Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Regional Geography

In the popular conception of geography, the discipline is concerned with the study of regions and little else. Geographers have examined regions at a variety of spatial scales and from a diversity of conceptual perspectives. Regions have long been a central means by which geographers organized data and made sense of the world's natural and social landscapes. Few topics have been more central to geography's history and disciplinary identity. Regions continue to form a mainstay of elementary geography pedagogy, and many geographers specialize in the analysis of particular regions, ranging from tiny places to entire cultural realms. Regions mean different things at different times and can be defined in different ways depending on the particular issue involved. Regions are important in structuring popular geographical imaginations as well as public and private economic strategies. While this topic may appear to be relatively free from controversy, in fact the use of regions and their philosophical significance has been the source of considerable debate. Indeed, regional geography, which has declined in significance since its heyday in the mid 20th century, continues to play an important part of the discipline, albeit one that jostles uneasily alongside other, less regionally oriented perspectives.

Classical Regional Geography

Since the Classical Age of Greece, regions have played a central role in geography as a means to collect, organize, and give meaning to spatial distributions. Many classical scholars, such as Ptolemy, wrote encyclopedic accounts that were largely regional descriptions of the known world. In the 17th century, Bernhard Varenius (1622–1650) wrote the Geographia Generalis, a volume that became a major textbook in Europe for the next 150 years and was translated into English by Newton. Varenius distinguished between specific geography, which was concerned with the unique character of places, and what he called general geography, which was concerned with universal laws.

In the 19th century, three figures loomed large in the formalization of regional geography. Carl Ritter (1779–1859) wrote the 19-volume Erdkunde (1818), a comprehensive world regional geography text, which emphasized the comparison and synthesis of facts through a regional approach, largely with religious goals in mind. Geography's purpose was to detect the holistic character of places. Comparative local studies were to be the basis through which generalizations could be made. Ritter claimed to see evidence of divine plans in the world's geography, advocating a religious, teleological interpretation. Second, Paul Vidal de la Blache (1845–1918), widely seen as the founder of modern French geography, developed the notion of genres de vie, or local lifestyles, which celebrated the uniqueness of rural landscapes in the French pays (local, typically agrarian regions). Noting the variations across France in the face of a common climate, he maintained that culture, not nature, was primarily responsible, using this theme to bludgeon environmental determinism and introduce possibilism. Third, Alfred Hettner (1859–1941), in the Kantian tradition, defined geography in chorological terms, believing that the discipline's importance was maintained by its comprehensive, regional approach rather than its subject area and that synthesis was its greatest strength.

Areal Differentiation

The American version of regional geography reached its apex between the two World Wars with the ascent of this school of thought, variously labeled as areal differentiation, chorology, or regional description. The ascent of this view was to be found in the aftermath of environmental determinism, when the discipline's retreat from theory sharply differentiated it from other social sciences, which were then making great strides. Its embodiment is Richard Hartshorne (1899–1992) and his definitive landmark text The Nature of Geography (1939). Having studied under Hettner and thus heavily Kantian in outlook, Hartshorne made a variety of claims regarding regional geography as the definition of the discipline's core and claim to uniqueness within the academic division of labor. Geography was synthetic, like history, integrating the analysis of different phenomena as they were manifested in unique combinations in particular places. Regions allowed the analysis of both human and physical phenomena, transcending the growing schism between the two parts of the discipline. Because the complexity of the world is overwhelming, Hartshorne advocated the study of small regions with relatively little internal variation; accreting this into a mosaic that would encompass larger areas. This view subscribed to a crude spatial determinism in which proximity came to stand for causality: Where things were was enough to ascertain their nature, and closer phenomena were more likely to be related than more distant ones. He well understood that regions are only tools and, in the vein of Kant, maintained that regions are only mental constructs—simplifications of the world the mind uses to impose order on the world.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution