Welcome to 
Geography 107
Introduction to Human Geography
Dr. Steve Graves
California State University, Northridge

Are you here today?
•	Get out your “clickers” and we’ll test the system.  This is how attendance will be recorded in this course.
•	Are you here today:
•	A.  Yes
•	B.  No
•	C.  I’m not sure
•	D.  All of the above.
What is Geography
•	Geography is a subject.
•	Geography is a discipline.
–	Geographers use a set of methodologies.
–	Geographers have an epistemology.
–	Geographers ask, “Where?” when they want to know “Why?”
•	Geography is what geographers do.
•	Anything that takes place can be studied from a geographic perspective.
What is Geography
•	Geography is a subject.
•	Geography is a discipline.
–	Geographers use a set of methodologies.
–	Geographers have an epistemology.
–	Geographers ask, “Where?” when they want to know “Why?”
•	Geography is what geographers do.
•	Anything that takes place can be studied from a geographic perspective.
Where?  Where!
•	“Where?”, is the most important question geographers ask.
•	Where things are give us important clues about why they are as they are.
•	Historians tend to ask “When?”…and focus on chronology.
•	Geographers focus on chorology…or more commonly “distribution”
•	Diffusion!

The Jedi Major
•	Padawan Learners must learn to:
•	See as a Jedi 
–	landscape interpretation
•	Think as a Jedi – epistemology
–	 Use the force!  Ask: “Where?”
•	Work as a Jedi 
–	(GIS – light sabers)
•	Communicate as a Jedi
–	(cartography)

How this course works
•	The most important thing for you to learn is how to think…to develop epistemology and methodology.
•	You will be introduced to a series of subjects (politics, language, ethnicity, industry, etc.)
•	You will be shown how geographers “see” and understand these topics and how spatial thinking is applied to solve problems.
How this book is organized
•	Each chapter has a topic (politics, religion, ethnicity, etc.)
•	Each chapter has the following sections:
–	Region (Where is it?)
–	Migration/Diffusion (How’d it get there?)
–	Cultural Ecology (What’s the interaction with nature?)
–	Cultural Integration (How does it affect other things?)
–	Landscape (What does it look like as you drive by?)
Functional Region: TV Markets
Formal Region: German Speakers

•	Note the German heartland is both Protestant and German speaking, but the periphery is Catholic and more likely to include other languages.
Vernacular Regions
•	“Dixie” is another word for the southern US, but exactly where is “The South”?
Properties of Distribution
•	Density – measurement
–	Number of objects
–	Land area
•	Concentration
–	Clustering
–	Dispersal
•	Pattern
–	Irregular
–	Linear
–	Rectangular
–	Grid
•	Cholera map…
Payday Lenders vs. Doughnut Shops 
•	Which industry do you think is more concentrated in the San Fernando Valley?
•	If one industry is concentrated spatial and the other is not, what inferences can we draw about the competitive nature of each industry?

Diffusion
•	Diffusion is how people, ideas, the flu, music styles, etc. move from a hearth at the core outward to the periphery.
•	Different styles of diffusion:
–	Hierarchical & Reverse-hierarchical
–	Contagious diffusion
–	Relocation diffusion
–	Stimulus (partial diffusion)
•	Barriers, including time and space intervene

Diffusion: 
Health and Medical Questions?
_
Humans and Environment
•	Geographers are also very interested in how the natural environment affects our cultural behaviors (and vice verse)
•	In the book, this relationship is called “Cultural Ecology”
Soils of Alabama
•	Soils in the blue color are particularly productive, especially for cotton.
Cotton Production: 1860
•	Note the relationship between cotton production and soil type in Alabama
Voting for Obama/McCain 2008
Do you see the relationship between soils-agriculture-politics?
Landscape
•	Consider the parking structure across from Sierra Hall.  What does it suggest about the culture that built it?
•	What symbolic values does it have?
•	What is not said?
Consider these Landscapes
Environmental Determinism? NO!
•	figure
Environmental Possibilism?
Earth Modification
•	figure
Hazard Location: Malibu
•	figure
Conclusion
•	Example: the American log house