1 HUMAN GEOGRAPHY: NATURE & SCOPE

IMPORTANT TERMS:
1. Synthetic Nature of Human Geography: Since geography is integrative by
nature, the integration between humans and the factors of the physical environment
leads to the synthesis (production) of new features and phenomena. Human
geography is therefore the synthetic study of relationship between human societies
and earth’s surface.
2. Dynamic Nature of Human Geography: Human geography is the study of the
changing relationship between the unresting man and the unstable earth. Since both
are changing forever, human geography is also a field which is changing forever.
3. Concept of Conception in Human Geography: Conception resulting from a
synthetic knowledge of the physical laws governing our earth, and of the relations
between the living beings which inhabit it, leads to a new conception of the
interrelationships between earth and human beings.
4. Physical environment: The part of the human environment that includes purely
physical factors (eg. Natural: soil, climate, water, etc. and manmade: cities, houses,
roads, railroads, factories, etc) is known as the physical environment. It includes all
the natural resources that provide our basic needs and opportunities for social and
economic development.
5. Environmental Determinism: In a society which is not technologically advanced,
the environment is the determining factor.
6. Possibilism: Being advanced in technology makes a society move from a state of
necessity to a state of freedom. Possibilism is the theory that the environment sets
certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by social
conditions. People are not just the products of their environment or just the puppets
of the natural environment.
7. Neo-Determinism or Stop-and-Go Determinism: this is the point of balance
between the two extremes of determinism and possibilism. In the short term, people
might attempt whatever they wished with regard to their environment, but in the
long term, nature’s plan would ensure that the environment won the battle and
forced a compromise out its human occupants. Man is able to stop, slow down or
accelerate the rate of progress of a country’s regional development. But he should
not, if he is wise, depart from the directions as indicated by natural environment.
He is like the traffic controller in a large city who alters the rate, but not the
direction of traffic.
8. Welfare or humanistic school of thought: This is mainly concerned with the
different aspects such as housing, health and education. This is about social well-
being of the people.
 9. Radical school of thought: This puts emphasis on the basic cause of poverty,
deprivation and social inequality. Contemporary social problems were related to the
development of capitalism.
10. Behavioral school of thought: This lays emphasis on the lived experience
and also on the perception of space by social categories based on ethnicity, race,
religion, etc. Behavioral geography is an approach to human geography that
examines human behavior using various approaches. Eg: distance is a geographical
term, but it makes an impact on behavior. Just imagine if someone asks you to walk
up to Delhi…
11. Areal differentiation: The surface of the earth may be divided into regions,
which may be distinguished and categories using various spatial criteria.
12. Spatial differentiation: This is the concept that economic activity is not
evenly dispersed across the land. That is, goods, services, resources, production and
consumption are more concentrated at some locations and less concentrated at other
locations due to natural endowments and human activity.
13. Post-modernism: This is a theoretical approach to human geography. Post-
modernism does not believe in absolute truth, and believes that every person has
his own truth. Grand generalizations cannot be made about people.

Human geography is concerned with the political, economic, social, cultural and
demographic processes. Human geography is about the study of the earth as home of
humans. Its nature is interdisciplinary and integrative. It studies the inter-relationship
between physical environment and the socio-cultural environment created by human
beings through mutual interaction with each other. Human Geography deals with the
study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere,
hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere. The four historical traditions in geographical
research are spatial analysis of natural and human phenomena, area studies of places and
regions, studies of human-land relationships, and the Earth sciences. Geography has been
called the world discipline and the bridge between the human and the physical sciences.

Q. 1. Define Human Geography.

A. 1. Human Geography is a branch of geography which studies the relationship between
the physical/natural world and the human world, the spatial distribution of human
phenomena and how they come about. It also studies the social and economic differences
between different parts of the world.
Q. 2. What is studied in human geography?
A. 2. Human geography studies the interrelationship between physical environment and
socio-cultural environment created by humans by mutual interaction with each other. We
use a lot of resources provided to us by the physical environment. The physical
environment has been greatly modified by humans. And this has impacted human lives.
In human geography, we study how the physical environment affects human life.
Q. 3. Write in detail about the nature of human geography.
A. 3. The nature of human geography:
1. Naturalization of human beings, and humanization of nature.
Under this we study:
a. Environmental determinism,
b. Possibilism,
c. Neo-Determinism or Stop-and-Go Determinism
2. How human geography has changed over the period of time.
3. Stages of human geography, and the thrust in each stage.
4. Fields and sub-fields of human geography.
Explanation:
1. The meaning of naturalization of human beings, and humanization of nature: in the
primitive societies, the main factor affecting the life of people was whatever was
naturally available in the environment and the natural phenomena. Humans were
naturalized because they were one with nature. On the other hand, humans used the
technologies available to them to modify their environment to make it suitable for
themselves. This is called humanization of nature.
a. Environmental determinism: For a human being whose every aspect of life
is governed and dictated by nature, one can say that he is at the mercy of the
natural forces and natural resources. In other words, these natural forces and
resources determine his life. This is called environmental determinism.
b. Possibilism: This is the opposite of environmental determinism. In
possibilism, the humans get to break free from the control of nature. They
modify their environment and make it suitable for themselves. They use
modern technologies to do so .
c. Neo-Determinism or Stop-and-Go Determinism: This is a mid-way
approach to (a) and (b) given above. Here, humans are to observe the signs
and symptoms presented by the nature and environment, choose to either
become more inclined towards environmental determinism, or towards
possibilism, as the case may be, such that the environment is not damaged,
and at the same time the human beings are not too much disadvantaged.
Q. 4. What is the contribution of history to human geography? OR What are the
broad stages of human geography, and what are the main thrust-areas in each?
A. 4. The contributions of history to human geography are:
a) The early societies were scattered, with not much integration among them. They
were isolated. The early explorers and travelers visited these societies and brought
back knowledge about them.
b) Europe attempted explorations in the 15th century. This removed the myths and
mysteries about people and places.
 c) Early colonial period: The explorations and the resulting descriptions enabled the
gathering of information about people and places. The interests were about trade
and for the royals.
d) Later colonial period: Regional analysis of the information gathered in the previous
times led to elaborate descriptions of all the aspects of a region. The whole earth is
composed of individual areas. So the detailed knowledge of each area, when added
up, enabled a better understanding of the whole earth.
e) 1930s to 1950s: Areal differentiation - identifying the uniqueness of each region,
and understanding how and why it was different from others.
f) Late 1950s to late 1960s: Spatial differentiation – data collected about places,
people and natural phenomena was analyzed on computers. The main objective was
to identify mappable patterns for different human activities. This phase is also
called as the quantitative revolution.
g) 1970s: The approach was humanistic, radical and behavioral. After all, this being
human geography, this should have been more about human beings and not just
about data as in the previous period. In the 1970s, what was given importance was
human welfare (housing, food, healthcare, education, etc), basic issues of society
(poverty, deprivation, social inequality, etc.), and behavior about ethnicity, race and
religion, etc.
h) 1990s till present time: it is emphasized that one cannot make generalizations and
there cannot be one universal theory to explain places and people. The reason is
each place and person is different. Importance is given to understand each place
and person in their respective local context.
Q. 5. Name some sub-fields of human geography.
A. 5. Some sub-fields of human geography are:
a) Geography of social well-being,
b) Behavioral geography,
c) Cultural geography,
d) Military geography,
e) Agricultural geography,
f) Geography of tourism,
g) Geography of International Trade, etc.
Q. 7. How is human geography related to other social sciences?
A. 7. Given below is the relationship of human geography to some disciplines of social
sciences:
1. Social geography:
a. Behavioral Geography is related to Psychology.
b. Geography of Social Well-Being is related to Welfare Economics.
c. Geography of Leisure is related to Sociology.
d. Cultural Geography is related to Anthropology.
 e. Gender Geography is related to Sociology, Anthropology, and Women’s
Studies.
f. Historical Geography is related to History.
g. Medical Geography is related to Epidemiology.
2. Urban Geography is related to Urban Studies and Planning.
3. Political Geography is related to Political Science.
a. Electoral Geography is related to Psephology.
b. Military Geography is related to Military Science.
4. Population Geography is related to Demography.
5. Settlement Geography is related to Urban/Rural Planning.
6. Economic Geography is related to Economics.
a. Geography of Resources is related to Resource Economics.
b. Geography of Agriculture is related to Agricultural Sciences.
c. Geography of Industries is related to Industrial Economics.
d. Geography of Marketing is related to Business Studies, Economics and
Commerce.
e. Geography of Tourism is related to Tourism and Travel Management.
f. Geography of International Trade is related to International Trade.