Themes in APHG

There are a number of themes that will be running throughout the entirety of this course, so I wanted to take a moment to address them at the start.

1. Globalization:  Due to improvements in technology the world is moving towards greater interconnectedness.  Remote parts of the world can now receive messages from the busiest urban centers.  We have more information now about those obscure regions of the world than we ever had before.  Again, this new trend is largely due to improvements in communications technology, access to the internet, improvements in transportation, and a shift in global ethos that allows for more movement between places.  Globalization affects culture, language, business, global economic trends, migration patterns, and a number of other factors that we will discuss in length throughout this course.  Generally speaking, though, we can say that people are much more connected now in the 21st century than they were at any other time.
2. Urbanization:  Along with becoming more globalized the world is also becoming more urbanized.  The global trend in migration (at least for the less-developed countries) is to move from rural to urban areas.  In more-developed countries this trend is to move from urban to suburban areas.  Regardless, people are increasingly being concentrated in large cities, and this is having a profound affect on how humans choose to live, how culture and language are evolving, and how humans interact with their environment.  Increased urbanization means more access to popular culture, a larger concentration of wealth, fewer languages being spoken, and a number of other factors that come about when you have large amounts of people living in a small location.
3. MDCs vs. LDCs:  An important distinction that we will visit again and again in this course is the the difference between our more-developed countries (MDCs) and our less-developed countries (LDCs).  Though we will talk more in length about the differences between these two categories of countries when we reach the Development chapter, we can generally state from the outset that economically powerful countries interact with other groups in a far different way than economically weak ones.  Differences between the two include population growth rates, patterns in migration, access and influence in popular culture, political and military power, and economic might.
4. Legacies of Colonialism:  Another important theme we will address, especially once we start talking about Political Geography, is how the legacies of colonialism have had a lasting effect on the world.  Great Britain once controlled territory on all continents (with the exception of Antarctica).  Colonial empires brought their langauges, culture, religion, waves of migrants, economic systems, political ideologies, technologies and diseases.  Colonial armies decimated the populations of natives in the New World, brought Old World crops and animals with them, and laid the framework for Christianity to dominate the Western Hemisphere.  In short, we will be talking about colonialism quite a bit.
5. Regional Analysis:  Regional analysis is a useful tool for getting a quick idea about the countries that occupy that region.  In a nutshell, regional analysis is the process of looking for common characteristics among countries within a region in order to get a general idea about how a particular country may function.  For example, you might not know much about Bahrain, but if you know that it is a country within the Middle East you can make some general assumptions about it (probably practice Islam, petroleum dominated economy, climate probably isn't the best for agriculture, etc.).  This is an incredibly helpful tool to have, and we will work on developing it as we work our way through the course.

Keep these themes in mind as we read through our textbook and have discussions about the content.