1. Human Geography: Places and
Regions in Global Context, 5e
Chapter 1: Geography Matters
Paul L. Knox & Sallie A. Marston
PowerPoint Author: Keith M. Bell

2. Chapter Objectives
• The objectives of this chapter are to
illustrate:
– Why places matter
– How geography matters
– The basic tools required for understanding
geography

3. Overview
This chapter introduces the basic concepts of human geography as well as the
reasons for its study. The students should immediately realize that human
geography is not merely memorizing the names of state capitals or of other
landscape features. After reading this chapter, the students should have a clear
idea about what human geography is and what human geographers do.
The key concept in Chapter 1 is globalization. We live in an increasingly
interdependent world, in which events in one place can have important effects and
ramifications in other places. The students should be aware of just how
interconnected and interdependent their community is with other places around the
world. They should also be aware of what makes each place, including their own
community, unique and distinctive. Finally, they should realize that human
geography is the field of study that analyzes these relationships.

4. Chapter Outline
• Why Places Matter (p. 2)
– Places are socially constructed
– Places are interdependent
– Different geographic scales of analysis
– Places are dynamic
• Interdependence in a Globalized World (p. 9)
– A globalized world is interdependent
– Changes in the pace and nature of globalization
• Studying Human Geography (p. 21)
– Basic tools used in geography
– Five concepts of spatial analysis
– Principles of economic location
– Regions and regional analysis
– Developing a geographical imagination
• Conclusion (p. 37)

5. Geography Matters
• 1.1 Geography Matters—Making a Difference: The
Power of Geography (p. 6)
• What geographers do, and jobs and careers in
geography
• 1.2 Geography Matters—The Global Credit Crunch
(p. 10)
• The Financial Crisis of 2008 and the effects of global
economic interdependence
• 1.3 Window on the World—Worlds Apart (p. 14)
• Different lives and livelihoods in Switzerland and Ethiopia
compared

6. Geography Matters
Geography matters because it is
specific places that provide the settings
for people’s daily lives.
Places and regions are highly
interdependent, each playing
specialized roles in complex networks
of interaction and change.
Interdependence between geographic
scales are provided by the relationships
between the global and the local.
Human geography provides ways of
understanding places, regions, and
spatial relationships.
“Everything is related to everything
else, but near things are more related
than are distant things.”
Connectivity and interaction are
dependent on channels of
communications and transportation.

7. Why Places Matter: Geographic Literacy
The importance of geography (i.e., spatial science) is becoming more
widely recognized. Many more schools now require courses in geography
than just a decade ago. Employers are coming to realize the value of
employees with expertise in geographical analysis.

8. The Influence and Meaning of
Places
• Places are settings for social
interaction that, among other
things,
– structure the daily routines of
people’s economic and social
lives;
– provide both opportunities and
constraints in terms of people’s
long-term social well-being;
– provide a context in which
everyday, common sense
knowledge and experience are
gathered;
– provide a setting for processes of
socialization; and
– provide an arena for contesting
social norms.

9. Spatial Levels
• Levels or scales of spatial
organization represent a
tangible partitioning of
space.
– World regions
• Asia, Europe, or Latin America
– Supranational organizations
• NAFTA, European Union,
ASEAN, World Trade
Organization
– De Jure States
• Legally recognized political
entities
– Body and Self
• Physical appearance and
socially acceptable norms

10. Geographers at Work
• International Affairs
• Locations of Public Facilities
• Marketing and Location of
Industry
• Geography and the Law
• Disease Ecology
• Urban and Regional Planning
• Economic Development
– The global credit crunch left
the world economy facing the
prospect of recession.
• Security

11. Interdependence as a Two-Way Process
People develop patterns of living that are attuned to the opportunities and
constraints of local physical environment, as shown here in this
intensively farmed region in the Chang Jiang (Yangzi) delta, China.

12. Interdependence in a Globalizing World
• Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness of
different parts of the world through common processes of
economic, environmental, political, and cultural change.
• The Hyperglobalist View
– Open markets, free trade, and investment across the global markets
allow more people to share in the prosperity of the world
economy.
• The Skeptical View
– Contemporary economic integration is much less significant than it
was when the world was on the gold standard in the nineteenth
century.
• The Transformationalist View
– Globalization is a long-term historical process that is underlain by
crises and contradictions that are likely to shape it in all sorts of
unpredictable ways.

13. The Human “Footprint”
Notice that the “footprint” is largely absent in places that are
too wet, dry, cold, or hot for wide spread human habitation
(e.g., Antarctica, Sahara Desert, Amazonia, Siberia).

14. Window on the World
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Zug, Switzerland
The Sormolo Family of Ethiopia and the Rust Family of Switzerland live “worlds
apart.” One family ekes out a living on $280 a year, while the other thrives on
$68,000. What geographical factors played a role in this disparity?

15. Key Issues in a Globalizing World: Sustainability
Sustainability is about the interdependence of the economy, the
environment, and social well-being. It is defined as “development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.”

16. Diffusion of HIV
Where does the medical and geographical evidence point as the origin of
the HIV/AIDS pandemic?

17. The Geography of HIV/AIDS
What historical, geographical, and social factors contribute to
Sub-Saharan Africa being so stricken with HIV/AIDS?

18. Key Issues in a Globalizing World: Security
Floral tributes lie outside Edgware Road underground station in London,
England, after al-Qaeda bombers killed 49 people and injured 700 during
morning rush hour terrorist attacks that were targeted at London’s transport
links on July 7, 2005.

19. Geography in a Globalizing World
• Will globalization render geography obsolete?
– Yes? (Why?)
– No? (Why?)
• The new mobility of money, labor, products, and ideas
actually increases the significance of place:
– The more universal the diffusion of material culture and lifestyles,
the more valuable regional and ethnic identities become.
– The faster the information highway takes people into cyberspace,
the more they feel the need for a subjective setting—a specific
place or community—they can call their own.
– The greater the reach of transnational corporations, the more easily
they are able to respond to place-to-place variations.
– The greater the integration of transnational governments and
institutions, the more sensitive people have become to local
cleavages of race, ethnicity, and religion.

20. Studying Human Geography
• Physical geography deals with
Earth’s natural processes and its
outcomes.
• Human geography deals with
the spatial organization of
human activities, and with
people’s relationship with their
environments.
• Regional geography combines
elements of both physical and
human geography.
• Applied geography: fieldwork,
laboratory work, archival
searches, remote sensing, and
GIS (input, manipulation,
analysis, etc.)

21. Remotely Sensed Data: Aerial Photographs
Remotely sensed images can provide new ways of seeing the world, as
well as unique sources of data on all sorts of environmental conditions.
Such images can help explain problems and processes that would
otherwise require expensive surveys and detailed cartography.

22. Studying Human Geography
• Latitude/Longitude
• Site/Situation
• Distance
– Cognitive
– Friction
– Distance-decay function
• Spatial Interaction
– Complementarity
– Transferability
– Intervening opportunity
– Spatial diffusion
The spatial diffusion of many phenomena
tends to follow an S-curve of slow build-
up, rapid spread, and leveling off.

23. Spatial Analysis
Like distance, space can be measured in absolute, relative, and cognitive
terms. Topological space are the connections between, or connectivity of,
particular points in space.

24. Regionalization
• The geographer’s equivalent of
scientific classification is
regionalization, with the
individual places or areal units
being the objects of
classification.
– Logical division—
“classification from above”
– Grouping—“classification
from below”
– Formal regions
– Functional regions
• Donald Meinig’s core-
domain-sphere model of the
Mormon region
– Regionalism
– Sectionalism
– Irridentism

25. Ordinary Landscapes: Community Art
Community art can provide an important element in the creation of a
sense of place for members of local communities. It displays an
“ordinary landscape” (or vernacular landscape) in the Mission district in
San Francisco.

26. Symbolic Landscapes: Tuscany
Symbolic landscapes represent particular values or aspirations that the
builders and financiers of those landscapes want to impart to the larger public,
like the neoclassical architecture of the federal government buildings in
Washington, D.C., or the Risorgimento of the classical Tuscan landscape.

27. The Power of Place
Ireland England
The West of Ireland came to symbolize the whole of Ireland to Irish
nationalists in the early twentieth century, as opposed to the more bucolic
rural landscape ideal of England (its former colonial master).

28. Regional Analysis: A Sense of Place
Intersubjectivity, or the shared meanings that are derived from the lived
experience of everyday practice, is how people become familiar with one
another’s vocabulary, speech patterns, dress codes, gestures, and humor.
Routine encounters in Waldkirch, Germany develop the sense of place.

29. Developing a
Geographical
Imagination
It is useful to think of places and
regions as representing the
cumulative legacy of successive
periods of change.
This photograph of Milan, Italy,
is a very striking example, with
modern urban development
interlayered with surviving
fragments of Medieval,
Renaissance, and nineteenth-
century development.

30. Recognizing the
General and the Unique
Some places, like Hersbruck,
Germany, become distinctive
because they were almost
entirely bypassed by a period
of change. Notice the narrow
street and old world
architecture.
Changes could have come to
other towns and cities in the
form of the Industrial
Revolution or the construction
of a new highway or railroad.
Thus, the interconnectedness
of urban systems is key to
integration.

31. The Global Perspective
• Each place, each region, is largely
the product of forces that are both
local and global in origin.
• Each is ultimately linked to many
other places and regions through
these same forces.
• The individual character of places
and regions cannot be accounted
for by general processes alone.
Some local outcomes are the
product of unusual circumstances
or special local factors.

32. End of Chapter 1

33. Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes
• Ask the students to define the meaning of
“house” and “home.” How are these terms
different? Then note that human geography
studies how human beings have transformed
their Earthly “house” into a “home” or
“homeland.”
– “House” suggests a physical structure for which we
may or may not have any personal attachment,
while “home” suggests a place we know, originate
from, and feel some kind of personal attachment
towards.

34. • What is meant by the concept of
“globalization”? How is this process evident in
the local community? Which aspects of the
local community are universal (global), and
which are unique to it? Is there value to each
aspect?
– “Globalization” is the increasing interconnectedness
of different parts of the world through common
processes of economic, environmental, political,
and cultural change. Discuss the
interconnectedness of the local community with the
wider world and the positive and negative aspects
of this interconnectedness.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

35. • Ask the students what they ate and drank for
breakfast. Then ask them to state the likely
origins for these foods and beverages
(Ecuadorian bananas, Brazilian coffee, Florida
oranges, etc.). How do the local community
and the source regions for these products
depend on each other?
– The local community needs to import items that
cannot be produced locally, whereas source regions
depend on external communities for markets.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

36. • Have the students describe both the site and
the situation of the university campus. What is
the relationship between the site and the
situation?
– The site refers to the physical attributes of a place,
such as its terrain, soil, and vegetation. The
situation refers to the location of the place relative to
other places—for example, in the case of a
university campus, to other parts of the community
or to given streets or parks.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

37. • Have the students draw maps of the local
area. Then have them compare these maps
with each other (or make slides out of several
of them and then discuss them in class). How
do different students perceive their
environment? What aspects did all students
identify as important? How do these maps
reflect cognitive images?
– Cognitive images are made up from people’s
individual ideas and impressions of a location.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

38. • What is the main economic activity in the local area?
How does the local economy interact with other non-
local economies and regions? What regions does the
local area depend on for its exports and imports?
Discuss economic activity in the context of the
concepts of complementarity, transferability,
intervening opportunity, and spatial diffusion.
– Information on local economic activity can often be obtained
from the local Chamber of Commerce or other business
associations—also try Internet sources for information about
the local community. See the textbook for information about
the concepts of complementarity, transferability, intervening
opportunity, and spatial diffusion.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

39. • Show the students images depicting
various map projections. What are the
strengths and weaknesses of each
projection? Why are all of them still in
use today?
– See the appendix (p. 475) in the textbook for
information about different map projections
and their strengths and weaknesses.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

40. • Choose two American cities for which
illustrations or slides are readily available.
Choose places that are contrasting, yet still
American, such as Los Angeles/New York City,
or Williamsburg, VA/Santa Fe, NM. What
makes these places distinct? What do they
have in common? Why do these places look
the way they do?
– A good starting point for this discussion is the five
concepts of spatial analysis—location, distance,
space, accessibility, and spatial interaction. See
pages 22–30 in the textbook for elaboration of these
concepts.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

41. • Lake Baykal, also spelled Lake Baikal, is a global
environmental flashpoint. Environmental degradation
at Lake Baykal prompted the emergence of
environmental activism in Russia. The environmental
problems at Lake Baykal provide a good entry point for
a lecture on the global challenges of environmental
issues.
– For further information on Lake Baykal, consult (among
others) the following websites: http://www.irkutsk.org/baikal
and http://www.globalnature.org (for this link, choose English
as the language, then look under Living Lakes and then Lake
Members for Lake Baikal). You can use a discussion of Lake
Baykal to open a discussion of environmental problems in the
local area.
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes

42. • Discuss how globalization is changing the
nature of Mexico’s economic relationship with
the United States.
– For information, consult the following works: Clint
E. Smith, Inevitable Partnership: Understanding
Mexico–U.S. Relations (Boulder: Lynne Rienner,
2000) and James W. Wilkie and Clint E. Smith,
eds., Integrating Cities and Regions: North America
Faces Globalization (Los Angeles: UCLA Program
on Mexico, 1998).
Discussion Topics and Lecture
Themes