Perspectives in Human Geography
Areal differentiation; regional synthesis; Dichotomy and dualism; Environmentalism; Quantitative revolution and locational analysis; radical, behavioural, human and welfare approaches; Languages, religions and secularisation; Cultural regions of the world; Human development index.
Basic concepts
Humboldt / Ritter / Darwin / Vidal le blcanche /Carl sauer contibution; Khuns paradigm applied in geography; Ideographic vs Nomothetic )/ Ecumen and non ecumen regions
ECUMENE AND NON-ECUMENE REGIONS
MAJOR ECUMENE REGIONS
Four major clusters or ecumene account for 75% of the world’s total population.
1. East Asia (China, Japan) is the largest ecumene and a sub-tropical region accounting for 25% of the world’s total populations.
2. South Asia (India and neighbours) ranks second. It is a tropical region accounting for 25% of the world’s population. This is a region having pre-modern subsistence economy which is predominantly agricultural. The population distribution is determined by agricultural potential of the land food supply. Poverty, malnutrition and low levels of living are common. Birth rates are high; death rates are low but not like the developed countries. Therefore high growth rates prevail. This regions account for only 20% of the world’s resources.
3. Formers USSR, a mid-latitude region, accounts for 20% of the total population.
4. North America accounts for 5% of the total population. It is a highly industrialized region with specialized pockets and generally high standards of living throughout.
MAJOR NON-ECUMENE REGIONS These include, generally, the cold, dry and hot-wet lands. Main features of these regions and future prospects for habitation are discussed below.
Cold, High-Latitude Lands. These include the ice caps of Antarctica,
Greenland, Tundra region of North America and Eurasia and the Arctic and sub-Arctic cold deserts. The main limitations of these regions are long sunless periods, extreme cold temperatures, and almost no vegetation. Only towards the southern margins, some habitation is possible. Future prospects for settlement in this region are bleak due to severity of climate.
Dry Lands These are characterized by deficiency of water, low precipitation, sparse vegetation, unreliable yields. These lands are intermittently occupied by nomadic groups with dense populations only in a few oases. These regions recently witnessed expansion of population with development of irrigation techniques. This is also possible in future, but at high costs.
Hot-Wet lands These regions show abundance of climatic energy in form of solar energy and precipitation which cause luxuriant vegetation growth that can support large populations. The wet tropics of the old world are better populated than those of the new world. Nearly 20% of the new world wet tropics can be brought under habitation with suitable land use. Thus, only the wet tropics show prospects of dense population concentrations in decades to come.
ECUMENE AND NON-ECUMENE REGIONS
- The permanently inhabited lands are referred to as the ecumene, while the uninhabited, intermittently or sparsely inhabited lands are referred to as the non-ecumene.
- The boundaries of these regions are not distinct but diffuse into each other.
- The major limiting factors are climate, drainage, soil, rough terrain, wild vegetation, altitude and the degree of proneness to disease. Although, the Antarctic ice caps and Greenland represent complete, continuous non-ecumene, most of the non-ecumene is in form of unoccupied, isolated and intermittently occupied regions of varying size and is confined to desert wastes, cold barren, high mountains, swamps and primitive forests of tropics and sub Arctic’s. About 60% of the world’s total area could be referred to as ecumene.
MAJOR ECUMENE REGIONS
Four major clusters or ecumene account for 75% of the world’s total population.
1. East Asia (China, Japan) is the largest ecumene and a sub-tropical region accounting for 25% of the world’s total populations.
2. South Asia (India and neighbours) ranks second. It is a tropical region accounting for 25% of the world’s population. This is a region having pre-modern subsistence economy which is predominantly agricultural. The population distribution is determined by agricultural potential of the land food supply. Poverty, malnutrition and low levels of living are common. Birth rates are high; death rates are low but not like the developed countries. Therefore high growth rates prevail. This regions account for only 20% of the world’s resources.
3. Formers USSR, a mid-latitude region, accounts for 20% of the total population.
4. North America accounts for 5% of the total population. It is a highly industrialized region with specialized pockets and generally high standards of living throughout.
MAJOR NON-ECUMENE REGIONS These include, generally, the cold, dry and hot-wet lands. Main features of these regions and future prospects for habitation are discussed below.
Cold, High-Latitude Lands. These include the ice caps of Antarctica,
Greenland, Tundra region of North America and Eurasia and the Arctic and sub-Arctic cold deserts. The main limitations of these regions are long sunless periods, extreme cold temperatures, and almost no vegetation. Only towards the southern margins, some habitation is possible. Future prospects for settlement in this region are bleak due to severity of climate.
Dry Lands These are characterized by deficiency of water, low precipitation, sparse vegetation, unreliable yields. These lands are intermittently occupied by nomadic groups with dense populations only in a few oases. These regions recently witnessed expansion of population with development of irrigation techniques. This is also possible in future, but at high costs.
Hot-Wet lands These regions show abundance of climatic energy in form of solar energy and precipitation which cause luxuriant vegetation growth that can support large populations. The wet tropics of the old world are better populated than those of the new world. Nearly 20% of the new world wet tropics can be brought under habitation with suitable land use. Thus, only the wet tropics show prospects of dense population concentrations in decades to come.
Areal differentiation
- The study of the spatial distribution of physical and human phenomena as they relate to each other spatially proximate and causally linked phenomena in regions or other spatial units. Along with spatial analysis and landscape approaches, this is often seen as one of the three major approaches to understanding in human geography
- term coined by hartshorne
- terms- chorology by strabo
- Reason for revival- study of human geography, study uneven development, linked to humanism , welfare and sociology
- feature- ideographic, regional focus (meaning of ideographic- http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ideographic-versus-nomothetic-approaches)
- Advantages-
- criticism-Chorology drew to a close during the 1950s, beginning with a famous attack on Hartshorne’s worldview by Frederick Schaefer in 1953. Essentially, Schaefer claimed that the view that geography is an integrative science concerned with the unique was naive and arrogant because such issues were common to many sciences. By refusing to search for explanatory laws, geography condemned itself to what Schaefer called an immature science. Rather than seeking idiographic regions, geographers should seek nomothetic regularities across regions. This critique helped open the door to the rise of positivism and the quantitative revolution.
Regional Synthesis
- Brian J.L. Berry in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 54 (1964) has endeavoured to explain regional synthesis by using a geographic matrix
- Synthesis of not only spatial but includes temporal also
- link: http://www.geographynotes.com/human-geography/regional-synthesis-of-human-geography-2/1040
Dichotomy and dualism
general vs regional/Detterminism vs possibilism/Physical vs human/ Systematic vs regional/ Historical vs contemporary/formal vs functional
Environmentalism
Ellen Churchill semple
Quantitative revolution
Richard hagget
Chorley
Critic-LD stamp and Minshull
Locational analysis
Locational analysis is an approach to human Geography which focuses on the spatial arrangement of phenomena the main objective of location analysis is generalisation models and theories with productive power
Its philosophy is positivism and quantitative revolution
1950 and
geographers as like Bunge and mccarty
Based on empiricism
Hagget in his book locational analysis in human Geography appeal to adopt geometrical tradition in order to explain location order and patterns in human geography
Now write merits and demerits
Radical,Behavioral, Human, welfare
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