Regional Geography

Question 1

Are Africans in the ‘coup-belt’ prisoners of geography?

Answer 1

• since 1950 there have been more than 48 coup attempts globally. Almost 1/2 have been in Africa - over 100 succeeded.
• 45 of 54 African nations have experienced at least one coup attempt.
• 17 of the 18 coups worldwide since 2017 have been in Africa, most in west Africa and the Sahel.

Question 2

What is the coup-belt?

Answer 2

• modern geopolitical concept which emerged in the 2020s to describe the region of West Africa, Central Africa and the Sahel.

Question 3

Geographical factors as to why is the Sahel prone to coups?

Answer 3

• the region is semi-arid
• poor coup growth
• suffers water and food shortages
• landlocked

Question 4

Coup - Gabon:

Answer 4

• lack of basic resources, abundance of rich resources, i.e., cobalt.
  climate - arid (lack of precipitation)
• historical factors: e.g., borders (French ex-colony, borders based on territory not culture).

Question 5

What is environmental determinism?

Answer 5

• Evolutionary theory influences a pseudo-scientific geographical racism, poisitng a hierarchy of human types according to climate, with white Europeans at the top.
• Geographers mapped civilisation/barbarism onto physical grogragues in a ‘moral economy of climate’
• Africa and Australia’s ‘inauspicious climates explained their savagery
• And the (supposed) lack of civilisation in the tropics was thought to be due to the climate.

Question 6

Environmental determinists:

Answer 6

• Friedrich Ratzel
• Ellen Churchill Semple

Question 7

Friedrich Ratzel:

Answer 7

• In 1901, Ratzel coins the concept lebensraum (living space)
• Healthy or more vigoirs states will grow beyond their borders
• This idea was later adopted by Nazi ideology to justify aggression and expansion.

Question 8

Ellen Churchill Semple:

Answer 8

• Human temperament, culture, religion, values, economy, etc all derived from the environment.

Question 9

Responses to environmental determinism:

Answer 9

• Environmental determinism cannot explain variation and migration, humans modify and shape environments as much as they are shaped by them.
• ‘The geographical experiment in holding nature and culture together in causal evolutionary terms was collapsing as an academic enterprise’.

Question 10

Responses to environmental determinism - landscape and region:

Answer 10

Carl O Sauer
Paul Vidal de la Blache

Question 11

Carl O Sauer:

Answer 11

• (1889-1975)
• In 1925, Sauer publishes the Morphology of Landscape
• Geography as the study of ‘culture areas’
• Culture as an ‘imprint’ or ‘stamp’ upon the earth’s surface to produce a landscape
• Culture + nature = landscape

Question 12

Paul Vidal de la Blache:

Answer 12

• (1845-1918):
• The ‘region’ is a unique expression of the interaction between humanity and the physical environment
• In particular places, pays, the natural realm provided the milieux in which ‘genres de vie’ (ways of life) were shaped
• Customs are etched onto the land
• Habits of life reflect nature, but they also transform it.

Question 13

The rise of regional geography?

Answer 13

• ‘regional geography’ is the dominant way that Geography was taught and researched in Europe and N. America from the 1930s to the 1950s.
• Instead of specialising in a branch of geography (geomorphology, political geography, cultural geography, etc.) lecturers would specialise in a particular region of the world.

Question 14

Hartshorne:

Answer 14

• The Nature of Geography (1939)
• Geography as chorology: ‘the ultimate purpose of Geography is the study of areal differentiation of the world’
• Tried to define Geography as the identification and classification of distinct ‘regions’
• Yet, region is a “fuzzy” concept: it refers to both sub-national (Midlands, East Anglia) and supra-national (Scandinavia, Middle East) entities

Question 15

Mackinder:

Answer 15

• First Reader in Geography at University of Oxford (1887); co-founder of LSE (1895); MP (1910-1922)
• Evolutionary / Darwinist view of geography as a human struggle for space and resources
• In 1899, part of the first European expedition to climb Mount Kenya
• In 1904, publishes the Geographical Pivot of History
• Places geography explicitly at the service of imperial power and control
• Geography as a kind of military/strategic knowledge = Geopolitics

Question 16

Haushofer:

Answer 16

• In Germany, geopolitical emphasis focuses on the theory of lebensraum
• This builds on Ratzel’s earlier (Darwinian) work on how ‘vigorous’ peoples would seek to expand their territories
• Haushofer synthesizes this with Mackinder’s Heartland or pivot theory (1904) to develop ideas about lebensraum that are used by the Nazis.

Question 17

Conclusion:

Answer 17

• late 19th century and early 20th century - Darwin’s ideas on evolution and natural selection exerted a strong influence on geography and other disciplines (e.g. anthropology).
• Darwinism would shape the way that geography played out for much of the next century.
• In the early years of the 20th century, for example, under the influence of evolutionary theory, some geographers advocated Environmental Determinism (e.g. Ratzel, Semple).
• Most reacted against this, and instead studies of human-environment interactions and the development of particular cultural landscapes and regions came to dominate (e.g. Vidal, Sauer).
• Regional geography dominated education and research in the discipline from the 1930s to 1950s.
• At the same time, a strong variant of Darwinian thinking influenced the new field of geopolitics.