Geography Matters

Geography LiteracyLack of Systematic Knowledge of Place

beyond tourism The influence of Place on Trends

The Influence and Meaning of Place

• Provides a setting for our daily lives• Setting for knowing who we are, how we

should think and behave, life on earth• Life in a small industrial area vs. big city• Cultural impacts, trade, communications• Population and Migration• Globalization, the environment and world

views

Our daily lives

Settings for Culture

Cultural Symbols

Cultural Symbols

Interdependence

Interdependence and Diversity

Interdependence and Globalization

Globalization

• The increasing interconnectedness of different parts of the world through common processes of economic, environmental, political and cultural change.

• The world economy is nothing new: we’ve been trading with other cultures for centuries.

• Telecommunications and technology in the roll of factors for change: Internet anyone?

Perspectives on Globalization and Interdependence

• One shared political and economic space• Hyperglobalist View• Skeptical View• Transformationalist View

Hyperglobalist View

• Open markets and free trade allow more people to share in prosperity.

• Interdependence creates shared interests• Neoliberal policies – minimalist role for the

state, free markets– The end of Nation-States– Denationalization of economies– Borderless future with one Global Governance

Skeptical View

• Today’s globalization is nothing new• Nation-state is not in decline– Needed to regulate international economic

activity – Regionalization and Globalization as contradictary

tendencies• Regional blocks: Europe, North America, Japan

Transformationalist View

• Globalization is historically unprecedented• Globalization is a transformative force– Change in societies– Change in economies– Change in governments– Unpredictable outcomes and unintended

consequences as countries and regions are increasingly interdependent

– Increased disparities in wealth: elites, embattled, and marginalized.

Key Issues in Globalizing the World

Environmental Issues

Sustainability

Health IssuesThe movement of disease throughout the world - HIV

Security Issues

Geography in a Globalizing World

• The more universal the diffusion of material culture and lifestyle, the more valuable regional and ethnic identities become.

Geography in a Globalizing World

• The faster the internet takes people, the more they feel the need for their own community

Geography in a Globalizing World

• The greater the reach of corporations, the more easily they are able to respond to place to place variations in labor markets and consumer markets and the more radically the economic geography has to be reorganized

Geography in a Globalizing World

• The greater the integration of transnational governments and institutions, the more sensitive people have become to local cleavages of race, ethnicity and religion.

Studying World RegionalGeography

• Physical Geography• Human Geography

Spatial Analysis: Longitude and Latitude

Distance

Accessibility and Topological SpaceConnectivity

Migration

• The Push Factor – What make people decide to leave?

• The Pull Factor – What draws them to a new place?

Spatial Interaction

• Intervening opportunity– Determining the volume and pattern of

movements and flows. • Spatial diffusion

Patterns of Spatial Diffusion

Regionalization

Landscape

Ordinary Landscapes

Symbolic Landscapes

Sense of Place

Sense of Place

Developing a Geographical Imagination

• Think of places and regions as representing the cumulative legacy of successive periods of change.

Recognizing the General and the Unique

• General – general effects of spatial outcomes• Unique – general effects of a particular

changes always involve some degree of modification as they are played out in different environments, giving rise to unique outcomes.