GEG 100 ONLINE! Cultural Geography INSTRUCTOR'S NOTES

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NOTE: The chapter may contain pages from other chapters or be only partial. For the exact reading pages see the "ASSIGNMENTS - BEGIN HERE" link on Blackboard

• GEG 100 is named "Cultural Geography", whereas our textbook is titled "Human Geography . . . " They mean the same thing.
  The field of geography is divided into two broad fields (1) Physical Geography and (2) Human or Cultural Geography.
  
  
• p.1 "Human (or Cultural) geography is the social science that describes and explains where human activities take place."
  
  
• What is "Culture" ?
  

  The Spatial Perspective

  Geographers can study anything that has a significant spatial component. Geographers concentrate on the "where" and by doing this they may be able to gain a better understanding of what is being studied than if the "where" were ignored. This is the "Spatial Perspective" that is peculiar to the study of geography. This perspective is useful in a wide variety of fields and therefore you have a wide variety of sub-disciplines in the field of geography (like political geography, cultural geography, physical geography, etc.). Businesses use geography when they decide WHERE to locate a new plant. Real estate developers use geography when they decide WHERE to build a new housing development. You have used geography when you decided WHERE to look for a job, or WHERE to go on vacation, or WHERE to go to school. If the WHERE is important, then geographers can study it.

  History Analogy

  History and Geography are quite similar. When historians study a topic they focus on the WHEN. Hence you can have subjects like the: history of war, the history of sports, the history of comic books, etc. Geographers can study these same issues, and virtually anything else, but the geographer's perspective is SPATIAL, rather than TEMPORAL like the historians. Hence there can also be the geography of war, the geography of sports, and the geography of comic books. What geographers add to such topics is the spatial perspective.

• MAPS- Ways that maps manipulate and distort information:
  1. Choice of projection
  2. Simplification:what to put on and leave off the map
  3. Change of scale
  4. Level of aggregation
  5. Choice of type of map
• Spatial data and GIS
  • Primary vs. secondary data
  • Geographic information systems (GIS)
  • Spatially referenced data
  • Layering
  • Changing scale

  Background

  Students must keep in mind that this is a geography class and geographers study WHERE things are and WHY they are THERE. These activities concentrate on the WHERE question of geography. For many of the questions you have to look at a map and describe WHERE the map indicates most African Americans live. To answer such questions you must indicate PLACES. If the question asks for the "distribution" or the "map pattern" , or "spatial pattern" or even your "impression" or map "problems", you will have to discuss WHERE.

  Most, if not all questions refer to WHERE. Look at the maps and DESCRIBE WHERE (i.e. list places).