cultural geography

Geographic

2022

We explain what cultural geography is, its history, object of study and auxiliary sciences. In addition, other branches of geography.

Cultural geography studies the relationship of human works with geography.

What is cultural geography?

Cultural geography is a discipline that studies the cultural phenomena and products of the different populations human and his link with him space as populations they migrate, move or settle for a specified period of time.

The approach to cultural geography is similar and complementary to that of the geography general, that is, to the understanding of the world based on the distribution and structuring of its different regions, each endowed with natural aspects and human works. It is the latter that are of interest to cultural geography.

For that reason, in some academies it is assumed that cultural geography is an equivalent of human geography, that is, a different name for the same thing, while in others it is thought of as a much more specific division of this one.

History of cultural geography

Human beings have always had an impact and were affected by their environment.

The term "cultural geography" emerged in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, as more or less synonymous with human geography, that is, in contrast to the description geographical area of ​​natural accidents.

This usage is maintained in many Anglo-Saxon academies. In this context, some of its great local names emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Carl O. Sauer (1889-1975), author of Cultural Geography, where the foundations for discipline were laid. Behind the WWII, cultural geography was assumed as a discipline more naturally.

This diffusion occurs in the midst of a veritable explosion of European representatives such as Schultze, Bobek, Biasutti, Sestini, Max Sorre and Paul Claval, among others. Sorre, in particular, considered the perspective of cultural geography very narrow and was a supporter of the rise of human geography in its place.

Object of study of cultural geography

Cultural geography studies, said by Carl Oscar Sauer in his Cultural Geography, “… The human works that are inscribed in the land surface and they give it a characteristic expression ”.

This phrase means that its object of study is, in principle, the way in which different human cultures interact and modify their natural geographic environment. Put more simply, it studies from a geographical point of view the footprint of the human being in the planet.

Auxiliary sciences of cultural geography

Cultural geography draws on other disciplines, such as economic geography.

Cultural geography has a necessary contact with the other branches of geography, such as the physical geography wave economic geography. It is also related to humanistic disciplines and social Sciences who are also interested in the human being and his way of building the society, how can they be the anthropology, the sociology, the history wave linguistics.

Other branches of geography

Geography is a science that includes other renowned branches, such as:

  • Physical geography. The one who is interested in him relief, the formation of the earth's surface and other geographical aspects that have to do with the nature.
  • Human geography. That which, contrary to the previous one, focuses its attention on the geographical presence of the human being, that is, in their societies and the way in which they interact with their environment.
  • Economic geography. A branch of human geography that focuses on the economically relevant aspects of the planet, that is, the location of its exploitable resources and the way in which it economy human is distributed on the globe.
  • Linguistic geography. Another branch of human geography, although perhaps also cultural, which contemplates the distribution of the languages ​​on the planet, as well as their historical events and their points of contact.
  • Social geography. A highly specialized branch of human geography that studies the reciprocal relationships between the geographic environment and different human societies, emphasizing how one determines the other throughout the history.
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