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What is Geography?���Why world regional geography?���

What is globalization?

May 10, 2010 GEOG 1982

Geography The study of Earth as created by natural forces and as modified by

human action (p.2)

•  Physical Geography Deals with Earth’s natural processes and their outcomes (climate,

weather patterns, landforms, soil formation, and plant and animal ecology)

E.g. geomorphology, climatology, biogeography •  Human Geography

Deals with the spatial organization of human activity and with people’s relationships with their environments (and each other)

E.g. cultural geography, economic geography, political geography, urban geography

•  Technical Geography E.g. cartography, remote sensing analysis, geographic

information systems (GIS), geographic information science

video: learning country facts… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F_tT-q8EF0

Space, Place, and Scale

•  location, spatial relationships and connections between the environment and people

•  Space - general, objective location or area •  Place - includes both objective and subjective

aspects of a location •  Scale - the proportion that relates the

dimensions of a map to the dimensions of the area it represents

Space: container or relation?

“Container” filled up by people and things General, objective location or area

Relational: The built environment and real-world things

shape the way we live our lives

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Place

Includes both objective and subjective aspects of a location

Generalization about a place Who and what belongs where?

Scale

The proportion that relates the dimensions of a map to the dimensions of the area it represents

Scale

Global Regional National State Local Household Body

Map Projections

•  Projections - different ways of representing the spherical surface of the earth on flat paper

•  Each projection has some distortion •  Examples of projections:

– Mercator projection – Goode’s interrupted homolosine projection – Robinson projection

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Why world regional geography? •  World regions are large-scale geographic divisions

based on continental and physiographic settings that contain major clusters of humankind with broadly similar cultural attributes (p.1)

•  The contribution of regional geography is to reveal how natural, social, economic, political, and cultural phenomena come together to produce distinctive geographic settings (p.2)

•  Regions are in process, as process (p.3) •  All regions & borders are political projects (arbitrary) •  Contestation and internal variation

What is globalization? Definition: the increasing interconnectedness of different

parts of the world through common processes of economic, environmental, political, and cultural change. (p.7)

History: •  Long histories of interregional trade •  Interregional linkages increased during European

colonialism Regional geography is about understanding the variety &

distinctiveness of places & regions, without losing sight of the interdependence among them (p.2)

What is new about this globalization?

•  Changes in global economic structures and flows •  With developments in communication technology

and transportation, there have been increased interregional flows of: –  information –  goods – money –  people

Global flows of information Global flows of goods Global production networks of transnational corporations (TNCs) http://www.patagonia.com/web/us/footprint/index.jsp

Commodity chains are networks of labor & production processes that originate in the extraction or production of raw materials & end with the delivery & consumption of a finished commodity (p.8)

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Global flows of money Global flows of people

Globalization & Inequality •  Global flows of information, goods, money

and people are uneven

WTO & Anti-globalization •  The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an

international organization designed to manage the rules of trade (& enforce free trade agreements)

•  November 30, 1999 – WTO held its Ministerial Trade Conference in Seattle, Washington

•  40,000-100,000 activists (students, labor unions, religious groups, anarchists) tried to shut the trade meetings down to protest free trade & globalization

•  Many people consider this a watershed moment of the ‘anti-globalization’ movement

•  WTO Seattle 1999

Globalization & Culture •  Culture – a shared set of meanings that are

lived through the symbolic & material practices of everyday life (p.11)

•  Single global culture? McDonaldization?

•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Echi6oMYEOM&NR=1

Globalization & Culture •  Single global culture OR increased exchange of

products, symbols, myths, events, & traditions leading to a common knowledge but not necessarily common reaction or response (p.11)

•  Cultural flows take place in all directions

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Things to remember (study) Sub-disciplines of geography Definitions of space, place, scale Strengths & weaknesses of 3 map projections What is world regional geography? In what ways are regions political projects? Definition & examples of globalization Definition of culture, relationship between

culture and globalization READING FOR TOMORROW: Chapter 1 (1-5, 7-9, 29-52); Chapter 2 (56-76, 79-82, 84-93, skim 94-105)