Human Geography

An Essential Introduction

Mark Boyle

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781119374695
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Human Geography
• Index: Social Sciences

Revised, Extended, and Extensively Updated Text Uses Historical Geographical and Thematic Approach to Provide Undergraduates with a Firm Foundation in Human Geography

Drawing on nearly three decades of instructional experience and a wealth of testing pedagogical innovations with students, Mark Boyle has revised and expanded this authoritative and comprehensive introduction to Human Geography. As with the First Edition, Boyle follows the premise that "history makes geography whilst geography makes history, " and that the key to studying the principal demographic, social, political, economic, cultural and environmental processes in any region in the world today is to look at how that region has been impacted by, and in turn has impacted, the story of the rise, reign, and decline of the West. Moreover he argues that Human Geog­raphy itself is best understood as both an intellectual endeavour and a historical, political, and institutional project.

Informed by recent developments in post-colonial scholarship, the book covers key concepts, seminal thinkers, and influential texts in the field. Although designed for the beginner student, Boyle does not shy away from ideas and debates often avoided in introductory texts, clearly communicating theory without condescension. In addition, he places human geography in its larger academic context, discussing the influences on the field from related subjects. Notable features in the Second Edition include:

• Extensive revision and updating of coverage of key ideas, developments, debates and case studies
• New chapter on uneven geographical development at different scales and development theory and practice
• Dedicated coverage of Covid-19s geographies
• New learning resources (figures, tables, plates, maps, Deep Dive boxes, etc.) throughout the text, plus learning objectives, essay questions, checklists summarizing key ideas, and guidance for further reading
• Updated and expanded companion website with MP4 and MP3 chapter-by-chapter lectures and PowerPoint slides for each chapter, new multiple-choice exam paper and additional essay-style exam questions, and a wide range of student tutorial exercises

Human Geography: An Essential Introduction, Second Edition is an excellent foundational text for undergraduate courses in human geography, globalization, Western civilization, historiographies of intellectual thought, the grand public problems confronting humanity in the twenty first century, and other wider social science courses.

Chapter 1
Introducing Human Geography

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Chapter Table of Contents

1. Chapter Learning Objectives
2. Introduction
3. What Is Human Geography?
4. One Planet, Many Cultures, Unconscionable Inequality
   1. The Origins of Our Unequal World: The Rise, Reign, and Faltering of the West
   2. Four Theories Explaining the Rise, Reign, and Faltering of the West
5. Conclusion
6. Checklist of Key Ideas
7. Chapter Essay Questions
8. References and Guidance for Further Reading
9. Website Support Material

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Chapter Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter you should be able to:

• Attain a heightened awareness of your geographical imagination and recognise the value of improving it through formal education.
• Provide a working definition of human geography, and identify the three central concerns of human geography.
• Appreciate the importance of the ascent of the West from the fifteenth century, its global dominance across a subsequent 500‐year period, and its recent crisis in confidence, in the making of the contemporary world.
• Identify and comment upon the merits of four overarching theories human geographers use to explain the rise, reign, and faltering of the West from the fifteenth century.

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Introduction

In the twenty‐first century, humanity will be forced to confront a number of questions of epic consequence.

How many people will exist on planet earth in the year 2100? Where will these people live? What challenges will be posed by an aging population? Will uneven geographical development persist? Will there always be a developing world and lagging and poorer city‐regions? Or will inequalities and the blight of world poverty finally be ended? Can the earth support continued population and economic growth? How serious is climate change, and what might its consequences be? How can societies make better usage of renewable energy resources? Can we build a low‐carbon future? Will the sun finally set on the West's half‐millennium dominance of global affairs? Will the United States or China or perhaps Russia or India or even Brazil or Indonesia or Nigeria rule the late twenty‐first century? Or will the world in the future be governed by supranational entities like the European Union instead of nation states? Why are cities across the world expanding so rapidly, and what are the implications of this rapid urbanization of the earth's surface? Are infectious diseases re‐emerging, and what can we do to remediate Covid‐19 and its aftershocks and build back better so we are more prepared for Covid‐20 and Covid‐21? How will we govern the sprawling megacities of the future? Why are people migrating in ever‐larger numbers, where are they moving from and to, and what might the consequences be for both sending and receiving countries? Why do cultures clash with one another, and how might intercultural understanding and dialogue be promoted? Why are natural hazards seemingly occurring with increasing frequency, and why do they tend to affect vulnerable people dwelling in poorer countries most? How can we build greater resilience to nature’s extremes?

If these questions exercise your mind too, then congratulations! You have made a good start already by choosing to study human geography. The aim of this book is to provide you with an essential introduction to human geography. The purpose of this chapter is to provide you with a concise introduction to this essential introduction.

The chapter begins by furnishing you with a working definition of human geography and an understanding of the discipline's three key concerns: society and space, place and the cultural landscape, and human–environment interactions. A distinctive feature of this book is the world historical perspective it employs as its overarching organizing framework and analytical approach – crudely summarized, our focus will be upon the role of the rise, reign, and faltering of Western societies in the making of the contemporary world. The key argument advanced is that variations across the earth's surface in cultures, polities, societies, and economies can be traced in no small way to the rise of the West from the fifteenth century; the West's subsequent dominance over a 500‐year period, expressed most visibly in its great empires; and the collapse of these empires from the mid‐twentieth century and progressive erosion of Western hegemony from the 1970s. This chapter will introduce you to this story and will explain why it is an essential point of departure for any introduction to human geography. It will also alert you to the existence of a number of ways of narrating it. How we tell the story of the West’s ascent, imperialism, and stumbling matters ‐ to our understanding of how the world got to be as it is today, the challenges it currently faces and the direction in which it is heading.

What Is Human Geography?

So What Is Human Geography?

Human geography is a branch of knowledge that seeks to venture descriptions of and explanations for the uneven distribution of human activity across the surface of the earth. Or, to phrase it slightly differently, human geography works to describe and explain variations from place to place in the ways in which human beings have inhabited the face of the earth. Or, more simply, human geography concerns itself with what is where, why, and with what consequence. Human geography is built around three key concerns: society and space (the spatial distribution of human activity, or why and how societies deposit certain spatial arrangements and patterns, and why and how in turn these arrangements and patterns both enable and constrain what societies are able to do and to become), place and the cultural landscape (the anointment by human beings of some locations as symbolically significant, emotionally loaded, and meaningful, and the inscription of human meaning onto the built environment through the imprint of the cultural landscape), and human–environment interactions (the two‐way relationships between people and the natural environment) (see Deep Dive Box 1.1).

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Deep Dive Box 1.1 Awaken Your Geographical Imagination! Around the World in Eighty Days (Or Even Eighty Hours?)

Let us begin as we mean to continue: with some homework! Go to your nearest library, then find and read a copy of Jules Verne's famous book Around the World in Eighty Days. Although initially serialized in the media as if a real travel diary, this fictional work was eventually published as a novel in 1873. It was written against the backdrop of nineteenth‐century British and French colonial and imperial expansion, aided and abetted by revolutionary changes in transportation technology.

Having accepted a wager of £20 000 made by a fellow member of the Reform Club (a “gentleman's club”) in Pall Mall in London that he could not travel around the world in eighty days, the book follows the travails of Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean‐Passepartout as they attempt to circumnavigate the earth's circumference in that time or less. Departing London by train on October 2nd, Fogg's mission was to return to the Reform Club by December 21st, transiting through Suez, Bombay, Calcutta, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, and Liverpool; crossing therein the Mediterranean, Red, South China, and East China Seas and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans by steamboat, and journeying across continents by rail and, it transpires, elephants.

Take stock of Verne's vivid depictions of Fogg's adventures and encounters in strange, faraway, foreign, and exotic lands.

Now indulge your imagination for a second, and try to visualize the sorts of people, places, and landscapes you might encounter were you to follow in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg today. Only chart your own itinerary. Allow yourself to wander off the beaten track, to take the roads less traveled. Picture yourself moving across and between the world's oceans and continents. What mode of transportation are you using? Phileas Fogg arrived back in London on time and collec...