Human Geography Essay

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GEOGRAPHY – Vol. II - Human Geography - Carles Carreras HUMAN GEOGRAPHY Carles Carreras Departament de Geografia Humana, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain Keywords: Culture, Description, Economy, Explanation, Geography, Location, Perception, Population, Social Sciences, Understanding. Contents: U SA N M ES PL C E O– CE HO AP L TE SS R S 1. Historical Background 1.1. A Secular Chorographical Tradition 1.2 The First Human Geography of Friedrich Ratzel 1.3. Human Geography as a Social Science, separated from Physical Geography 1.4. The Criticism to Neopositivist Approaches: Recent Debates in Human Geography 2. The Main Fields of Study 2.1. Population Geography or Geodemography 2.2. Economic Geography or Geoeconomy 2.3. Social Geography or Geosociology 2.4. Settlement Geography 2.5. Cultural Geography or Geoanthropology 2.6. Political Geography or Geopolitics 2.7. Theory and Methodology 3. Alternative Approaches to Thematic Studies 4. The Present Human Geographical Problems Glossary Bibliography Biographical Sketch Summary The chapter states the generally accepted fact that, in spite of many other older special contributions, the German geographer and anthropologist Friedrich Ratzel created Human Geography as an independent discipline. His two-volume work Anthropogeographie (1982) presented for the first time a broad vision of the human settlements and their economic activities and a deep analysis of their complex relationship with a conditioning physical environment. The development of strong specialization in Natural and Applied Sciences after the Second World War, and the Social Science orientation of the Human Geography studies, mainly among the French Regional School had definitively separated Human and Physical Geography. The recent debates, especially among the British geographers try to renew the traditional
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