1. Geography 107 Introduction to Human Geography
California State University, Northridge

2. What is Geography Geography is a subject. Geography is a discipline.
Geographers use a set of methodologies.
Geographers have an epistemology.
Geographers ask, “Where?” when they want to know “Why?”
Geography is what geographers do.
Anything that takes place can be studied from a geographic perspective.

3. What’s wrong with Geography?
The “Mother of all Disciplines”…
Ancient history
Encyclopedia of every place…

4. Environmental Determinism.
Flawed notion that culture is a direct response to the dictates of climate and topography.
Popular during the 1800s-1920s.
Has some ugly potentialities and undermined the success of Geography as a discipline.

5. How this course works
The most important thing for you to learn is how to think…epistemology and methodology.
You will be introduced to a series of subjects (politics, language, ethnicity, industry, etc.)
You will be shown how geographers understand these topics and how spatial thinking can be applied.

6. Some preliminaries…
Background vocabulary and some basic skills are in order…

7. Place is important Location Site Situation Position Description
Physical characteristics
Attributes
Situation
Relative location
Comparisons
Significance of location

8. Region Several different types of regions…or groupings of places.
Formal
Functional
Vernacular

9. Functional Region
Has a concentrated center and fuzzy boundaries and is based frequently on economic linkages, communication and transportation ties.
“Core and Periphery”
KTLA, a Los Angeles TV station has a functional region…
“LA” is a functional region that extends outward to include suburbs...

10. Functional Region: TV Markets

11. Formal Regions Formal regions are defined by some characteristic.
The characteristic may be absolute, or simply “predominate”

12. Formal Region: Election
All the people who have an address in California can vote as “Californians”.

13. Formal Region: German Speakers
Note the German heartland is both Protestant and German speaking, but the periphery is Catholic and more likely to include other languages.

14. Formal Region: Rural America
figure

15. Vernacular Region
A region perceived to exist by people living within it, or by outsiders.
An outgrowth of a sense of belonging
Probably an outgrowth of a need to exclude others as well.
Powerful emotionally
Hard to characterize systematically
“SoCal” is a vernacular region…

16. Vernacular Regions
“Dixie” is another word for the the southern US, but exactly where is “The South”?

17. Where? Where!
“Where?”, is the most important question geographers ask.
Where things are give us important clues about why they are as they are.
Historians tend to ask “When?”…and focus on chronology.
Geographers focus on chorology…or more commonly “distribution”

18. Properties of Distribution
Density – measurement
Number of objects
Land area
Concentration
Clustering
Dispersal
Pattern
Irregular
Linear
Rectangular
Grid
Cholera map…

19. Payday Lenders vs. Doughnut Shops
Which industry do you think is more concentrated in the San Fernando Valley?
If one industry is concentrated spatial and the other is not, what inferences can we draw about the competitive nature of each industry?

20. Connectivity Spatial interaction
Characteristics spread through diffusion

21. Health and Medical Questions?_

22. Diffusion Characteristic spreads across space and time
Hearth - locations and nodes
Relocation diffusion – physical movement
Expansion diffusion
Hierarchical
Contagious
Stimulus
Figure Relocation Diffusion
Figure 1.9.2

23. Diagram of Diffusion Patterns

24. Environmental Determinism
Flawed notion that culture is a direct response to the dictates of climate and topography.
Popular during the 1800s-1920s.
Has some ugly potentialities and undermined the success of Geography as a discipline.

25. Environmental Possibilism
People are the primary architects of culture, although the environment gives us options that we may choose to follow or ignore.

26. Environmental Possibilism?
figure

27. Environmental Possibilism?
figure

28. Environmental Perception
This school argues that perception of the environment is most important.
Ignorance is as important as knowledge
Geomancy or Feng Shui
Natural hazards and hazard zones

29. Hazard Location
Figure

30. Hazard Location: Malibu
figure

31. Humans as modifiers of the earth
Opposite of environmental determinism.
Argue that it is humans that are in the drivers seat in this relationship.

32. Earth Modification
figure

33. Cultural Integration Cultures are complex wholes
Cultures are integrated systems
Each cultural aspect is dependent on others
Example: religion and politics and economics and race and …
Cultural determinism is a danger

34. Social Science Scientific method applied to people
Laws are sought which explain humans spatial behavior
According to the text, space (geometric space) is a key concept in this modernist approach.
Model building is common
Economic determinism is a danger
Some progress made in accounting for geographic variation.

35. Humanistic geography Place and place meaning
Humanistic views and subjectivity
This is an area of geography that is very much like English, history or art appreciation.

36. Postmodernism Multiple definitions of postmodernism
Critical Theory and Cultural Studies

37. Cultural Landscape The built and humanized landscape
Landscapes tell of the culture
Can be “read” like a text
Three principal aspects of cultural landscape
Settlement patterns
Land-division patterns
Architecture

38. Landscape
Consider the parking structure across from Sierra Hall. What does it suggest about the culture that built it?
What symbolic values does it have?
What is not said?

39. Conclusion
Example: the American log house