Geographical determinism is the belief that the environment determines the standards of human culture in a given place and its social development.
In this case, mainly physical factors are taken into account, such as landforms and climate.
Experts who believe in geographic determinism claim that only ecological, climatic, and geographic factors are responsible for human cultures and individual decisions.
Furthermore, they claim that social conditions have virtually no impact on cultural development.
The argument used for geographic determinism
The main argument for geographic determinism is that the physical characteristics of an area, such as the climate, have an essential and direct impact on the lives of the local inhabitants..
This perspective claims that this helps define the general behavior and culture of a society. For example, areas in the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn were said to be less developed than the higher latitudes.
This justification was given by the continuously hot climate that, according to some geographers, facilitated the survival and therefore the people who lived there did not work as hard to ensure their survival.
Another example of geographic determinism would be the theory that island nations (formed by an island or a set of them) have unique cultural characteristics, due to their isolation from societies. continental.
Geographical determinism according to ancient geography
Writings on geographic determinism have been noted for many years.
Climatic factors, for example, were used by Plato and Aristotle to explain why the Greeks were more developed than other societies in much warmer or much colder climates.
Furthermore, Aristotle created his climate classification system to explain why people were limited to settlement in certain areas of the globe..
Other scholars have also used geographic determinism to explain not just the culture of a society, but the reasons behind the physical characteristics of the people.
Al Jahiz, an East African writer, for example, cited environmental factors as the origin of different skin colors.
He believed that the darker skin of many Africans and many birds, mammals and insects was a direct result of the prevalence of black basalt rocks in the Arabian Peninsula.
Geographical determinism and Friedrich Ratzel's theory
Geographical determinism reached its apex in modern geography, from the end of the 19th century, when it was resurrected by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel. Thus, it ended up becoming the central theory of the discipline.
Ratzel's theory emerged following Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 and was strongly influenced by evolutionary biology and the impact a person's environment has on their evolution cultural.
Friedrich Ratzel, German geologist.
Ratzel's theory states that, in addition to man being the result of the environment and geographic environment in which he lives, the State is like a living organism that works to expand and defend its own space.
Thus, the most advanced societies would have a larger space, being able to expand with more speed and ease.
It was from this thought that the German geologist originated the living space concept, which relates human groups to the spatial units where they develop.
Many experts in modern geography call into question Ratzel's theory and claim that it was, in some way, the impetus for the Nazi event.
Criticism and decline of geographic determinism
Despite its success in the early 1900s, the popularity of geographic determinism began to decline in the 1920s.
Furthermore, critics began to claim that the claim was racist and perpetuated imperialism.
Carl Sauer, for example, claimed that geographic determinism prematurely generalized the culture of an area. Thus, it did not allow results based on direct observation or other research.
As a result of their criticisms and others, geographers developed the theory of environmental possibilism to explain cultural development.
Environmental possibilism and geographic determinism
Environmental possibilism was established by French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche and asserted that the environment sets limitations for cultural development, but does not fully define the culture.
Rather, culture is defined by the opportunities and decisions humans make in response to dealing with such limitations.
In the 1950s, geographical determinism has been almost entirely replaced in geography by environmental possibilism, effectively ceasing to be the central theory of the discipline.
Regardless of its decline, however, geographic determinism was an important component of geographic history since which initially represented an attempt by early geographers to explain the patterns they saw developing across the country. world.
See too: determinism, geographic space and imperialism.