Section 2: Geography, Space & Global Connections

Geography

The study of spatial relationships, places, environments, and human activity.

Space

The geographic dimension in which locations, relationships, and social processes exist.

Absolute location

The exact position of a place identified by fixed coordinates.

Latitude/parallels

Imaginary east-west lines measuring degrees north or south of the Equator.

Longitude/meridian

Imaginary pole-to-pole lines measuring degrees east or west of the Prime Meridian.

Relative location

The position of a place in relation to other places, routes, or connections.

Place

A location shaped by its social relationships, experiences, history, and meaning.

Territory

A geographic area claimed, controlled, or governed through political power.

Scale

The geographic level at which a process is studied, from the body and local to the global.

Network

A system of interconnected places, people, or organizations linked by relationships and flows.

Cognitive/mental maps

Personal understandings of geographic space shaped by experience, knowledge, and perception.

Time-space compression

The shrinking importance of distance as transportation and communication become faster.

Global sense of place (Massey)

The idea that places are shaped by their connections and relationships with the wider world, not isolated identities.

Differentiated mobility and power geometry (Massey)

People have unequal power to control or participate in global movement; some direct flows while others are restricted.

Disjunctive flows (Appadurai)

Global movements of people, money, technology, media, and ideas that do not necessarily occur together or at the same speed.

Global -scapes (Appadurai)

Five overlapping global flows: ethnoscapes (people), technoscapes (technology), financescapes (money), mediascapes (information), and ideoscapes (ideas).

Geographic unevenness (Coe et al.)

The unequal distribution of economic development, opportunities, resources, and power across places.