However, the people who occupy the spaces - as students, residents, University employees - flow through and occupy these spaces in various roles throughout the day. The spaces of the University and the town, and their corresponding roles are apparent in the maps above. 22).īut, if we are to understand State College, PA to a greater degree - if we want to understand how and why State College, PA is a unique, historied, and dynamic place - we must investigate the situated characteristics embedded within the town's social and physical geography.įlint explains, “(t)he economic, political, and social relationships that we enjoy and suffer are mediated by different roles for different spaces” (2016, p.
within particular areas, or hierarchies and distances between objects” (Flint, 2016, p.
But, as Flint noted, “the term space is more abstract than place.(and) gives greater weight to functional issues such as the control of territory, an inventory of objects. Looking at the two maps above, we could gather some information about the “spatial organization of human activity” (Flint, 2016, p. Thus, I will use State College, PA (including University Park) as my hometown example.īelow is a screenshot of State College, PA taken from Google maps.īoth the size and close spatial relationship of the University are certainly of note when we think about the relationship between the University community and State College residents. So, while I can identify with being an "Army brat", I also consider State College, PA my hometown. My father was in the US Army, so I was born in Germany, then we moved to North Carolina, then back to Germany, then to Texas, all before I started the 4 th grade and he retired and we finally moved to State College, PA. Until I was in the 4 th grade, my family moved around quite a bit. So, we will begin the discussion of geography and politics by utilizing the example of State College, home of Penn State University! In this first lesson, all of our activities ask you to think about your hometown and the various characteristics that make it a place you are intimately connected to - indeed, for many of us, it shapes various aspects of our identity and perspective on the world around us. And, while we may still be quite perplexed at the various impasses we see on the global geopolitical stage, we will, at the very least, better understand the complexity involved in some of these seemingly intractable situations. That is, through our work in this lesson, and throughout the semester, we will try to better understand how and why things unfold in certain ways in specific places. Our study of Geopolitics will guide us through the process of situating events within a particular context.
In this course, you will be introduced to a subset of Human Geography, called Political Geography, or Geopolitics.
While these activities are indeed fundamental to geography, the discipline expands well beyond the confines of maps and capital cities. Whether you are new to the discipline of geography or not, most people were introduced to the field through looking at maps or elementary school exercises where you were made to memorize capital cities. Please begin by reading the Prologue and Chapter 1 of Flint, C.