Introduction

As I write this, we’re presently looking at a shockingly high number of major world issues — the Russian Invasion of Ukraine; Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip; climate change; reverberating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; sectarianism and fanaticism in multiple governments around the world; and poverty and inequality in many places. All of it — let me say that again, all of it — can be better understood by geography. And because these things can be understood by geography, then maybe geography can help begin correcting some of the many issues out there. Maybe, just maybe, if everyone had a little more understanding of what is actually going on, there wouldn’t be so much of this craziness going on.

As my biographical information on the cover says, I am a geographic educator. My career is devoted to teaching others about geography. Human geography is, by far and away, my favorite subject to teach. All of the issues I listed at the beginning of this introduction can be contextualized by human geography to help make sense of them. Sometimes, it feels like you can see into the inner workings of a problem to make those problems just a little less daunting.

What I especially love about this subject is its ability to connect with anything and anyone. In my experience, people love learning about new things and places. It’s one reason travel logs are so plentiful; you can learn about the world from someone else’s point of view from the safety of your own couch. Human geography, however, empowers you to write your own story. Your story can be a geographic story that’s not just about collecting superlatives. Geographic exploration is about much more than checking things off so you can post pictures on social media. Your story will have a deeper meaning. You will also connect what you find to the collective of what others have seen and done. That’s one of the great things about learning: You learn things you never even thought you would, and then you can contribute to the world’s body of knowledge so that others can learn from you. Sometimes, we don’t know what we don’t know until we know!

We’re constantly being cued about how and what to think. Only by learning for yourself can you really truly figure things out. For example, about a month into living in China, a couple of us took a trip to Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing’s governmental center. While being a couple of goofy-looking tourists amidst the throngs of people celebrating China’s National Day, a man who wasn’t Chinese came up to us and asked if we were Americans. My friend is Canadian, so he quickly corrected the man, saying we were from the US, Canada, and Malaysia. To which he replied, “I’m Iranian; I don’t want to kill you!” Once we stopped laughing, we talked about how our respective governments and media cue us to dislike and mistrust one another. I genuinely enjoyed talking to Hamid, the engineering student from Iran.

And that connects to one of my overarching goals for this book: to start building your own perspectives of the world. And human geography gives you the context and framework to do just that.

About This book

Human Geography is a collection of subdisciplines dealing with the location and distribution of human systems worldwide. I usually sum it up as: “Why people live where they live, and how do they live?” though that is a vast oversimplification of the subject. As a discipline, we generally divide the subject between population, migration, urbanization, agriculture, industry, development, culture, and political organization. That is a lot to fit into one book. We will refer to these as the main subdisciplines of human geography.

When most people think of geography, they generally assume it is about memorizing place names and locations or making maps. Those things are part of this subject but only minimally. Nowhere in this book will you find a quiz to test your knowledge. It is important, but the field of human geography reaches much deeper than memorizing place names and locations. Instead, we seek to understand how those subdisciplines are present, distributed, and compared from one location to the next.

This book is arranged thematically, not chronologically or regionally. Many geography classes are set up regionally, where the teacher goes region by region and talks about the different geographic, physical, and human features before talking about the superlatives and moving on. While that is an interesting way to learn what there is to see and do worldwide, you can find deeper meaning by learning it thematically. In this book, I’ll introduce a concept, then give you an example, and invite you to come up with an example of your own where you can apply it. I’m hoping you’ll think about the content and try to apply it to better understand the world around you. Then, through the examples, you’ll be able to see how where you’re living is connected to other parts of the world.

I tried to connect my personal experiences (like meeting Hamid) to explain how it is possible to connect with the materials personally. This does not mean you have to travel all the way to Beijing. You could just visit a part of town you’ve never been to or even drive home by taking a different way to see what you can see. I’m selfishly hoping this book will inspire you to explore more wherever you are!

How This Book Is Organized

Human geography is a multi-dimensional field of study comprising multiple areas of interest and concern. As one of the social sciences, human geography seeks to better understand how people are living in different parts of the world. With so many applications for human geography, it is possible to find connections to any area of interest. This book will begin demystifying the field of geography by describing how geographers study the world in the following areas.

Part 1: Introduction to Human Geography

Part 1 will look at the history of the field of geography in general and the study of human geography specifically. The chapters in this part will look at historical and philosophical developments in the field and how they’ve directed the study of the human world from a spatial perspective. There will also be a discussion of some of the overarching ideas, known as the Five Themes of Geography, that help guide our study of the world.

Part 2: The Geography of Human Habitation

By looking at the geographic phenomenon of population, human migration, and clustering of populations in urban areas, we can understand some trends in human populations. Where are they living? Why are they living there? How has their living there been affected by the physical characteristics of the land? We’ll answer these questions in the chapters in this part.

Part 3: The Spatial Organization of Human Systems

How humans distinguish themselves from one another can be done by creating intricate cultures and rigid political divisions. These are both topics that human geographers are interested in because they can be measured over space and time to come up with a clear picture of what makes groups of people unique and how they divide themselves from one group to the next. The chapters in this part look at the principles and examples of cultural and political geography.

Part 4: The Spatial Organization of Human Economic Systems

The structure of economies and how people provide for themselves is of great interest to economic geographers. They can do this by examining the relationship between humans and the cultivation or utilization of the land to provide wealth. This can come either in the form of food production by different agricultural systems or the mining and collection of resources to produce goods in industrial systems. These are large contributing factors that help better understand the levels of development and how humans interact with the land. Part 4 explains agricultural, industrial, Land Use, and Developmental geographies.

Part 5: The Part of Fives

The final part of this book, The Part of Tens, breaks down how you could use your knowledge of human geography in the job world and apply what you’ve learned in this book to the real world.

Foolish Assumptions

Going into this book, I assume you are not a dummy but just want to learn more about the topic. Human Geography is not a required subject in most of the world. Subjectively, I think it’s a terrible shame that human geography is not required learning everywhere since it’s so helpful. So, I’m going to assume you’ve never taken a human geography course before and are learning this stuff for the first time. However, the thing about a lot of this content is that you probably are already familiar with a lot of it; you just didn’t know there were terms and concepts connected to it. You might be reading this book to help you with a class or because of your general interest. Either way, I wrote the book to be accessible to all, no matter how old you are.

I’m also going to assume you have an Internet device nearby. There is only so much I can explain in a book this size, so I’ll sometimes recommend looking up content to expand your understanding beyond what you read here. Almost all the topics I discuss can be much more complicated than what I have the space to cover in this book. Some topics can get complex to the point that people have devoted entire academic careers to...