![]() ![]() And this deeply contrasts with Strahler’s project to understand the human impacts on the environment in order to minimize (and not eliminate …) environmental degradation and to establish objective and universal knowledge about this issue. Daniels and his colleagues on the other hand insist on the variability of the ways to consider these interrelations up to the point of considering any analysis of it as a social construction, that, hence, can be deconstructed and reconstructed into other ways. Moreover, this interaction seems independent of the way people interrelate with each other within different societal contexts 2. This suggests a historical and spatial continuity in the way humans interact with nature. Strahler is considering “man”, not society. But there are also significant differences in the way to approach this. They also use the concept of environment rather than nature for doing so and this emphasize the position of humans in nature and their interactions with it, rather than considering nature as pristine and conceptually separated from humans. 2 However, whenever the plural word “humans” is used (unfortunately not in “human-environment interac (.)ģClearly, even if more than 30 years separate the two writings, both physical and human geographers care about the how societies are threatening the capacity of our environment to sustain human life and feel the necessity to take respectively humans and the environment into account.is a key subject for the twenty-first century, in part because many of the challenges that face humanity are at the interface between human societies and natural environments.” (2008, p. But in the face of the growing environmental issues, they also state that “geography in its broader definition provides an interface between the human and the natural worlds. For these authors, ”Human geography … is about explaining how space is configured and shapes economies, societies and social processes” (2008, p. Whose human geography, where and when?” (Daniels P. … Interpretations of the world differ from different vantage points in time and place. 2).ĢOne of the widely used handbooks in human geography has a quite different tone: “Human Geography is … a social construction. We shall be interested in assessing the extent of these impacts, the better to understand what must be done to minimize environmental degradation” (1975, p. His short introduction to the matter ends with “As man withdraws, utilizes, and disposes of water and mineral resources, he makes severe impacts upon the natural environment. … man creates many forms of environmental degradation and pollution” (1975, p. ![]() … man does respond to the forces of the environment, but man in turn acts upon and modifies environmental processes and forms. … Physical geography is a study of the workings of an environment that not only nourishes and stimulates life processes, but also places constraints and limitations upon those processes. When defining the object of physical geography, Strahler, a prominent physical geographer who was a key figure in introducing quantitative approaches in the discipline, states it is about “…understanding the relationship of man to his physical environment. 1 In more recent handbooks, gender neutrality is respected by using the word “humans” instead of “man (.)ġIt is striking to find that influential handbooks in human and physical geography are quite explicit about the importance of the other half of the discipline. ![]()
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