We explain what cultural geography is, its history, object of study and auxiliary sciences. Also, other branches of geography.
What is cultural geography?
Cultural geography is a geographical discipline that studies the phenomena and cultural products of different human populations and their link with space as populations migrate, move or settle over a given period of time.
The approach of cultural geography is similar and complementary to that of general geography, that is, the understanding of the world based on the distribution and structuring of its different regions, each one endowed with natural aspects and human works. It is the latter that are of interest to cultural geography.
For this 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 the latter.
History of cultural geography
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 geographical description of natural accidents.
This use is maintained in many Anglo-Saxon academies. In this context, some of the great local names emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Carl O. Sauer (1889-1975), author of Cultural Geographywhere the foundations for the discipline were laid. After the Second World War, cultural geography was assumed as a discipline more naturally.
This diffusion occurs in the midst of a true 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 limited and was in favor of the emergence 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 on the earth's surface and 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 environment natural geographic. In simpler terms, it studies the human footprint on the planet from a geographical point of view.
Auxiliary sciences of cultural geography
Cultural geography has a necessary contact with the other branches of geography such as physical geography or economic geography. It is also related to humanistic disciplines and social sciences who are also interested in human beings and their way of building society, such as anthropology, sociology, history or linguistics.
Other branches of geography
Geography is a science that includes other renowned branches, such as:
- Physical geography One who is interested in the relief, the formation of the earth's surface and other geographical aspects that have to do with nature.
- Human geography That which, unlike the previous one, focuses its attention on the geographical presence of human beings, that is, on 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 the human economy is distributed across the globe.
- Linguistic geography Another branch of human geography, although perhaps also of cultural geography, that contemplates the distribution of languages on the planet, as well as their historical developments 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 history.
Continue with: Political geography
References
- “Cultural geography” on Wikipedia.
- “Cultural Geography” by Dupuy, Héctor at the National University of La Plata (Argentina).
- “Treatise on human geography” by Daniel Hiernaux and Alcia Lindón in Anthropos of the Autonomous Metropolitan University (Mexico).
- “Geography of culture” in Transitaelmundo (blog).
- “Cultural geography” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica.
