Anthropogeography

The term anthropogeography refers to a perspective and program in human geography with both major and minor traditions, expressions, and manifestations. Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904) is credited with coining the term. His two-volume work, Anthropogeographie (published in 1882 and 1891), is usually cited as the founding document. The first volume, in which he offered an overview of human history as adaptation to physical environment, often has been misrepresented as an environmental determinist tract. It is true that many subsequent environmentalists, perhaps most famously Ellen Churchill Semple (1863–1932), interpreted Ratzel's anthropogeography in this light. These misreadings of Ratzel led to anthropogeography's major tradition—that of the study of the effects of the biophysical environment on human culture and history. By the time of Ratzel's death, an increasing number of geographers were producing studies that superficially could be attributed to Ratzel's example. This remained the case through the 1920s, but thereafter their industry and influence waned.

In North America, this eclipse was due in no small part to Carl O. Sauer's (1889–1975) attacks on environmental determinism in geography and Franz Boas's (1858–1942) condemnations from his base in anthropology. Sauer's critiques included alternative views of human–environment relations, ones that incorporated much of what Ratzel proposed for cultural geographic studies in the second volume of Anthropogeographie. According to Sauer, Ratzel pioneered the study of the distribution of culture traits, first stated the case for cultural diffusion as the prime process, and anticipated the culture area concept. This is all second-volume Ratzel. By the 1940s, when environmental determinism had been largely discredited and the term anthropogeography had fallen into disuse, Sauer began his rehabilitation of the term. He and some of his students, such as Fred Kniffen (1900–1993) and George Carter (1912– 2004), used it to identify their approach to a cultural geography centered on locating cultural cores or hearths, tracing diffusions of culture traits, and more generally reconstructing the making and breaking of cultural landscapes through “all human time.” By the 1950s, Sauer had begun to self-identify with anthropogeography explicitly. Although few have applied this appellation to Sauer's collective enterprise, the Berkeley School, it is perhaps the most apt way to encompass the problems, perspectives, and practices associated with this school. This, then, can be considered anthropogeography's minor, if explicitly antithetical, tradition.

One maxim of this minor tradition is that where cultural historical questions are concerned, “it is always earlier than you think.” Accordingly, the origins of the term anthropogeography probably antedate Ratzel's deployment. The earliest detectable English use seems to be from the 1650s, when it appeared in alchemical[Page 11] discourse pertaining to the symmetries and correspondences between the human body and the earth. Its most common current use resides in bibliothecal categories. The U.S. Library of Congress indexing system equates anthropogeography and human ecology and puts this major heading (GF) between environmental science (GE) and anthropology (GN). Future cross-fertilizations between disciplinary sectors of geography and anthropology may be expected to bring about new meanings of this adaptable term and concept.