (part-time worker)
 Geography- literal writing of the world
 Three recurring themes
o Humans and land: The human world, a landscape, is continuously
changing because of human actions within institutional and physical
frameworks
o Regional studies: Describing the earth and dividing the whole into
parts-regions-in which one or more variables exhibit some uniformity
o Spatial analysis: Explaining the locations of geographic phenomena
using abstract arguments and quantities procedure
 Since human world often changes, human geography typically includes a
time dimension
 Our subject matter since human behaviour as it affects the earth’s surface