I.

Introduction

Human Geography, that part of geography involving the study of people and their activities and structures, whether economic, social, cultural, or political, in their spatial contexts. Human geography also encompasses the ways in which people interact with the natural environment. At the simplest level this encompasses the straightforward description and mapping of where, for example, industries or towns are located, but human geographers’ concerns are far more complex than this. In particular, they seek to understand how and why human structures and activities have developed in particular ways in particular places.

Their approaches, however, have varied considerably. For example, some human geographers considered that place, in the sense of the physical environment of an area, controls the activities and structures that people develop. Later, human geographers ignored the physical aspects of place altogether, concentrating instead on modelling the purely spatial relationships between human structures, such as settlements, and activities. More recently, some researchers have been concerned with the way power relationships affect the way people use space, while others have focused on the way that people perceive space, and the impact this has on what they do with it. These various approaches in part reflect the tendency of human geography throughout its history to be open to ideas and methods from other disciplines. At various times researchers have turned to the biological sciences, physics, economics, political theory, sociology, psychology, and literary theory for insights into human beings’ occupancy of the Earth. Another cause, associated particularly, but not solely, with early development of geography as an academic discipline has been the desire to elaborate a unique geographical approach and methodology. This is not a concern of many contemporary researchers in human geography, however. The discipline is now divided into such distinct specializations, often with more in common with other disciplines than with each other, the concern has sometimes been expressed that human geography is in danger of vanishing altogether as a distinct discipline, with its subject areas being incorporated within a broad social science.