I used to think geography was only about looking at maps, knowing what the capital of Slovakia is, and identifying the flag of Zimbabwe. Then, when I took a human geography class in high school, geography also meant concepts like migration and the demographic transition model. But now, after my first year of doing a geography major at university, I’m finding out that geography is all of these things and so much more.
As one of the major topics I write about on this website, with articles like An Icy, Apocalyptic Story: Svalbard and The Largest Organism on the Planet, I figured I should give an introduction as to what geography is.
What is Geography?
The National Geographic Society defines geography as “the study of places and the relationships between people and their environments”. Essentially, how the physical world interacts with society and vice versa. One of the important ideas that we often forget is that despite our self-induced removal from nature, we are still a part of the natural world. Regardless of the amount of concrete we may put up, nature will continue to interact with us and we will continue to interact with nature. Therefore, we have to study the world in the same way.
Climate change is one of the most obvious and pressing examples of this concept of interactions between society and the natural world. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in August 2021, “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred”. We have influenced the physical spheres of the world in a terrible way. On the other hand, climate change is also influencing human populations. Forced migration of people affected by climate events and processes, like flooding and sea-level rise, will put stress on less-developed countries and their infrastructure. It’s within this intersection of the physical and human world that the study of geography lies.
We are often told there is a difference between physical and human geography. The former is concerned with the spatial arrangement of landscapes and the latter is concerned with human populations and migration. This may be true to some extent, but the two fields do not have to be antagonistic. Instead, it merely just makes it easier to administrate and teach to subdivide geography into two separate areas, but it can’t be fully separated.
As a result, geography is the synthesis of many different fields. In 1935, geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor went so far as to suggest all fields of study are an aspect of geography. History would be political geography, geology would be topography, economics would be economic geography, and so on. While not exactly right, it gives an idea as to how some of the underpinning concepts of geography were developed.
A Brief History
Antiquity
In the second century BCE, the Ancient Greek mathematician Eratosthenes is credited for inventing geography. Due to Eratosthenes’ interest in mapping and understand how the known world and people are arranged around him, the greek translation for γεωγραφία (geography) is “geo-writing”. This general definition holds true for centuries during the gradually expanding exploration of Earth until the mid-19th century.
Establishment of Discipline
Then, in the second half of the 19th century, the discipline of geography became more established because of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. More well-known today for his philosophical theories, Kant was also a geography teacher for 50 years. He believed empirical knowledge of the world and society through geography could base all of philosophical thought. Through this, humans could have better, moral lives. However, there were limitations in Kant’s version of geography in it being only a static description of the Earth that does not change over time. The problem is the world is a constantly changing, dynamic system.
Regional Geography
In the early 20th century, the concept of regional geography began to take hold. Basically, the study of geography was broken into different regions such as Asian geography of South American geography. This was largely descriptive, not allowing for predictions to be made for future events, and was limited in scale since the Earth acts in a global system.
Environmental Determinism vs. Possibilism
The shift towards regional geography also gave rise to the concepts of environmental determinism and possibilism. Environmental determinism is the idea that culture and physiological traits of a society are determined by the enviornment. While a seemingly valid outlook, this concept has historically been used to academically justify racism, colonialism, and eurocentrism. But, a revised version of environmental determinism was popularised in the last couple decades by Jared Diamond in the book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, that sought to rebuke the theory’s history of racism.
Environmental possibilism was the response. Instead, possibilism is the idea that humans have the ability to exercise our own will, but within the constraints of our environment. This theory is much more based in societies’ ability to grow in their own way without inherently suggesting superiority of one group of people over another.
Geography Today
Today we live in the proposed epoch of the Anthropocene, which is the period of the Earth’s history dominated by the activity of us: humans. Traces of plastic have been found in almost every corner of the earth and we are changing the climate beyond what should be natural. We are pervasive. With this, the study of geography has had a renewed emphasis on human’s involvement in the environment as a component of it, rather than separate from it. It also has seen a rise in the popularity of global policy-based solutions to tackle environmental problems.
Why Does Geography Matter?
Now more than ever, geography is at the crux of the world’s problems. With climate change being a multi-dimensional problem, analysing it through a geographic lens can bring holistic solutions to the table. Geography can also help us predict the future trajectory of our climate and our place in the environment. Beyond climate change, geography has an incredibly broad range of topics within it. Odds are, if you start looking, there’s probably something that will pique your curiosity.
By the way, if you were playing along at the beginning, the capital of Slovakia is Bratislava and the flag of Zimbabwe looks like this: 🇿🇼 .