JANVI HATHIRAMANI

AP HUMAN GEO
2015-16
CHAPTER 1 PEOPLE ,PLACES , AND CULTURES NOTES
Human Geography focuses on how people make places, how we
organize space and society, how we interact with each other in
places and across space, and how we make sense of others and
ourselves in our locality, region, and world
Physical Geography is the study of physical phenomena on Earth
Advances in communication and transportation technologies
are making places and people more interconnected. Even with
culture encouraging us all to be the same, we still have a
collage of religions, languages, and ethnicities. The world is
full of diverse places and people.
Globalization is a set of processes that are increasing interactions,
deepening relationships, and heightening interdependence
without regard to country borders
The main concern about the outcome of globalization is that
there won't be individual cultures. Everything is going to turn
into a big blob of the same. Global is seen as a blanket
smothering the world and its diversity; local is seen as a
continuation of the traditional despite the blanket of
globalization. Globalization is a set of outcomes that are
unevenly distributed and differently manifested across the
world.
Why and how we do things come together in certain places to
produce particular outcomes? So what? Why does it matter that
things are different across space? What role does a place play in
its region and in the world, and what does it mean for the
people?
Spatial Arrangement- is how places and phenomena are laid out,
organized, and arranged on Earth, and how they appear on the
landscape.
Spatial Distribution- is the physical location of geographic
phenomena across space.
An epidemic is a regional outbreak of a disease, while a pandemic
is a worldwide outbreak of a disease

The Five Themes of Geography

Location- highlights how the geographical position of people
and things on the Earth's surface affects what happens and why.
Human-Environment- the study of the reciprocal relationship
between humans and environments
Region- an area on Earth's surface marked by a degree of
formal, functional, or perceptual homogeneity of some
phenomenon
Place- unique areas on the Earth's surface
Movement-the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the
surface of the planet.
Landscape-the material character of a place, the complex of
natural features, human structures, and other tangible objects
that give a place a particular form
Cultural Landscape-the visible imprint of human activity on the
landscape
Cartography-the art and science of making maps
Mental maps are the images or maps of places that we have in our
heads
The purpose of creating a map is to simplify the world
Geographers use GIS to compare a variety of spatial data by
combining layers of spatial data in a computerized
environment, creating maps in which patterns and processes
are superimposed. Geographers use the GIS to analyze data- in
the process of creating new insights into geographic patterns
and relationships.
The Scale is used to mean the territorial extent of something .
The scale tells us what level of detail we can expect to see and
see different patterns at different scales.
A formal region has both visible uniformity and cultural traits
Functional region- is the product of interactions, and of
movement.
-spatial system-its boundaries are defined by the limits of that
system
-the people within the region function together politically,
socially, or economically

Perceptual regions-are intellectual constructs designed to help us

understand the nature and distribution of phenomena in human
geography.
Culture- the lifestyles of people and their values and beliefs.
Culture trait- a single attribute of a culture
Culture complex- is when more than one culture exhibits a
particular culture trait , but each will have their own discrete
combination of traits (they will not have all of the same traits)
Culture hearth- is an area where cultural traits develop and from
which the cultural traits diffuse
Culture diffusion- the spread of an idea or innovation from its
hearth (source area) to other places
Culture barrier- certain ideas, practices or innovations that are
acceptable and known in one culture but are not known or
accepted in another
Expansion diffusion- is when an innovation or idea develops in a
hearth and remains strong there while also spreading outward
Relocation diffusion is when the people who have the innovation
or idea move and bring the idea with them and spread it to a
new culture while expansion diffusion is when the actual idea
moves to a new culture; the people don't move just the idea
spreads.
Everyone agrees that the natural environment affects human
activity in some ways, but people are the decision makers and
the modifiers, not just the slaves of environmental forces.
Environmental determinism and possibilism encourages a line
of questioning that starts with the physical environment and
asks what it allows. Yet human cultures usually push the
boundaries of what once was thought to be environmentally
possible by their own ideas and ingenuity. Today it is possible to
do many things that are at odd ends with the local environment.
They say that the environment runs the human race and that is
not exactly the case.