CBSE Class 12 Geography

What human geography studies

Human geography studies the relationship between human societies and the earth's surface. It looks at how people are distributed, how they use and change their surroundings, and how places differ from each other because of what people do there. Physical geography studies the natural environment (landforms, climate, water, soils and vegetation), and human geography studies the people who live in it and the cultural environment they build on top of it.

Geographers have defined it in several ways, and the definitions show how the subject changed.

• Friedrich Ratzel, who founded modern human geography, described it as the synthesis of the study of societies and the earth's surface. He stressed that the environment shapes people.
• Ellen Churchill Semple described it as the study of the changing relationship between the unresting man and the unstable earth. She saw both sides of the relationship as changing.
• Paul Vidal de la Blache described it as a conception resulting from a more synthetic knowledge of the earth's physical laws and of the relations between the living beings that inhabit it. His emphasis was that nature offers people a range of choices.

All three place people and environment in one relationship, and what changed over time was which of the two was thought to count for more.

Nature of human geography

Human geography is an integrating discipline. It draws on physical geography for the setting in which people live, and on the social sciences (economics, sociology, history, anthropology, political science) for the study of what people do. Its main concern is the interrelationship of physical and human elements, and it studies that relationship in space (where things are and why they are there) and in time (how patterns have changed).

Two ideas describe the relationship in its two directions.

Naturalisation of humans

In the earliest stages of human history, people lived in close touch with nature. They adapted to it and depended on it for food, shelter and tools. Their technology was simple, so they were strongly affected by the forces of nature. This is called the naturalisation of humans: people accepted and obeyed nature, and some worshipped it as the source of everything they needed. Hunter-gatherers in forests, whose way of life follows the seasons and the movement of animals and plants, are an example.

Humanisation of nature

As societies developed technology, they became less dependent on the direct gifts of nature. They learned to turn natural materials into resources, to farm, to build and to move goods over long distances. This is the humanisation of nature: people use their knowledge and tools to modify the environment, creating cultural landscapes of fields, towns, roads, canals and mines on the physical base of nature. The more advanced the technology, the greater the change that people can make. The levels are not separate, since a society with advanced technology still works inside the limits that the environment sets, and has to count the cost of the changes it makes.

Approaches to the study of human geography

Regional and systematic geography

Two approaches go back to the early German geographers. Alexander von Humboldt's work is the basis of the systematic approach, and Carl Ritter's of the regional approach.

In systematic geography a single aspect of human life, such as population, agriculture, industry or transport, is studied across the whole world, and its pattern and the processes behind it are explained. A study of the world pattern of population density is an example.

In regional geography a region of the earth is chosen, and everything in it, physical and human, is studied together and compared with other regions. A study of the Ganga plain, or of the Mediterranean region, is an example.

These two approaches are sometimes called the dualisms of geography. The two pairs are physical against human geography, and systematic against regional geography. They are complementary and not opposed: the systematic approach gives the principles, and the regional approach shows how they work out in a particular area.

Environmental determinism and possibilism

Two ideas tried to explain the relationship between people and nature.

Environmental determinism holds that human activities are controlled by the environment, especially by climate. It was the main view in the late nineteenth century and was associated with Ratzel, Semple and Ellsworth Huntington. In the earliest societies the idea fits quite well: people in cold lands, hot deserts or dense forests lived as the environment allowed.

Possibilism developed in reaction. Vidal de la Blache and the historian Lucien Febvre argued that the environment sets limits, but that people choose among the possibilities it offers. Nature provides opportunities and the use that people make of them depends on their culture, technology and needs. A sloping hill can be left as forest, terraced for rice or tea, or mined, depending on who lives there. The environment does not decide which.

Neo-determinism

Neo-determinism, put forward by Griffith Taylor, tried to find a middle path between the two. It is also called stop and go determinism. Its picture is that of a traffic signal: people can move forward and use the environment, but they must stop when the environment says so, and they must keep to the laws of nature. A society can exploit the environment and prosper, but only within what the environment can sustain.

Schools of thought in human geography

Human geography changed its concerns and methods in distinct stages.

The humanistic school gives a central place to human awareness, perception and creativity. The radical school used Marxist ideas to explain poverty, deprivation and social inequality as the results of capitalism. The behavioural school gave attention to how people see and experience places, and to the social and cultural influences on those perceptions.

Fields and sub-fields of human geography

Human geography is divided into fields according to the aspect of human life studied, and each field overlaps with a social science.

Within economic geography, the resource, agricultural, industrial and tourism branches study how resources are found and used, and how food, manufactured goods and services are produced and exchanged. Within social geography, behavioural geography studies how people perceive places, and medical geography studies the distribution and spread of disease and access to health care.