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Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-60927-280-7 (pbk)
Contents
Foreword
By Dorothy Drummond
vii
Section One
Basic Concepts of Geography and Diffusion
Introduction
A Spicy Mix of Salsa, Hip-Hop and Reggae
By Jon Pareles
The Locations of Wal-Mart and Kmart Supercenters:
Contrasting Corporate Strategies
By Thomas O. Graff
1
3
9
13
Section Two
Culture Hearths
25
Introduction
The Origins of the Civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia
By Lukas de Blois and R.J. van der Spek
27
33
Industrialization and the Remaking of the World, 1750–1900
By Edward J. Davies II
37
Section Three
Population
Introduction
Fertility Rates and Future Population Trends:
Will Europe’s Birth Rate Recover or Continue to Decline?
By Wolfgang Lutz
45
47
53
Section Four
Religion
67
Introduction
69
Vodou in the “Tenth Department”: New York’s Haitian Community
By Karen McCarthy Brown
73
Religious Diversity Across the Globe: A Geographic Exploration
By Barney Warf and Peter Vincent
81
Note on Islam
By Rosalyn W. Berne, Ahsun Jilani, and Jenny Mead
97
Section Five
Language and Ethnic Studies
105
Introduction
We Are Tous Québécois
The Economist
107
111
A God-Given Way to Communicate
The Economist
113
The United States and Atlantic Migration
By Edward J. Davies II
115
Mexican American Exterior Murals
By Daniel D. Arreola
127
Section Six
Political Geography
135
Introduction
Nationalism and the Break-Up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia
By Malcolm Anderson
137
145
Ethnic Conflict: The Forgotten Kurds
By Beverley Milton-Edwards and Peter Hinchcliffe
153
Section Seven
Economic Geography
165
Introduction
167
The Green Revolution
By Jeffrey M. Pilcher
175
The Coal Resource Base
By James T. Bartis, Frank Camm, and David S. Ortiz
183
The Philippines: Mobilities, Identities, Globalization
By James Tyner
191
Section Eight
Cities
197
Introduction
199
Classic Map Revisited: The Growth of Megalopolis
By Richard Morrill
203
Dubai: Globalization on Steroids
By William Morehouse
211
Section Nine
Health and Gender
Introduction
Demography of Aging in China and the United States
and the Economic Well-Being of Their Older Populations
By Charles Louis Kincannon, Wan He, and Loraine A. West
217
219
225
Demographic Dimensions of Global Aging
By Kevin Kinsella
239
Mortality Trends and the Epidemiological Transition in Nauru
By Karen Carter, Taniela Sunia Soakai, Richard Taylor,
Ipia Gadabu, Chalapati Rao, Kiki Thoma, and Alan D. Lopez
255
Socio-Cultural Aspects of the High Masculinity Ratio in India
By J.P. Singh
271
Bride-Burning: The “Elephant in The Room” is Out of Control
By Avnita Lakhani
289
World Regional Maps
293
Foreword
By Dorothy Drummond
W
ho am I? What are my roots? How did I come to be the person I am? Every student asks these
questions. The search for answers is sometimes deliberate, more often random, and often subliminal. But when a student encounters a geographical perspective, he comes to realize that his search
has landed on fertile ground. Geography is the study of how humans interact with their environment.
It is the study of Places and their physical and cultural character. It is also the study of Movement—of
people and ideas—and of the interaction between places. This well-chosen series of readings will lead
students to recognize the varied cultural inputs that have made them who they are.
This book of readings begins with basic concepts of Geography, of distribution and diffusion of phenomena on the earth. It then progresses to identify the world’s Culture Hearths. Students will recognize
that their ancestry had a beginning in a place or places where humans first organized as societies. More
than one Culture Hearth may well be involved in their makeup. They will see how culture spread outward from these Hearths, and they will learn how and why people moved. Cultural diffusion involved
the students’ ancestors. And it continues to involve students today.
People in the aggregate are population, and both population distribution and population density can
be mapped. Students will realize that there is a strong relationship between the nature of the land and
population density. People live where there is access to water, where the land is relatively level, where the
length of the growing season permits agriculture. Here, too, students will recognize that their ancestors
made a choice where they would live, and the choice was not random. From what populous parts of the
world did their ancestors migrate? Was their emigration related to so-called “over-population”? Some
densely populated parts of the world might be considered “over-populated”. But other densely populated
areas, such as Singapore, are organized so efficiently that everything works. How does technology factor
into the ability of an area to sustain a dense population?
It can be said that religion, language, and ethnicity combine to create culture. In critical ways these
factors determine how people think and act, and in turn how culture regions differ. In the set of readings
on these critical elements of culture students will find the roots of their identity. They will see themselves
as distinct products of their cultural heritage. At the same time, they will discover the many ties that link
them with people of other cultural regions, and the many ways in which movement of people and ideas
brings about change in culture.
How people of varied cultures are organized politically is the topic of the Political Geography readings. Students will be reminded of the uniqueness of the United States of America, where peoples of
Foreword | vii
vastly differing cultural backgrounds live together
peaceably under one governing unit. Many will
realize that their ancestors chose to immigrate
for the very reason that their political aspirations were not being met in their homeland, and
indeed that their aspirations had put their lives at
risk. Their ancestors may well have been part of
a nation struggling, with little hope of success, to
become a state. Students will read of the varieties
of political units on the earth, from nation-states
such as Norway, Chile or Vietnam, to culturally
diverse countries such as our own, to new states
such as Southern Sudan, and supranational evolving political units such as the European Union.
Thomas Friedman has titled his recent book
The World Is Flat. In the readings on Economic
Geography , and the essay that precedes them,
students will have plenty of opportunity to think
about the meaning of Friedman’s title as they
learn how the world works. They will be able to
place themselves, and their aspirations, within the
world’s economic systems. Further, they will see
how patterns of economic activity have evolved
from the simple hunter-gathering of our early
ancestors to the complex, electronics-enhanced
interchange of raw materials and finished products that characterizes our world today.
The chapter on cities flows logically from the
previous chapters on population, political and
economic geography, for cities represent the
ultimate concentration of human activity. All
students will be able to relate to the readings.
The great majority will live in cities, and they will
recognize patterns of urbanization with which
they daily interact: conurbation, urban sprawl,
neighborhoods, central business district. Or a few
viii | An Integrative Approach to Human Geography
may find themselves living outside the growing
urban areas of our country, in rural areas that are
declining as their once-vital service-center functions have migrated – with rapid access highways
and instant electronic communication – to the
cities. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, students will realize that urban patterns
with which they are familiar, such as inner city
decay and growth of affluent suburbs, may not be
the patterns in cities in other parts of the world,
where choice real estate is nearest the CBD and
areas at a distance are relegated to the poor. At
the same time, they will also be able to identify attempts – with growing success -- at gentrification
in the inner areas of U.S. cities.
The section on Health and Gender issues may
surprise students. Most may not have thought of
gender and health having a spatial (geographical)
dimension. They will learn, among other things,
that our cherished marriage rites can be traced
to the “Dowry” and “Bride Price” rituals of other
cultures. They will learn that the world’s population is not evenly divided, and that the preference
for males in a large part of the world, and female
infanticide, is lowering the ratio of females to
males. That epidemiology has a geographical
dimension has become all too obvious with the
global spread of AIDS from its origin in central
Africa. It is appropriate that the final unit in this
book deals with topics of gender and health.
These topics are certain to capture the attention
of every student as he/she personalizes the endlessly fascinating, enlightening, and wide-ranging
subject of geography.
Dorothy Drummond