Geography is the study of places and the relationships
between people and their environments. Geographers explore both the physical
properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it. They
also examine how human culture interacts with the natural environment and the
way that locations and places can have an impact on people.
There are three essential characteristics of geographical work (Haggett, 1994) may be identified as Follow :
- Emphasis on the location
- Emphasis on society-land relation
- Emphasis on regional analysis
1. Emphasis on the location:
In
geography, we try to Establishment locations of phenomena on the earth's surface
accurately and economically on the earth's surface accurately and economically on
the map. Thus cartography is an essential tool for geographical work.
Through
our maps, we disentangle different location factors in order to delineate
specific spatial patterns. By this means, we also endeavor to propose more
efficient or more equitable patterns in the social and economic organization of
everyday life.
2. Emphasis on society-land relation:
The geographical study is by nature ecological in approach and
perspective, so that it emphasis interrelations between phenomena, links
between different aspects of phenomena in the local natural environment and the
people living in that particular segment of the earth's surface.
Here emphasis shifts
from spatial variation of phenomena to the delineation of ecological links
between the land and the people.
This ecological relationship represents a kind
of vertical bond. The relationship between the people and their habitat is a
two-way affair.
The character of the natural environment so that the
environment in particular places as we find it today is partly the product of
man's intervention. In this context, it is pertinent to remember that the choice
of scale is the critical element in the geographical study since the scale of
operation- local, regional or global is what determines the overall
perspective.
3. Emphasis on regional analysis:
The regional analysis involves identification of regions analysis of their internal
morphology, their ecological linkage, and their relations with other regions
near and far. Regional work involves two different but closely related
approaches.
In the one, we focus on areal organizations in particular places or
areas with a view to gaining in-depth knowledge of the man environment reality
obtaining therein. The sum total of such studies focused on particular places
in different parts of the earth's surface may provide us valuable knowledge about
the totality of the global man environment system.
Such studies are termed as
regional geography and involve the "total aspect" analysis of
particular theme or element of the system and analyze it systematically over
the earth surface with a view to
identify the general laws of its distribution over the globe.
This is called
systematic geography. the two are complementary perspectives. Regional
geography provides the raw material on the basis of which in their turn,
illuminate future perspective in a regional study of particular places by
introducing a comparative perspective in research.
Source
Geographical thought
By R. D. Dikshit