What is human geography?
Human geography studies people and places. It asks how people use the land, water and climate around them, and how they change it.
For a long time, geographers split the subject into two halves. One half was physical geography (land, air, water). The other half was human geography (people, farms, cities). This split is called dualism. Today we know the two halves are joined: nature affects people, and people affect nature.
A simple definition: human geography is the study of the link between people and their natural surroundings, and how this link differs from place to place.
Naturalisation of humans (environmental determinism)
In early times people had very simple tools. They hunted, gathered fruits and lived in caves or huts. Nature decided what they ate, what they wore and where they lived.
When nature controls people so strongly, we say people are 'naturalised'. The idea that nature decides human life is called environmental determinism. Determine means to decide.
Example: forest people who depend on the forest for food, medicine and shelter, and who respect nature as a powerful force.
Humanisation of nature (possibilism)
Slowly, people learnt new skills: farming, metal tools, machines, dams and roads. With technology, they changed nature to meet their needs. Forests became fields; rivers got dams; hills got tunnels.
When people leave their stamp on nature, we call it humanisation of nature. The idea that nature gives many possibilities and people choose among them is called possibilism.
Signs of humanised nature: orchards on hill slopes, health resorts, ports, satellites in space, fields in a desert with canal water.
Neo-determinism: stop and go
A geographer named Griffith Taylor gave a middle path. He said people can change nature, but only up to a point. This is neo-determinism (new determinism), also called stop-and-go determinism.
Think of a traffic signal. Green: develop, use resources. Red: stop when nature shows limits, like floods, landslides, global warming or falling groundwater. So there is neither full freedom nor full control.
Human geography through time
The way geographers studied people changed over the years:
- Early colonial time – exploration and description: travellers described new lands, their people and resources.
- Later colonial time – regional analysis: a region studied in detail, all its parts together.
- 1930s – areal differentiation: finding why one region is different from another.
- 1950s–60s – spatial organisation: use of numbers, computers and models to find patterns (the quantitative revolution).
- 1970s – new schools: humanistic (people's feelings and awareness), radical (Marxist ideas to explain poverty and inequality), behavioural (lived experience and how people see space by age, caste, gender, class).
- 1990s – post-modernism: big general theories do not fit all; each local place matters.
Three schools of thought in the 1970s
Welfare / humanistic school: cares about social well-being, housing, health, education. Radical school: asks why poverty and inequality exist, using Marxist ideas. Behavioural school: looks at how people of different groups experience and see places.
Fields and sub-fields of human geography
Human geography is a big tree with many branches. Each branch talks to a sister subject.
- Social geography: behavioural, geography of social well-being, leisure, cultural, gender, historical, medical geography. Also population geography (with demography) and settlement geography (rural and urban planning).
- Urban studies and planning: cities and their growth.
- Political geography: electoral geography (voting areas), military geography (with military science).
- Economic geography: resource, agricultural, industrial, marketing, tourism and international trade geography.
Sister subjects: sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, history, demography, agriculture science and many more.
Key formulas and definitions
- Human geography = study of the link between people and their physical surroundings, place by place
- Dualism = splitting geography into physical and human halves
- Naturalisation of humans = nature controls people (environmental determinism)
- Humanisation of nature = people change nature with technology (possibilism)
- Neo-determinism = stop-and-go: develop within nature's limits (Griffith Taylor)
- Order of approaches: exploration → regional analysis → areal differentiation → spatial organisation → humanistic/radical/behavioural → post-modernism
- Fields: social, urban, political, economic (each with sub-fields)
Worked examples
1. A tribe living deep in a forest eats forest fruits, uses forest herbs as medicine and worships the forest. Which idea fits?
Naturalisation of humans (environmental determinism). Nature decides their way of life because their technology is simple.
2. Farmers in a dry region bring canal water and grow wheat in the desert. Which idea fits?
Humanisation of nature (possibilism). People used technology to change what nature gave.
3. A city allows new buildings but bans them on the river's flood plain. Which idea fits and why?
Neo-determinism (stop-and-go). Growth is allowed (go) but stops at nature's limit, the flood plain (stop).
4. A geographer uses computers and statistics to find patterns in how shops spread in a city. Which approach?
Spatial organisation (quantitative revolution, 1950s–60s).
5. A study asks why some groups stay poor in the same city. Which school of thought?
Radical school, which uses Marxist ideas to explain poverty and inequality.
Common mistakes
- Thinking determinism and possibilism mean the same thing. Determinism: nature decides. Possibilism: people choose.
- Saying neo-determinism means nature has no role. It means people can develop, but only within nature's limits.
- Mixing up the order of approaches. Exploration came first; post-modernism came last.
- Putting population geography under economic geography. It is a sub-field of social geography, linked with demography.