Themes in World Regional Geography

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Themes in World Regional Geography

• Geo100 - Fall 2003
• Julie Hwang
• Lecture 2

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Outlines

• Environmental Geography
• Population Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Political Geography
• Economic Geography

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Population and Settlement
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World Population

• 6 billion humans on Earth

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Population growth change in the world regions

• Rapid growth in the developing world
• Stabilized in developed countries
• Population growth/change is caused by
• natural growth (by birth offset by death)
• Migration (by in out-migration)

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Demographic indicators

• RNI (Rate of Natural Increase)
• Annual growth rate for a country
• (birth death) / total population
• Migration is not considered
• TFR (Total Fertility Rate)
• Average number of children borne by a
  statistically average woman

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Demographic indicators

• population under 15
• Indicates rapid population growth
• Need for nutrition, health care
• higher in less-developed countries
• population over 65
• Need for social welfare services
• higher in more-developed countries

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Demographic indicators

• Population pyramids

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Demographic Transition Model

• How population growth rates change over time?
• Phase1 Preindustrial
• high birth death rate
• Phase2 Transitional
• death rate ? (lt- onset of public health measure)
• Phase3 Transitional
• birth rate ? (lt- aware of advantages of smaller
  families)
• Phase4 Industrial
• low birth death rate

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Demographic Transition Model
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Migration Patterns

• Increase in international migration due to
  globalized economy
• Move from rural to urban environments due to
  urbanization
• What contributes to migration?
• Push factor civil strife, political refugee
• Pull factor better economic opportunity
• Informational networks

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World Urbanization

• Currently 46 of worlds population in cities

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Cities over 10 million

• Rapid growth in the developing world
• Slow growth in the developed world

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Conceptualizing the City

• Urban primacy
• Dominates economic, political, and cultural
  activities within the country
• Overurbanization
• urban population grows more quickly than support
  services such as housing, transportation, waste
  disposal, and water supply
• Squatter settlements
• illegal developments of makeshift housing on land
  neither owned nor rented by their inhabitants

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Example of squatter settlements
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Cultural Coherence and Diversity
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Culture

• Learned, and not innate, behavior
• Shared, and not individual, behavior
• Way of life
• Dynamic rather than static
• Process, not a condition

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Spectrum of cultural groups

• Folk culture
• shared by self-sufficient rural group
• Ethnic culture
• Common ancestry, race, religion, or language
• Popular culture
• Primarily urban-based, superficial relationships
  between people, weaker family structure
• World culture
• subset of popular culture, indeterminate
  nationality, mixed cultural value

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Membership of cultural groups

• Common to have association with multiple cultural
  groups
• eg. Amish young people interacts with popular
  culture while talking their primary identity from
  their folk culture

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Cultural Collision

• Cultural imperialism
• Promotes one cultural system at the expense of
  another (eg. European colonialism)
• Cultural nationalism
• As the reaction against cultural imperialism
  defends cultural system against diluting forces
  promotes national and local cultural values
• Cultural syncretism or hybridization
• Blending of forces to form a new, synergistic
  form of culture

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World Languages
Based on language families
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World Religions

• Universalizing religions
• Appeal to all peoples regardless of location or
  culture (eg. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism)
• Ethnic religions
• Identified closely with a specific ethnic,
  tribal, or national group (eg. Judaism, Hinduism)

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World Religions

• Christianity 2 billion Europe, Africa, Latin
  America, and North America
• Islam 1.2 billion Arabian Peninsula, Some
  Southeast Asia
• Buddhism 300-900 million Asia Rather mixed

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Geopolitical framework
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Geopolitics

• Describes the link between geography and
  political activity

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State Nation

• State
• political entity with territorial boundaries
• Nation
• a large group of people who share cultural
  elements such as language, religion, tradition,
  cultural identity

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Nation-state congruence

• Nation-state
• Relatively homogenous cultural group with its own
  political territory
• Ideal political model relatively rare (eg.
  Japan)
• Multinational state
• A country that contains different cultural and
  ethnic groups
• More common than nation-state (eg. US)
• Nation without a state
• Nations lacking recognized, self-governed
  territory (eg. Palestinians, Kurds, Basques,
  Catalans)

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Example of nation without a state
Not all nations or large cultural groups control
their own political territories or states
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Centrifugal Centripetal forces

• Centrifugal forces
• Forces that weaken or divide a state
• eg. Quebec, Basque
• Centripetal forces
• Forces that unite or reinforce a state
• eg. Germany in the 1990s

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Example of Centrifugal Centripetal forces
Cold War
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Boundaries

• Ethnographic boundaries
• Political boundaries that follow cultural traits
  such as language or religion (eg. European
  boundaries after WWI)
• Geometric boundaries
• Drawn without regard for physical or cultural
  features (eg. Africa in a colonial era)

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Example of ethnographic boundaries
WWI
After WWI, empires were largely replaced by
nation-states.
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Example of geometric boundaries

• The lack of congruence between ethnic boundaries
  and political borders often results in civil war

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Colonialism Decolonialization

• Colonialism
• Formal establishment of rule over a foreign
  population
• Decolonialization
• Process of a colonys gaining(regaining) control
  over its territory and establishing a independent
  government
• They are fundamental forces in the shaping of the
  modern world system

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The Colonial World, 1914
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Consequences of Colonialism

• In general, disadvantaged because of a
  much-reduced resource base, but varies from place
  to place
• Continuing exchange of human networks
• Economic ties between certain imperial powers and
  their former colonies are still found

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International Supranational organizations

• International organizations
• links together two or more states for some
  specific purpose, but does not affect the
  sovereignty of each state (eg. UN, OPEC, NATO,
  ASEAN, NAFTA)
• Supranational organizations
• organization of nation-states linked together
  with a common goal, but which requires each to
  give up some sovereignty (eg. EU, Arab League)

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Economic/Social development
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Core-periphery model

• As a way of understanding increasing uneven
  development between more/less-developed countries
• Developed core achieved its wealth primarily by
  exploiting the periphery, either through more
  recent economic imperialism
• Dependence may be structure through the relations
  of exchange, production between core and periphery

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World Economic Core Areas

• Economic activity is clustered around these core
  areas while outlying areas are underdeveloped

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Indicators of economic development

• GNI
• the value of all final goods and services
  produced within a country plus net income from
  abroad
• Measures the size of economy
• GNI per capita (at market exchange rate)
• GNI divided by countrys population
• GNI per capita at purchasing power parity
• GNI adjusted for differences in prices and
  exchange rates
• Living standards with the local currency

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• GNI per capita at MER
• What a nation can buy outside the nation
• GNI per capital at PPP
• What a nation can buy inside the nation

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Indicators of social development

• Life expectancy
• average length of life expected at birth for a
  hypothetical male or female, as based on national
  death statistics
• Under age 5 mortality
• measure of the number of children who die per
  1,000 persons

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Indicators of social development

• Adult illiteracy rates
• percentage of a societys males and females who
  cannot read
• Female labor force participation
• percentage of a nations labor force that is
  female

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• Give insights into the social conditions such as
  health care, sanitation, homocide rate,
  prevalence of disease

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Sustainable development

• Concept on limits to development
• Development that meets the needs of the present
  without compromising the ability of future
  generations
• Intergenerational equity