Geographic Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The key pairs Brian Berry with urban geography (iv), Carl Sauer with the item iii, Dorreen Massey with radical geography (ii) and O.H.K. Spate with regional geography (i), which gives iv, iii, ii, i. Berry did quantitative urban work, Massey worked in the radical and Marxist tradition, and Spate wrote regional geographies of India and Pakistan.

The other codes give Berry social or regional geography, or give Spate urban geography, which contradicts these three clear pairs. Sauer is better known as a cultural geographer, and the list's item for him is the one the key assigns to social geography.

Answer: A

The remark that regions are good servants but bad masters is attributed to C.C. Carter. It warns that a region is a useful device for study and understanding, but that it should not be treated as a rigid reality that rules the geographer's thinking.

Herbertson is known for his natural regions of the world, Spate for his work on regional synthesis in the Indian subcontinent, and Vidal de la Blache for the concept of 'pays' and possibilism. None of these is credited with that remark in the question's key.

Answer: C

Both statements are correct, and the reason is the correct explanation of the assertion, in the key. Behavioural geography has moved toward a constructivist or transactionalist epistemology of the neo-Kantian kind, in which the person and the environment shape each other. The geographers named, White, Kirk, Gold and Kates, were among those whose work started and developed the behavioural movement, which is why the shift described in the assertion happened. Options A and B call one of the statements wrong, and option D denies the explanatory link. Option C is the keyed answer.

Answer: B

The matching is a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i. Carl Sauer wrote on the morphology of landscape. Harlan Barrows described geography as human ecology in his presidential address of 1923. William Morris Davis put forward the cycle of erosion. Mark Jefferson is known for the law of the primate city. That order, iv, iii, ii, i, is option B. The other codes give the cycle of erosion or the primate city to the wrong geographer.

Answer: D

The works An Introduction to the Application of Geography to History and The Geographical Distribution of Mankind are by Friedrich Ratzel, the German geographer who founded anthropogeography. Vidal de la Blache is known for the idea of possibilism and the French regional school, Carl Ritter for his Erdkunde and the comparative method, and Alfred Hettner for the chorological view of geography. Option D is the keyed answer.

Answer: C

The great leaders of the golden age of German geography in the first quarter of the twentieth century were A. Penck and A. Hettner, so (i) and (iv) are correct. Albrecht Penck led geomorphology and Alfred Hettner the chorological school of regional geography. Carl Ritter died in 1859, so he belongs to the earlier classical period, and Hermann Lautensach, though important, came after that quarter of the century. Option C is correct, and the options with (iii) or (ii) are wrong.

Answer: C

The place of geography in the classification of sciences was determined by Immanuel Kant, who in his lectures on physical geography treated geography as the description of space, as history is the description of time, and so placed it among the empirical sciences by the way it deals with phenomena. Varenius is known for dividing geography into general and special, Cluverius for his work on ancient geography, and Munster for his Cosmographia. Option C is correct.

Answer: D

Statements (i) and (iii) are correct about Ratzel's Lebensraum. In Ratzel's writing it is the geographical area, the living space, within which living organisms develop, and it deals with the relation of human society, as a spatial organisation, to its physical setting. Statement (ii) describes economic and cultural activity outside the settled area, and statement (iv) gives the later use of the word in geopolitik, which belongs to Kjellen and Haushofer and not to Ratzel's own idea. Option D is correct.

Answer: A

Both statements are true, and the reason explains the assertion. Humanistic geography rejects positivism and quantification as ways of studying human beings, because they leave out meaning and experience. It does so because it stresses the role of human agency and creativity in the making of place, space and landscape, which cannot be reduced to numbers. So the reason gives the ground of the rejection, and option A is correct.

Answer: A

The chronological sequence of the Arab geographers is Al-Biruni (died 1048), Al-Idrisi (died about 1165), Ibn Battuta (died about 1368) and Ibn Khaldun (died 1406). That order is option A. Al-Masudi, who died in 956, is earlier than all four, so he would have to come first, and options B, C and D, which place him after other geographers, are wrong. Option B also puts Ibn Khaldun before Al-Biruni, and option C puts Al-Idrisi last, so neither follows the dates.