Flows Regions, and Networks
Geography to describe the earth A Geographer tries to describe why the earth is the way that it is A geographer also explains the earths surface, different parts of the world etc. All study earths surface, how its become what it is etc. Geography is a broad discipline: physical (physical aspects of earths surface), human (human systems ex. Political, economic, social), human-environment (combines both physical and human)
Conceptually organizing the world Anaximander a Greek Philosopher is credited with creating one of the first maps of the world Broke world into 3 continents: Europe, Libya and Asia Continents are basic building blocks of world geography Similar to Anaximanders map as it is broken into continents Dividing world into continents is arbitrary Ex. International Olympic committee only sees the world into 5 continents rather than 7 Continents don't objectively exist they only do because they are made by us, imagined, created Land exists independently but actual map is created by people Promote spatial stereotypes obscure more than illuminate Continents try to simplify things but obscure things so much that diversity is lost Rigid and static understanding of continents Map of the world is static, but how did the world get this way Great complexity of world is lost with continents
1st, 2nd and 3rd world map Emerged from the cold war political divisions 1st world capitalist 2nd world communist 3rd world non-alliance countries Terms have lost political meaning, have become economical 1st world rich 3rd world poor It can be useful but is problematic Ethnocentric as it is saying that some countries are considered better than others Homogenizes huge areas Erases important differences within countries
North South Map
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north industrialized, developed south non-industrialized, under-developed development in regards to countries economys homogenizes areas huge No sense of change, very static Geographically doesn't make sense Useful but proves problematic
"The West" The East (the rest) Implies the West is a place of reason and progress while the East is the opposite Implications that the West can be considered better or superior
Regions Can help simplify the world that is better than the other models More complex Breaks up Asia into number of regions Breaks up Africa More accurate but not perfect Still suggests container model of the world Static Shows how the world is but not how it got to the way it is No indications of connections of regions
Flows, Pathways and Networks Offer a different way of imagining the world Focuses on movement and change Allows us to see how the movement of different things helped create the world into what it is today Ex. African slave trade Movement created regions into what they are today
Lessons Flows vs. Regions
Globalization Intensification of flows Ex. International telephone traffic, networks of information
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Textbook def. - "the increasing interconnectedness of people and places through the converging processes of economic, political and cultural change." Globalization is an uneven process Expressed unevenly in a spatial way Effects different parts of the world in different ways About connection and disconnection
Where does this leave our study of regions? Regions are a way of describing the world Making sense of that phenomena Regions are actively made, imagined, created They are there because we say they are there Shaped by power relations Regions are not containers Regions have to be thought of as leaky because there is flow from region to region an within a region Fuzzy boundaries
Things to know What is geography How we conceptually organize the world and problems with the different models Importance of flows, networks, pathways and globalization Our approach to regions