World Regional Geography: People, Places, and Globalization

Citation

Berglee, R., Hidalgo Monroy Wohlgemuth, N., Yaukey, P., Johnson, T., Liner, R., Lodhi, M. A., Stepp, J., & Hawkes, J. (2024). World Regional Geography: People, Places, and Globalization. LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network. Free official edition: https://louis.pressbooks.pub/worldregionalgeography/

Chapter Summary

This open textbook is the LOUIS adaptation of Royal Berglee's World Regional Geography, first published by Flatworld Knowledge in 2012 and republished with minimal changes by the University of Minnesota Libraries in 2016. The LOUIS edition was produced for dual-enrollment courses, in which high school students take college courses, and its attribution statement lists the changes: reordered and expanded material in several chapters (significantly in Chapters 8, 9 and 11), new graphics, embedded videos and interactive H5P activities, and accessibility work. It has thirteen chapters: an introduction to geographic concepts and twelve chapters on world "realms". Each section opens with learning objectives and closes with key takeaways, discussion and study questions, map-location exercises and activities, and every chapter ends with a bulleted chapter summary.

Chapter 1: Introduction to the World

The conceptual foundation for the rest of the book, in four sections. Geography Basics covers the discipline, latitude and longitude, time zones, types of region and the division of the world into realms, suggesting a familiar state (Kentucky in the text) as a yardstick for comparison. The Environment and Human Activity introduces climate types A to E and H, biomes, deforestation, climate change and plate tectonics. Population and Culture covers the demographic transition, population pyramids, migration, race and ethnicity, languages and religions. Globalization and Development sets out the ideas used in every later chapter: two waves of globalization (European colonialism and the post–Cold War era), opportunity and advantage, rural-to-urban shift, the core–periphery spatial relationship, methods of gaining national income, an index of economic development, and a short introduction to political geography.

Chapter 2: Europe

Physical setting and resources; the historical patterns behind modern Europe (colonialism, the agrarian and industrial revolutions, nation-states, devolution, centrifugal and centripetal forces); a long regional tour of Western Europe, including each part of the British Isles; and Eastern Europe's transition after the Cold War, with the breakup of Yugoslavia as the main example of devolution.

Chapter 3: Russia

Russia's physical regions and climate, the expansion of the czarist empire and its environmental problems; the Soviet Union's central planning, the Cold War and the post-Soviet transition; and the regions of Russia from the European core through Siberia and the Far East to the Caucasus and Transcaucasia.

Chapter 4: North America

The United States and Canada as one realm: early development, westward settlement, industrialization and globalization; the "melting pot", the Hispanic and African American populations and the geography of religion; Canada's provinces, physical geography, British–French divide and economy; and a tour of regions from the Northeastern Core to the North.

Chapter 5: Middle America

The rimland and mainland division created by colonialism, the Maya and Aztec, and the Spanish colonial city; Mexico's core and periphery, social order, NAFTA and maquiladoras, and drug trafficking; Central America's altitudinal zonation and political geography; the Caribbean's colonial history, tourism, offshore banking and music; and a separate section on tropical cyclones.

Chapter 6: South America

A long introduction covers physical geography, the Iberian division of the continent, the Guianas, cultural regions, urbanization, inequality and globalization. Regional sections follow on Venezuela and Colombia, the Andean states, Brazil's core and Amazon periphery, and the Southern Cone.

Chapter 7: Subsaharan Africa

Physical geography, the slave trade, colonialism and independence; the realm's economy, languages, religion, ethnic conflict, HIV and AIDS, and tourism; then West, Central, East and Southern Africa, largely country by country, with attention to civil wars and conflict minerals.

Chapter 8: North Africa and Southwest Asia

The longest regional chapter: cultural hearths, water and the Arab Spring; Muhammad, the spread of Islam and Islamic law; then North Africa and the African Transition Zone, Israel and its neighbours, the Arabian Peninsula and oil, Iraq, Turkey and Iran, and Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Chapter 9: South Asia

Physical geography, the monsoon, colonialism and population; the peripheral states and Kashmir; an expanded section on Pakistan and Bangladesh; India's people, economy and regional contrasts; and the religions of the realm, from Hinduism and caste to Sikhism.

Chapter 10: East Asia

China's physical geography, river basins and the Three Gorges Dam, dynasties and the emergence of modern China; the periphery of Hong Kong and Shenzhen, Taiwan, Tibet and Mongolia; and Japan and the two Koreas.

Chapters 11–13: Southeast Asia; Australia and New Zealand; The Pacific and Antarctica

Southeast Asia is treated as a mainland region and an insular region, with colonialism and the overseas Chinese as unifying themes. Australia and New Zealand are presented through isolation, colonialism, core–periphery patterns, Aboriginal and Maori issues and economic change. The final chapter covers Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia, and Antarctica with the Antarctic Treaty and ozone depletion.

Key Concepts

Chapter 1: Introduction to the World

• Realm and region: realms are large world divisions containing several regions; regions are formal, functional or vernacular.
• Climate types: the A–E and H classification used throughout to link climate to human habitation.
• Demographic transition: the stages through which birth and death rates change as societies urbanize and industrialize.
• Core–periphery spatial relationship: the organization of economic activity around wealthy urban cores and resource-supplying peripheries, at local to global scales.
• Rural-to-urban shift: migration driven by the pull of opportunity and advantage in cities.

Chapters 2–7: Europe to Subsaharan Africa

• Centrifugal and centripetal forces: forces that divide or unify a state.
• Devolution and supranationalism: the breakup of states (Yugoslavia) and the pooling of sovereignty (the European Union).
• Rimland and mainland: Middle America's plantation-based coasts and islands versus its hacienda-based interior.
• Altitudinal zonation: the vertical zones of climate and land use in tropical highlands.
• Informal sector: economic activity outside government regulation, prominent in Subsaharan Africa.

Chapters 8–13: North Africa to Antarctica

• Cultural hearth: a place where innovations such as agriculture and religion originated and spread.
• African Transition Zone: the belt where the Sahara meets tropical Africa and Islam meets Christianity.
• Monsoon: the seasonal wind reversal that governs South Asian agriculture and flooding.
• Special economic zones: China's coastal zones for attracting foreign investment.
• Isolation geography: the effect of distance on Australia's and the Pacific's ecology, settlement and economy.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Free and openly licensed. The whole book is available online and as EPUB and PDF under a CC BY-NC-SA licence, with a companion course for Moodle and Canvas, so instructors can adopt, adapt and reorder it.
• A consistent analytical toolkit. Chapter 1 sets out a small number of concepts (realms, climate types, core–periphery, rural-to-urban shift, opportunity and advantage, the stages of development) and every regional chapter applies them, which helps students compare regions systematically.
• Built for beginners. Learning objectives, key takeaways, map-location exercises, study questions and interactive activities in every section suit first-year and dual-enrollment students; the authors' biographies show long experience of teaching introductory geography.

Limitations

• Largely a 2012 text. The 2016 edition states that it did not significantly alter or update the original 2012 text, and the LOUIS revision updated unevenly. Some passages mention events of 2022, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but many figures and frameworks remain from around 2010: NAFTA is still the North American trade agreement, Australia's population is given for 2010, and Japan is discussed as having recently lost second place among economies to China.
• Factual slips. The East Asia summary dates Hong Kong's return to China to 1998 rather than 1997, and the North Africa and Southwest Asia summary dates the partition of Palestine to 1945 rather than the 1947 UN plan. Chapter 1 attributes the demographic transition model to Warren Thompson but then presents Rostow's stages of economic growth as "Rostow's DTM", blending two different models.
• Descriptive and US-centred. The regional chapters are mostly descriptive surveys, and comparisons are often framed from an American standpoint (Kentucky as a yardstick, US interests in Middle America). Contemporary debates in human geography receive little attention.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the introductory human geography list this is the regional survey. Dorrell and Henderson's Introduction to Human Geography is a free topic-by-topic introduction to population, culture, politics, economics and urbanization; the two complement each other, one systematic and the other regional, and many students will use Dorrell and Henderson's chapters for concepts that Berglee's Chapter 1 treats briefly. Daley and Klinke's Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction is a short, current entry point that brings in the questions of inequality, justice and climate change that this textbook covers mostly descriptively.

The two remaining books belong to a later stage. Aitken and Valentine's Approaches to Human Geography explains the philosophies and theories behind human geography, and The Dictionary of Human Geography is a reference work of signed entries on concepts and debates. Both are useful for checking or deepening a concept met in this book, such as core–periphery or the demographic transition.

How to Use This Book

The book is written for introductory college courses and dual-enrollment students and needs no prior geography. It suits a one-semester world regional geography course or a general education course in global studies.

A practical plan:

• Start with Chapter 1 in full, since every later chapter relies on its concepts and climate types. Section 1.4, on globalization and development, is the most important.
• Choose realms to match the course. A semester rarely covers all twelve; the introductory section of each realm chapter ("Introducing the Realm") gives a solid overview, and the regional and country sections can be sampled.
• Use the end matter actively. Do the map-location exercises with a blank map, answer the discussion and study questions, and read each chapter summary before an exam.
• Check the facts that date. Compare population, economic and political figures with a current atlas or statistical database, and read the development material alongside a human geography text that presents the demographic transition and Rostow's model separately.

Edition and Sources

This guide is based on the official free online edition published by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network on Pressbooks (copyright 2024, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), at https://louis.pressbooks.pub/worldregionalgeography/. It draws on the preface, author biographies and attribution statement; the full table of contents; the learning objectives, section headings, key takeaways and study questions of every section in all thirteen chapters; every end-of-chapter summary; and Chapter 1, sections 1.1 and 1.4, in large part.