Geography Final

Front 1

territoriality

Back 1

- Territorial definitions: what do they consider a part of their territory and how does that compare to their neighbors? Leads to disputes between neighboring countries.
- the modern state is a geographical expression of the human tendency: the need to belong to a larger group that controls its own piece of the Earth, its own territory.
- most geographers view territoriality as a learned cultural response.
- Robert Sack regards territoriality as a cultural strategy that uses power to control an area and communicate that control, thereby subjugating the inhabitants and acquiring resources.
- the marking of borders is a practice originally unique to modern Western culture.
- political territoriality is cultural geographical phenomenon.
- an important geographical aspect of the modern state is the shape and configuration
of the national territory.
- the more compact the territory, the easier is national governance.
- circular or hexagonal forms maximize compactness, allow short communication lines and minimize the amount of border to be defended.
- basic human characteristic to control a piece of earth

• Instinctual- natural and unavoidable (tendency to want to control a piece of land)
• Learned- cultural strategy to control people and resources

Front 2

colonialism

Back 2

- the modern territorial state emerged recently in 16th century europe and diffused around the globe through European colonialism.

Front 3

exclave

Back 3

- potentially most damaging to a country's stability are enclaves and exclaves.
- excalves are parts of a national territory separated from the main body of the country to which they belong by the territory of another.
- ex: the Kaliningrad District. separated from Russia.
- exclaves are undesirable if a hostile power holds the intervening territory because defense of such an isolated area is difficult and makes substantial demands on national resources.
- an exclave's inhabitants, isolated from their compatriots may develop separatist feelings, causing more problems.
- pakistant good example of national instability created by exclaves. division from india and bangladesh.
- separated from the main body ex: Alaska and Hawaii>separated from U.S.

Front 4

enclave

Back 4

- a district surrounded by a country but not ruled by it.
- enclaves can either be self governing (ex: lesotho) or an exclave to another state.
- in either case its presence can pose problems for the surrounding country.
- potentially just as disruptive is the pene-enclave, an intrusive piece of territory with only the smallest of outlets. (ex: Gambia)

surrounded by a country but not ruled by it
• Peno-enclave: only a small outlet free from the surrounding country (ex: gaza)

Front 5

marchland

Back 5

- until recently, many boundaries were not clearly defined but instead referred to as zones (marchlands).

Front 6

buffer state

Back 6

- buffer state is the nearest equivalent to the marchland.
- a buffer state is an independent but small and weak country lying between two powerful, potentially belligerent countries.
- ex: mongolia, buffer state between Russia and China; Nepal occupies a similar position between India and China.

Front 7

satellite state

Back 7

- if one of the neighboring countries assumes control of the buffer state, it loses much of its independence and becomes a satellite state.• Eastern Bloc countries during Cold War controlled by Russia

Front 8

natural boundary

Back 8

- follow some feature of the natural landscape, such as a river or mountain ridge.
- ex: pyrenees lies between Spain and France and the Rio Grande is part of the border between Mexico and the U.S.

Front 9

ethnographic boundary

Back 9

drawn on the basis of some cultural trait, usually on the language spoken or religion practiced.
- ex: border that divides India from predominantly Islamic Pakistan

Front 10

geometric boundary

Back 10

- regular, often perfectly straight lines drawn without regard for physical or cultural features of the area.
- ex: U.S.- Canada border is a geometric boundary, as are most country state, and province borders in the central and western U.S.s and Canada.

Front 11

relict boundary

Back 11

- boundaries that no longer exist as international borders.
- leave behind a trace in the local cultures.
- ex: even after the iron curtain taken down between East and West Germany, remnants of the reminders of the old border remained, as it continued to function as provincial boundaries within Germany.

Front 12

centrifugal forces

Back 12

- anything that disrupts internal order and furthers the destruction of the country.

Front 13

centripital forces

Back 13

- geographers refer to factors that promote national identity and solidarity as centripital forces.
- many states encourage centripetal forces that help fuel nationalistic sentiment.
- things such as an official national language, national history museums, national parks, and even national religion are actively promoted and supported by the state.

Front 14

supranational organization

Back 14

- third major type of political functional region, in addition to indepedent countries and their governmental subdivisions.
- supranationalism exists when countries voluntarily give up some portion of their sovereignty to gain the advantages of a closer political, economic, and cultural assciation with their neighbors.
- sometimes they take the form of regional trading blocs such as NAFTA that promote the freer flow of goods across international borders.
- in 20th century, supranational orgs grew in numbers and importance, counterbalancing the proliferation of indepedent countries.
- most supranationals such as the Arab League of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations posses little cohesion.
- The EU is most powerful ambiitious and successful supranational org in the world.

Front 15

electoral geography

Back 15

- geographers can devise formal cultural regions based on voting patterns.
- every country where free elections are permitted has a similarly varied electoral geography.
- electoral geographers concern themselves with functional regions, the voting district and pricinct.

Front 16

cleavage model

Back 16

- cumulative voting patterns typically reveal sharp and pronounced regional contrasts. electoral geographers refer to these borders as cleavages.

- originally developed by lipset and rokkan to explain voting patterns in electoral geography, sheds light on this phenomenon.
- it proposes to explain persistent regional patterns in voting behavior in terms of tensions pitting the national core area against peripheral districts, urban against rural, capitalists against workers.

Front 17

gerrymandering

Back 17

- the practice where cleavage lines are crossed to create districts that have a majority of voters favoring the party in power or some politically important ethnic group.
- this is called gerrymandering and the resultant voting districts often have awkward elongated shapes.
- gerrymandering can be accomplished by one of two methods. 1) draw district boundaries so as to concentrate all of the opposition party into one district, creating an unneccary large majority while also ensuring that it can not win elsewhere.
2) draw the district boundaries so as to dilute the opposition's vote so that it does not form a simple majority in any district.

Front 18

cartogram

Back 18

- provides a better representation of both the true significance of states in the presidential election and the relative proportion of voters favoring Democrats or Republicans.

Front 19

nation-state

Back 19

- the link between political and cultural patterns is epitomized by the nation state, created when a nation- a people of common heritage, memories, myths, homeland, anc culture, speaking the same language achivees independence as a separate country.
- nationality is culturally based in the nation state, the countries reason lies in that cultural identity.
- the more the people have in common cultrally, the more stable and potent is the resultant nationaism
- ex of modern nation states include Germeny, sweden, japan, greece, armenia, and finland.
- scholars generally trace the nation state model to europe and the european settler colonies in the Americas in the late 18th century.
- the ideal of self determination (the freedom to rule one's own country) spread and over 1800 nation states emerged.
- many of these nation states, such as portugal, holland, and france ruled overseas territories as colonies of the mother country.

Front 20

political ecology

Back 20

- used by blaikie and brookfield
- when they used this term, they were interested in trying to understand how political and economic forces affect people's relationships to the land.
- they suggested that focusing on proximate or immediate causes (ex: farmers dumping pesticide in the river), provided an inadequate and misleading explanation of human environment relations.
- as an alternative they developed the idea of a chain of explnation as a method for identifying ultimate caues.

Front 21

folk fortress

Back 21

- before missile warfare, a country's survival was aided by some sort of natural protection, such as surrounding mountains, deserts, or seas.
- these natural strongholds are called folk fortress.
- it might shield an entire country or only its core area. it is a valuable asset in either way.

Front 22

Heartland Theory

Back 22

- mackinder
- discussions of environmental influence, manifest destiny, and russian expansionism led to this.
- it was propounded in the early 20th century and based on environmental determinism, the heartland theory addresses the balance of power in the world and the possibility of world conquest based on natural habitit advantage.
- it held that the eurasian continent was the most likey base from which to launch a successful compagn for world conquest.
- mackinder in examining this huge landmass, discerned two environmental regions: the heartland (lies remote from ice free seas) and the rimland (densely populated coastal fringes of Eurasia in the east, south, and west)
- far from the sea, the hearland was invulnerable to the naval power of rimland empires.
- he reasoned that a unified heartland power could conquer the maritime countries with relative ease.

Front 23

national iconography

Back 23

- statues of national heroes. status of liberty
- cultural landscape rich in symbolism.
- ex: mount rushmore, expresses american nationaism.
- some geographers theorize that the political iconography of landscape derives from an elite, dominant group in a countries pop. and that is purpose is to legitimize or justify its power anf control over an area.

Front 24

sovereignty

Back 24

- in the modern international system, states recognize each other's sovereignty.
- every state recognizes every other states right to exist and control its own affairs within its territorial boundries.
- • Ex: China doesn’t declare Taiwan as a nation, although the rest of the world does
• U.S. State department=194 countries in the world+Taiwan