Introduction
The Purpose of this Course:· Discover the scope, methods, and perspectives of geography.
· Define the relationship between geography and economic development.
· Account for the disparity among countries in the level of economic development.
· Explore the locational and physical bases of Eurasian human activities.
· Examine the diverse physical environment of
· Demonstrate a stronger knowledge base of place-name geography by using an atlas.
- Geography is the study of the interaction between humans and the physical environment. Specifically spatial distributions and relationships.
Realms – The largest units within which the world can be divided. (or study area)
· Transition Zones – between units – generally not sharp boundaries
· Subject to change over time
· Constructed from both Physical and Cultural divisions
· A functional interaction between humans and the environment
- An area of spatial change where the peripheries of two realms or regions meet.
- Generally marked by a gradual shift from one region to the other
- At what resolution are we working! The ratio of the distance between two locations on a map and the actual, real-world distance between them
- Small Scale – very general (1:1,000,000)
- Large Scale – more precise (1:24,000)
- Absolute Location – set of precise geographic measurements (longitude and latitude, UTM’s, etc…)
- Relative Location – location of a region/site in relation to other regions/sites.
- Regional Boundaries are not uniform or sharp
- Regional Boundaries will vary depending upon the questions asked and the criteria used to define them.
- Can be physical or cultural or both
- All regions have area, boundaries, and location
- Formal Region
- Marked by homogeneity in one or several phenomenon
- Also called a homogenous or uniform region
- Functional Regions
- A region marked less through homogeneity then through its dynamic internal structure
- Generally focused on a central core
- Formed from a set of sites and their functional interaction
- Also called a nodal region
- Tectonic Plates and Continental Drift
- Alfred Wegener (1915)
- Complete Paradigm reversal between 1960 and 1970
- Ring of Fire
- Climate and Weather
- Climatic Regions
- Physiography – the total physical geography
- Climate is weather over a long period
- Weather is the immediate state of the atmosphere at a specific place at a specific time
- Climate Change
- Ice Ages
- Holocene – Interglacial, current period
- Pleistocene - previous glacial period
- Global Warming
- Desertification
- Global Climate Patterns and Climatic Regions
- Four major population clusters
- Population Distribution
- Population Density
- Urbanization
- Culture – shared patterns of learned behavior
- Three main/central components
- Beliefs
- Institutions
- Technology
- The composite of human imprints on the earth
- “The Forms superimposed on the physical landscape by the activities of man.” Carl Sauer
- The landscape as “lived” by humans – how members of a society perceive themselves and their place in the world.
The State - National Political Systems
- State
- An independent political unit occupying a defined territory and having full sovereign control over its internal and foreign affairs.
- Does not include colonies or protectorates
- Doe not actually include Anocracies –
- Country
- Same as state
- Nation
- A community of people with a common culture and territory, bound together by a strong sense of unity arising from shared beliefs and customs.
- Nation-State
- European invention
- Where a nation corresponds to a state
- Bi-national or
- States which contain more than one nation
- Empires
- A single nation predominant in and dispersed across two or more states
- Greater
- Stateless Nation
- A people without a state
- Amerindian Tribes, the Kurds, Basques, Palestinians
Types of State Government (Center for Systemic Peace)
- Anocracies are societies where central authority is weak or nonexistent. Kinship bonds extended by personal allegiances to notable leaders are the principal relations. Likely to foster terrorism. Anocracies are relatively vulnerable and volatile states that often lack effective institutions and/or the capacities to establish and maintain social order.
- Anocracies are a middling category of states with incoherent or inconsistent authority patterns: partly liberal, partly authoritarian (i.e., -5 to +5 on the Polity scale). The Anocracy category also includes countries with any of the three special Polity codes: -66 (interruption), -77 (interregnum), and -88 (transition). Anocracies are relatively vulnerable and volatile states that often lack effective institutions and/or the capacities to establish and maintain social order (Center for Systemic Peace)
- Autocracies are states where opposition against the current rulers are suppressed. There may be frequent shifts back and forth between anocracy and autocracy when a leader temporarily gains enough power to suppress all opponents in a territory.
- Oligarchies are states where participation in government is restricted to an elite. Voting decides policy and opposition is accepted within the elite. Voting is usually restricted to less than 1/3 of the males. Examples include
- Democracies are states similar to oligarchies but there is not a sharp and clear distinction between an elite and the rest of the domestic population. Usually, more than 2/3 of the males have the right to vote.
- How members of a society perceive themselves and their place in the world. How people modify and create their “cultural” landscapes.
- Regional Character – division of the world into cultural regions.
- The Cultural Landscape
- Ethnicity
Realms, Regions, States, and Patterns of Development
- The Nation State (The
- Economic Geography
- Core and Peripheries
- Regional Disparities
- World Systems Theory
- Globalization
- A world-system is any historical social system of interdependent parts that form a bounded structure and operate according to distinct rules, or "a unit with a single division of labor and multiple cultural systems" (1974a: 390).
- mini-systems,
- world empires, and
- world-economies.
- The modern world-system is a world-economy: it is "larger than any juridically defined political unit" and "the basic linkage between its parts is economic"
- Origin in the European world-economy created in the late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth century (1974b: 15), but only consolidated in its current form by the mid-seventeenth century (1974a: 401).
- The crisis of feudalism created strong motivation to seek new markets and resources;
- Technology gave Europeans a solid base for exploration (1974b: 39).
- North Western Europeans exploited initially small differences, via specialization in activities central to world commerce, to ultimately large advantage.
- Core Areas
- First World Nations (Western Europe,
- Maintain position through economic and military power
- Serve the interests of the economically powerful
- Maintain economic stability
- Maintain dependence of periphery areas
- Semi-Periphery States
- Help to maintain Core power
- Deflect ire of periphery nations from Core nations
- Provide different services and markets than periphery areas
- Core power is maintained through a shared ideology and national myth
- Currently it is the ideology of capitalism and liberalism which is the global geo-culture
- Labor and production are spread across the three zones differentially
- Cyclical crises follow periods of innovation and expansion with periods of recession and stagnation.
- Shifts in the power of the Hegemonic states
- Periods of clear leadership alternate with struggle (as now)
- Resistance movements and ideology offer alternatives and variations
- Socialism and anti-globalization movements
- US Hegemony in decline since about 1970
- In a period of crisis and change
- Both capitalism and liberalism are exhausted as forms of international myth
- Struggles against the ideas of global capitalism and liberalism
No comments:
Post a Comment