Introduction to Human Geography

Citation

Dorrell, D., & Henderson, J. P. (Eds.). (2018). Introduction to Human Geography. University of North Georgia Press. Free official edition: https://web.ung.edu/media/university-press/human-geography_v2.pdf

Chapter Summary

The book is an openly licensed textbook of about 275 pages in thirteen chapters by six contributors, produced with an Affordable Learning Georgia grant. Every chapter has learning outcomes, an outline, richly illustrated text, a key-terms list, works consulted and endnotes; most end with a summary or conclusion. There is no preface and there are no exercises.

Chapter 1: Introduction to Geography

Joseph Henderson defines geography by its spatial perspective ("what is where, and why?") and separates human from physical geography. The chapter then covers the basic toolkit: projections and scale, latitude and longitude, site and situation (New Orleans), formal, functional and vernacular regions, remote sensing and GIS, types of diffusion, and environmental determinism versus possibilism.

Chapter 2: Population and Health

David Dorrell starts from the Greek idea of the ecumene, sets Malthus against Boserup and asks whether neo-Malthusian assumptions hold. A section on scale introduces the ecological fallacy using maps of Hispanic population aggregated to county, state and nation. Population dynamics, the four-stage demographic transition, projections and medical geography (the epidemiological transition, re-emerging diseases) follow.

Chapter 3: Migration

Todd Lindley begins with the human dispersal out of Africa, defines types of migrants and draws on Ravenstein's laws. After regional sections on Europe, North America and Asia, he links migration to the demographic transition through push and pull factors, discusses brain drain and brain gain, and notes that most people never leave their country of birth.

Chapter 4: Folk Culture and Popular Culture

Culture is defined as learned behaviour and divided into mentifacts, artifacts and sociofacts; culture hearths and the cultural landscape follow, with a case study of Jamaican dancehall. The chapter contrasts folk with popular culture ("culture that is bought"), explains commodification and global culture, and ends with resistance to globalization.

Chapter 5: The Geography of Language

Arnulfo G. Ramírez treats language as mental capacity, communication and cultural practice, then covers the diffusion and classification of languages (families, branches, dialects, pidgins, lingua francas) and U.S. language diversity, ending with place names, advertising and social media.

Chapter 6: Religion

Religion is examined as part of identity and landscape (scale, theocracy, sacred spaces). The chapter distinguishes ethnic from universalizing religions, describes the major faiths, traces the diffusion of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam with Chapter 1's diffusion types, and ends with religious conflict.

Chapter 7: Ethnicity and Race

Dorrell separates ethnicity (learned) from race (defined by inherited characteristics), while stressing that both are embedded in society, and uses the U.S. Census categories and Hispanic ethnicity to show how the two interact. Most of the chapter concerns the United States (racism, segregation and enclaves, environmental justice, foodways, the distributions of the main groups); a final section looks at nation-states and models of ethnicity elsewhere.

Chapter 8: Political Geography

Henderson presents the state and nation-state, state shapes, and cooperation through the UN, NATO, the EU and NAFTA (with a section on terrorism), then boundary types and disputes (the Chamizal Treaty on the Rio Grande), gerrymandering and the Electoral College. There is no closing summary.

Chapter 9: Development and Wealth

Lindley defines more and less developed countries, describes global inequality and compares the international trade model (the Asian Tigers) with the protectionist model. Rostow's stages are presented with their critics, followed by the Human Development Index, Bhutan's happiness-based approach and microfinance.

Chapter 10: Agriculture and Food

Georgeta Connor traces agriculture from hunting and gathering to domestication and contrasts subsistence with commercial systems. The second half covers agribusiness and von Thünen's model, the Green Revolution and biotechnology, food security and sustainable agriculture.

Chapter 11: Industry

Dorrell and Lindley outline the history of industrialization and use Marx's tendency of the rate of profit to fall to explain the pressure to cut costs. The core is industrial location (materials, labour, Weber's transport-cost model, containerization, incentives, risk, markets), followed by transnational corporations, global trade and deindustrialization.

Chapter 12: Human Settlements

Connor moves from clustered and dispersed rural settlements to the history of urbanization, from the first urban hearths to industrial cities and city-size change since 1950. North American cities (with the concentric zone, sector and multiple nuclei models) are compared with European ones, and sprawl is weighed against smart growth.

Chapter 13: Environment and Resources

Presented as the capstone of the book, the final chapter by Henderson covers nonrenewable and renewable energy sources, air and water pollution and solid waste, and the difference between conservation and preservation of natural resources. Like Chapter 8, it ends without a summary.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–3: Introduction to Geography; Population and Health; Migration

• Site and situation: the physical characteristics of a place versus its position relative to other places.
• Ecological fallacy: the error of applying statistics from one level of aggregation to another, such as to individuals.
• Demographic transition: the model of stages in which birth and death rates fall as societies industrialize.

Chapters 4–7: Culture; Language; Religion; Ethnicity and Race

• Folk and popular culture: culture rooted in small, homogeneous groups and particular places, versus mass culture driven by commerce.
• Commodification: turning a cultural attribute into a mass-market product.
• Ethnic and universalizing religions: religions tied to one people versus those that seek converts.
• Environmental justice: the principle that all groups should have access to decent places to live, set against the siting of unwanted facilities near less powerful groups.

Chapters 8–9: Political Geography; Development and Wealth

• State and nation-state: a sovereign territorial unit, and a state whose population largely shares one ethnicity.
• Gerrymandering: drawing electoral districts to favour the party in power.
• Rostow's stages of growth: a modernization model in which countries pass through fixed stages to mass consumption.

Chapters 10–13: Agriculture; Industry; Settlements; Environment

• Von Thünen model: rings of land use around a market, determined by transport costs.
• Least-cost location: Weber's idea that industry locates where total costs, especially transport, are lowest.
• Urban structure models: the concentric zone, sector and multiple nuclei models of land use in cities.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Free, openly licensed and complete. The whole book is available as a PDF from the publisher under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, so it can serve as the main text of a course at no cost and can be adapted by instructors.
• Covers the standard syllabus. The thirteen chapters follow the topic sequence of most introductory human geography courses, from concepts and population through culture and politics to economy, settlement and environment, and they cross-refer: Chapter 1's diffusion types return in the religion chapter, Chapter 2's demographic transition in the migration chapter.
• Consistent learning apparatus. Each chapter's learning outcomes, outline and key-terms list make it easy to see what must be mastered, and the glossaries are substantial (the agriculture chapter alone defines about thirty terms).
• Map-rich and example-led. Choropleth maps, population pyramids and diagrams appear throughout, and authors use concrete cases such as New Orleans for site and situation, dancehall for cultural diffusion and the Chamizal Treaty for river boundaries.

Limitations

• Strong U.S. focus. Census categories, U.S. ethnic distributions, gerrymandering, the 2016 presidential election and examples from Georgia colleges dominate several chapters, especially Chapters 7 and 8.
• Dated in places. Data are mostly from 2015–2017, the European Union is described with 28 members, and NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership are discussed as live questions; later events such as the replacement of NAFTA are not covered.
• Uneven editing. Chapters vary in length and depth, two chapters lack a summary, and there are slips such as the claim that the UN was formed as the League of Nations after World War II and a cross-reference in Chapter 8 to a non-existent section. The works-consulted lists for the agriculture and settlement chapters lean heavily on Wikipedia entries.
• No practice material and little theory. There are no review questions or exercises, and the discipline's theoretical debates (critical, feminist or postcolonial approaches) receive little attention beyond brief references such as world-systems theory in Chapter 9.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is the main survey textbook in the course list and the natural first reading for a semester-long introduction: it supplies the vocabulary and the standard topics, one chapter per week. Daley and Klinke's Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction makes a good companion. Much shorter and organised around spaces such as the border and the workplace, it argues a critical, decolonial view that this textbook does not attempt; reading its border chapter after Chapter 8 here shows two very different treatments of the same material. Berglee's World Regional Geography covers the world region by region for students who want more place-based detail.

The other course books go deeper into ideas. Aitken and Valentine's Approaches to Human Geography explains the philosophies and theories behind research in the field, which this textbook largely leaves aside, and The Dictionary of Human Geography is a reference for following up any key term in more depth. Both work better after this book than before it.

How to Use This Book

The book assumes no previous study of geography and is pitched at an introductory college course; it suits a one-semester course or independent study.

• Start with Chapter 1. Its concepts (scale, region, site and situation, diffusion, determinism and possibilism) recur throughout the book.
• Read Chapters 2 and 3 together. The migration chapter relies on the demographic transition explained in Chapter 2.
• Treat Chapters 4–7 as one unit on cultural geography, and Chapters 9–11 as one on economic geography; Chapters 8, 12 and 13 can be moved to suit a syllabus.
• Use the apparatus actively. Turn the learning outcomes into questions before reading and test yourself on the key-terms list afterwards; since there are no exercises, write a short answer to each outcome.
• Update the numbers. Replace the 2015–2017 data with current figures from the UN, World Bank or a national statistics office, and check the political chapter against current alliances and trade agreements.

Edition and Sources

This guide is based on the full text of the official free PDF published by the University of North Georgia Press (https://web.ung.edu/media/university-press/human-geography_v2.pdf; copyright 2018 University System of Georgia, CC BY 4.0; file last modified 2020). The contents, the learning outcomes, outlines, section headings, introductions, summaries or conclusions and key-terms lists of all thirteen chapters were read, together with substantial parts of the main text of each chapter.