Geography 1100: Introduction to Human Geography - Midterm Review Vocabulary

Midterm Exam Details

• Tuesday class: June 17th

• Thursday class: June 19th

  Terms and Topics

• Use the list of terms, lecture notes, lecture slides, quizzes, and textbook review questions to prepare.

  Introductory Concepts (Ch. 1)

• Geography

  • Physical geography
  • Human geography

• Location

  • Absolute (latitude and longitude)
  • Relative (site and situation)

• Distance

  • "First law" of geography: everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.
  • Absolute, relative, cognitive

• Space

  • Absolute, relative, cognitive (cognitive images), topological

• Region

• Landscape

  • Ordinary, symbolic
  • Palimpsest: A landscape with visible traces of previous cultures and historical events.

• Place

  • Place-making: How humans transform space into a place.
  • Sense of place: Feelings evoked by certain places.

• Geographical imagination: Understanding how people and places are connected.

• Map projection

  • Mercator: Preserves shape and direction, distorts area.
  • Peters: Preserves area, distorts shape.
  • Robinson: Compromise between shape and area.
  • Fuller (dymaxion): projects the world onto an icosahedron, which can be unfolded to flatten with minimal distortion.

• Spatial diffusion: The process by which something spreads across space.

  Globalization (Ch. 2)

• World-system theory

  • World-system: An interdependent system of countries linked by political and economic competition.
  • Core: Wealthy, developed countries.
  • Periphery: Poor, less developed countries.
  • Semi-periphery: Countries with characteristics of both core and periphery.

• Imperialism: The extension of a country's power through diplomacy or military force.

• Colonialism: The establishment and maintenance of rule over a dependent territory.

• European expansion

• Ethnocentrism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture.

  • Social Darwinism: The theory that individuals, groups, and peoples are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection as plants and animals
  • Environmental determinism: The belief that the environment determines social and cultural development.
  • "White man’s burden": The supposed duty of white people to bring their culture and civilization to non-white peoples.

• Scramble for Africa: The invasion, occupation, division, and colonization of African territory by European powers.

• Impacts of colonialism on the periphery

  • Economic
  • Political
  • Cultural
  • Neo-colonialism: The use of economic, political, cultural, or other pressures to control or influence other countries, especially former dependencies.

• Contemporary globalization

• Perspectives on globalization

  • Generally “good”: Promotes economic growth and development.
  • Generally “bad”: Increases inequality and exploitation.

• Core-periphery inequalities

  • Income and wealth
  • Fast world/slow world: fast world refers to the areas of the world, usually in the core, that experience rapid economic development, while slow world refers to the areas, usually in the periphery, that experience less economic deverlopment
  • Digital divide: The gap between those who have access to technology and those who do not.

  Political Geographies (Ch. 9)

• North-South divide: Socio-economic and political division between wealthy developed countries (North) and poorer developing countries (South).

• Decolonization: The process by which colonies become independent.

  Population Dynamics (Ch. 3)

• Demography: The study of population.

• Crude (arithmetic) density: The total number of people divided by the total land area. \text{Population} / \text{Land Area}

• Nutritional (physiologic) density: The number of people per unit area of arable land. \text{Population} / \text{Arable Land}

• Natural increase (or decrease): The difference between the birth rate and the death rate.

• Crude birth rate: The number of live births per 1,000 people per year. \text{Number of Births} / \text{Total Population} * 1000

• Total fertility rate: The average number of children a woman will have during her childbearing years.

• Replacement rate: The total fertility rate needed for a population to replace itself.

• Infant mortality rate: The number of deaths of infants under one year old per 1,000 live births.

• Crude death rate: The number of deaths per 1,000 people per year.

• Average life expectancy: The average number of years a person is expected to live.

• Age-sex pyramid (aka “population pyramid”): A diagram showing the distribution of a population by age and sex.

• Dependency ratio: The number of people who are too young or too old to work, compared to the number of people in their productive years.

• Demographic transition theory

  • Key arguments; phases and reasons for changes
  • Critiques

• Overpopulation

  • Malthusian perspective: Population growth will outstrip food production, leading to famine and disease.
  • Neo-Malthusian perspective: The advocacy of population control programs to ensure resources for current and future populations.
  • Critiques of Malthus and neo-Malthusians

• Population policy: Government actions aimed at influencing population size, structure, or distribution.

  Economic Development (Ch. 7)

• Economic development

  • Definitions
  • Expectations

• Economic indicators

  • GDP: Gross Domestic Product. The total value of goods and services produced within a country.
  • GNP: Gross National Product. The total value of goods and services produced by a country's citizens, regardless of location.
  • GNI: Gross National Income. GDP plus income from abroad.

• Informal sector: The part of an economy that is neither taxed nor monitored by the government.

• Externalities

  • Positive and negative

• Human development index (HDI): A composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development.

• Gender inequality index (GII): An inequality index. It measures gender inequalities in three important aspects of human development—reproductive health, measured by maternal mortality ratio and adolescent birth rates; empowerment, measured by proportion of parliamentary seats occupied by females and proportion of adult females and males aged 25 years and older with at least some secondary education; and economic status, expressed as labour market participation and measured by labour force participation rate of female and male populations aged 15 years and older.

• Economic sectors

  • Primary: Extraction of raw materials (e.g., agriculture, mining).
  • Secondary: Manufacturing.
  • Tertiary: Services (e.g., retail, tourism).
  • Quaternary: Information and knowledge-based services (e.g., research, consulting).

• Foreign direct investment: Investment made by a company or entity based in one country, into a company or entity based in another country.

• Transnational corporation: A company that operates in multiple countries.

• Trade bloc: A group of countries that have signed an agreement to reduce or eliminate barriers to trade.

• Globalization and economic development

  • Internationalization of finance: The increasing integration of financial markets worldwide.
  • New technology system
    • Time-space convergence: The reduction in the time it takes to travel or communicate between places.

• Global consumer markets

• New international division of labor

  • Global assembly line: Production processes in which products are assembled across multiple countries.
  • Commodity chain: A network of processes that gathers resources, transforms them into goods, and distributes them to consumers.
  • “Race to the bottom”: A situation in which companies seek to reduce costs by moving production to countries with lower wages and weaker environmental regulations.

• Film: The True Cost

  • Fast fashion (causes, impacts, externalities, etc.)
  • Rana Plaza
  • Consumptionism
  • Pepe
  • Ecological narcotics
  • Fair trade
  • Notes from class discussion

  Exam Format

• Part 1: Approximately 35 multiple-choice, true/false, and matching questions.

  • Transfer the answers to a Scantron form. Bring a pencil.

• Part 2: Four short answer questions (5 points each) and one essay question (15 points).

  Short Answer Questions

• Choose four out of six questions.

• Answers should be in full sentences, 1-2 paragraphs long (no bullet points).

• Indicate the number of the question at the beginning of each answer.

  Essay Question

• Choose one out of three questions.

• Answers should be in full sentences, 4-6 paragraphs long (no bullet points).

• Write the number of the question at the beginning of your answer.

  Important Notes

• Exam duration: 2.5 hours.

• Turn off phones and put them away.

• No washroom break during the exam.

• Define key terms and provide examples to illustrate concepts. Write in your own words.

• The discussion must relate to information/ideas discussed in the course, draw from a range of course materials.

• Clear communication is important.

• Evidence of cheating will result in a zero on the exam.

• Map Quiz 1 retake is available after the exam.