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Cultural geography is a sub-field within human geography
Human geography

Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape human interaction with the built environment, with particular reference to the causes and consequences of the Space#Geography of human activity on the Earth's surface....
. Cultural geography is the study of cultural products and norms and their variations across and relations to spaces and places. It focuses on describing and analyzing the ways language, religion, economy, government and other cultural phenomena vary or remain constant, from one place to another and on explaining how humans function spatially.

areas of study of cultural geography are very broad.






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Cultural geography is a sub-field within human geography
Human geography

Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape human interaction with the built environment, with particular reference to the causes and consequences of the Space#Geography of human activity on the Earth's surface....
. Cultural geography is the study of cultural products and norms and their variations across and relations to spaces and places. It focuses on describing and analyzing the ways language, religion, economy, government and other cultural phenomena vary or remain constant, from one place to another and on explaining how humans function spatially.

Areas of study

The areas of study of cultural geography are very broad. Among many applicable topics within the field of study are:
  • Globalization
    Globalization

    Globalization in its literal sense is the process of transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. It can be described as a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together....
     has been theorised as an explanation for cultural convergence.
  • Westernization
    Westernization

    Westernization or occidentalization is a process whereby Society come under or adopt the Western culture in such matters as industry, technology, law, politics, economics, lifestyle, diet , language, alphabet, religion or western culture....
     or other similar processes such as americanization
    Americanization

    Americanization is the term used for the influence the United States has on the culture of other countries, resulting in such phenomena as the substitution of a given culture with Culture of the United States....
    , islamization
    Islamization

    Islamization or Islamification means the process of a society's conversion to the religion of Islam, or a neologism meaning an increase in observance by an already Muslim society....
     and others.
  • Theories of cultural hegemony
    Cultural hegemony

    Cultural hegemony is the philosophic and sociologic concept, originated by the Marxism philosopher Antonio Gramsci, denoting that a culturally-diverse society can be ruled , by one of its social classes, partly through imposed ?common sense? ? quotidian ?shared beliefs? used as the foundation for complex systems of political, social,...
     or cultural assimilation
    Cultural assimilation

    Cultural assimilation is when an individual or individuals adopts some or all aspects of a dominant culture . Cultural assimilation is a process of socialization....
     via cultural imperialism
    Cultural imperialism

    Cultural imperialism is the practice of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one culture into another....
    .
  • Cultural areal differentiation, as a study of differences in way of life encompassing ideas, attitudes, languages, practices, institutions and structures of power and whole range of cultural practices in geographical areas.
  • Study of cultural landscape
    Cultural landscape

    Cultural Landscapes have been defined by the World Heritage Site as World Heritage Site or properties uniquely "..represent[ing] the combined work of nature and of man.." ....
    s.
  • Other topics include spirit of place
    Spirit of Place

    Spirit of Place is the first full length album by Australian folk-rock band Goanna . It was originally released in 1982, and was re-released in a remastered and expanded form in 2003....
    , colonialism
    Colonialism

    Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
    , post-colonialism
    Postcolonialism

    Postcolonialism is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theory found among the texts and sub-texts of philosophy, film, political science and postcolonial literature....
    , internationalism
    Internationalism (politics)

    Internationalism is a political movement that advocates a greater economic and political cooperation among nations for the theoretical benefit of all....
    , immigration
    Immigration

    While the movement of people has thought throughout history at various levels, modern immigration tourism are considered non-immigrants . Immigration that violates the immigration laws of the destination country is termed illegal immigration or undocumented immigration....
    , emigration
    Emigration

    Emigration is the act of leaving one's native country or region to Settler in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin....
     and ecotourism
    Ecotourism

    Ecotourism is a form of tourism, that appeals to ecologically and socially conscious individuals. Generally speaking, ecotourism focuses on volunteering, personal growth and learning new ways to live on the planet....
    .


History

Though the first traces of the study of different nations and cultures on Earth
Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun. Earth is the largest of the terrestrial planets in the Solar System in diameter, mass and density. It is also referred to as the World and Wiktionary:Terra.Note that by International Astronomical Union convention, the term "Terra" is used for naming extensive land masses, rather...
 can be dated back to ancient geographers such as Ptolemy
Ptolemy

Claudius Ptolemaeus , known in English as Ptolemy , was a Roman Greek mathematics, Greek astronomy, geographer and astrologer. He lived in History of Roman Egypt, and was probably born there in a town in the Thebaid called Ptolemais Hermiou; he died in Alexandria around 168 AD....
 or Strabo
Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
, cultural geography as academic study firstly emerged as an alternative to the environmental determinist
Environmental determinism

Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture....
 theories of the early Twentieth century, which had believed that people and societies are controlled by the environment
Natural environment

The natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, is a term that encompasses all life and non-living things occurring nature on Earth or some region thereof....
 in which they develop. Rather than studying pre-determined regions based upon environmental classifications, cultural geography became interested in cultural landscape
Cultural landscape

Cultural Landscapes have been defined by the World Heritage Site as World Heritage Site or properties uniquely "..represent[ing] the combined work of nature and of man.." ....
s. This was led by Carl O. Sauer
Carl O. Sauer

Carl Ortwin Sauer was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California, Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957 and was instrumental in the early development of the geography graduate school at Berkeley....
 (called the father of Cultural geography), at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley is a public university research university located in Berkeley, California, California, United States. The oldest of the ten major campuses affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley offers some 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines....
. As a result, cultural geography was long dominated by American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 writers.

Sauer defined the landscape as the defining unit of geographic study. He saw that cultures and societies both developed out of their landscape, but also shaped them too. This interaction between the 'natural' landscape and humans creates the 'cultural landscape'. Sauer's work was highly qualitative
Qualitative research

Qualitative research is a field of inquiry that crosscuts disciplines and subject matters . Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior....
 and descriptive and was surpassed in the 1930s by the regional geography
Regional geography

Regional geography is a study of regions throughout the world in order to understand or define the unique characteristics of a particular region which consists of natural as well as human elements....
 of Richard Hartshorne
Richard Hartshorne

Richard Hartshorne , was a prominent United States geographer. He completed his undergraduate studies at Princeton University He died of cancer at his home in Madison, Wisconsin....
, followed by the quantitative revolution
Quantitative revolution

The quantitative revolution was one of the four major turning points in the history of geography . The quantitative revolution occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and marked a rapid change in the method behind geographical research....
. Cultural geography was generally sidelined, though writers such as David Lowenthal continued to work on the concept of landscape.

In the 1970s, the critique of positivism in geography caused geographers to look beyond the quantitative geography for its ideas. One of these re-assessed areas was also cultural geography.

New cultural geography

Since the 1980s, a "new cultural geography" has emerged, drawing on a diverse set of theoretical traditions, including Marxist
Marxism

Marxism is the political philosophy and practice derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxism holds at its core a Marxist analysis of Critique of capitalism and a theory of social change....
 political-economic models
Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy....
, feminist theory
Feminist theory

Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophy, ground. It encompasses work done in a broad variety of disciplines, prominently including the approaches to women's roles and lives and feminist politics in anthropology and sociology, psychoanalysis, economics, women's studies and gender studies, feminist literary...
, post-colonial theory
Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theory found among the texts and sub-texts of philosophy, film, political science and postcolonial literature....
, post-structuralism
Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of continental philosophy and critical theory who wrote with tendencies of French philosophy#20th century....
 and psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis is a body of ideas developed by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud and his followers, which is devoted to the study of human psychological functioning and behaviour....
.

Drawing particularly from the theories of Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was a French philosophy, historian, intellectual, Critical theory and sociologist. He held a chair at the Coll?ge de France with the title "History of Systems of Thought," and also taught at the University of California, Berkeley....
 and performativity
Performativity

Performativity is a concept that is related to speech act theory, to the pragmatics of language, and to the work of J. L. Austin. It accounts for situations where a proposition may constitute or instantiate the object to which it is meant to refer, as in so-called "performative utterances"....
, in western academia and the more diverse influences of postcolonial theory
Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism is an intellectual discourse that holds together a set of theory found among the texts and sub-texts of philosophy, film, political science and postcolonial literature....
, there has been a concerted effort to deconstruct
Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a term used in philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, popularised through its usage by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s....
 the cultural in order to make apparent the various power relations. A particular area of interest is that of identity politics
Identity politics

Identity politics is political action to advance the interests of members of a group whose members perceive themselves to be oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalized identity ....
 and construction of identity.

Examples of areas of study include:
  • Feminist geography
    Feminist geography

    Feminist geography is an approach in human geography which applies the theories, methods and critiques of feminism to the study of the human environment, society and geographical space....
  • Children's geographies
    Children's geographies

    Children's geographies is an area of study in human geography, studying the places and spaces of children's lives.Children's geographies is that branch of human one,which deals with the study of places and spaces of children's lives,characterised experientially,politically and ethically....
  • Some parts of Tourism geography
    Tourism geography

    Tourism Geography is the study of travel and tourism, as an industry and as a social and culture activity. Tourism geography covers a wide range of interests including the environmental impact of tourism, the geographies of tourism and leisure economies, answering tourism industry and management concerns and the sociology of tourism and locat...
  • Behavioral geography
    Behavioral geography

    Behavioral geography is an approach to Human Geography that examines human behavior using a disaggregate approach. Behavioral Geographers focus on the cognitive processes underlying spatial reasoning, decision making, and behavior....
  • Sexuality and space
    Sexuality and space

    Sexuality and space is a field of study within human geography. The phrase encompasses all relationships and interactions between human sexuality and the environment; including but not limited to cultural geography, i.e....
  • Some more recent developments in Political geography
    Political geography

    Political geography is the field of human geography that is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures....


Some within the 'new cultural geography' have turned their attention to critiquing some of its ideas, seeing its views on identity and space as static. It has followed the critiques of Foucault made by other 'poststructuralist
Post-structuralism

Post-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of continental philosophy and critical theory who wrote with tendencies of French philosophy#20th century....
' theorists such as Michel de Certeau
Michel de Certeau

Michel de Certeau was a French Jesuit and scholar whose work combined psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences.Michel de Certeau was born in 1925 in Chamb?ry, France....
 and Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze , was a French philosophy of the late 20th century. From the early 1960s until his death, Deleuze wrote many influential works on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art....
. In this area, non-representational geography
Non-representational theory

Non-representational theory is a theory developed in human geography, largely through the work of Nigel Thrift , and his colleagues such as J.D....
 and population mobility
Population mobility

Population mobility, geographic mobility or more simply mobility is a statistic that measures migration within a population. It is most commonly used in demography and human geography, it may also be used to describe the movement of animals between populations....
 research have dominated. Others have attempted to incorporate these critiques back into the new cultural geography.

See also

  • Cultural region
    Cultural region

    Cultural region is a term used mainly in the study of geography. Distinct cultures often do not limit their geographic coverage inside the borders of a nation state, or to smaller subdivisions of a state....
  • Environmental determinism
    Environmental determinism

    Environmental determinism, also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism, is the view that the physical environment, rather than social conditions, determines culture....
  • Possibilism (geography)
    Possibilism (geography)

    Possibilism in cultural geography is the theory that the environment sets certain constraints or limitations, but culture is otherwise determined by man's actions....


Further reading

  • Tuan, Yi-Fu. 2004. "CENTENNIAL FORUM: Cultural Geography: Glances Backward and Forward". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 94 (4): 729-733.