Introduction to
Human Geography
Nature and Scope of human Geography
◦Brief Evolution of the discipline
◦Key concepts and themes
◦Applicability and importance
◦Organization of human activities
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By the end of this module you should
be able to:-
a) Articulate clearly the foundations
which led to the evolution of human
geography as a discipline;
b) Characterize the scope of human
geography
c) Explain what defines human
geography and characterize basic
themes and concepts of human
geography
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d) Analyze the applications of human
geography in real world and in
academics;
e) Analyze clearly the organization of
human activities and its linkages to
the level of development and
impacts to environment.
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The deceptively simple word of ‘geography’
embraces a deeply contested intellectual
project of great antiquity and extraordinary
complexity.
There is no single, unified discipline of
geography today and is difficult to discern such
a thing in the past.
Accordingly there is no single history of
‘geography’ only a bewildering variety of
different, often competing versions of the past.
( Clifford, et al; 2009)
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Geography evolution can be traced with the
transition from early-modern navigation to
Enlightenment exploration to the ‘new’
geography of the late nineteenth century and
the regional geography of the interwar period.
Through this evolution various geographical
traditions emerged, overlapped and persisted
alongside later developments to create an ever
more complex picture. ( Clifford, et al ; 2009)
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Accordingly, it is very difficult to distil from
such complex histories an essential core
theme that has always animated
geographical inquiry.
This gives one fact as stand crystal clear
that, geography has always existed in a
state of uncertainty and flux.
Consequently, two arguments are
emerged: whether as a weakness of the
discipline or the absence of conceptual
conformity has been one of the disciplines
great strengths. ( Clifford, et al; 2009)
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Defining geography is not an easy task.
For example, What is at the core of
geography? What are the key concepts?
• Is it about maps and encyclopedic knowledge of
the people and places?
• Even though the above aspects are parts of
geography, the study geography involves
learning about the Earth, about humans’
relationships with the Earth, and about peoples’
relationships with one another across time and
space.
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Geography and the Physical Sciences
tradition
• Geography draws a lot from physical sciences in
terms of methods employed which include
observation, measurement, various forms of
experimentation, theory development, and
testing.
• Geography draws much from these related
practices from physical sciences, and it
contributes much to it.
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Geography and the Social Science
tradition
• As a field of human society and activity, social
science includes sub-disciplines such as
economics, political science and sociology.
• Before 1970s few human geographers identified
their discipline as a social science, but many now
do.
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• Originally such a shift was linked to the adoption
of a ‘positivist ontology’ and its associated
scientific method.
• Yet, many contemporary human geographers
who identify as social scientists have challenged
this orthodoxy, drawing on a diverse range of
theories and approaches, including Marxism,
feminism, postmodernism, and post-
structuralism, to create a very broad and
diverse contemporary discipline.
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• In 1950s and 1960s a new generation of human
geographers sought to reoriente the discipline
towards social sciences.
• Initially, that reorientation involved a concern
with scientific rigour and the
adoption/adaptation of quantitative methods to
analyze spatial patterns and develop models of
spatial organization.
• This scientific orthodoxy was subsequently
challenged and contemporary human
geographers who identify as social scientists
draw on a more diverse range of theories and
approaches, including Marxism, feminism,
postmodernism and post-structuralism.
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Geography and the Humanities Tradition
• Geography and humanities are intimately
connected, although it is only relatively that
such connections have been explicitly explored
in theory and in practice.
• The humanities encompasses the study of
human creativity, knowledge, beliefs, ideas,
imagination and experience.
• Such a work has inspired a wide range of
humanistic, cultural, and historical geographical
research.
• At the same time, ideas about space, place and
imaginative geographies have inspired work
across the humanities.
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Geography and the Humanities Tradition
• One area that the connection between geography
and humanities seen is the development of
humanistic approach in human geography.
• Humanistic geographers work was very influential
in foregrounding human experience and a sense
of place to counter abstractions of spatial
science.
• Humanistic geography led important foundations
for a revitalized cultural geography, particularly
from the 1980s onwards (Jackson, 1989; Crang,
1998; Cook et al., 2000 in Clifford et al., 2009).
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• Literally, human geography could be
interpreted as the study of the geography of
humans: when, where, and how humans
evolved, developed strategies for survival, and
dispersed to other parts of the world.
• It is the study of Earth: its people, and
geographical interpretations of economies,
cultural identities, political territories, and
societies.
• Human geographers analyze population trends,
theorize social and cultural change, interpret
geopolitical conflict, and seek to explain the
geography of human economic activities around
the world. (Gibson, 2009:1)
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• One of the aspects defining human geography
is that of being concerned by “relations
between human beings and nature”
• Another aspect is that of human geographers’
fascination with “the peoples and places that
make up our world; with differences and
silimilarities between them, with the ways they
are connected to or disconnected from each
other and with the processes through which the
world is structured into identifiable peoples,
spaces, and places at all”. (Clock et al; 2005).
• Human geography can be also understood from
the root of what geography does.
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Human geography is the field of the
discipline of Geography that is principally
concerned with the spatial organization and
differentiation of human activity, and its
interrelationships with the "environment
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Therefore, human geography has two main concerns:-
1)The first aspect being “human nature relations” This
addresses how human geography is concerned :-
with how we live on and our planet, and the
“environments” and “natures” it provide for us;
with how we understand and value them; and
with how we relate to our own natures and our
existence as part of our the natural world.
2)The second being “scales of human-nature
relations”. This focuses on:-
The way people constitute the space, that is a concern
of spatiality.
Examples of central notions used are such as location,
distance, place, travel, scale, distribution, etc.
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Human geography developed out of the
University of California, Berkeley and was
led by Carl Sauer. He used landscapes as
the defining unit of geographic study and
said that cultures develop because of the
landscape but also help to develop the
landscape as well..
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In addition, his work and the cultural
geography of today is highly qualitative
rather than quantitative - a main tenant of
physical geography
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• Both physical and human geography have a
vast range of substantive topics.
• The topics covered in human geography are as
diverse as those concern by third-world
development, the international financial
systems, urban gentrification, global
environmental change, landscape etc.
• Human geography has been changing and
adopting or adding into it lists various
perspectives with time.
For example while most of the human geographies of
the pasts, arguably, are marked by “masculinism”
thought, the new approach to feminism has introduced
another way of examining geographical phenomena
known as feminist approach.
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• Human geography covers a diverse of themes.
Human geographers tend to explore:-
Social, economic, cultural, political, and demographic
dimensions of human existece, and situate analysis
in geographical space (conceptualized across and
between scales from the body to the city, nation,
and globe).
• Although human geography is remarkably
diverse there are common questions of
geographical scale, causality, agency and
structure, interrelationships and networks
and movements, places etc.
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Human geography covers a very wide field or its scope is
enormous:-
1)Study of human races: the growth, distribution and
density of populations of the various parts of the world,
their demographic attributes and migration patterns etc
2)Takes into account the mosaic of culture and built
environment, e.g. types and patterns of rural
settlements, the site, size, growth and functions of urban
settlements etc.
3) The study of spatial distribution of economic activities,
industries, trade, and modes of transportations and
communications as influenced by the physical
environment are also the important topics of human
geography.
4)The impact of man on environment
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It is evident that the maintenance of the
subdiscipline as discrete and internally coherent
is far from straightforward.
Human geography is directed to the type of
academic pursuit undertaken in the modern era,
and particularly from the latter half of the
twentieth century onwards, which encompasses a
diversity of ways of examining presence and
actions of humans in geographical space.
Human geography is necessarily an
interdisciplinary pursuit.
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The way human geographies are done differ from
one area to area although traffic of ideas and
methods across and between is apparent.
Contemporary human geographies are hybrid
formations in which multiple paradigmatic
viewpoints, drawn from multiple historical and
spatial contexts, coexist and jostle within the same
institutional and subdisciplinary spaces.
Questions for Consideration:
Based on what we have discussed and further study,
characterize what defines human geography. Be sure to
make a reference to different historical developments have
taken place as well as the diversity of approaches found in
human geography.
What could you say are the applications of human
geography to: (i) your daily life including national
development (ii) to the academics?
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We have covered in this presentation the
following:-
How ‘human geography’ has evolved, as part
of subdiscipline of geography.
Characterizing elements that define human
geography
The main content/themes/perspectives of
human geography
The nature of human geography
Applications of human geography
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