he is dealing with real human beings who are just as circumscribed as he. 3
Geography, as an interdisciplinary field of study has an interest in both the physical and cultural worlds. Although geography’s physical side is not specifically covered in this chapter, most of the items cited will cover the entire discipline, not just the study of human activity of Earth […] is the focus of geography as a social science.
During the twentieth century a number of fundamental themes evolved within geography. A traditional definition of the discipline is given in the essay “Geography” by Norton Ginsburg found in A Reader’s Guide to the Social Sciences (A-1). In the new two-volume edition, published in December 2000, the geography chapter has been radically rewritten with essays that focus on feminist geography, geographical information systems, residential segregation and urban social geography and human geography. Geographers also point to a presentation by William Pattinson entitled “The Four Traditions of Geography” as a help in defining the discipline. 4 It is also traditional for the current president of the Association of American Geographers to present a presidential address that defends the nature and state of the discipline, which is then published in the Annals of the AAG.
Regional and systematic geography
Within the social sciences the study of geography is divided into regional geography and systematic geography. The regional approach has traditionally formed the core of geography and reform its essential character. 5 The main purpose of regional studies is to concentrate on the geography character of areas and to focus on critical distinctive features. Regional studies usually include a number of topics: location, natural environment, population, political status, type of economy, internal arrangement and organization, external connections and relationships, characteristic landscapes and their origin, world importance, potentialities, and problems. 6
Alternatively, systematic geography is focused on the phenomenon and how it is spatially distributed. Systematic geography experienced significant growth during the twentieth century, research interests splitting off from each other as geographers became increasingly specialized. For instance, the main subfield, human geography, was subdivided into cultural, economic, historical, political, population, and urban geography.