Geography Test - 2

The correct answer is Quantitative revolution.

 Key Points

• Approaches in human geography are as follows-

Important Points 

• Quantitative revolution -
  • Marked by the use of computers and sophisticated statistical tools.
  • Laws of physics were often applied to map and analyse human phenomena. This phase was called the quantitative revolution.
  • The main objective was to identify mappable patterns for different human activities.

The correct answer is Political Geography.

Key Points

• Political Geography is NOT a sub-field of economic geography.
• Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures.
  • Conventionally, for the purposes of analysis, political geography adopts a three-scale structure with the study of the state at the center, the study of international relations (or geopolitics) above it, and the study of localities below it.
  • The primary concerns of the subdiscipline can be summarized as the inter-relationships between people, state, and territory.
  • Critical political geography is mainly concerned with the criticism of traditional political geographies vis-a-vis modern trends.
  • As with much of the move towards 'Critical geographies', the arguments have drawn largely from postmodern, post-structural, and postcolonial theories. 

Additional Information

• Economic geography is the subfield of human geography which studies economic activity and factors affecting them.
  • It can also be considered a subfield or method in economics.
  • There are four branches of economic geography.
  • There is the primary sector, Secondary sector, Tertiary sector, & Quaternary sector.
  • Economic geography takes a variety of approaches to many different topics, including the location of industries, economies of agglomeration (also known as "linkages"), transportation, international trade, development, real estate, gentrification, ethnic economies, gendered economies, core-periphery theory, the economics of urban form, the relationship between the environment and the economy (tying into a long history of geographers studying culture-environment interaction), and globalization.
  • Sub-fields of Economic Geography are Geography of Resources, Geography of Agriculture, Geography of Tourism, Geography of Industries, Geography of Marketing, and Geography of International Trade.

The correct answer is A-(iii), B-(ii), C-(i).

Key Points

• Shifting cultivation is widely practised by many tribes in the tropics, especially in Africa, south and central America and southeast Asia.
• The vegetation is usually cleared by fire, and the ashes add to the fertility of the soil.
• Shifting cultivation is thus, also called slash and burn agriculture.
• The cultivated patches are very small and cultivation is done with very primitive tools such as sticks and hoes.
• After some time (3 to 5 years) the soil loses its fertility and the farmer shifts to other parts and clears another patch of the forest for cultivation. 
• It is prevalent in the tropical region in different names,
  • e.g. Jhuming in the Northeastern states of India,
  • Milpa in Central America and Mexico
  • Ladang in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Demography:

The correct answer is option 3 i.e. demography.

Biogeography: 

• It is the study of the distribution of ecosystems and species through geological time and in geographic space, along with geographic gradients of habitat area, isolation, latitude, and elevation.

Human geography or anthropogeography:

• It is the branch of geography concerned with humans and their cultures, economies, communities, and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across locations. 

Urban geography: 

• A branch of human geography dealing with various aspects of cities.
• It studies the spatial processes and emphasizes mainly on location and space that create patterns observed in urban areas. 

The correct answer is Neodeterminism.

Key Points

• Geographer, Griffith Taylor introduced this concept which reflects a middle path (Madhyam Marg) between the two ideas of environmental determinism and possibilism.
• He termed it as Neodeterminism or stop and go determinism.
• It means that possibilities can be created within the limits which do not damage the environment and there is no free run without accidents.
• The free run which the developed economies attempted to take has already resulted in the greenhouse effect, ozone layer depletion, global warming, receding glaciers and degrading lands.
• Neo-determinism conceptually attempts to bring a balance nullifying the ‘either’ ‘or’ dichotomy.

Population Geography

• Scholars usually equate population geography to demography even though this is usually not the case. This is mainly owing to the reason that population geography is deeper than the study of the patterns of a group of people with regards to birth, marriage & death as is the case with demography.
• This means that they normally look at the manner in which the population of a given area is distributed, how the people there migrate, and the rate as well as pattern of the population growth.

Social sciences comprise a branch/field of knowledge which basically studies human society or human relationship. Geography has now acquired the status of science that explains the arrangements of various natural and cultural features on the earth's surface. Geography is a holistic and interdisciplinary field of study engaged in understanding the changing spatial structure from the past to the future. 

 Key PointsNature of geography as a social science subject:

• Geography is related to different place and space-related issues like the environment, atmosphere, resources, nature, temperature, transport, and communication, etc.
• The teaching of geography mainly acquaints learners with India's natural, economic, and developmental geography and the world.
• In geography, place or the careful observation/examination/description of a particular environment is especially important.
• It deals with earth systems and their processes and patterns like the atmosphere (air), the hydrosphere (water), the lithosphere (earth solid rock), and the biosphere, which encompasses all of earth’s living organisms.
• It focuses on various kinds of forests, grasslands, distribution of flora and fauna, human-nature relationships, and the quality of the living environment and its implications for human welfare.
• In geography, we tend to understand human-environment interactions and look at how the environment shapes human activity and how human activity shapes the environment. 
• It deals with methods and techniques for field studies, qualitative quantitative and cartographic analysis, and Geographic Information System and Global Positioning System (GIS and GPS), and remote sensing.

• It describes the culture, populations, dynamics of social, economic, and political aspects of space.

From the above, we can conclude that all the statements mentioned in the question regarding the nature of geography as a social science subject are true.

The correct answer is Both 1 and 2.

Key PointsHuman Geography

• Human geography uses the full sweep of quantitative and qualitative methods from across the social sciences and humanities, mindful of using them to provide a thorough geographic analysis.
• It also places emphasis on fieldwork and mapping, and has made a number of contributions to developing new methods and techniques, notably in the areas of spatial analysis, spatial statistics, and GIScience.
• Quantitative Methods in Geography will be composed of lectures, discussions and exercises and is designed as an undergraduate level introduction to spatial analysis and the application of statistical methods in a spatial context.
• Qualitative method is the collection of information about human behaviour and perception. It is about focusing in depth to find out why and how certain activities and events occur.

The correct answer is Neo-Determinism

Key PointsNeo-determinism

• Neo-determinism reflects a middle path between two ideas of environmental determinism and possibilism.
• It means that possibilities can be created within the limits which do not the environment.
• Humans can control nature by obeying them. Concept: Nature of Human Geography.
• The concept of Neo-determinism in geography is one of three major approaches in geography (the others being determinism and possibilism) that explain human and environmental relationships.
• As, neither environmental determinism nor possibilism has been able to explain the relationship between humans and the environment correctly, hence the concept of neo-determinism emerged in geography. 
• Neo-determinism is also called "Stop and go determinism" because it believes that if human activities (pollution) cause long-term damage to the environment then such activities should be stopped otherwise humans can do everything that the environment allows us to do.