THE geography it is the science responsible for understanding space and the relationship it has with human beings. Saying that Geography is a science implies considering that it has its own methodological perspectives and its object of study, being a comprehensive area of knowledge and responsible for influencing several applicability, in addition to having several subareas.
What does geography study?
Geography studies the geographic space, that is, all terrestrial space produced by man or that has a direct or indirect relationship with it. Thus, the study of urban and rural societies, the use and appropriation of natural resources and natural dynamics are part of geographic studies.
In general terms, Geography is usually divided into Regional and General, the latter being further subdivided into Physics and Human, although geographers have been increasingly seeking to establish a correlation between human and natural. In the following organization chart, we can have a better idea of the structure of Geography.
Simplified scheme of the structure of geography
THE regional geography, as the name itself points out, starts from localized, regional studies, based more on the specific characteristics of the places than on generalizations or universal reasoning. Some currents of thought even believe in the concept of uniting the whole by the parts, that is, systematizing regional knowledge in order to understand the whole world based on them. This thought spread through Vidal de la Blache, an important French geographer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
THE Physical geography, in turn, studies the land relief, as well as the intervention of human action on it, also acting in environmental, agrarian and urban planning systems. This area is systematized from the understanding of four major compartments of reality: the lithosphere (rock layer of the Earth), the hydrosphere (the waterways), the atmosphere (the climate and its effects) and the biosphere (the vegetation and the distribution of living beings).
already the human geography is based on understanding the reproduction of human activities over space, such as the growth of cities, the dynamics of the economic space, the agrarian and rural environment, the demographic dynamics, among others themes.
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In addition, there are some concepts that, together with geographic space, constitute the core of geographic thought, with emphasis on the following themes: territory, place, landscape and region.
O territory it is, basically, the space appropriated by the relations of power or belonging. It can have natural, political and cultural boundaries that are not always fixed or fully visible. It has different forms that vary with time and area of coverage, in addition to being structured in networks, like the territories of the traffickers, which are structured in interconnected cells that constitute different places.
O place it forms a more comprehensive characteristic, being considered as a space according to human perception, constituting itself from relations of affection and identity. An example of a place, for a person, is the farm where he spent his childhood or the street where his school was located.
THE landscape é, roughly speaking, the external expression in space or the way it is apprehended by the human senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. It represents everything that human beings can see, touch, smell, feel and experience. Some examples are the landscape of cities, rural areas, buildings, among others.
THE region it is the compartmentalization of space based on a previously established criterion. It is possible to regionalize, for example, the area of a city according to the average income of the inhabitants or based on different cultural customs or relief features. It is, then, an intellectual apprehension of reality.
In addition to these concepts, there were or still are other important categories of geography, such as geographic position, location, lifestyles, everyday life, among countless others. Geography is, therefore, a broad science that carries with it the important mission of revealing the different social and natural characteristics reproduced within the terrestrial space.
By Me. Rodolfo Alves Pena