Landscape: Compilation of Essays on Landscape | Geography

Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Landscape’ for class 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Landscape’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Landscape

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Essay Contents:

1. Essay on the Introduction to Landscape
2. Essay on the Meaning of Landschaft and/or Landschaftskunde (Landscape) and Region
3. Essay on the Origin of Concepts: Landschaft and Region
4. Essay on the Synthesis between Cultural and Natural Regions
5. Essay on the Typology of Region
6. Essay on the Approaches to the Study of Landscape

Essay # 1. Introduction to Landscape:

The concept of ‘region’ or ‘regional’ concept has for long been a major concern to geographers, particularly to those who believe in the ‘geographical synthesis’ of the earth-bound phenomena. It was Philippe Buache, the French geographer, who in the mid-eighteenth century came out with a concept of an Earth marked off into major basins bordered by continuous ranges of mountains.

Earth surface can be indefinitely sub-divided into segments of various sizes. When such a segment of Earth surface is set off by boundaries it is known as an ‘area’. An area of the Earth’s surface with a distinctive appearance, natural, man-made, or both is called a landscape.

Any tract of the Earth’s surface with either natural or man-made distinctive characteristics is called a ‘region’. A region is identified by specified criteria and its boundaries are determined by these criteria. However, in geography both the words ‘landscape’ and ‘region’ are often used synonymously.

On the land these are drainage basins, and the mountains form the drainage divides between different river systems. Perhaps his concept would not have gained such a wider support had it not been for German geographer, Johann Christoph Gattener, who identified the drainage basins as natural regions and used them as the frame of organisation for geographical texts.

‘The followers of Gattener saw a first step toward a more scientific geography in replacing the traditional divisions into political units by the division into ‘ natural regions’ offered by the theory of the continuous network of mountains. When this theory proved untenable, they did not abandon the concept of ‘natural regions’ but sought to define them in less simple terms. Thus Ritter furthered the establishment of the concept in general as a fundamental basis for regional geography’.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, there was little concern over this concept. With the renewed interest in regional geography at the turn of the century, the concept of region as definite, concrete, if not natural, unit reappeared.

Essay # 2. Meaning of Landschaft and/or Landschaftskunde (Landscape) and Region:

The German word ‘landschaft’ literally and most generally means ‘landscape’, which is a concept more particularly associated with the continental European school of ‘landschaft geography’. A landschaft may either be a specific unit area or type of area.

The word ‘landschaft’ has two distinct meanings:

i. ‘An extent of area/territory distinguished by a more or less uniform aspect’, and

ii. ‘The aspect of the face of the Earth as seen in perspective but without connotation of areal extent’.

Humboldt and Wimmer used landschaft to refer to the visual impression, the aesthetic appreciation of beauty of the observable phenomena over the surface of the Earth. However, the use of the word in the sense of an area of uniform aspect has never entirely disappeared.

The word ‘landschaftskunde’ (landscape science) concerns both the study of small unique areas and the delimitation and classification of different types of regions. Hannerberg considered that ‘landschaftskunde’ might be taken over by the systematic branch of geography, while ‘landerkunde’ remained as regional geography in its own right.

Otto Schluter, however, noted that accepting the landscape as the subject matter of geography would give the field a logical definition, like that of any other academic field except history. The non-material content of an area-such as political organisation, religious beliefs, economic situations or even the statistical averages of climate could not be considered primary objects of geographical study, although this could be introduced to explain the observable landscape.

Hettner and Schluter expressed their concern about the variations in the character of the face of the Earth, which became known later as ‘areal differentiation’. Both recognised that there were distinctly different kinds of areas on the Earth which were distinguished from their surroundings and which showed a certain degree of homogeneity within boundaries that could be defined. However, Hettner stressed the ways in which features of a region reflected the basic patterns of the physical Earth, but Schluter emphasised that the attention in the interrelation of these features tended to provide the region its distinctive appearance. He sought to distinguish between the landscape that predated or antedated the arrival of ‘cultural’ man, and the landscape created by the human culture, i.e. the cultural landscape.

Schluter’s ‘kulturlandschaft (cultural landscape) appears to have a greater resemblance with the French ‘Pays’—small homogeneous well-defined areas/regions manifesting intimate and reciprocal relationships between man and his immediate surroundings (milieu) through centuries.

A ‘pay’ is, therefore, an areal expression of the genre de vie of a particular human community whose occupation of the area/region over centuries seems to have created the landscape. Richthofen, earlier, realised that in addition to looking at the world as a whole, it was necessary to examine smaller and smaller segments of the Earth’s surface.

Schluter defined the landscape as the total impact of an area on man’s senses, including such invisible phenomena as wind or temperature. He specifically included man as a part of landscape. But some of his followers insisted on restricting the term only to those material objects that could be seen.

Leo Waibel in 1933, sought to point out that the word came into common use in Germany just at the time when geographers were focusing their studies on smaller and smaller areas, for which the word landschaft (with its meaning as a small region) seemed more appropriate than the word for a larger region (Gebiet). However, the emphasis on Richthofen’s concept of the interconnection among diverse things associated in area continued and the word ‘landschaft’ seemed to carry the connotation of harmony of related parts.

The uncertainty regarding the exact meaning of this word is responsible for a conceptual error that still persists.

The sequence of ideas runs as follows:

i. It is agreed that ‘Landschaft’ is made up of concrete, observable features;

ii. It is agreed that the word ‘landschaft’ is a synonym for a homogeneous area, or region.

Combining these meanings it becomes possible to assert that a region is a concrete reality and not just an intellectual construct.

To most of the German geographers before World War Second, the concept of ‘landschaft’ referred to an area with a more-or less uniform appearance and its interpretation required the study of the material and the non-material phenomena in an area or region. Most German geographers, however, followed Schluter in identifying the study of landscape as the central theme of geography. ‘Every landscape is a dynamic structure, a thing- area-time system of specified quality inside the whole geosphere’.

The German word ‘landschaft’ essentially appears to be analogous to Carl Sauer’s ‘cultural landscape’ which means a scientifically defined geographical region which is expressive of the human imprints across the territory. Sauer pointed out that geography is concerned with the study of things/ phenomena associated in area on the Earth’s surface with differences from place to place, both physical and cultural. Man, behaving in accordance with the norms of his culture, performs work on the physical and biotic features of his natural surroundings and transforms them into the cultural landscape.

‘The cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group. Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, and the cultural landscape is the result. Under the influence of a given culture, itself changing through time, the landscape undergoes development, passing through phases, and probably reaching ultimately the end of its cycle of development. With the introduction of a different—that is, an alien— culture a rejuvenation of the cultural landscape is superimposed on remnants of an older one’.

To understand the changes man has made on the face of the Earth, it is necessary to go back for enough time to establish the nature of processes. According to Sauer, ‘the landscape is undergoing manifold changes. The contact of man with his changeful house, as expressed through the cultural landscape, is our field of work. We are concerned with the importance of site to man; and also with his transformation of the site’.

Despite some epistemological differences, the German ‘Landschaft’ and Carl Sauer’s ‘cultural landscape’ seem to be analogous to each other. However, Schluter’s ‘kulturlandschaft’ is more akin to Sauer’s cultural landscape as both sought to recognise the importance of human agency in the evolution of the landscape.

One of the best known phenomenologists, Yi-Fu Tuan, once remarked that ‘geography is the mirror of man; to know the world is to know oneself. The study of landscape is the study of the essence of the societies which mould them. Such study is clearly based in the humanities, rather than in social and physical sciences’. He preferred to use the term ‘humanistic geography’ for such studies which are regarded here as including both idealism and phenomenology.

There is much controversy among the professional geographers with regard to the extent to which a landscape is analogous to a region. Is a region different from a landscape? Is a landscape a concrete viable geographical entity or an arbitrarily chosen fragment of land? The word landscape here refers to the cultural landscape.

A landscape may be closed-system if it exhibits a defined ‘genre de vie with no input from the outside. A region in the Vidalean tradition is an area over which such an intimate relationship between man and nature has developed through the centuries which tends to constitute it.

In the evolution of a landscape, the role of the human agency is of paramount importance, but in the case of a region, if the Vidalean tradition is to be believed, it is the intimate nature of relationship between man and nature over centuries that concerns much in its evolution. A region may be an arbitrarily chosen fragment of land if its identification is not based on the indices of the intimate man/nature relations over centuries in the area.

However, a landscape is not necessarily akin to a region. Nevertheless, they appear to be analogous to each other because of the role of the human agency vis-a-vis the man-nature intimate relations in this evolution. The landscape study and the interpretation of the region essentially include and involve existentialism and phenomenology.

Some have sought to divide landscape into:

i. Natural landscape, and

ii. Cultural landscape.

These two seem to indicate that they are separate components of the total ‘landscape’, with the former consisting of all the natural features of an area, the latter of all the man-made forms. Most American geographers who sought to use the term ‘cultural landscape’ meant simply the present landscape of any inhabited region.

In the German literature, there is a distinction between ‘natural’ in the sense of nature excluding man, and ‘actual’ or ‘real’ in contrast to ‘arbitrary’ or ‘artificial’ and is used to indicate that a particular Landschaft is a region, is a real unit. Some German scholars attempted to contrast between ‘natural’ and ‘actual’ on a relative basis, i.e. on the extent of cultural development.

The original natural landscape, however, is not the same as the present theoretical natural landscape. Nature has not been static during thousands of years that man has lived on the Earth. Consequently, it can be said that the natural landscape is a theoretical conception that not only does not exist in reality, but never did exist. Something more or less like it did exist in the original primeval landscape which, in complete form, only the first man to arrive in any area could observe.

Essay # 3. Origin of Concepts: Landschaft and Region:

The origin of the concept of the region can be found in the writings of the pre-classical geographers from whom it may be traced through Ritter and possibly Ratzel. Its greatest development in the present time appears to have been furthered first by the works of Schluter and Passarge, both of whom have presented it in opposition to the methodology of Hettner. Passarge in particular tended to emphasise the purpose of presenting the total form from a Landschaft: in opposition to merely analytic method of Hettner. In fact, the German geographers are credited for having developed the concept of the Landschaft which is for all practical purposes analogous to the English word ‘region’.

The German word Landschaft has long been used in common speech to indicate either:

i. The appearance of a land as is being perceived,

ii. Simply a restricted piece of land.

Both these concepts were introduced into German geography not later than the beginning of the nineteenth century. Hommeyer used the word to indicate an area of land intermediate in size between ‘gegend’ and ‘land’.

Humboldt used the term primarily in the sense of the aesthetic character of an area, though he might have occasionally used it in other sense also. Similarly, Oppel and Wimmer both regarded the landschaft primarily from the aesthetic point of view, but the latter also included social features as a part of the landschaft as a coherent whole.

The majority of German geographers of the early twentieth century tended to use the word Landschaft in either sense without distinguishing them. The corresponding French term ‘paysage’ apparently also permits of this double meaning.

Even the writers who sought to use the term more or less synonymous with region are by no means in agreement on what the term included. Schluter repeatedly emphasised the difference between his use of the term and that of Passarge. The differences were much more fundamental than those involved in the attempts of the American geographers to define a ‘region’.

There were no differences in determining limits, but the differences were about the kinds of things which were included in the Landschaft, whatever its limits. The difficulty resulted from the fact that in using Landschaft to mean ‘region’, all these writers wish to carry over certain aspects of its meaning as ‘landscape’, but they were not in agreement as to which of the latter they wished to include. The American geographers; ‘who sought to use the word ‘landscape’, had given it, perhaps unconsciously, a special redefinition’.

To Waibel, the Landschaft is ‘the section of the Earth’s surface and the sky that lies in our field of vision as seen in perspective from a particular point.’ The visible landscape forms the core of Grano’s concept which includes human sensations of sound, smells and feelings of an area. However, Grano’s concept is based on Hellpach’s definition of the Landschaft as ‘the total impression aroused in us by a piece of the Earth’s surface and the corresponding section of the sky’.

He seemed to have proceeded from the psychic sensation produced by an area to the objects in the area that caused the sensation. In order to conserve the strict meaning of Landschaft as the sensational landscape, Grano suggested other terms, but those who followed him simply transferred the word Landschaft or landscape to the objects in the area that are responsible for our sensations of landscape.

To Penck, the Landschaft included only ‘what is perceptible in our field of vision’. This does not include man, but only his effect on the Earth’s surface. Schluter, on the other hand, not only included men on the grounds that they were perceptible objects, but in order that they might appear as more than ‘minute grains’ in the landscape.

In fact, he sought to make man a major Landschaft element. Passarge, in contrast, excluded not only man, but also animal life in general, because otherwise it was too difficult to separate one Landschaft (region) from another. He also sought to limit his Landschaft to natural, non-human elements, thereby including elements like natural vegetation that might no longer be in existence.

Each geographer’s definition of the word varies according to what he thinks geography should study. ‘Landschaft is therefore no more precise than ‘geographic area’ but has only the appearance of being more precise. To a geographer who is primarily a geomorphologist, a term covering the visible objects of an area seems sufficient. To one primarily interested in cultural geography, something must be done to make man, the active cultural agent, assume a stature proportional to his importance. For one who feels that almost all geographic features can be interpreted ultimately in terms of natural vegetation, climate and landforms, the Landschaft may be limited essentially to those features’.

All of the above writers employ the word landschaft as limited to physically perceptible objects. Those who, however, wish to include the non-material phenomena as objects of direct study in a geography that studies the landschaft have a greater difficulty in defining their concept. Lautersach, perhaps, included non-material elements such as ‘racial and linguistic conditions’ in his concept.

He did not define Landschaft, but his description of what was included in it appeared to represent all that any geographer would include in the study of an area. Maull (1925), however, considered the political state as an element of Landschaft, ‘not so much on the grounds that the state tends to affect the visible landscape but simply because it is closely related in one way or another with other elements of Landschaft.’

The term is therefore nothing more or less than a synonym for ‘region’. Landschaft may be used to indicate a unit political area as a whole, including its population, commonly one of smaller size than a land. To Krebs, the term Landschaft refers not so much to the particular individual area, but rather to certain aspects of its character that are considered as typical of many similar areas.

To him the peculiar character of the Alps as a mountainous area might be called the ‘Alpine Landschaft’ which is repeated in other parts of the world, whereas the land or region of the Alps is unique. ‘This is no fine distinction but a major one- the Landschaft of the Alps is limited to certain characteristics excluding relative locations and distinctive cultural characteristics, whereas the Alps as a ‘land’ include all significant characteristics’.

The majority of the contemporary German scholars preferred to use Landschaft more or less in the sense that the Americans used region though each defined it in a different way. The word Landschaft was more preferred by the Germans, particularly when asked to choose between’ ‘Landerkunde’ and’ ‘Land’.

The Germans showed no interest in the use of the English word ‘Region’. Waibel, however, observed that the contemporary drive in Germany was to see things as they were together to consider the totality of phenomena landscape.

To many American geographers, the German Landschafi meant Landscape, which is an area made up of a distinct association of forms. Sauers (1925, 25) epoch-making essay on the ‘Morphology of Landscape’ provided a detailed exposition of the concept.

Sauer’s design of landscape includes:

i. The features of the natural area and

ii. The forms superimposed on the physical landscape by the activities of man—cultural landscape.

His concept of landscape requires to be defined either as the area minus its phenomena or the area in so far as it is material. Sauer is believed to have considered that landscapes are individual units of area— ‘the geographic area is a corporeal thing which is approached by the characterisation of its forms recognised as to structure, and understood as to origin, growth and functions’.

The contemporary American geographers held the word ‘landscape’ as being synonymous with the word ‘region. If they thought that the geographic region should be regarded as including non-material features, then the state should be included as an element of landscape, just as Maull included it as an element of the Landschaft.

Broek (1938), however, concluded that the word Landscape had two quite distinct meanings.

It consists of:

i. ‘The observable features of any arbitrary part of the Earth surface but in a wider sense than the common usage implies’, and

ii. ‘A region that has certain homogeneity in its morphology’.

Broek held the view that the geographers should not limit themselves to ‘directly observable phenomena but should also include invisible features’. The landscape for the geographer, therefore, is ‘an abstract landscape free from time bounds and place bounds of the observers and supplemented by invisible, but nevertheless, significant data’.

Broek did not attempt to come out with a precise statement on landscape; otherwise the statement would have been- ‘the landscape consists of the observable features of any arbitrary part of the Earth’s surface plus all non-observable features of significance.’

The use of the word landscape by the complementary English geographers carried the same meaning as did their American counterparts. To Hartshorne, the landscape consists of ‘the landforms, their plant cover, together with the fixed material features, in compact areal association, which are the result of the transformation of the land forms and plant cover through human occupancy’ (1959, 34). The ‘landscape’ is essentially synonymous with a piece of area having certain characteristics which set it off from other pieces of area. This concept represents the German Landschaft to which many German and American geographers adhered.

English-speaking geographers have long used the word ‘landscape’ to indicate an area with certain homogeneity. Whatever difficulties have been experienced have not resulted from any confusion over the word ‘region’, but simply from the problems involved in determining what ‘an area with a certain homogeneity’ may be.

The concept of a piece of area somehow distinct from neighboring pieces of area is much more definitely suggested by region than by landscape. If it be claimed that a region sounds like a larger piece of area than the geographers may wish to select it as a unit, landscapes then suggest a very much smaller piece.

A large number of German and American writers in the early part of the twentieth century sought to use the word ‘Landschaft’ or ‘landscape’ (if the words are identical in meaning) to indicate all the material facts in an area. They spoke of ‘observable’ facts, but any fact to be a fact must somehow be observed.

Many, following Schluter, spoke of sensually perceptible features—all objects that are theoretically, directly observable as sights, sounds, smell and feelings. To many, this concept was suggested by the common meaning of landscape. Grano selected all the features of an area that were responsible for human sensation. To him, therefore, the word landschaft meant a concept of sensation.

The word landscape does suggest some objective single reality outside our sensations. It is a concept that represents a certain distinct and real aspect of an area. In empirical science of geography, there is little need for any of the concepts of ‘landscape’ as sensations.

By defining landscape as more or less synonymous with area/region and at the same time retaining the connotation of its other meaning as a visible scene/sensually perceptible, one appears to have proved without much argument that an area/region is an objective unit.

Thus Sauer, after making landscape appear identical with ‘geographic area’, sought to refer to either of these apparently interchangeably as ‘a reality as a whole’, a ‘corporeal whole’ that has ‘form, structure and functions’. One of the basic purposes of geography is to discover the areal combination of phenomena and their order; it seems to be the ‘phenomenology of landscape’ that is to be studied.

If an areal section of the Earth surface, delimited in some particular way to constitute a ‘region’ can be demonstrated logically to be a corporeal thing, a concrete unit whole, it must be that by whatever name we call it.

But if an area and region are regarded inadequate by some because geography does not intend to include everything in an area but only its material features, and there exists no term that expresses the area minus its non-material and/or immaterial features, it would be better to find out a term. Hartshorne suggests the word ‘geographic region’ which, according to him, ‘could be precisely defined to mean that, since it has no established meaning in common thought.’

There is some confusion with regard to the use of the word ‘individual’ to refer to any area, and/or region. Presumably all would agree that its particular combination of interrelated features makes it different from any other area. This is what the German geographers asserted with regard to the concept of region.

Hettner spoke of the ‘individuality’ of any area or rather of any point on the Earth. ‘It is only through misunderstanding of his statements that some perhaps believed that he regarded the area in question as an individual in the additional sense of a limited object or entity’.

It is quite possible that the contemporary French geographers likewise were concerned simply with the unique character of area when they referred to them as ‘individuals’ though their interest in the personality of each area would have implied a more concrete concept. The confusion with regard to the use of the term may be avoided by using the term ‘unique character’ for the former sense of ‘individuality’ and confining ‘individual’ to definitely limited objects.

The German word ‘einheitlich’ presumably refers to ‘unitary’ or ‘uniform’ or ‘homogeneous’. However, Grano used einheit in the sense of uniformity or homogeneity in order to contradict ‘geographic individuals’ which according to him referred to limited areas that might or might not be homogeneous.

However, the German geographers were a little confused with regard to the use of words like ‘unitary’ and ‘uniform’ to refer to an area or region. The American geographers, on the other hand, preferred to use the word ‘unitary’ in the sense of an individual unit which might or might not be uniform or homogeneous.

Related to the concept of region are the concepts of the ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ aspects of unity. However, the vertical concept of unity seems to be more applicable to any area, whether it is homogeneous or heterogeneous. Each of its parts is related in some way to others.

In Germany, this vertical form of unity is called a Ganheit or Whole. In a Ganheit or a Whole, the parts are dependent not merely on each other but on the Whole and cannot be properly interpreted in terms of each other independently of the Whole. The Whole is something more than the sum of its parts, arid is relatively independent of outside elements.

Penck attempted to introduce a new term ‘Gestall’ to express the unified form of larger areas, each consisting of a particular arrangement of regions, but others have adapted it for the geographic landschaft. To Bunges, a Gestall is a dynamic structure in which the parts reach into other functionally, and can be understood only in view of the whole. All living organisms, certain kinds of groups of living things, as in a family and to a certain degree in a people, and certain phenomena of experience may be examples of Wholes (Gestalten).

‘To what extent may these various concepts be applied to particular sections of the Earth surface somehow defined as regions? Any area we select will have structure and will include forms that are in functional relation to each other. Even if we are not to consider the region as a (primary) Whole, something may still be gained if we can consider it as at least a loose unity, in the sense of a complex of related elements forming a relatively closed system—the unitary self-enclosed Landschaft…. The region has structure, form, and function and hence a position in a system. To have these attributes the region must obviously have fairly definite limits and since the region can only be defined in terms of area it must have fairly definite areal limit. The region thus determined is so constituted in the structure and function of its parts as to represent a relatively closed unit, in contrast to adjacent or distant similar units’.

The problem of drawing the limits of regions cannot be solved simply by substituting boundary zones in place of lines. ‘Even if it were possible to solve this problem of delimitation of areas in respect to a single element, the problem remains as to how can we decide which of various elements are to be considered as decisive’ (ibid.). Passarge recognised that vegetation (or climate) and landforms could be considered as possible elements to solve the problem of delimitation of areas.

Indeed, in most of his works he relied entirely on vegetation, though often this was confused with climate directly. Nevertheless, he recognised that even with but two factors it might be necessary to resort to arbitrary selection of lines of convenience.

‘Thus, if forests overlap from mountains into the margin of a grass plain, the forested border may be included in the region of grass plain. If the mountains grade through foothills into the plain, but the forest grass boundary is sharp, then this line may conveniently be used as the Landschaft boundary. If, however, the transition area is of considerable extent it may be recognised as a landschaft’. But Passarge did not realise that this simply introduces the double problem of delimiting the transition zone on either side.

To say that ‘the elements of a region are geared together so that they are independent, each element reacting upon all the others and in turn being reacted upon by them, is to give the impression that if any one element varies in major degree the others will likewise vary in major degree and hence the complex of elements of a Whole would change in marked degree….The different realms of nature and circles of phenomenon are closely knit together and consequently differences present in any one realm of nature and one circle of phenomenon will correspond to a certain degree with those of the others’.

Most of the scholars who uphold the concept of region as actual units attempt to include at least the material features of culture as well as the natural features. Nevertheless, there is a lack of correspondence between natural and cultural features, and none of the scholars would claim that there is a complete correspondence.

‘It is essential that the demarcation of the regions can be applied to the Earth’s surface without effort and in an incontestable manner, it is necessary to demonstrate the existence of regions without mutual trespassing, and it is necessary that all of the facts of geography, physical and human, can be grouped in concordant with regional definitions…. The differentiation is not the same in each circle of phenomena…. Any particular large portion of the Earth surface is therefore homogeneous only in one relation, in others it is heterogeneous; and in the strictest sense only a particular spot on the Earth has complete individuality or character of its own’ (ibid.).

Some geographers regard the region as an organism that passes through a lifecycle and disappears with its death. It can be said that Carl Ritter, in company with many of his predecessors, regarded the Earth as a whole an organism, and his description of the continents as ‘individuals’ or as ‘organs’ might be regarded as leading naturally to the concept of smaller areas as ‘organism’. Likewise, Vidal de la Blache called the Earth’s surface as ‘the terrestrial organism’. For many geographers today, the term which Ritter used to describe the intricate interlacing of all Earth phenomena, animate and inanimate, material and immaterial, is accepted as a precise statement of the character of a region.

Carl Sauer (1925, 45), who sought to carry forward Vidal’s concept of the unity of the ‘terrestrial organism’ in his ‘landscape paradigm’, wrote that ‘we regard the geographic area as a corporeal thing…. We are to study the anatomy of that area … the landscape is considered in a sense as having organic quality’. Sauer, perhaps, specifically emphasised the fictive character of the region as an organism.

Fictive analogies, however, have a way of developing into direct statement of facts. Finch (1939, 12) once stated that ‘a geographic region, or even an arbitrarily chosen portion of the Earth’s surface, may be thought of having some qualities of a human being. It is a thing … with physical and cultural elements so interwoven as to give individualism to the organism’. To Trewartha, the regions are ‘functioning organisms’ comparable with plants. Likewise, James made a similar shift from ‘pseudo-organic’ to ‘organism’.

However, the organic concept of the region has been reviewed and criticised on several counts. ‘To say that region or landschaft is an organism is to imply more than that it is in some particular unstated manner like an organism.’ The region has the qualities that are inherent in organisms.

‘Thus it is not sufficient to establish that a region includes animate and inanimate things in close interrelation. At the most, therefore, one would have not a closed individual organism but simply something organic part of an organism…. An organic combination of animate and inanimate matter, however, involves something more than a close interrelation of those elements; it involves a connection of the whole as the superstructure to which the physical elements are subordinate’.

It is aptly believed that neither the Earth’s surface nor any areal portion of it can possess some of the characteristics of organism which include power of adaptation, of cohesion, of reaction and of recreation. A region is acted upon; of itself it never reacts.

Bunge has sharply drawn the distinction between a region which he regards as a whole and an organism. In both cases, he observes a multiplicity of different parts combined to form a whole. In the organism, however, whole is capable of life because there is a differentiation between the parts such that each part has a particular function prescribed for it by its place in the whole organism.

There exists, therefore, a general functional harmony that subjugates the individual part (organ) to the laws of the whole, and limits its separate existence. ‘It follows from the description of an organism that its parts cannot be considered in themselves as organisms, but only as organs, members, or organic parts of an organism. An organism is essentially indivisible, whereas any regional unit of the Earth surface can be divided into smaller units’.

The analogy with an organism, Hartshorne asserts, is apt to be particularly misleading when we consider what is frequently called the growth of regions or development of the cultural landscape out of the natural landscape.

‘In the organic growth, all the individual parts develop from a common origin … are nourished from a common food supply and are controlled in their growth by some directive agencies. External elements introduced into a single part of the organism are either converted into materials that are spread through the whole, or are expelled, or are immediately recognised as ‘foreign bodies’ and isolated as in a cyst. What do we find comparable to this in the alterations of the area of the earth? The soil erosion of any single slope may be entirely independent of all conditions in other parts of the area; the growth of a single tree is dependent only on the immediately surrounding conditions; what takes place in all the rest of the area may be of no importance to it whatever. The rainfall conditions are largely the result of external forces quite independent of changes in the area itself’.

The region as a whole does not undergo changes, but only the complex of different elements changes with changes in its elements. The development of a cultural landscape is therefore nothing but the development of the complex of its cultural elements.

The changes may be largely the result of external influences. ‘The analogy of an organism, if at all applicable, can be applied only to the whole Earth surface. The interpretation of changes in any single area of the world must be extended into neighbouring and even remote areas.’ The region is not an organism and the landschaft as an area is not a concrete object nor is an individual unitary whole but only a more or less arbitrarily chosen fragment of land.

Generic and Specific Regions:

Efforts to find a system of regional division of the world are no doubt as old as geography itself; indeed the very nature of the subject requires some basis of division of the Earth’s surface. Although most of the early geographers were content to accept the division already provided by the political map, the efforts of early Greek geographers to divide the world into climatic belts represented an early attempt in a different direction. The first major effort in modern times was that of Ritter, which, however, was based on a teleological philosophy much in contradiction to the modern sciences.

Nevertheless, ‘to Ritter remains the great merit that he recognised the necessity of a division of the Earth spaces based on a universal consideration of all features and made an attempt to put it into effect’. Hettner followed Ritter in so far as the latter utilised not one element, but the combination of various elements and, further, had developed his system in part inductively from the character of individual small areas.

A different direction was given to the problem by the epoch-making, effort of Herbertson in 1905. Ritter, Hettner and many other German authors had associated individual regions together, as they are in fact, into larger realms and continents.

Herbertson, on the other hand, considered his regions as specimens of types, thus associating widely separated areas in the same type. His system was, therefore, a classification of regions regardless of location and association in space, in contrast with an areal division of the world into major parts, each sub-divided into sub-divisions which were contiguous and together form an associated Whole.

One system is a classification, according to ‘internal character’, the other ‘an outline of the actual areal relations’. In the first case, the regions might be called generic; in the latter specific. Whereas most works dealing with the regional geography of particular continents employ a division into specific regions, most of the recent attempts towards the regional division of the world followed the generic or comparative system.

‘The generic method reveals the inherent similarity of remotely separated regions; this similarity, however, is fundamentally incomplete, since the location of a region is one of its important inherent characteristics which may have marked effect on other inherent characteristics.

Even though we find ‘Mediterranean’ climate, vegetation and crops, combined with landforms similar to those of the Mediterranean region itself, in such areas as Southern California and Central Chile, are not and cannot be ‘Mediterranean’ in true sense of the term.’

On the other hand, if we merely associate each of these areas with their neighbouring areas in a system of specific regions which might be called the actual system of regions, we lose the advantage of similarity of regions provided by the generic (comparative) method.

Almost every professional geographer has attempted to divide some larger area, such as continent, into specific regions. To divide any area into regions involves necessarily more than the recognition of the distinctive character of certain parts of it, ignoring those less distinct in character. An incomplete study may limit itself to the ‘cores’ or ‘hearts’ of regions, although this involves the questionable assumption that such areas are geographically more important than the areas of less distinctive character.

A complete study must give attention to every portion of the area so that the geographers sooner or later must face the problem of definite, even though arbitrary, boundaries between the regions. The device of ‘transition zones’ does not eliminate the problem since these zones are themselves areas which must be delimited.

Hettner made a thorough study of the problem of dividing the world into specific regions. Recognising the manifold character of the world, he felt that a division based on all of reality was not possible on one principle, but could only be built up on a combination of several grounds.

The problem, therefore, is to compare the different bases and measure their relative importance. The degree of importance is to be measured in terms of the effects on organic life, notably that of man.

‘What is the order of importance of the multitude of factors involved? On one point there may perhaps be complete agreement. The presence of land in contrast to sea is of first importance not only for man but for most organic life…. If we confine our attention to the lands, we find no fixed order of importance of different elements that is applicable to all parts of the world- in one area, climatic differences may be of major importance, in another differences in relief, in still others, soil, mineral deposits or simply relative location.

Consequently, it is necessary to use different grounds for division in different parts of the world, although within a single division … On the other hand, different grounds may be combined in recognising a single region. Thus the Spanish Peninsula is distinguished as a subdivision, of major size, because of the separating effect of the sea on three sides and of mountains on the fourth, even though these factors of sea and a type of land are actually opposing elements’.

A system of division based on a large number of elements whose relative importance varies greatly from place to place may appear complicated. These elements, however, are not completely independent of each other. Will not the study of their interrelations lead us to a somewhat simpler basis? To Hettner, ‘every realistic system of division must be genetic; it must show causal relations present in the reality- It must search for the creative forces of the earth; it must seek to know the manner in which the phenomena of the Earth surface result from the composite influence of those forces; and it must likewise learn to reconstruct in mind the edifice of the Earth and thereby learn to understand the individual parts and spaces in their character and their significance’ (1905).

It is clear that a system of regional division cannot be completely genetic as the genetic principle leads us into serious difficulties. These become clear when we consider the relation of human or cultural phenomena to the system of regional division.

Though the works of man may be largely regarded as resultants in a genetic explanation, at the same time, human factors are causal factors in the development of many features. Though these causes may conceivably be explained as results of non-human causes, we are seldom in the position of being able to demonstrate that.

In a realistic system of world division, every region is recognised as unique and the regions are associated in their actual relationships. With such a system it is possible to take widely separated regions which show marked similarities in certain elements and study both their similarities and their differences. In this sense, comparative regional geography is nothing new.

‘On the other hand a system of regional division which is based on certain major similarities of regions, regardless of where they are located, a system, which distinguishes regions not so much in terms of their unique reality but in terms of types into which they can be classified, essentially facilitates the study of comparisons’. Such a system may be called a comparative system of division of the world into generic regions.

Natural Regions:

There seems to be a controversy regarding the usage of the term ‘natural region’. What actually constitutes a natural region? The term carries different meanings in different countries. In its broadest sense, nature obviously includes man, together with all his works. In this sense, it is nearly synonymous with the universe, or better, with the reality of the universe as distinct from our thoughts about it. Thus Kant, Humboldt and others have used the word nature to mean the objective world outside of the observer’s mind.

Some geographers attempted to use the term natural region to indicate ‘something inherent and not arbitrarily imposed.’ The word ‘region’ itself carries the connotation of ‘inherent character’ in contrast to the word ‘area’.

If ‘natural’ is added in order to emphasise the concept of ‘inherent regional character’ as opposed to arbitrarily imposed divisions of area, it implies that there is in nature, i.e. in the real world, an unambiguous division of the Earth surface and the problem is simply to recognise it. No such division exists in reality and attempts to divide the world involves subjective judgement, not in the determination of the limits of individual factors, but in deciding which of the several factors is to be regarded as most important.

The ‘inherent character’ of an area is composed of a multitude of incommensurable elements which are interrelated in no complete sense. Temperature, rainfall, relief, slope of land, physical texture of soil, underground minerals and relative location are all in large degree independent of each other.

In a world in which these factors all vary from place to place, the variations being in large degree independent, it is impossible to draw the division on the basis of all the factors simultaneously. One must, therefore, determine which variations are of greatest importance. The decision can only be subjective; the regions so constructed are in this sense arbitrarily imposed on reality.

Some scholars have attempted to use the term ‘natural regions’ merely to indicate that the basis of the regional division could be found in nature as a whole, including man, in contrast to a division based on a single element, as in the case of ‘climatic regions’, ‘agricultural regions’, etc. (In most cases, the division is actually based almost on one factor, namely, climate).

On first thought, ‘natural regions’ may seem a legitimate abbreviation of ‘regions on the basis of nature’. But we find that the shorter phrase claims much more than the longer one; as we shorten ‘regions on a basis of real conditions’ to ‘real regions’. The conditions are reality, the regions are intellectual conceptions.

Hettner, however, sought to distinguish between ‘regions on a natural basis’ and ‘natural regions’. He recognised that whatever the basis for division, its application required so many subjective decisions of judgement, that the resultant regions could not in any proper sense of the word be called ‘natural’.

He attempted to contrast his system of division with that which he termed artificial. His system then was ‘natural’ in the sense of realistic; more fully he sought for a logical basis founded solely on reality and on the whole of reality.

One might say that the use of the word ‘natural’ in its broadest sense tended to include all the phenomena observed outside the observer’s mind— objective reality. During the nineteenth century, nature was used as a word to express the contrast between that part of reality that was independent of man and the part that was human. The fact that man alone was capable of contemplating such a contrast was sufficient justification for the terms with which to express it.

Man in his relation to ‘non-human’ factors reacts in an entirely different manner from all other living things; his reactions are cultural reactions. ‘Since geography is a science developed by and for men—as distinct from all other biological beings—the relations between the world of man and the non-human world are of greatest concern in geography…. We are therefore justified in accepting the popular conception that in the universe the things that are cultural, i.e. of man are fundamentally different from everything else— which for want of a better term we call ‘natural’.

The term natural regions would presumably indicate regions considered in terms of their non-human elements. It is also possible that ‘natural regions’ in the limited sense might be used merely to indicate that the world has been divided on the basis of the natural, ‘non-human’ elements.

However, this usage is misleading for two reasons:

i. Nature, as distinct from man, provides no basis for a division which would be significant or suitable at the same time for all natural features, not even for two or three natural features of great importance.

ii. Neither does nature indicate which of its elements is of more significance than others. Needless to say, all such divisions by geographers have been made with reference to man’s point of view—nature as man is concerned with it.

Some geographers preferred the term ‘geographical regions to natural regions. For example, Unstead sought to recognise that the term geographical regions necessarily included all the significant features, both natural and human, but he observed that climate was the main criterion. His world map was, therefore, essentially ‘climatic’.

A different direction was taken by Passarge and James. Inspite of the underlying consideration of climate in the systems of both these authors, the individual regions were defined specifically in terms of natural vegetation. The actual classification of vegetation regions was found to be very different in the two cases, and James put the high mountain areas into a separate category like that of Unstead who classified highland areas separately.

The climatic basis of regional classification of the world does not classify cultural regions as a classification of natural regions (as significant to man). Even in those areas where climatic differences are of first importance and where they are correlated fairly completely with vegetation and soils, these together cannot be credited with a monopolistic determination of regional character. A map of climatic areas is an indicator of variable reliability for many other elements, including cultural. To call it a map of natural or geographic regions is in either case to invite confusion.

Likewise, a regional system based on natural vegetation—even to the limited extent in which it is possible to construct one—does not seem to justify the claim expressed by such titles as ‘natural’ or ‘geographic’ divisions. A division of the world based on vegetation is simply a division of world vegetation and nothing more. Like a map of climatic division it suggests other things but tells us nothing.

A regional classification based on either climate or natural vegetation does not seem to be adequate for the purpose it is made. The question that arises is whether ‘all the natural elements significant to man’ should be considered for a system of world regional division instead of depending on one or two natural elements? However, it had not been done either by the German or the American geographers in the past. The synthesis of natural elements in areas represents a combination of several factors of importance to man.

These several important factors are sufficiently independent so that they can be associated together in a great number of different combinations which may be very nearly as great as the total number of areal divisions, i.e. nearly every area is a type in itself.

‘It may be suggested that this difficulty is to be avoided by making our types more generalised, so that each separate region could be considered as a sub-type of the more general type. But the combination of several factors, each of which varies independently, can be reduced to common types only if one assumes that some of the factors are of minor importance, no matter how much they vary’.

This proposition is important to the whole problem of comparative regional division on whatever basis it is made. It might be thought, for example, that classifications of climate that are based on actual climatic conditions rather than on genesis, represent the organisation of many semi- independent factors, like rainfall, temperature, winds, humidity, etc. The system of classifications of Koppen and Thornthwaite and others primarily depended on only two of these factors, namely, precipitation and temperature.

The number of actual combinations that must be recognised, however, need not be too large and each type may be represented by several areas.

Grano made use of seven independent symbols (six symbols for natural elements excluding climate and one for human elements) to identify a single type of area. To be sure, many of the elements can be regarded as factors of minor importance in any particular area, but none can be eliminated from the entire consideration since anyone may be, in some particular area, the most important factor.

Consequently, the number of actual combinations which we would have to recognise as types would be little less than the total number of regions that would be recognised; we would have a system of regions but not of types.

The fact that the study of the world is organised on the basis of one particular feature inevitably leads the reader to think of that feature as the most significant feature in every area studied. If the discussion of a certain type of cultural development is largely confined to a chapter named in terms of a certain type of natural vegetation or climate, a relationship is thereby suggested, whether or not it has validity.

The disadvantages inherent in any system based on a single natural feature are most apparent in one, based on natural vegetation, because of the marked discrepancy between the agricultural regions and areas of natural vegetation used as the outline.

The conclusion to be drawn from the consideration of regional systems based on natural elements is in agreement with that of Finch and Trewartha who said- ‘It is deemed unwise to try to fit world culture patterns into the framework of the physical regions.’ In addition, however, Hartshorne concluded that ‘it is hardly possible to fit the summations of natural elements which they call ‘physical regions’ into a framework based on one or two natural elements’.

Cultural Regions:

There are possibilities of constructing a regional division based on cultural elements. Some continental geographers retreated to such simple divisions as those based on political boundaries, states and provinces, or on racial or folk areas. A few attempts have been made to lead to a system for world division on a general cultural basis. A theoretical approach to the problem is therefore required.

What are the major aspects of culture which are of greatest importance to regional geography? If the question is referred to the fundamental concept of the nature of geography, it reads: What major aspects of man and his works are relatively homogeneous in limited areas, but in different areas differ notably in ways that are significantly related to the total character of the area? If areas could be found for which these conditions are true of all aspects of man and his works, these could be perfect cultural regions.

Since the areal differentiation of various cultural aspects will not coincide, we must limit ourselves to major aspects. The distinction between major and minor, among phenomena that are mutually incommensurable, is not a question permitting objective answer, but on a subjective basis it is possible that there might be a fairly general agreement.

Presumably all will agree that the ‘areal differentiation’ in numbers of people, population density, is of major importance. Hall and others, long back suggested that population density in different areas of the world might be considered as a possible criterion for cultural regional division, as it could be easily measured.

He even emphasised the need for such a study of the whole world. How effective such a basis would be for world regional division can be judged better when we have such detailed maps on a common basis of at least some areas of the world of notably different culture.

It, however, seems probable that the same form of distribution may be found in areas of different culture and may represent in many ways entirely different regional character. It can be concluded that population density, even in its most detailed and complicated form, provides us with one major key which alone is not sufficient.

Aside from their numbers, what are the ways in which people differ in different parts of the world? All those differences, which however important as between members of any local group, are not significant between people of different areas and therefore can be eliminated for geographic purposes.

Further, in comparing regions we can disregard certain differences that are of major importance within a region—including the whole complex of differences between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ areas. On this basis, we can eliminate a whole host of cultural phenomena of man, since in so many ways people of the world are alike, do the same things and do them in more or less the same way.

There are a great multitude of cultural phenomena which differ significantly from region to region. For this very reason, geographers should not study any one or two phenomena without first considering their importance both in themselves and in relation to other cultural phenomena that are geographically significant.

‘If one were to attempt a full list of such phenomena it would include a large number of material objects which men make, and make differently, in different parts of the world…. These would include- the physical characteristics of the population; the manner and the substance of thought, speech and writing; the way in which people eat, dance, walk, or ride; the character of their clothing, shelter—both for man and beast—and the grouping of these shelters in settlements; the way in which the people work and play and the tools and implements used in doing each; the domestic animals which they use in different ways; and implements, shelter, fuel and power, and finally various alterations to which they subject the Earth’s surface, including alteration of vegetation, soils, land-forms, bed-rock and even underlying formations’.

Any one of all these phenomena may have its own geographic regional expression and might furnish something of a key to the geography of cultural phenomena. Serious attention should be given to those criteria which are in themselves of greatest importance in determining regional character.

Theoretically, if there are such criteria, we can use only those which we are able to observe, classify and to some degree measure quantitatively. On the basis of both the conditions, the physical Characteristics of the population may be eliminated. Nevertheless, the racial map of the world might be of even greater importance than that of mere number of the people.

Since most of the cultural phenomena are in part products of the way in which people think, it is suggested by geographers that cultural regions are required to be determined by finding areas in which people think alike.

There is some degree of uniformity in thinking by people who speak the same language in contrast to those who speak a different language. Linguistic regions may, therefore, show similarities in a large number of the cultural phenomena. But many of the human phenomena are hardly affected by linguistic differences.

Geographers are faced with the problem of determining the comparative geographic importance of different individual cultural phenomena. If they combine the areal spread of a phenomenon with its relative importance to man, they might get the major factors for a theoretical basis of measurement. Without attempting a complete analysis, one might measure the importance of a phenomenon to each individual in terms of the part it bears in his total activity.

For most of the people of the world, a major part of their activity is concerned with ways and means of make living, i.e. economic activities. By far the most important of the economic activities is the use of the land to secure plant and animal products.

The intensity and the manner in which the land is used may be a basis for regional division of the world that will be significant for the largest possible number of cultural phenomena important to man and to the Earth surface as well.

In terms of differences in the intensity and manner of agricultural landuse, the land areas of the world can be divided into:

i. Those which are not used at all—the uninhabited areas;

ii. The areas in which man utilises the wild vegetative and animal life; and

iii. The areas where the surface is dominated by man’s cultivation, i.e. where man has removed the wild vegetative cover and replaced it with plants of his own choice.

While the largest part of the land area of the world is included in the second class, the most important areas are, of course, those of the third.

Within the cleared and cultivated lands, the differences in manner of use which are geographically most significant are the differences in the plants and animals produced. The intensity of agricultural landuse in these cultivated areas is measured in the first instance in the extent to which they are cleared and cultivated rather than left in forest or wild grass. Differences in the intensity and manner in which the land is used across the Earth’s surface may be added to the system of criteria for the world regional division in terms of cultural phenomena.

However, a common basis for dividing each of the major classes of lands, namely, in terms of the actual vegetation (and animals) can be established. These are real rather than theoretical features which we can observe and measure by various methods, and can therefore classify and map. Such a system would provide at least a major part of a valid basis for establishing culture—geographic regions. A world division on this basis will show significant associations with the areal differentiation of natural features.

The regional division of the world in terms of cultural phenomena provides no method for measuring the relative importance of fundamental cultural features not associated with production from the surface of the land such as mining and manufacturing.

Nor does it provide a sufficiently inclusive classification of characteristics of rural areas. Thus, different areas may have nearly the same association of crops and animals. But the methods, tools and equipment of production may be sufficiently different in the several areas as to require recognition in the regional classification.

Not many attempts have been made to construct regional systems based on cultural features. Those which have been done are confined to a few major aspects of cultural geography with perhaps no consideration of their relation to the general problem of culture-geographic division.

In many studies in cultural geography, the attempt is made to proceed directly from individual elements— once they are classified and their distribution determined—to regional determination. This appears in the attempt to divide an area into ‘agricultural regions’ on the basis of single crop.

‘While Engelbrecht and others in Germany, as well as many in America, attempted to determine agricultural regions on the basis of single crops, Hahn (1892) struck at a more basic element in considering the manner of cultivation—in particular the contrast between hoe culture and plough culture. Waibel (1933) studied the distribution of forms of landuse by the fallow system, the three-field system and various forms of rotation. Kniffen, however, emphasised that in the study of cultural geography in general a necessary step is the recognition of areal associations of elements, or what be called element-complexes’

An early attempt towards agricultural ‘element complexes’ was represented by the map of Agricultural Regions of the United States, prepared by O. E. Baker and others, and published by the US Department of Agriculture in 1915.

The first attempt to classify types of agricultural landuse for the world in term of ‘element-complexes’ and to divide the world map on that basis was the system developed over a long period of time by Wellington Jones and Derwent Whittlesey. In 1936, Whittlesey revised the whole map and replaced it by a new map with a write-up- ‘Major Agricultural Regions of the Earth’.

Valuable as these studies are, they cannot be combined into a single uniform system, in part because each of the authors constructed an independent system. Furthermore, in some of these, the regional determination is based on the individual elements. Finally, no clear distinction is maintained between ‘specific’ regions, each unique in itself, and the ‘genetic’ regions of a comparative system of division.

Each of the systems—one prepared by Jones and Whittlesey and the other by Hartshorne and Samuel in 1935-36—sought for a comparative’ regional division of the world which appeared to be significant for the greatest possible number of features associated with landuse. Busch presented a model which sought to determine agricultural types and areas in which they were found. It was, however, based on particular combination of crops and livestock.

The criteria of crop-animal complexes was found to be more easily applicable and provided better results in areas limited to a single major cultural type. Hartshorne and Dicken found it most nearly successful when they applied it to areas in both Europe and North America. But the problem of determining which factors in the crop-animal associations are most effective in determining types that will reflect the largest number of significant farm features is not one that admits of clear and unquestioned answers.

Hartshorne and Dicken sought to base their division on the criteria of the landscape as being observed. The present landscape cover consists of vegetation, fallow fields, quarry pits, buildings, etc. Whether the vegetation is natural, wild, or cultural is for the moment immaterial.

In contrast to the concept of the natural landscape, or natural vegetation, this concept of the present landscape cover is a reality; it can be observed and analysed. Further, its various elements can be arranged in an order of importance which does not vary.

Furthermore, the landscape cover of the world is not a hopeless kaleidoscope of varying features, but in major aspects shows marked similarity within limited areas with greater contrasts between those areas.

This results from two separate forces both of which produce real synthesis in the landscape. Nature produces the synthesis of the plant associations, theoretically the ‘natural vegetation’:

(a) Where man has affected these without destroying them, and

(b) Where man has more or less disrupted the synthesis of the association of his own choosing by substituting new plant associations. In the process, various human species over million years altered the biological character of nature. This conversion of the ‘natural landscape into the ‘cultural landscape’ over time appears to be ‘perhaps the greatest act of man, a geographical and historical event of the highest importance’.

From this point of view, the distinction of importance in present landscape is not that between those areas where ‘natural landscapes’ may actually be found, i.e. the glacial regions and the inhabited lands affected positively or negatively by human occupancy.

The contrast is expressed in a multitude of different aspects between areas whose landscape cover is largely under the control of man and those where any effect of man’s occupancies is minor in comparison to the forces of nature.

Within these wild landscapes one could distinguish, theoretically between those that are exclusively natural and those which have been negatively affected by man. The areas of wild landscapes may be sub-divided on the basis of appearance, distinguishing areas of ice, bare Earth, tundra, grass, savanna and forest. Within anyone of these major sub-divisions one could distinguish between areas of continuous wild landscape with cultivated clearings.

In the cultivated landscapes, the landscape cover is represented not merely by the cleared and cultivated fields whose character changes so markedly through the seasons, but also by various features including fences, farm-building, villages, roads, town, etc.

These features are functionally associated with the farm features, and therefore they may be considered as parts of a complete areal complex. Any division of the cultivated landscapes consistent with the general system, however, would presumably be used on the major features of the landscape cover, namely, the cultivated fields.

It is apparent that a great variety of cultural features with greatest geographical significance are represented, directly or indirectly, in the present landscape. A regional division based on that seems to be significant for a great many features.

The alternative to the system based on the present landscape cover is one based on the synthesis of all features involved in the productive use of the land surface. The individual cultural features are not independent in their variations; they are in fact synthesised by man in his individual organised units of landuse.

The basic units are represented by the individual farm, plantation, or ranch. The farm, as an organised unit, includes not merely the land and the plants and buildings on it, but also the livestock, tools, methods and intensity of production, and the use of the products.

The farm, therefore, represents not merely an element- complex, but is a primary ‘Whole’. A particular type of landuse units has areal expression. The individual farms are very much alike over considerable areas and differ notably from units in other areas.

The land-use units are associated in areas to form larger element-complex of various orders of magnitude and coherence. In most of the countries, the farms of a particular community in which all the families live in a compact village form, an element complex that may well is considered a unit, though hardly a ‘Whole’.

The association of a much larger area of farm­land with neighboring agricultural town or city, likewise, forms an element-complex of a relatively loose form, in which highways and railways constitute connecting elements.

Though this larger areal complex does not appear to be a Whole, it does show a definite character that can be considered in the recognition of ‘generic’ types of regions. The areal distribution of various types of landuse is significantly related to other geographic features, both cultural and natural, and the landuse complex is the most important of all element-complexes in human geography.

If we are to have the culturo-geograpbic regions on the areal distributions of landuse units, considered as primary Wholes, then those units should be studied in fact as actual Wholes. In order to comprehend either element-complexes of the more highly organised and closed units, called the Wholes, we must study individual cases.

The study of a unit as a whole requires analysis as well as synthesis. But the elements analysed are to be studied not over the whole world, nor over a whole region, or even a country, but within the unit farm. It is essential first to establish the relation of each of these elements to the total farm (land use) as a unit whole.

Essay # 4. Synthesis between Cultural and Natural Regions:

Throughout the discussion of regional systems of world division based upon cultural complexes, the question which has been frequently raised requires to be answered. ‘Can such a system—whether based exclusively on cultural features or on actual features of the landscape cover, both cultural and natural—provide a sound framework for a field that is concerned with all features, natural as well as cultural? Will we not face difficulties in comparing such a system of essentially cultural complexes with the complex of natural elements— whether the present, theoretical natural element or the actual original fundament?

This comparison, however, is not to be stated as ‘the relation of cultural regions to natural regions’. ‘The determination of regions in either case requires the measuring rod of significance to man. Though this presents no difficulty in the recognition of ‘cultural regions’, it eliminates entirely the concept of ‘natural regions’ in any literal sense of the term.

What is the situation when we compare the culturo-geographic regions with the regions of the individual natural elements? Either system of culturo-geographic regions is based on a large number of cultural features, no one of which is dependent on a single natural element.

In fact, ‘each is dependent, in part, on a number of natural elements and the manner and degree of dependence is different for each cultural feature’. In consequence, the sum total of cultural features as represented by the cultural regions will differ markedly from the regional classification of any one of the natural elements or of any combination of a few of them.

‘If one takes the maps of cultural regions of either Whittlesey or of Hartshorne and Dicken and compares them with the world maps of climate, relief, soil, etc., it is obvious that the explanation of any single type of cultural area in the cultivated lands will require consideration of all the natural elements, and further, that it cannot be completely explained by that consideration alone’ (ibid.). The racial difference between regions in China and those in North America will at once require the consideration of cultural factors.

The insistence that the study of the cultural features of an area must start with the cultural features does not mean that in the general study of the geography of any region one must start with cultural features. Assuming that one may beg the question of delimiting the region, the only scientific requirement of course is that one start with available facts. The available facts, as Finch strongly put forward, are the present, actual features of the area, regardless of whether they are cultural or natural.

In other words, he recommended the procedure of starting with present features of the landscape. ‘The interpretation of the natural features would depend exclusively on non-human factors, so that the study of an area little affected by man might quite reasonably begin with the consideration of natural features’. But the consideration of the cultural features even within such an area must, to be sound, proceed from the observations of the cultural features.

Such a system should be based on a single element-complex or synthesis whose varying forms have areal expression. Since neither nature nor man synthesises all geographic features in this way, a single system of regional division including all geographic features is not possible. As many regional systems as seem desirable can be established on the basis of individual elements or on individual element-complexes and can be compared with each other.

If all these maps are superimposed on one map, the total would represent the actual geography of the world as it is. But it would not establish definite regions, nor would it establish definite types of areas, but rather would show all the differences actually existing in specific regions.

For some purposes, the world division into type areas based on actual landscape cover may prove the most useful. The largest number of different features, however, is represented by a world division into type areas based on the great number of cultural features synthesised by man in his productive use of land.

A cultural region thus refers to an area which is well-defined in terms of boundary and that has fundamental unity in the composition, arrangement and integration of significant traits which distinguishes it from other cultural regions. The Earth surface therefore consists of a mosaic of cultural regions with distinct sets of ‘genre de vie’.

Essay # 5. Typology of Region:

Geographers tend to draw distinction between regions on various grounds. The features which distinguish regions may be singular or plural. The region of covered bridges (a covered bridge region is an area in which the distinguishing element and/or feature is a part of the rural landscape) is a ‘single-feature region which maintains a well-defined boundary. A ‘multiple-feature region, on the other hand, is one in which three different sets of features—core, domain and sphere—tend to overlap and intervene, so as to make the region plural.

Since culture is a multi-faceted concept, most cultural regions tend to have multiple rather than single distinguishing feature. Geographers use the term ‘core areas’ to define such regional heartlands which have a special significance in the study of the regional mosaic of the Earth.

A ‘domain’ is defined as an area where the culture is dominant, as but with less intensity than in the core and where local differences in social organisation are evident. A sphere is an outer zone of influence and peripheral contact in which the members of the culture become significant local minorities. The boundary of a multiple feature region does not seem to be well defined because of the gradual weakening of the domain.

Whittlesey sought to identify a variety of different kinds of regions:

i. Uniform Region:

The ‘uniform region’ is a discrete distribution that is defined in terms of specified criteria and homogeneous throughout in terms of these criteria. Uniform regions are defined in terms of single feature or association of several features.

Examples of such uniform regions are the unit areas on Finch’s map of Montfort or the Cotton Belt/Com Belt as defined in 1927 by O. E. Baker. Whittlesey (1956) defined the ‘Compage’ as a uniform region in which all the features of the physical, biotic and social environment are functionally associated with the human occupancies of the Earth.

As a revival of an ancient word meaning ‘a way of joining and connecting matter’, the term ‘Compage’ was introduced into geography by Whittlesey to lend greater precision to several aspects of regional geography. It implies a highly diversified though unitary complex of elements.

ii. ‘Nodal’ or ‘Functional’ Region:

The ‘nodal’ or ‘functional’ region is an area that is tied functionally to a node or to several nodes. The definition of such a region involves the measurement of movements or spatial interaction, e.g., the area functionally connected with a central place; the service area of a market; the area reached by a newspaper; or the territory that is tied to a centre of government by the lines of political authority.

The nodal/ functional region is bounded by lines that mark the disappearance or weakening of the tie to its own focus in favour of some focus. The lines that mark the extension of a nodal/functional region are similar to isopleths in that they do not separate different kinds of things. Furthermore, the lines of connection to the node usually run at right angles to the boundary of the region. In essence, a nodal or functional region is a multiple feature region.

iii. Formal Regions:

Many of the early studies in regional geography had been concerned with formal regions, identified on the basis of the presence or absence of particular distinguishing features. Hartshorne (1939) had prefigured the significance of the alternative concept of a functional region.

R. E. Dickenson (1947) acknowledged the force of ‘regional homogeneity’ which underpinned the identification of formal regions, but argued that the fullest measure could be discovered only through analysis of the character, intensity, extent and interrelations of regional associations and the ways in which they are interlocked and separated from each other in space. Dickenson’s formulation was its break from physical geography and physical environment and following from this its provision of a ‘central regionalising principle that lies behind the spatial structure of society’. This was the city region: ‘an area of interrelated activities, hindered interests and common organisation, brought into being through the medium of the routes which bind it to the urban centres’.

Dickenson’s central concern with the human organisation of space was reinforced ten years later by A. K. Philbrick (1957), for whom ‘the task of any intellectually viable human geography was to analyse the areal structure of human occupancies independent of the natural environment, through an explication of the functional organisation of human occupancies in area. He fashioned a set of theoretical constructs—locality, localisation, interconnection and spatial discontinuity— which were supposed to provide a new framework for geographical inquiry. ‘Both Dickenson and Philbrick had been greatly impressed by Christaller’s Central Place Theory, and together these three men formed a spring board for the eventual translation of functional regions into spatial systems’.

‘The emergence of several avowedly non- functionalists has led, in the 1980s, to a renewed interest in regions and in the reconstruction of a theoretically informed regional geography. Within Time-geography, for example, Hagerstrand’s (1953/1967) emphasis on sequences of events which necessarily unfold in situations bounded in time and space and whose outcomes are thereby mutually modified through their common ‘localisation’, clearly presages a return to Kant’s ‘physical classification’ as a distinctive and a regional basis for geographical inquiry. Building on Hagerstrand’s foundations, Thrift (1983) described the region as meeting place of Human Agency and social structure. For him, a region is made up of a number of different but connected settings for interaction—a particular intersection of different Locales—which help to structure the intricacies of interaction, the specificity of particular times and spaces, the sense of living as meeting’.

To Giddens (1984), regionalisation ‘is a notion that should be seen as having a major role in social theory. Regionalisation is best understood not as a wholly spatial concept but as one expressing the clustering of contexts in time and space. As such it is a phenomenon of quite decisive significance to social theory, on both a theoretical and empirical level. No single concept helps more to redress the misleading divisions between micro and macro sociological research; no concept helps more to counter the assumption that a society is always a clear-cut unity with precisely defined boundaries to it’.

Pred (1984) provided a similar highly schematic model of the region as a ‘process’. In drawing attention to the ‘contingency’ of regional configurations, however, he also paralleled some of the substantive theses of Marxist Geography concerning the regional geography of the division of labour, layers of investment and uneven development.

Across a broad and rapidly advancing front, therefore, the region is coming to be recognised as an indispensable focus of any truly contextual theory, though not its single pivot, and as being constantly constructed, destroyed and reconstructed in changed form as a result of the interaction of local and non-local processes of social development. 

Essay # 6. Approaches to the Study of Landscape:

Fochler-Hauke (1959) distinguishes five different approaches to Landschaftskunde which include: Landscape Morphology 2. Landscape Ecology 3. Landscape Chronology 4. Regionalisation 5. Landscape Classification. However, these branches demonstrate different approaches to the study of regions.

1. Landscape Morphology:

It is a form of regional geography which was particularly well developed in Germany during the inter-war periods. Otto Schluter, who played a central role in its development, stated as early as 1906 that geographers should consider the form and spatial structure created by visible phenomena on the surface of the Earth as their unifying theme. All human distributions of non- material character such as social, economic, racial, psychological and political conditions are excluded from this study as ends in themselves.

The French scholar Jean Brunhes (1910) said:

‘We should analyse the landscape and the characteristic interplay of observable phenomena there. The visible landscape is a result both of natural conditions and forces and a manifestation of the work of man. The landscape itself creates a synthesis, there is no longer a gap between physical geography and geography of man; both have the same object—the variable landscape—and also there is close contact in terms of methods.’

Alfred Hettner opposed Schluter’s limitation of geographical study to the visible landscape. He was concerned with the ‘uniqueness of area’, whether this uniqueness was evident in the visible landscape or not. He, however, recognised the focal interest of landscape, but refused to recognise the limits set by it on the study of the human facts in space.

Despite this disagreement, landscape morphology can be seen as an attempt to study region on the basis of Hettner’s principles. He had provided the German geographers with a philosophical basis for geography as a distinct discipline, but no clear-cut practical methods of enquiry.

Schluter provided a practical approach which proved to be useful in field studies everywhere. The landscape morphologists agreed with Hettner on the main philosophical issue, that geography is a chorological science which should focus on regional synthesis and only delve into historical developments to the extent necessary to explain the contemporary situation.

2. Landscape Ecology:

It is less familiar, but it represents functional approach in regional geography. The functional approach has grown up to study the relationships between centres and their upland, i.e. the well-developed theme of functional or centred regions.

Landscape ecology is also concerned with the relationships which occur within a region in terms of transport, contact fields, etc. Clearly a functional region does not need to restrict itself to the study of centred regions, even if this has come to be a most important theme in recent geography. It may also study the total interplay between the factors in an ecosystem whether dominated by man or by nature.

3. Landscape Chronology:

It manifests a major concern for the development of regions over time. The same category includes a type of regional geography which was developed in North America between the wars, described by Whittelesey in 1929, as ‘sequent occupancy’. Sequent occupancies studies the ways in which each culture uses a region in its own way.

This is demonstrated in America where most regions experienced a sudden change from the Indian to the European culture, and in many parts of Europe which progressed from agrarian to industrial cultures. Sequent occupancy stresses the stages in the development of a region, not through studies of local differentiation as a result of the long interplay of man and nature over the centuries, but by emphasising how easily shifts in regional character can take place.

4. Regionalisation:

The landscape consists of the observable features of any arbitrary part of the Earth’s surface plus all non-observable features of significance. It consists of the landforms and their plant cover together with the fixed material features, which are the result of the transformation of the landforms and plant cover through human occupancies.

The German term ‘Landschaft’ which is literally analogous to the English word landscape also means a scientifically defined geographical region in German. Geographers have come to use landscape as being synonymous with ‘region’.

The region or landscape (Landschaft) is said to constitute a definite individual unit that has form and structure and is, therefore, a concrete object so related to others like it that the face of the Earth may be thought of as made up of a mosaic of individual landscapes or regions. The region is an organic object comparable to biological organism.

The regional concept refers to the mental image of an Earth’s surface differentiated by an exceedingly complex fabric of interwoven strands and produced by diverse but interrelated processes. The region is thought of as a device for selecting and studying areal groupings of the complex phenomena found on the Earth.

Any segment or portion of the Earth surface is a region if it is homogeneous in terms of such an areal grouping. Its homogeneity is determined by criteria formulated for the purpose of sorting from the whole range of Earth phenomena the items required to express or illuminate a particular grouping, areally cohesive.

So defined, a region is not an object, self -determined or nature-given. It is an intellectual concept, an entity for the purpose of thought created by the selection of certain features that are relevant to an interest or problem and by the disregard of all features that are considered to be irrelevant.

Nevertheless, the region has a form, structure and function; and region, being identical with landscape, it intrinsically refers to itself as ‘a reality, as a whole, an objective unit and a corporeal thing, as well as a concrete unitary object’. The region is unique in respect of its tool combination of major characteristics.

The distinctiveness and/or the uniqueness of the region can be expressed in three basic concepts:

(a) The interrelation of different kinds of phenomena that are directly or indirectly tied to the earth;

(b) The differential character of these phenomena and the complexes they form in different areas of the Earth; and

(c) The areal expression of the phenomena of complexes.

On account of its individuality, personality and uniqueness, the region is suggestive of a primary whole, to which the German word Gestalt is used. Gestalt is expressive of the unified form of larger areas, each consisting of a particular arrangement of regions. It is a dynamic structure in which the parts reach into each other functionally and can be understood only in view of the whole.

5. Landscape Classification:

We can distinguish between ‘natural landscape and ‘cultural landscape’: the former consisting of all the natural features of an area, the latter of all man-made features. The cultural landscape means the present landscape of any inhabited region. The natural landscape, however, would be found in an area never disturbed and invaded by man.

In the inhabited areas of the world, the concept of natural landscape is purely theoretical; throughout the civilised world at least the natural landscape has been seen by no living person. The Germans distinguished between ‘Urlandschaft’ (the landscape that existed before major changes were introduced through the activities of man) and ‘Kulturlandschaft (landscape created by human culture).

There are two principal types of systems of regional division, both of utility in different ways. A realistic system of ‘specific’ regions is based on consideration of all factors involved, including relative location in reference to land and sea. A comparative system of ‘generic’ regions considers only the internal characteristics of the areas without respect to relative location; strictly speaking, it does not establish regions, but simply areas of particular types.

Natural regions are actually regions based on a combination of certain natural factors, according to their importance to men of particular culture and technology. It is the fundamental unity in man’s ethno-cultural traits that leads to areal association of cultural element-complexes in the space that tends to produce cultural regions. Cultural regions are required to be determined by finding the areas in which people think alike and maintain a common genre de vie.

There can be the uniform or formal region and the nodal or functional region. The former is defined in terms of specified criteria and homogeneity, whilst the latter is an area that is tied functionally to a node or to several nodes. A functional region intrinsically constitutes a Whole or a gestalt.

Nevertheless, the regional entities which are being constructed on the above criteria and principles are in the full sense mental constructions. They are entities only in our thoughts, even though we find them to be constructions that provide some sort of intelligent basis for organising our knowledge of reality.