World Regions in Global Context : Peoples, Places, and Environments

by Marston, Sallie A.; Knox, Paul L.; Liverman, Diana M.

• ISBN13: 9780131449756
• ISBN10: 0131449753
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-01
• Publisher: Prentice Hall

Summary

For courses in World Regional Geography. For courses in World Regional Geography. World Regions in Global Context employs an explicitly global approach to world regional geography that emphasizes global connections, the stories behind the maps, and presents explicit discussions of how these forces and processes play themselves out in individual places. The book makes the most current and powerful ideas in geography accessible to the introductory student. Marston, Knox, and Liverman feature an emphasis on core regions, key cities, and distinctive landscapes that allows the them to stress global connections while still maintaining the course's traditional focus on places at the local scale.

Table of Contents

A World of Regions

The Power of Geography: A World of Regions:The Regional Approach

The Interdependence of Geographic Scales

Boundaries and Frontiers

Regionalism and Sectionalism

Places and Regions in an Interdependent World:Globalization

Globalization and Environmental Change

The Global Context: Some Important Patterns:Religion

Language

Population Distribution

Urbanization

Economic Development and Social Well-being

The Foundations of World Regions

The Changing World:The Earth System

The World-System

Geographic Expansion, Integration, and Change:The Growth of Early Empires

The Geographic Foundations of the Modern World

Organizing the Core:The Division of Labor

Standardizing Time, Space, Measure, Value, and Money

Forging National Identities and Constructing States

Controlling and Commodifying Nature

Developing Internal Infrastructures

Organizing the Periphery:Imperialism and Colonialism: Imposing New Geographies on the World

An International Division of Labor

Political and Cultural Geographies

Exploration and Exploitation

Developing Internal Infrastructures

Globalization and Economic Development:Deploying and Encountering Development

Five Key Factors of Globalization

Transnational Economic Integration

Europe

Environment and Society in Europe:Landforms and Landscapes

Climate

Environmental History

Europe in the World-System:Trade and the Age of Discovery

Industrialization and Imperialism

Eastern Europe's Interlude of State Socialism

The Peoples of Europe:The European Diaspora

Migration Within Europe

Recent Migration Streams

European Cultural Traditions

Culture and Ethnicity, Nations and States

Contemporary Challenges in a Globalizing World:Growth, Deindustrialization, and Reinvestment

The European Union

The Reintegration of Eastern Europe

Core Regions and Distinctive Landscapes:Europe's Golden Triangle

The Southern Crescent

Mediterranean Europe

Alpine Europe

Nordic Europe

The Danubian Plains

The Russian Federation, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus

Environment and Society:Climate

Physiographic Regions

Natural Landscapes

Environmental History

Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus in the World-System:Muscovy and the Russian Empire

The Soviet Empire

New Realities

The Peoples of Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus:The Russian Diaspora and Migration Streams

Nationalisms

Contemporary Challenges in a Globalizing World:Problems of Economic and Social Transformation

Gender and Inequality

Core Regions and Distinctive Landscapes:The Central Region

The Volga Region

The Urals

The Tundra

Central Siberian Taiga

The Steppes

The Central Asian Deserts

Middle East and North Africa

Environment and Society in the Middle East and North Africa:Landforms and Landscapes

Climate

Environmental History

The M

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Excerpts

It is not down in any map; true places never are. Excerpt fromMoby Dick;orThe WhalePublished by Harper & Brothers, New York. Copyright 1851 by Herman Melville. This line from Herman Melville's classic American novel,Moby Dick,suggests that while places can be identified on a map--located using longitude and latitude coordinates--one can never truly understand a place simply by knowing its geographic location. Places and regions come to life as we learn about them and develop a relationship--sprititual, physical, emotional, psychological--to them.Moby Dickis the story of a voyage of discovery; this book is as well.World Regions in Global Contextprovides an introduction to world regional geography that will make exotic places, landscapes, and environments accessible and will reveal the familiar in new ways. To study world regional geography, to put it simply, is to study the dynamic and complex relationships between people and the worlds they inhabit. This book gives students the basic geographical tools and concepts needed to understand the complexity of regions and to appreciate the interconnections between their own lives and those of people in different parts of the world. Objectives and Approach This book has two primary objectives. The first is to provide a body of knowledge about how natural, social, economic, political, and cultural phenomena come together to produce distinctive territories with distinctive landscapes and cultural attributes: that is, world regions. The second is to emphasize that although there is diversity among world regions, it is important for us to understand the increasing interdependencies that exist among and between regions in order to build any real understanding of the modern world. In an attempt to achieve these objectives, we have taken a fresh approach to world geography, reflecting the major changes that have recently been impressed on the global, regional, and local landscapes. These changes include the global spread of new information technologies such as the World Wide Web, which brings distant people and places to our computer screens; the rise of terrorism and the global geopolitical and geoeconomic impacts that have resulted; and the global spread of new social movements that are pressing for reforms on a whole range of issues from sustainability to human rights. The approach used inWorld Regions in Global Contextprovides access not only to the new ideas, concepts, and theories that address these changes and many other changes but also to the fundamentals of geography: the principles, concepts, theoretical frameworks, and basic knowledge that are necessary to build a geographic understanding of today's world. A distinctive feature of our approach is that it employs the concept of geographic scale and emphasizes the interdependence of places and processes at different scales. In overall terms, this approach is designed to provide an understanding of relationships between the global and the local and the outcomes of these relationships. Moreover, we are not only interested in understanding the internal dynamics of a world region, we are also interested in that region's relationship to other regions around the globe. One of the chief organizing principles of our approach is how globalization frames the social and cultural construction of particular places and regions at various scales. This approach allows us to emphasize a number of important themes. Globalization and the links between global and local--Throughout the book, we stress the increasing interconnectedness of different parts of the world through common processes of economic, environmental, political, and cultural change. We approach the processes of globalization through a world-systems framework based on ideas about geographic cores, peripheries, and semiperipheri