Human and Cultural Geo Handout - Pictures

HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
Human Geography refers to the study of the interrelationships between people, place,
and environment, and how these vary spatially and temporally across and between locations.
Whereas Physical geography concentrates on spatial and environmental processes that shape
the natural world and tends to draw on the natural and physical sciences for its scientific
foundations and methods of investigation, human geography concentrates on the spatial
organization and processes shaping the lives and activities of people, and their interactions
with places and nature. Human geography is more allied with the social sciences and
humanities, sharing their philosophical approaches and methods.
Human geography consists of a number of sub-disciplinary fields that focus on different

elements of human activity and organization, for example, Cultural geography, Economic
geography, Health geography, Historical geography, Political geography, Population
geography, Rural geography, Social geography, Transport geography and Urban geography.
What distinguishes Human geography from other related disciplines, such as Economics,
Politics or Sociology, is the application of a set of core geographical concepts to the
phenomena under investigation, including space, place, scale, landscape, mobility and nature.
These concepts emphasize the notion that the world operates spatially and temporally, and that
social relations do not operate independently of place and environment, but are thoroughly
influenced and modified by them.
The long-term development of Human geography has progressed since the Quantitative
Revolution which was a paradigm that sought to develop a more rigorous and systematic
methodology for the discipline of geography. The main claim for the quantitative revolution
is that it led to a shift from a descriptive geography to an empirical law-making geography.
The quantitative revolution took place during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change
in the method behind geographical research, from regional geography into spatial science.
Since then, a whole new Critical Geography has developed leading to further diversification
of geographic thought and making geographical thinking highly pluralist in nature.
CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY
Cultural geography focuses on the study of the relationship between culture and place.
In broad terms, cultural geography examines cultural values, people’s material expressions
and practices, cultural diversity and plurality of societies. It also deals with how cultures are
distributed over space, how places and identities are produced, how people make sense of
places and also build sense of places, and how people produce and communicate knowledge
and meaning.
Cultural geography has long been a core component of the discipline of geography. In
the late 19th century, cultural geography sought to compare and contrast different cultures
around the world and their relationship to natural environments; it aimed to understand cultural
practices and social organizations. In the early 20th century, it gave emphasis to people’s
connections with and use of place and nature. It was particularly interested in how people
adapted to environments and how people shaped the landscape through agriculture,
engineering and building, and, at the same time, how the landscape was reflective of the people
who produced it.
In the 21st century, from the perspective of new cultural geography, landscape is not
simply a material artefact that reflects culture in straightforward ways, but it is full of symbolic
meaning that needs to be decoded with respect to social and historical context. As a result,
cultural geography has developed to examine the broad range of ways in which culture evolves
and makes a difference to everyday life and places. Some studies have examined the cultural
politics of different social groups with respect to issues such as disability, ethnicity, gender,
race, sexuality and how they shape the lives of people in different contexts fostering senses of
belonging or exclusion. Other researchers have looked at how culture is reflected through
representations such as art, photography, music, film, fashion, memorials and monuments.
Consequently, cultural geography is one of the most vibrant fields in human geography today.
Castree, N., Kitchin, R., & Rogers, A. (2013). “Human Geography” In A Dictionary of Human
Geography: O.U.P.

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HUMAN GEOGRAPHY

Human geography consists of a number of sub-disciplinary fields that focus on different

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