Geographic Thought Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The description fits a Formal region.

A formal (uniform or homogeneous) region is defined by one or more characteristics that are the same throughout, such as a climatic type, a soil or a crop, and it has definite boundaries where that characteristic changes.

A functional (nodal) region is defined by connections to a centre, such as a city's commuting area, and its boundaries are zones of fading influence. A peripheral region is defined by its position relative to a core, and a compage is Whittlesey's term for a region of many interrelated features.

Answer: C

Genres de vie means Way of living.

The term was central to the French school of geography of Paul Vidal de la Blache. A genre de vie is the way of life of a group, the combination of techniques, habits, customs and institutions by which it uses its environment. It was the basis of possibilism: the environment offers possibilities, and people choose among them through their way of life.

It does not mean cultural assimilation, gender roles or a geographical area.

Answer: B

The perspective is Humanism.

Humanistic geography, developed in the 1970s by Yi-Fu Tuan, Edward Relph, Anne Buttimer and others, studies how individuals experience, perceive and give meaning to place and space. It draws on phenomenology and existentialism and stresses subjective experience, values and a sense of place.

Positivism seeks objective, general laws through quantitative methods; feminism studies gender relations in space; postmodernism questions grand theories and stresses difference.

Answer: C

The order from the oldest is (ii) (iv) (iii) (i).

1. Anaximander: about 610-546 BCE, credited with the first world map.
2. Herodotus: about 484-425 BCE, historian and traveller.
3. Plato: about 428-348 BCE.
4. Eratosthenes: about 276-194 BCE, who measured the earth's circumference.

Options starting with Eratosthenes or Herodotus get the earliest name wrong, and option B places Eratosthenes second, three centuries too early.

Answer: C

The correct matching is a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii.

• P.R. Gould and R. White: Mental Maps (1974).
• D. Ley (spelt 'Leg' in the paper) and M.S. Samuels: Humanistic Geography: Problems and Prospects (1978).
• E. Soja: Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (1989).
• R.J. Johnston: Geography and Geographers, a history of Anglo-American human geography since 1945.

The other codes misassign at least two of these well-known titles.

Answer: C

Its language and method became Geometry.

During the quantitative revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, geography was recast as a spatial science seeking general laws of location. William Bunge's Theoretical Geography (1962) argued that geometry is the language of spatial analysis, and models of distance, point patterns and networks became its method.

Ecosystem, environment and landscape were the central concepts of earlier or later approaches, ecological and regional geography, rather than the language of spatial analysis.

Answer: B

The geographer is Otto Schluter (spelt 'Schulter' in the paper).

In 1906 Schluter's paper 'Die Ziele der Geographie des Menschen' (The Objectives of the Geography of Man) argued that geography should study the visible landscape, especially the cultural landscape shaped by people, rather than the influence of environment on man. This founded German landscape science (Landschaftskunde).

Georg Gerland wanted geography to be a purely physical science, Friedrich Ratzel founded anthropogeography, and Ferdinand von Richthofen is known for chorology and his work on China.

Answer: C

The incorrect statement is that the intellectual movement of postmodernism flourished in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Postmodernism arose in the 1970s and 1980s, in the last quarter of the century, as a reaction against modernism and its grand theories; in geography it was brought in by Edward Soja, Michael Dear and David Harvey's critique.

The other statements are accepted: postmodern method relies on deconstruction (from Derrida); it gives a context for studying spatial diversity and difference; and Fredric Jameson called postmodernism the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Answer: A

The philosophy is Structuralism.

Structuralism grew out of Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics, which explained language as a system of relations between signs, governed by underlying structures not visible on the surface. Claude Levi-Strauss carried the method into anthropology, and from there it entered the social sciences and geography.

Feminism comes from the politics of gender, behaviouralism from psychology, and humanism from phenomenology and existentialism, not from linguistics.

Answer: C

Structuralism in geography focuses on social structures and power relations.

Structuralist geography, especially in its Marxist form, holds that spatial patterns cannot be explained by what is visible on the surface. They must be traced to underlying structures, the economic system, class relations and the distribution of power, which shape individual actions and landscapes.

Individual behaviour and perception is the concern of behavioural geography, while the critique of grand narratives and the stress on multiple perspectives belong to postmodernism.