Geographic Questions:

-How the environment shapes (and is shaped by) people

-How it is perceived and understood by people

Different cultural identities and status categories influence the ways in which people experience and understand their environments, as well as how they are shaped by - and are able to shape - them.

Behavioral Geography

-environmental perception and knowledge

-attitude and behaior towards the environment

Acquisition of environmental knowledge

-direct and indirect experience

-factors influencing knowledge acquisition

Personal level:

-race, gender, age, education, personality, past-experience

Broad level:

-cultural, economic, political, biophysical

Landscape is a complex repository of society or a comprehensive product of human action

-different meanings/things for different people

Landscape classification

-to better understand the meaning of landscape

-based on the elements within landscape

derelict landscapes - landscapes that have experienced abandonment, misuse, disinvestment, or vandalism

*meaning of landscape is subjective

Humanistic approach:

-places the individual, especialy individual values, meaning systems, intentions and sonscious acts - at the centre of analysis

Landscape as text

-the idea that landscapes can be read and written by groups and by individuals

-layers of meaning embodied in one place

-landscapes produce and communicate meanings: values, beliefs, and practices

Aesthetic: culturally determined standard of beauty and good taste

Aesthetics of Landscape reflects our attitude to nature which is "culturally constructed"

-its change is indicative to the prevailing tastes of people who create it at a time

Humans have innate sense of territoriality (the persistent attachement of individuals to a specific location or territory)

Ethnologist view:

-humans have genetic traits for territory

-territory provides a source of physical safety/security, stimulation, and physical expression of identity

Proxemics

-territoriatlity as a product of culturally established meanings

-proxemics is  the study of "social and cultural meanings that people give to personal space"

-public space: 12-25 ft

-social space: 4-12 ft

-personal space: 1.5-4 ft

-intimate space: within 1.5

Territoriality and Place Making

-a product of forces rooted in social relations and cultural systems

-territoriality as a means for the regulation of social interaction, the regulation for access to people and resources, and the provision of a focus and symbol of group membership and identity

Territory facilitates:

-classifying people/resources

-communicating where the territorial boundary is

-enforcing a particular set of rules and conditions

Sense of Place

-due to territoriality, people and place are bonded

-feelings are evoked among people in a place

-experiences and memories associated with the place

-the symbolism attached to the place

=creation of a senes of place

Forming of Cognitive Images

two mental processes:

-people filter information from their environments through neurophysiological processes

-people draw on personality and culture to produce cognitive images of their environment, pictures, or representations of the world that can be called to mind through the imagination

-wrote "the image of the city"

-5 elements to the mental map:

-People's cognitive images tend to both simplify and distort real-world environments

paths- channels in which people travel

edges- perceived boundaries (walls, shorelines)

districts- relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or character

nodes- focal points, intersections or loci

landmarks- readily identifiable objects for reference points

-cognitive images are compiled, in part, through behavioural patterns

-environments are "learned" through experience

-meanwhile, cognitive images, once generated, influence behaviour

-places are reinterpreted, re-imagined, designed, packaged and marketed

-commodification of sense of place

-branding

Places can be products! (competition, destinations)

modernism - a forward-looking view of the world that emphasizes reason, scientific rationality, creativity, novelty, and progress

postmodernism- a view of the world that emphasizes an openness to a range of perspectives in social inquiry, artistic expression, and political empowerment

*Niagra Falls case study*

-whose space is it to market?

-what images are being sold?

-do occupants/residents approve?

-Landscapes are embedded with meaning, which can be interpreted differently by different people and groups

-in order to interpret and read our environment, however, we must need to understand the language in which it is written

-we must learn how to recognize the signs and symbols that go into the making of landscape

SHOPPING MALL (as coded space)

-the practice of writing and reading signs is known as semiotics

-malls are "palaces of consumption" designed to send signals to the consumer about style, taste, and self-image

-pseudoplace -illusory image

-encourages shopping... illusion of something else

Codes of Meaning

inclusionary- we consume to conform

exclusionary- private property

-spaces of placelessness

-tricks of mall design

political geography- A subfield of teh discipline of geography, political geography examines complex relationships b/w politics and geography (both human and physical)

geopolitics - state's power to control space or teritory and shape the foreign policy of individual states and international political relations

-Friedrich Ratzel's (1844-1904): A German Geography

-A theory of state's growth and development influenced by the work of Charles Darwin

Laws of State Growth

-territory of the state grows with the expansion of the population having the same culture

-a state grows by absorbing smaller units

-frontier is the political organ of the state that reflects the strength and growth of the state; hence non-permanent

-as states grow, they need to absorb politically valuable territory

-states grow as they become more highly developd civilizations

**In the model, states are like biological organisms

-legacy..... geopolitics stems from the interactions of power and territory

territory

-the delimited area over twhich a state exercises control and that is recognized by other states

-boundaries are inclusionary; and can be exclusionary

-regulate and control a specific set of people and resources

-once established, they reinforce spatial differentiation (ie. control flow of immigrants)

-boundaries have different degree of permeability

-informatl to extremely formal and recognized by international laws

-boundaries my be formed by natural barriers or straight lines

state

-most important concept in political geography

-independent political unit with recognized boundaries

frontier

-politico-geographical area lying beyond the state into which expansion could take place

-transition zone

nation

-a group of people often sharing common elements of culture

-religion, language, history, political identity

-need not to reside within a common geographic area (jewish nation)

Nation-State

-ideal form consisting of a homogeneous group of people governed by their own state

sovereignty

-referring to exercise of state power over people and territory, recognized by other states and codified by international law

-is a recent idea, primarily after "enlightenment", an 18thCE European movement that sought to replace ideas of authority or explanation drawn from God with those that individual humans could establish their own reason

-nation-state as a sovereign unit occurs when power is decouple from the ruler and vested in the people

-space (state) and people (nation) are linked

-want to make nation overlap with state!!

**Cultural, economic, political and regional factors relating to unity or disintegration of a nation-state

-centrifugal forces (pull apart)

-centripetal forces (bind together)

End of Nation-State?

-a true sense of nation-state never existed by important as a model for state formation

-way of dominating the world system by the core

-debate on validity of a restricted citizenship that the nation-state model promotes and idea of state sovereignty

-A time and space contingent concept

-rights of a citizen vary in space and change in time

-civil rights: righs to property, personal liberty, and full and equal justice before the law

-social citizenship and welfare state: health care, pension, UI...

-hollowing out of the welfare state

-rising costs of providing social rights of citizens

-spatial aspect/denial of citizenship

universalism

-the modern state is established to provide people with universal values and rights

-but universal rights (human rights) means that it is no longer possible for a country to do what it likes to its citizens

limited state sovereignty; globalization argument

-international institutions - World Band, WTO, IMF

-international regulation

difference in practices

-human rights defined and practiced differently in different places

-local autonomy

-emergence of transitional communities

Modes of Geopolitics

-extension of power by one group over another

-two ways to ahieve:

1)imperialism... the extension of state authority over the political and economic lives of other territories

2)colonialism: formal establishment of an maintenance of rule by a sovereignty power over a foreign population through establishment of settlements

Heartland theory - highlighted importance of geography in the world political and economicstability and conflict

World Island: eurasia and africa... breadbasket.. protected by its extent

periphery:

-americas, the british isles, oceana

-dependent on maritime commerce

-vulnerable due to dispersion

-the heartland lay at the centre of the world island stretching from the Volga to the Yangtze and from the Himalayas to the Arctic

The Geographical Pivot ofHistory, 1904

Hypothesis:

-who rules eastern Europe and commands the Heartland, who rules the Heartland commands the World Island, and thus commands the world

**strategic values of space!!!

-BUT, long range missiles and the rise of air power marked the end of the Heartland model

Political Geography

Politics of Geography

-distribution of people and objects in space impacts on politics in a significant way

-geography shapes politics (ie. regionalism)

-politics occus at all levels of human experiences

Geography of Politics

-tactics and operations of states shape geography

-changing international, national, regional, and local politics affect geographic distribution of people and territories

POLITICS OF GEOGRAPHY

Self Determination

-the right of a group with distinctive politico-territorial identity to determine its own destiny, at least in part, through the control of its own territory

Regionalism

-a feeling of collective identity based on a population's politico-territorial identification within a state or across state boundaries

-creation of new political parties

-involving ethnic groups whose aims include autonomy from an interventionist state and development of their own political power (Basque in Spain and France; Tibet in China, Quebec in Canada)