Pre-Reading Notes

This chapter is a little different from all of the other chapters in this textbook because it presents the core background in geography that you’ll need to explore the world’s regions. If you’ve already had a geography course, great! This chapter will likely be a refresher. If not, welcome to your first geography course! It’s probably going to be quite different than you expected but I’ve designed this textbook, and these notes, with you in mind and I hope you enjoy it!

First, let’s review the learning objectives for this chapter in a bit more detail:

• Understand the principles of geographic study
  • What are the core principles geographers use to study the world?
  • How is geography different from other disciplines, like history or sociology?
• Summarize the key physical and human features of the world
  • What are the key physical features found on Earth’s landscape?
  • What are the key human characteristics of our world? (Such as major population centers, etc.)
• Distinguish between different types of regions
  • What are the three main types of regions and what are examples of each?
• Understand the major subfields of geography and their key conceptual frameworks
  • Geographers study many different things – what are the key areas of inquiry within geography and how do they differ?
• Describe the process of globalization and the principal measures of inequality
  • What does globalization mean?
  • What is inequality and how is it measured?

Each chapter starts with a list of learning objectives, and I would encourage you to create questions so you can test yourself based on these objectives. I’ll provide a few starter questions for each chapter in the notes to get you started.

In this chapter, pay close attention to vocabulary terms since these are terms and concepts that will come up throughout the semester. Also, try not to get stuck in the weeds. World Regional Geography is a LOT. It’s the entire world throughout all of time throughout all of history and also some weather and tectonics and our physical environment and… the list goes on. So, try not to get overwhelmed by specific facts.

For example, skip ahead in the book to section 1.5. See the discussion of the rate of natural increase and how I give Madagascar as an example? Does this mean you need to memorize the natural increase rate of Madagascar? No way! (Also, it changes every year, so there’s not much point.) Often, I provide detailed examples in the text as a way to help students understand key concepts, but it’s generally the concept that matters and not the specific statistics or data presented. So, each paragraph, remind yourself to “zoom out,” and ask yourself what the most important piece of information in that section is.

Alright, now it’s your turn to read the chapter and then check back for the after-reading notes!

Notes After Reading

Welcome back! How did you like Chapter 1? It’s a lot, but you’ve now got all the basic information you need to start to explore the world from a geographic perspective.

For each chapter, I’ll provide some detailed notes on the one or two concepts that students seem to struggle with the most. But for this chapter, since we’re reviewing the basics, I’ll cover three core concepts.

First, students often seem confused about the core-hinterland and core-periphery, so let’s review that briefly. Picture the closest city to where you are. And it doesn’t have to be a big city, just an area with a commercial center and some shops and businesses. Okay, now where are the rural areas around that city? If you’re not sure, think about where you might find farmland if you went out for a drive. In my town, I live near a major road that leads out to a rural area and I often see (and hear) trucks driving into town carrying lumber, flowers, agricultural products – all kinds of things. Where do you see big trucks in your area and where are they headed? The rural areas where these goods are coming from is the hinterland. Where do people mainly buy and sell goods in your area? The commercial centers where most shops and businesses are located is the city, or core.

Let’s apply this model to the global scale. Where are most goods produced? This area is known as the global periphery and it’s similar to the hinterland, but note that these countries are not just homogenous rural areas. The global periphery has its own commercial centers. Which countries are the ones buying most of the goods produced in the periphery? These are the core countries. Do you live in a core country or a peripheral country? Check Figure 1.6.

Last question for this concept: how is the relationship between the core and the hinterland different between the core and periphery? One key difference is that the core-hinterland relationship is a bit more symbiotic than the relationship between the core and the periphery. Think about the rural area near your town that you pictured earlier. Do enough people live in the rural area to just sell the goods there? No, they need the market base of the core. And is land plentiful, and cheap, enough in the core for goods to be produced there? No, they need the cheaper land of the periphery. The difficulty with the global core-periphery arrangement is that it is generally more one-sided, with the core countries pressing to buy goods as cheaply as possible from the periphery and often countries in the periphery unable to move beyond a peripheral status.

Next, let’s look at the Demographic Transition Model, which is my favorite model ever!! (Can you tell I’m excited?) Okay, before we get into why it’s my favorite, let’s walk through the model together. Take out a sheet of paper (or grab the back of some recycled paper) and two different colored writing utensils. Seriously. I’ll wait.

Got it? Okay, I think  students understand this model best when they can walk through step by step and draw it themselves, so let’s do it. First, there are five (depending on who you ask) (but you asked me, so there’s five) stages of the Demographic Transition Model (or DTM.) So let’s draw five boxes on our paper like this:

Excellent!

So what is the birth rate and death rate like in Stage 1? Picture feudal Europe – large families and lots of death. (Not my ideal time period to come back to if I were a time traveler.) So begin by drawing some crazy squiggles in the box for Stage 1 with each color of your writing implements. Have one color represent birth rates and the other death rates. (Or if you only have one color, just make one a solid line and the other dotted.) It should look something like this:

Well done! Okay, let’s move on to the next stage. In Stage 2, we see a major change with the death rate. What are some core things that make a society’s death rate go down? You might think of heathcare systems, education for medical professionals, etc., and you’re absolutely right. Don’t forget though, many countries moved into Stage 2 alongside the Industrial Revolution, so some of the advances in medicine that drove down the death rate were things as simple as washing your hands! Vaccines dramatically decreased the death rate as well. Culturally, a preference for larger families remained as many Stage 2 countries were/are primarily agricultural, so the birth rate stays high. Add a high birth rate and a steeply decreasing death rate to your model like this:

This model is really taking shape. Now let’s move on to Stage 3. In Stage 3, we start to see the birth rate go down, so add that to your model. Why has it gone down? As societies industrialize, we see more women entering the workforce and continuing their education, both of which bring down the birth rate. We see societal shifts toward smaller families. And we also see a more widespread cultural acceptance of family planning methods. What happens to the death rate? There’s no reason for it to go up, right? So it stays low. Add your death rate to the model, which should now look something like this:

Okay, great work so far. So what happens in Stage 4? Stage 4 countries are like the United States, where the birth rate and death rate are both quite low, so let’s add that to our model:

Now, we come to the mysterious Stage 5. (Me: “When I was your age, they didn’t even have a Stage 5!” That’s true, actually.) Stage 5 is relatively new and not everyone agrees that it exists and what it looks like, but it seems clear that there has been an additional demographic transition happening in more developed countries but how it manifests can vary. In a number of countries, we see the death rate stay low but the birth rate actually continues to go lower, dropping below the death rate. Picture countries like Japan where real estate can be very expensive and have no children or one child is culturally acceptable. Stage 5 in these countries would look something like this:

Note how the birth rate has dropped below the death rate. What would happen to a country’s population over time if this is the case? Hold that thought because we’ll come back to it.

In other countries, we see the birth rate actually increase a bit from Stage 4, but the death rate might increase as diseases of affluence increase (things like obesity-related illnesses, for example, which are more prevalent in more developed societies with an ample supply of highly processed foods.) So their Stage 5 might also experience a population decrease if the death rate increases but birth rates only increase slightly. In still other countries, maybe there’s a slight uptick in births but the death rate remains low. What seems to be most common in more developed countries among the native-born population is the model I’ve inserted above where the birth rate slips below the death rate.

Okay, really well done! Hopefully that helped you understand the model a bit more taking it stage by stage. Now, as promised, let’s talk about why I love this model. First, remember I asked what would happen to a country’s population over time? Well we can track it using this model! A country’s population would increase if its birth rate is higher than its death rate. Its population would decrease if it’s death rate is higher than its birth rate. Super simple, right? So wherever you see your birth rate line above your death rate line → population increase. Wherever your death rate line is below your birth rate line? Population decrease. Where the gap is the widest is the biggest change in population.

A country’s demographic transition tells us SO much about its broader demographics, not just the actual birth and death rates themselves. They can point to how agricultural or industrial a society is. They can shed light on cultural preferences for family sizes, attitudes towards women in the workforce and the use of contraceptives. They can let us know what future challenges a country might be facing. (An aging population that will require significant social service funding, for example, or a large younger population seeking to enter the workforce requiring economic investment in jobs and housing.) You can look at some real examples of actual demographic transitions in different countries here: Wikimedia Demographic Transitions Article

Finally, let’s turn to regions. Students are often confused about the three different types of regions, so let’s review them briefly.

First, formal regions are pretty much any map that uses different colors to represent certain features (the fancy name for this is a choropleth map.) Take a moment and Google “choropleth map.” Click on the image tab – those are all examples of formal regions. On my search results, I have a map showing the percentage of rural population living in poverty by state (a formal region map because we’ve created regions based on an underlying characteristic. In this case, rural poverty) and a map of Australia based on temperature (again, we’re grouping areas based on their temperature, which would be formal regions). Try Googling “agriculture region map” and view the results. Is this an example of a formal region or a functional region? Ask yourself, “Is this map created by creating regions based on what they have in common?” Absolutely! In this case, we take the topic of agriculture and draw regions based on shared crops, soils, or growing conditions.

Next, let’s turn to functional regions. These are a bit tougher, but I’ll give you one critical hint: pretty much any metro area is a functional region. Tokyo-Yokohama metro area? Functional. DC metro area? The terrible mess that is I-95 on a workday shows you that indeed, it is a functional region. Los Angeles metro area? Functional region. So why is every metro area a functional region? Well, functional regions are united by their function, which is an economic function in this case. And every metro area by its very definition is united by people working in a central area even if they commute from the wider region. What are some other functional regions? They’re a bit harder to think of examples for. TV viewing areas used to be one that people gave as an example, but that was back when people had rabbit ear antennas, which you might still have (I certainly did in college). Wi-fi hotspots is a more modern example. If you made a map of your city based on wi-fi hotspots, you’d be defining regions based on function (where a wi-fi signal was available).

Lastly, we have vernacular regions. These are regions that are perceived to exist. That’s not to say they’re fake. For example, I told my son the other day that continents aren’t real (which is true) but now he’s enjoying saying they’re fake. It’s not that continents don’t exist at all, it’s that the divisions we create for them are based on perception. (But I should have realized that’s probably too nuanced for a first grader. Live and learn.) Where are some vernacular regions that could describe the country where you live? In the United States, an example of a vernacular region might be “the South.” Your boundaries of where you would define the location of the south are probably different than mine, but we agree it exists. (This is a key hint of whether or not something is a vernacular region – if we agree it exists, but disagree on the boundaries, it is probably a vernacular region.) (Or you could just be bad at geography, but probably it’s vernacular.) Vernacular regions in towns could be things like “downtown” or “the historic district.” Often, shops and businesses use vernacular labels, so that’s another hint that a region could be vernacular.

As you finish up this chapter, go back to the learning objectives for the chapter and the questions you created and use them to test yourself!