Human Geography: Nature and Scope

What human geography studies, how people and nature act on each other (determinism, possibilism, neo-determinism), the approaches over time, and its fields.

Key ideas

Human geography studies the relationship between people and their physical environment, and how human activities are spread over the earth.
With little technology, people adapted to what nature dictated (environmental determinism, “naturalised humans”).
As technology grew, people used nature’s opportunities to create possibilities, leaving a cultural landscape of farms, ports and cities (possibilism, “humanised nature”).
Griffith Taylor’s neo-determinism, or stop and go determinism, is a middle path: develop when nature permits, stop where it sets limits, like traffic lights.
Approaches changed over time: exploration and description, regional analysis, areal differentiation, spatial organisation (the quantitative revolution), humanistic and behavioural schools, and post-modernism.
Each field links to a sister discipline, so human geography is closely tied to the other social sciences.

Remember

Definitions	Ratzel: synthesis of societies and the earth’s surface; Ellen C. Semple: the ever-changing relationship
Approaches in order	exploration (early colonial) → regional analysis → areal differentiation (1930s) → quantitative revolution (late 1950s–60s) → humanistic and behavioural (1970s) → post-modernism (1990s)
Field and sister discipline	behavioural – psychology; population – demography; medical – epidemiology; cultural – anthropology; historical – history
Warmer by heating	inside temperature − outside temperature, e.g. 23 − (−18) = 41 °C
Time saved	days × 24 × 60 = minutes; times faster = old time ÷ new time

Watch out

Mixing up possibilism (people create possibilities) and determinism (nature controls people).
Linking neo-determinism to Ratzel instead of Griffith Taylor.
Subtracting a negative temperature wrongly: 23 − (−18) is 41, not 5.

Worked example

Suppose a letter once took 8 days to arrive and a message now takes 15 minutes by internet. How many minutes are 8 days, and how many times faster is the message?

Working: 8 × 24 × 60 = 11,520; ÷ 15

Answer: 11,520 minutes; 768 times faster