Geographic Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The view that space is socially or culturally constructed belongs to postmodernism in geography, which treats space and place as products of meaning, discourse and power and not as an objective container. Logical positivism looks for universal laws and measures space as geometry. Behaviouralism studies perceived space and decision making of individuals, and structuralism looks for underlying economic structures. Postmodernism is the school that stresses social and cultural construction.

Answer: C

Alfred Hettner defined geography as the chorological science, that is, the study of the differences of areas of the earth's surface, in contrast to the systematic sciences. Ptolemy was a classical geographer and cartographer. Richthofen supported chorology and regional study but Hettner gave the clear definition. P.E. James is known for his work on the history of geographical thought and for his regional approach, but not for this definition.

Answer: A

Torsten Hagerstrand, the Swedish geographer, developed time geography (time-space geography), which studies how the constraints of time and space shape individual activities and movement. His model uses paths in space-time and prisms. Haggett is known for locational analysis, Johnston for the history of geography and for electoral geography, and Harvey for Marxist geography and for the book Explanation in Geography. His work was published in the 1970s and has been used to study daily life and migration in a planned way.

Answer: C

The key matches Gibson with realism (ii), Guelke with idealism (i), Peet with radicalism (iv), and Wright and Kirk with behaviouralism (iii). This is code C. Guelke argued for the idealist method in historical geography, Peet was a leading radical geographer, and Kirk and Wright developed the behavioural environment and geosophy. The codes A, B and D place Guelke or Gibson under the wrong philosophy. Idealist, behavioural and radical approaches grew in the 1970s as reactions to the quantitative revolution in geography.

Answer: D

The question on the geography of public finance, 'who gets what, where and at what cost', is credited to R.J. Bennett, a British geographer who wrote on the geography of public finance and on spatial time series. Chorley is known for geomorphology and the use of models in geography, Harvey for Marxist and social justice geography, and Claval for French social and regional geography. The key gives Bennett as the answer.

Answer: A

Bernhard Varenius laid the foundation of the dichotomy of General versus Special Geography. His Geographia Generalis (1650) treated the general laws of the earth as a whole, while special geography described particular regions, and the split shaped later debate between systematic and regional geography.

Kant lectured on physical geography and classified knowledge. Peter Apian and Sebastian Munster were sixteenth century cosmographers who produced descriptive works and maps but did not set up this division.

Answer: B

Teleology in geography was propounded by Carl Ritter. He viewed the earth as a planned home for mankind, designed by a divine creator, so that the arrangement of lands and seas had a purpose, and he studied how people and places relate within this purposeful whole.

Humboldt wrote Kosmos and stressed the unity of nature, though not the teleological view. Peschel was a German geographer of geomorphology and comparative studies. Vidal de la Blache is known for possibilism and the study of 'pays', and not for teleology.

Answer: C

Ellsworth Huntington specifically emphasised climatic determinism. In Civilization and Climate he argued that climate, with stimulating temperature and storminess, accounts for the rise of civilisations and for human energy and progress.

Ratzel founded anthropogeography and spoke of the influence of the environment more broadly. Semple popularised environmental determinism in English with the influence of geographic environment generally. Griffith Taylor proposed 'stop and go determinism', a modified view, not an emphasis on climate alone.

Answer: B

Areal differentiation is also called chorological study, or chorology. Following Hettner and Hartshorne, geography is the study of the differences between areas of the earth's surface and of how places differ in the combination of phenomena they hold, which is the chorological view.

Exceptionalism is the claim, criticised by Schaefer, that geography is unique among sciences. Systematic geography studies one class of phenomena at a time across the earth. Regionalism is a movement or political and cultural idea of attachment to a region and is not a name for areal differentiation.

Answer: D

The correct sequence of Greek geographers is Anaximander, Herodotus, Eratosthenes and Hipparchus. Anaximander (sixth century BC) is credited with an early world map. Herodotus (fifth century BC) wrote the Histories with geographical description. Eratosthenes (third century BC) measured the earth's circumference. Hipparchus (second century BC) proposed latitude and longitude grids.

The other options place Hipparchus before Eratosthenes or Herodotus before Anaximander, which reverses their dates.