Berkeley School

The Berkeley School of geography, also sometimes called the California School, was a movement of geographic analysis that originated with Carl Sauer and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in the early to mid 20th century. It was a major branch of cultural geography concerned with how humans interact with and change their landscapes. The Berkeley School helped diminish the popularity of environmental determinism and placed an emphasis on historical human culture and behavior. As such, it was heavily aligned with UC Berkeley's history and anthropology departments. Scholars at the Berkeley School believed that by studying historical cultures and their impacts on the landscape, they could better understand modern human impacts. Unlike its counterpart in the Midwest, the Berkeley School was also more concerned ...