2) Studying Human Geography

Key Points

• A basic assumption of a positivist philosophy is that it is possible for a human geographer to conduct research objectively, without being affected by her or his personal beliefs about the world and the way it ought to be. Does this sound reasonable?

• A basic assumption of Marxist philosophy is that, rather than strive for objectivity, it is essential that a human geographer conduct research with a specific ideological agenda in mind. Does this sound reasonable?

• Human geographers who subscribe to one of the several versions of a humanist philosophy acknowledge that the research they conduct is not easily verified by others. Does this matter?

• Philosophy is critical to the beginning geographer → philosophical perspective explains our specific content, concepts, and analytical techniques

• Facts, concepts, and other disciplines in human geography are logically unrelated

• @@Much geographic work is guided by a specific philosophical viewpoint@@

• Positivism and the quantitative procedures associated with it have a tendency to exclude the individual human element from research, preferring to focus on aggregate data; critics consider such work to be dehumanized human geography. We might call it a geography of people.

• Humanism, postmodernism, and the qualitative procedures associated with these, on the other hand, emphasize the integration of researcher and research, thus generating a geography with people.

• Marxism, along with feminism, aspires to solve problems associated with inequality and lack of social justice, thus aiming to be a geography for people.

Philosophical Options

• We draw on a wide variety of concepts and methods → philosophical diversity of contemporary human geography namely:
• Aphilosophical or empiricist
• Positivist
• Humanist
• Marxist
• Feminist
• Postmodernist

Empiricism

• Some human geography throughout time, even today, may appear to be aphilosophical
• Most human geographers before the 1950s ignored philosophical issues/conducted research that was considered appropriate in the light of the discipline’s historical development
• Work, particularly in regional and cultural studies, made no claim to have a philosophical base
• It can be argued there was an implicit philosophy in regional and cultural work
• This is the philosophy of empiricism
• @@Empiricism → We know through experience that we experience only those things that actually exist@@
• @@Empiricism typically sees knowledge acquisition as an ongoing process of verifying and, as necessary, correcting factual statements@@
• By definition, @@empiricism rejects any philosophy that purports to be an all-embracing system@@
• Empiricism is rejected by most other philosophies
• There is a fundamental assumption of positivism
• A philosophy that builds upon the basic empiricist foundation to include such strategies as theory construction and hypothesis testing

Positivism

• For some human geographers, positivism is a very attractive philosophy

• It is rigorous, formal, clear and straightforward

  1. Human geography needs to be objective; the personal beliefs of the geographer should not influence research activity. Do you agree with this principle? If so, do you believe that it is possible to research human geography without being affected by your personal beliefs? According to humanism and Marxism, objectivity is not only undesirable but also, in fact, impossible.
  2. Human geography can be studied in much the same way as any other science. For the positivist, there is really no such thing as a separate geographic method; all sciences rely on the same method. Specifically, positivism first found favor in the physical sciences, and its applications in human geography reflect the belief that humans and physical objects can be treated in a similar fashion. Once again, humanism and Marxism reject this assumption, believing that it dehumanizes human geography.
  3. The specific method that positivism sees as appropriate for all sciences, physical and human, is known as the scientific method: reflecting the empiricist character of the philosophy, research begins with facts; a theory is derived from those facts, together with any available laws or appropriate assumptions; a hypothesis is derived from the theory, and that hypothesis becomes a law when verified by the real world of facts. Thus, the scientific method consists of the study of facts, the construction of theory, the derivation of hypotheses, and the related recognition of laws. For the positivist, any science rests on the twin pillars of facts and theory, and a disciplinary focus on one at the expense of the other is wrong.

• Positivist philosophy was introduced into human geography relatively late (1953)

• Closely associated with quantitative methods and theory developed during the 1960s

• Spatial analysis approach

• Positivism was controversial because it directly challenged the regional approach that was dominant at the time

Humanism

• Humanism is a loosely structured set of ideas
• @@“Knowledge is subjective”@@
• Humanistic geography developed from about 1970 onward
• Initially in strong opposition to positivism
• @@Humanism focuses on humans as individual decision-makers, on the way humans perceive their world, and emphasizes subjectivity in general@@
• There are several humanistic philosophies
• Pragmatism
• Phenomenology
• Several other humanistic philosophies such as individuals’ personal existentialism and idealism have been advocated by geographies but not influential
• Humanism raises two general issues

1. The distinction between positivism and humanism is one of objectivism vs subjectivism

• Positivism contends that the study of human phenomena can be objective/humanism says that it cannot

  • Positivism contends that the study of human phenomena can be objective/humanism says that it cannot
  • Is there an interaction between the researcher and the research subject that invalidates the information collected?
  • Does the researcher have a personal background that effectively influences her or his choice of problem, methods, and interpretation of results?
  • If we view humans objectively, does this mean we see them as objects? If so, is this approach dehumanizing?

• Answering no → positivistic / Answering yes → humanistic

  2. Social Scale: Do we as human geographies study individuals or groups of people and, if the latter, what size of the group?

• Classic humanistic philosophies place some emphasis on individuals while traditionally we have focused on groups

• Most human geographers feel the emphasis on individuals is inappropriate

  • Due to this, much humanistic work has been done on a group scale

• Groups are defined by culture, religion, language, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality

Phenomenology

• There are many variations
• A central component of phenomenology is the idea that researchers need to demonstrate verstehen, sympathetic understanding, of the issue under research
• Phenomenology seeks an empathetic understanding of the lived worlds of individual human subjects
• Whereas positivism seeks objective and casual explanations of human behavior without reference to individual human differences
• Yi-Fu Tuan has written a series of books and articles that are phenomenological in focus

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Marxism

• The ideas of Karl Marx are foundational to an understanding of the human-land interference and must be considered regardless of views
• Marx and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, are difficult to summarize due to their unequivocal fashion of writing
• Any interpretation of Marxism is bound to rise to disagreement
• Karl Marx was a political, social, economic, and philosophical theorist who worked to construct a body of social theory that would explain how society actually worked
• He aimed to facilitate a change in the economic and political structure of society, from capitalism to communism
• The Marxist perspective is often described as historical materialism
• This term refers to Marx’s concern with the material basis of society and his effort to understand society and social change by referring to historical changes and social relations
• Marx’s Summary of the Character of Society:
  • First, there are forces of production: the raw materials, implements, and workers that actually produce goods.
  • Second, there are relations of production: the economic structures of a society, that is, the ways in which the production process is organized.
  • The most important relations are those of ownership and control.
  • In a capitalist society, for example, those relations are such that workers are able to sell their labor on the open market.
  • Thus, although workers—the labor force—produce goods, the relations of production determine how the production process is organized.
  • Together, these forces and relations make up what is called the mode of production. This concept is the key to understanding the composition of society.
  • Examples of modes of production include slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism.
• These ideas were used to sketch a history of economic change that traces the transitions from one mode of production to another
• Marc was especially critical of the capitalism that flourished in his lifetime because of his belief that one class exploited the other in order to maximize its own profits
  • Marx recognized the same kind of exploitation continued under capitalism but disguised
• Marx called for a socialist revolution in the form of a class struggle to overturn one mode of production and replace it with another under the control of the workers themselves
• Marx differed profoundly from both positivism and humanism because he sees human behavior as constrained by the economic processes
• He held human societies alone responsible for the conditions of life around them
• He believed that social institutions were created by humans, when those institutions no longer served a society’s needs, they could and should be changed
• Working within Marxism usually implies that one is striving both to understand the human world and change it
• To facilitate a social and economic transformation from capitalism to socialism
• Marxism is an attractive philosophy for human geographers who feel strongly that their work should focus explicitly on social and environmental ills and contribute to solutions to those ills
• Marxist geography is not the only kind of geography that strives to contribute solutions to environmental and social ills, but this focus is most explicit in Marxisx

Feminist Thought

• There is no single feminist philosophy or body of feminist theory
• various schools of feminist thought are associated with larger bodies of theory such as liberalism, Marxism, socialism, or postmodernism
• All schools of feminism are united in their commitment to improving the social status of women and securing equal rights with men
• There are significant differences from country to country, but women are usually systemically disadvantaged in most areas of contemporary life
• The fundamental reason stems from patriarchy (a social system where men dominate women)
• Women were economically dependent on male breadwinners
• The few women who did work outside the home were paid less than what men received for equivalent work
• Culture is seen as a key factor in the construction of gender differences through various socialization processes
• Sexuality and violence are seen as forms of social control over women
• The state is seen as typically reinforcing traditional households and failing to intervene in cases of violence against women
• The oldest feminist thought and action dates back to the late eighteenth century → liberal feminism
• Aimed at securing equal rights and opportunities for women
• Two of the most important recent traditions argue that the oppression of women can’t be corrected by superficial change because it is embedded in deep psychic and cultural processes that need to be fundamentally changed
• Radical feminism contends that gender differentiation results from gender inequality and that the subordination of women is separate from other forms of social inequality
• Socialist feminism emphasizes gender inequality and links it to class but argues that both men and capital benefit from the subordination of women
• For feminist geographers, the key category of analysis is gender
• Gender implies a distinction between power groups (male and female)
• Feminist geographers have usually accepted that gender is a social construction deriving largely from the natural category of biological sex
• discussions of gender are premised on the logic of constructionism not essentialism
• Gender is formed initially through the differential treatment of boys and girls
• The differential treatment is accompanied by different societal expectations of the values, attitudes, and behaviors of the boys and girls
• Human geographers did not begin paying serious attention to gender differences until the 1980s
• This meant, in effect, that the former insistence on discussing humans, in general, resulted in ignoring all the ways in which the lives and experiences of women and men are different around the world
• Boys and girls are raised unequally
• Boys socialized to be aggressive and assume leadership roles
• Girls socialized to be passive and compliant followers
• Such characteristics possibly have some initiating biological cause, but even if this is so, the socialization process clearly emphasizes and increases any natural differences and minimizes movement across the categories of male and female
• This process works to the advantage of men
• Women achieve a better education overall but earn less and occupy fewer top jobs
• Part of the explanation for this apparent contradiction is that women continue to perform more domestic work and more women hold part-time jobs
• These differences are not explained in terms of biological differences but in terms of cultural differences

Postmodern Thought

• Postmodernism emerged as a reaction to modernism
• A general term used to refer to any number of movements beginning in the mid-nineteenth century that broke with earlier traditions
• Modernism developed most fully in art and architecture
• Social science methodology arose via the positivism that first appeared in the nineteenth century
• It assumes that reality can be studied objectively and be validly represented by theories and that scientific knowledge is practical and desirable
• Modernism is also closely linked to the Industrial Revolution as the rise of capitalism
• Emphasizing classic liberal themes such as the rationality of humans, the privileged position of science, human control over the physical environment, the inevitability of human progress, and a search for universal truths
• What was the postmodern reaction?
• Most contemporary human geographers would agree that postmodernism is an especially difficult body of ideas to understand
• By its reactive nature, postmodernism is unstructured and ambiguous
• Anarchic concepts may be embraced
• Many versions of the postmodernist theory were developed in disciplines far removed from human geography
• Architecture
• Literature
• Postmodernism is playing an increasingly important role in contemporary human geographic research

The Postmodern Alternative

• Postmodernism rejects all the assumptions of modernism
• Reality cannot be studied objectively because it is based on language
• Reality should be thought of as a text in which aspects are related
• Therefore, reality cannot be accurately represented
  • Truth is relative and, for practical purposes, non-existent
  • Casualty does not exist
  • Theory construction has no meaning
• Emphasized deconstruction of texts and the construction of narratives that do not make claims about the truthfulness
• Such narratives tend to focus on differences, uniqueness, irrationality, and marginal populations
• Deconstruction questions the established readings of a text and highlights alternative readings
• @@Postmodernism considers modernist claims to be arrogant, even authoritarian@@
• Postmodernism for contemporary human geography is its emphasis on cultural otherness, its openness to previously repressed experiences and those lacking power and authority

The Diversity of Postmodern

• Postmodernism concepts vary considerably between disciplines and even within them
• Some who embrace postmodernism nevertheless continue in the progressive directions suggested by modernism
  • Becoming involved in social movements
  • Working to break down the barriers between researchers and subjects
• Symbolic interactionism
• The lack of a single unequivocal version of postmodernism in human geography is not surprising → central to postmodernism is the importance of diversity
• Some geographers express concern about the postmodern tendency to focus on topics that could be seen as trivial
• Hamnett (2003: 1) worries that human geography has become a “theoretical playground where its practitioners stimulate or entertain themselves and a handful of readers, but have in the process become increasingly detached from contemporary social issues and concerns.

Human Geographic Concepts

• Human geography involved two basic endeavors
• Geographic Literacy
  • The need to establish facts
  • A vital starting point and to be hyperaware of fundamental characteristics
• Geographic Knowledge
  • The need to understand and explain facts
  • To know why the facts are the way they are
  • Understanding and explaining require that we are intelligent question
  • This requires the conscious adoption of an appropriate philosophical stance
• Philosophy guides us but does not necessarily provide all the tools we need
• Some concepts and techniques are relevant regardless of philosophical bent while others are philosophy specific
• Concepts and techniques that are not tied to particular philosophies focus on factual matters
• Determining where things are on the surface of the earth
• An important distinction needs to be drawn here between idiographic and nomothetic methods
• Idiographic
  • Concerned with individual phenomena
  • Traditional empiricist regional geography / Humanistic and postmodern geography
• Nomothetic
  • Concerned with formulating generalizations or laws
  • Research in a positivist tradition is nomothetic
  • E.g. Marxist human geography and some feminist geography

Space

• It is not uncommon to describe human geography as a spatial discipline, one that deals primarily with space
• Not in the context of outer space but in the context of the Earth’s surface
• Absolute and Relative Space
• Absolute Space
  • Objective
  • Exists in the areal relations among phenomena on the earth’s surface
  • This conception is at the heart of map-making, the study of religions, and spatial analysis, and is central to the ideas of Kant
• Relative Space
  • Perceptual
  • Socially produced
  • Subject to continuous change

Location

• “Where?”
• The basic concept refers to a particular position within space (either in outer space or on the earth’s surface)
• Absolute location and Relative Location
• Absolute Location
  • Identifies position by reference to an arbitrary mathematical grid system such as latitude and longitude
  • Mathematically precise statements are essential
  • Unchanging
• Relative Location
  • The location of one place relative to that of one or more other places
  • Subject to change (lines, roads, air routes, etc.)
• A location can be described simply by reference to its place name (toponym)
• Site and Situation
• Site
  • The local characteristics of a location
• Situation
  • A location relative to others

Place

• Special meaning to human geography
• Refers not only to a location but the values associated with that location
• @@A place is a location that has a particular identity@@
• To distinguish place from space or location, place is not about where we live but rather how we live where we live
• Sense of Place
• Popularized in the 1970s by humanistic geographers with philosophical roots in phenomenology
• Refers to our attachments to locations with personal significance
  • Memorable or distinctive locations
• Sacred Space
• Closely related subject in sociology and used by humanistic and other geographers
• Refers to landscapes that are particularly esteemed by an individual or group usually for religious, political, or similar reasoning
• Placelessness
• Used to identify landscapes that are relatively homogeneous and standardized
  • Tourist landscapes, commercial strips, and suburbs
  • More evident in the industrial and post-industrial world
• Topophilia
• “Love of place”
• Refers to the positive feelings that link humans to particular environments
• Topophobia
• Refers to the dislike of a landscape that may prompt feelings of anxiety, fear, or suffering
• These concepts add valuable refinement to people and their relationships with land
• We can think of places as emotional anchors for human activity

Region

• One of the useful yet most confusing geographic concepts
• “So much geography is written on a regional basis that the idea of the region and the regional method is as familiar and as accepted as is Mercator’s map in an atlas. Yet as with so many other familiar ideas which we use every day and take for granted, the concept of the region floats away when one tries to grasp it, and disappears when one looks directly at it and tries to focus. (Minshull, 1967: 13)”
• The region is defined as “a device for selecting and studying areal groupings of the complex phenomena found on the earth. Any segment or portion of the earth’s surface is a region if it is homogeneous in terms of such an areal grouping”
• Dividing a large area into regions, or regionalization is a process of classification in which each specific location is assigned to a region
• Geographers recognize various types of regions
• Formal: an area with one or more traits in common
• Functional: an area with locations related either to each other or to a specific location
• Choices in measure regarding region rely on considerable subjectivity
• Region delimitation implies that regions are geographically meaningful → a Prarie wheat-growing region may or may not be a significant portion of geographic space
• The rise of spatial analysis n the 1960s caused the traditional concept of formal regions to decline / functional regions to increase in popularity
• By 1970, humanistic geographers argued for revitalized regional geography involving vernacular regions
• Regions perceived the exist by people either within or outside them

Distance

• The distribution of geographic facts can be explained by reference to the distance between them and other geographic facts
• Geographers often talk about distributions, patterns, or forms in reference to the mapped appearance of spatial facts
• Distributions are characterized as resulting from a clustering process
• Urban centers are usually industrialized at larger distances than specialty retail stores
• One of the principal reasons for a particular location is to provide services to surrounding rural populations
• Other geographic facts locate apart because they involve the provision of services without involving competition (hospitals, recreation areas, etc.)
• First Law Of Geography: Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distance things
• The notion of distance decay/the effect, or friction, of distance
• Typically both time and cost are involved in overcoming distance
  • This concept lies at the heart of much spatial analysis
• Accessibility refers to the relative ease with which a given location can be reached from other locations
• Therefore indicates the relative opportunities for contact and interaction
• A key concept in the agricultural, settlement, and industrial location theories
• Interaction refers to the act of movement, trading, or any other form of communication between locations
• Agglomeration describes situations in which locations are in close proximity to one another
• Deglomeration refers to situations in which those locations are characterized by separation from one another
• Distances may be measured in many ways but the standards are kilometer, time, or cost

Physical Distance

• The spatial interval between points in space is the physical distance
• They are often measured with reference to some standard system/precise measurement
• The shortest travel distance between points is often not a straight line
• Two points may be related to the direction of travel
• In a grid-pattern city, there are a series of differently oriented straight lines

Time Distance

• Most preferred routes are quicker rather than shorter to preserve materials
• Time distance is related to the mode of movement, traffic densities, and various regulations regarding movement
• A time-space map shows space stretching in the congested central area and shrinking in the outlying areas due to the consequences of the great time needed to travel as opposed to freely flowing routes
• The extent of stretching and shrinking varies according to time of day and day of the week
  • Rush hour on business days, bustling weekends, etc.

Economic Distance

• Movement from one location in space to another usually entails an economic cost of one kind or another
• This economic distance can be defined as the cost incurred to overcome physical distance
• There is not a direct relationship between physical distance and other measures
• Costs frequently increase in a step-like fashion and the cost curve is convex
• E.g. taxi fares are determined not by physical distance but by the number of zones crossed throughout the ride
• There is considerable logic to the notion that economic activities should be mapped in economic space, not physical or container space

Scale

• One of the first decisions made in any piece of geographic research relates to the selection of appropriate scales → spatial, temporal, and social
• The choice of scale is usually determined by the questions posed
• Different scales can generate different answers
• Geographers use the concept of spatial scale in three distinct ways
• In accordance with a technical meaning associated with the use of maps
  • Scale is the ratio of a distance on a map to distance on the ground
  • World maps - Small Region maps - Intermediate / Local areas - Large
• Whether or not the locations in a given set are clustered
  • Agglomerated or dispersed
  • Answers will vary based on the specific area selected
  • The spatial scale also needs to be carefully identified whenever statements about density are made
• Spatial scale refers more generally to the specific identification of the area being studied
  • There is no direct link between philosophical emphasis and the scale employed
  • The choice of scale does relate to the purpose of the research
• Some research is concerned with a local area
• Shopping area, business district, small ethnically distinct residential area
• Much humanistic research favors this scale of analysis
• Other geographic studies are concerned with a larger area based on a regional scale
• Some studies appear empiricist in character, belonging to the genre of regional geography on a national scale despite the base of analysis being a single country
• Groupings of countries are usually identified because they are understood to share some important characteristics
• The world is analyzed in many instances such as world population or global economy
• Positivist and Marxist analyses are likely to be conducted at these scales
• @@The choice of temporal scale is also significant to data analyzation@@
• Evolution of landscape → temporal scale / Manner in which a given area functions → X temporal scale
• Historical and cultural geography usually emphasize time/chronological and spatial emphasizes the present
• Selecting the scale most appropriate to the question posed and leading to the correct answer is not as simple as it seems
• Scales must be selected with proper care and justification
• A scale is a function of the particular type of study being conducted and thus reflects a philosophical preference
• Those who study with a humanistic focus recognize the need to study the intentions and actions of people both as individuals and as members of groups
• Those with a Marxist perspective focus on groups because they believe that individuals cannot be understood without reference to the appropriate larger cultural context
• More specifically the overarching social and economic mode of production
• Most traditional cultural geography has favorited a group scale because it is best suited to the typical geographic interest in the world/regions
• Most contemporary social theory favors the group scale
• Largely on the grounds that individual actions are determined by ideas and beliefs rooted in groups defined on the basis of interaction and communication

Diffusion

• The spread of phenomenon over space and growth through time is one way change occurs
• The migration of people
• The movement of ideas
• The expansion of land use
• Diffusion-centered research has long been central to cultural geography because of the need to understand landscape evolution
• Torsten Hägerstrand, a Swedish geographer, developed a series of diffusion-related concepts in 1953
• Largely positivistic in character
• Introduced three important ideas
  • The Neighbourhood Effect
  • Describes situations where diffusion is distance-biased
  • Where a phenomenon spreads first to individuals or groups nearest its place of origin
  • The Hierarchical Effect
  • The phenomenon first diffuses to large centers, then to centers of decreasing size
  • The S-shaped Curve
  • Most diffusion situations proceed slowly at first and then rapidly, ending with a final slow stage to produce an S-shaped curve
  • Best described as a process that prompts changes in landscapes, regions, and locations

Perception

• In 1850, Humboldt notes that, “in order to comprehend nature in all its vast sublimity, it would be necessary to present it under a twofold aspect, first objectively, as an actual phenomenon, and next subjectively as it is reflected in the feelings of mankind”
• Geographers still paid relatively little attention to subjective matters (especially the perceived environment) until the late 1960s
• We now recognize that all humans relate not to some real physical or social environment rather than perception
• A perception varies with knowledge and is closely related to cultural and social considerations
• @@Humanistic geographers in particular discuss the mental images of places and other people and seek to describe and understand the images (mental maps) that we carry in our heads@@
• @@Human geography teaches us about the world, where things are located, why they are there, and what they really are@@

Development

• Human geographers recognize that any one area changes through time and those different areas have different landscapes
• Such conditions are interpreted in terms of development
• Development measures lots of location factors
• Economic growth
• Social welfare
• Modernization
• Certain areas are qualified as more developed and others as less developed based on some of these factors
• It is important that human geographers highlight spatial disparities in economic well being
• Also important to interpret variations with reference to cultural and social considerations
  • Income level
• Contemporary human geographers analyze development while remaining fully aware of the risks of oversimplification
  • A Marxist might view underdevelopment as a consequence of the rapid diffusion of the capitalist economic and social systems
  • Arguing that areas brought into the expanding capitalist system become dependent
  • A capitalist system tends to create depressed areas in any given country prompting uneven development

Discourse

• The root meaning of the word “discourse” is speech
• This term also refers to a way of communicating as a member of a particular group
• Space, location, place, etc. is part of the discourse of human geography
• Serves to identify those who use that vocabulary as members of the group of human geographers
• Discourse has a more profound meaning derived from the work of the French social theorist Michel Foucault
• Foucauldian theory was introduced into the literature of human geography in the 1980s as one aspect of social theory
• According to Foucault, the history of ideas is a history of changing discourses in which
  • There is a fundamental connection between power and knowledge
  • Truth is not absolute but relative, dependent on the power relations within the societies that construct it
  • Pursued in feminism and postmodernism
• Bodies of social theory that challenge established discourses because they are seen as products of people in positions of academic power who are able to define the truth in their terms (usually marginalized) groups

Globalization

• Globalization integrates some (and might even replace) several aforementioned concepts such as space, location, place, etc.
• The most fundamental consequence of globalization is that our complex and varied human worlds are becoming more (unevenly) like a single world
• Globalization is identified as an overriding metaconcept
• This provides human geographers with a body of ideas that may facilitate the analysis of environmental, cultural, political, and economic topics
• The term globalization came into widespread use only in the 1980s
• It refers to the idea that the world is becoming increasingly homogenized economically, politically, and culturally
• Globalization is both a result and a cause of ever-increasing connectedness of places and peoples as economic, political, and cultural institutions and networks all combine to bring previously separated peoples and places together
• Advances in communications technologies and the increasing dominance of transnational are components of globalization
• Distance no longer plays the critical role it once did in promoting the development of separate human geographic worlds

Techniques of Analysis

• Cartography
• Computer-assisted cartography
• Geographic information system
• Remote sensing
• Each of these systems is inherently geographic and involves inputting, storing, analyzing, and outputting spatial data

Cartography

• The “science of map-making”
• Until the 1960s, cartography was limited to map production, following data collection by surveyors and preceding analysis by geographers
• Much emphasis on manual skills
• The main purpose of such maps was to communicate information
• Maps are an efficient means of portraying and communicating spatial data
• Today, cartography is less dependent on manual skills and is closely integrated with analysis
• In the production of maps, cartographers need to decide on questions of scale, type, and projection, which can significantly affect map appearance and quality
• Scale is always indicated on a map, whether as a fraction, a ratio, a written statement, or graphic scale
• The type of map constructed depends on the information being presented
• Dot Map
  • Data showing towns, wheat farming, cemeteries, an incidence of disease
  • Typically each dot represents one occurrence of the mapped phenomenom
• Choropleth Map
  • Tonal shading proportional to the density of the phenomena in each of the defined area units displays data
  • These maps sacrifice detail for improved appearance
• Isopleth Map
  • Series of lines (isopleths or isolines) that link points having the same value
  • Equal transport cost maps
• “How can we best represent a nearly spherical earth on a flat surface?
• Projection
• No satisfactory answer has been found
• Significance of chosen scale, types of symbols, and the projections are all taken in consideration for a projection to be interpreted correctly

Computer-Assisted Cartography

• Digital-mapping
• Discussed separately from traditional cartography because it represents much more than just another evolution in production techniques
• Computer-assisted cartography was conceived by Canadian geographer Roger Tomlinson (1933–2014)
• Computer-assisted cartography enables us to amend maps by incorporating new and revised data and to produce various versions of the mapped data to create the best version
• Mapping packages diminishes the need for artistic skills and allows for desktop map creation
• Regardless, this skill requires considerable design skills as decisions are made about coloring, shading, labeling, and other aspects of map creation
• Computer-assisted cartography has introduced maps and map analysis into a wide range of new arenas
• Business to realign sales and service territories
• Computer-generated maps facilitate decision-making and are becoming important in both academic and applied geography

Geographic Information Systems

• Geographic Information System - GIS
• A computer-based tool that combines several functions
  • Storage
  • Display
  • Analysis
  • Mapping of spatially referenced data
• GIS includes processing hardware, specialized peripheral hardware, and software
• Typical processing hardware is a personal computer
• Mainframe computers may be used for especially large applications
• Peripheral hardware (digitizers and scanners)
• Used for data input
  • Printers and plotters produce copies of the output
• Software production has numerous products available for GIS users
• IDRISI - University-produced package designed primarily for pedagogic purposes
• ARC/INFO - Package developed by the private sector that is widely used by governments, industries, and universities
• Origins of contemporary GIS can be traced to the first developments in computer-assisted cartography and to the Canada GIS of the early 1960s
• These developments centered on computer methods of map overlay and area measurement (tasks previously accomplished by hand)
• GIS activity has made an explosion in culture since the early 1980s due to an increasing need for GIS and the increasing availability of personal computers
• Roots of GIS clearly in cartography and maps are both its principal input and output
• Computers are generally only able to handle only characters and numbers, not spatial objects (lines, points, and areas)
• GISs are distinguished according to the methods they use to translate spatial data into computer form
• There are two principal methods of translation
• Vector
  • Describes spatial data as a series of discrete objects
  • Points are described according to distance along two axes
  • Lines are described by the shortest distance between two points
  • Areas are described by sets of lines
• Raster
  • Represents the area mapped as a series of small rectangular cells known as pixels
  • Points, lines, and areas are approximated by sets of pixels
  • The computer maintains a record of which pixels are on or off
• What is the value of GIS?
• GISs have numerous and varied applications in any context that may be concerned with spatial data
• GIS achieves a whole new range of mapping and analytical capabilities- additional ways of handling spatial data

Remote Sensing

• No map can be produced without data
• GISs and analytical methods in general also require data
• One group of collection methods focuses on gathering information about objects from a distance
• Remote sensing describes the process of obtaining data using both photographic and non-photographic sensor systems
• We all possess remote sensors in the form of our eyes
  • It has been one of humanity’s ongoing aims to improve their ability to acquire information
  • Improving our eyes
  • Improving our field of vision by gaining altitude
  • Improving recording of what is seen
• Today, most applications of remote sensing rely on electromagnetic radiation to transfer data from the object of interest to the sensor
• Electromagnetic radiation occurs naturally at a variety of wavelengths, and there are specific sensing technologies for the principal spectral region
• The conventional camera was the principal sensor used until the introduction of earth orbital satellites in the 1960s
• Aerial photography is still used for numerous routine applications
• Particularly in the visible and near-infrared spectral regions
• The near-infrared spectral region has proved particularly useful for acquiring environmental data
• The current emphasis is on satellite imagery
• Especially since the United States launched Landsat in 1972
• Satellite scanners numerically record radiation and transmit numbers to a receiving station
• These numbers are used to computer-generate pixel-based images
• There are several principal advantages to satellite remote sensing
• Repeated coverage of an area facilitates analysis of land-use change
• Most data are homogeneous and comprehensive
• Data collected are in digital format
  • Rapid data transmission and image manipulation are possible
• For most parts of the globe, these are the only useful data available
• Allows the collection of entirely new sets of data
  • Satellite data first alerted us to the changing patterns of atmospheric ozone in high-latitude areas
• Remote sensing is less useful if we are concerned with underlying economic, cultural, or political processes
• A recent substantial achievement was the remarkably detailed mapping of the earth’s surface in 2000 by a manned NASA space shuttle
• This mission involved a partnership among the military, intelligence-gathering, and environmental communities and resulted in a topographic map of the earth’s landmass between 60°N and 56°S that is about 30 times as precise as the best maps available before the mission
• In the early 1990s geographers began to make use of another new digital geographic technology, the global positioning system (GPS)
• A GPS is an instrument (either hand-held or installed in a personal computer) that uses signals emitted by satellites to calculate location and elevation
• Along with remotely sensed data, GPS data can be integrated into a GIS

Qualitative Methods

• Human geographers collect and analyze data using a broad range of qualitative methods
• A term widely used in other social sciences that refers to research with a focus on the attitudes, behavior, and personal observation of human subjects
• Qualitative methods are a part of ethnography
• A general approach that requires researcher involvement in the subject studied
• Much fieldwork is qualitative in character
• A traditional term for the methods that geographers use to obtain primary data
• New types of fieldwork have appeared in response to humanistic concerns and human geographers now use a range of qualitative methods for collecting and analyzing data
• Early fieldwork was not philosophically motivated although it was implicitly empiricist because it assumed that reality was present in appearance
• Contemporary fieldwork is by nature humanistic as a response to the humanistic requirement that human geography strive to understand the nature of the social world
• For the humanist, qualitative methods that involve a researcher’s observation of any involvement in everyday life are central to understanding humans and human landscapes
• Participant observation is now a popular geographic approach
• A standard method in anthropology and sociology
• The principal advantage of this method is its explicit recognition that people and their lives do matter
• Conducting research using qualitative methods requires considerable skill
• A subjective procedure such as a participant observation does not provide any means for the researcher to objectively control the relationship between observer and observed
• One of the key issues in the differences between humanism and positivism
• The researcher, who is often of higher social status is ethnocentric
• Ethnocentrism is the presumption that one’s own culture is normal and natural and that other cultures are inferior
• Contemporary geographers and other social researchers pursuing field research seek to bring reflexivity to their fieldwork
• Includes awareness of their own real or potential biases
• How their presumed status and gender may affect the data they collect from human subjects
• How their simple presence inevitability will alter the dynamic of that which they seek to observe and understand
• The risk that the researcher will begin with a biased or otherwise inappropriate idea about the data to be collected or that the subjects of the study may not be sufficiently representative to provide an accurate picture

Quantitative Methods

• Some fieldwork is explicitly quantitative in character
• Notably the use of a questionnaire to survey people
• A questionnaire is part of an empiricist research activity
• Unlike qualitative fieldwork, it asks all individuals the same questions in the same way
• The value of the questionnaire results depends on the response rate achieved and the way potential respondents are selected
• The sampling method
• Proper sampling methods, based on statistical sampling theory, allow the sample results to be treated as representative of the population within certain error limits
• The most common technique used for selecting respondents is random sampling
• The principal methods used were statistical, and the purposes were to describe data and to test hypotheses generated by theory
• The spatial analysis school recognized early that models could play a much greater role in analyzing data
• A model is an idealized, simplified representation of the real world
• Key properties are highlighted and incidental information is eliminated
• Many of the earliest spatial models were based on generalizations about the relationships between the distribution of geographic facts and distance
• Geographers use quantitative techniques for a wide variety of purposes
• Especially for analyzing relationships between spatial patterns and for classifying data
• Describing relationships is fundamental in producing explanations and revolves around a functional relationship where one variable is dependent on one or more variables
• The relationship specified is, ideally, derived from appropriate theory in accordance with the scientific method outlined earlier
• Classifying imposes order on data, and a number of techniques facilitate that activity

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Conclusion

• Human geography, both past and present, is presented through the appreciation of the discourse of the discipline and its diverse subject matter
• In addition to recognizing that there are several different but legitimate approaches to researching that subject matter

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