Geography

What is geography? Author Alastair Bonnett attempts to answer this question in the book titled the same. He states that geography is a “human enterprise...[that] is an attempt to find and impose order.”1 He explores the many facets of geography that include history, political power, climate, and the humans that live throughout the world. The first two chapters explain in more detail about how geography is knowing the world through both political order and nature.

The first chapter of Bonnett’s What is Geography? explores geography through order and power. Bonnett asserts that humans have a “consistent desire to order their world.”2 This order accomplishes two things: it allows humans to find meaning in the world and helps to establish power for those that understand it. Bonnett believes that people begin to understand the world through stories, orientation, and the notion of center.3 Stories are used by people to explain the world in a way that is easy to understand. Civilizations throughout history have created their explanatory narratives to help establish order and power. However, for these stories to have any validation, there needs to be a point of reference. Bonnett goes on to explain the next two criterion for order. With orientation, people of a particular nation or group are given a starting and an end point for the world. Maps in Europe were originally made to face Jerusalem in the East to remind themselves of where their civilization came from. This, along with the ideas based on the Sun rising in the East as an analogy for the West being more evolved, created a base for the dominant thought of Eurocentrism.4 The final point for order is based on the notion of centre and peripheries. Bonnett explains t...

... middle of paper ...

...fies this idea is that of the Incan empire.

The terrain and climate of the Andes forced the Incans to develop a unique infrastructure. They mass produced individual crops in separate areas on manmade terraces that implemented complex irrigation channels that moved water throughout the mountains. Surplus food was stored in the event of a bad harvest.10 The innovation and adaptation to the environment is a perfect example of what Bonnett was alluding to with Diamonds factor of “how a society deals with its environmental problems.”11

Bonnett concludes the chapter with his summation current issues that plague modern society. He connects modern environmental disasters and issues with the theories of Diamond et al. to explain the current need for an understanding of geography. This understanding of nature allows humans to evolve and grow with the world they live in.