Modern Geography

The study of geography went gone through many stages in the 19^th and 20^th century. The four main ones were environmental determinism, regional geography, the quantitative revolution, and critical geography.

Environmental Determinism                                       Environmental Determinism is the theory that the type of person you are is directly influenced by the environment you live in. It is the belief that a person’s natural environment affects their physical, mental and moral traits. The most common ideas are "heat makes inhabitants of the tropics lazy" and "frequent changes in barometric pressure make inhabitants of temperate latitudes more intellectually agile." Despite trying to keep the study scientific many geographers have dubbed it as sweeping generalizations with very little basis.

Regional Geography                                                             Regional geography is the belief that pure geography is the study of areas, regions and places. It includes information and description about the places and the right way of having earth divided into regions. Some geographers believe that it is too descriptive and not enough scientific evidence behind it.

Dividing Regions of the World

The Quantitative Revolution                                                        The Quantitative Revolution was a revolution that began in the 1950’s. This was a period when many geographers took geographical theories and scrutinized them in test usually using statistical methods.

Critical Geography                                                                   Critical Geography is similar in some ways to Environmental Determinism as it states how groups of people can be affected by the landscape they live in. It studies how a person can feel a sense of relationship with a region or area and how the natural environment can affect the social and political regimes.

Although the study of geography has changed and developed throughout the ages and different cultures, we will always enjoy learning and discovering new and exciting things about the wonderful world that we live in. There will always be the great questions that geographers can battle with like ‘How can a levee be dry?’ and ‘What makes one pine for the fjords?’.

American Pie by Don McLean            Monty Python – dead parrot sketch