What is Geographical Determinism

Geographical determinism is the belief that the environment determines the patterns of human culture in a given location and its social development .

In this case, mainly physical factors are taken into account, such as landforms and climate.

Experts who believe in geographic determinism say that only ecological, climatic and geographical factors are responsible for human cultures and individual decisions.

In addition, they claim that social conditions have virtually no impact on cultural development.

The argument used for geographic determinism

The main argument for geographic determinism is that the physical characteristics of an area, such as the climate, have an essential and direct impact on the lives of the local inhabitants .

This perspective states that it helps to define the general behavior and culture of a society. For example, areas in the tropics of cancer and capricorn were said to be less developed than the higher latitudes.

This justification was due to the continually hot climate that, according to some geographers, facilitated survival and, therefore, the people who lived there did not work as hard to guarantee their survival.

Another example of geographical determinism would be the theory that island nations (formed by an island or a group of them) have unique cultural characteristics, due to their isolation from continental societies.

Geographical determinism according to ancient geography

Writings on geographic determinism have been noted for many years.

Climatic factors, for example, were used by Plato and Aristotle to explain why the Greeks were more developed than other societies in much hotter or much colder climates.

In addition, Aristotle created his climate classification system to explain why people were limited to settlement in certain areas of the globe .

Other scholars have also used geographic determinism to explain not just the culture of a society, but the reasons behind the physical characteristics of the people.

Al-Jahiz , an East African writer, for example, cited environmental factors as the origin of different skin colors.

He believed that the darker skin of many Africans and various birds, mammals and insects was a direct result of the prevalence of black basalt rocks in the Arabian Peninsula.

Geographic determinism and Friedrich Ratzel’s theory

Geographical determinism reached its peak in modern geography, from the end of the 19th century, when it was resurrected by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel. Thus, it ended up becoming the central theory of the discipline.

Ratzel’s theory emerged following Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 and was strongly influenced by evolutionary biology and the impact that a person’s environment has on their cultural evolution .

Friedrich Ratzel, German geologist.

Ratzel’s theory states that, in addition to man being the fruit of the environment and geography he lives in, the State is like a living organism that works to expand and defend its own space.

Thus, more advanced societies would have a larger space, being able to expand more quickly and easily.

It was from this thought that the German geologist originated the concept of living space , which relates human groups to the spatial units where they develop.

Many experts in modern geography challenge Ratzel’s theory and claim that it was, in some way, the driving force behind the Nazi event.

Criticism and decline of geographical determinism

Despite its success in the early 1900s, the popularity of geographic determinism began to decline in the 1920s.

In addition, critics began to claim that the claim was racist and perpetuated imperialism .

Carl Sauer, for example, claimed that geographical determinism prematurely generalized the culture of an area. Thus, it did not allow results based on direct observation or other research.

As a result of their criticism and others, geographers developed the theory of environmental possibilism to explain cultural development.

Environmental possibilism and geographical determinism

Environmental possibilism was established by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche and stated that the environment establishes limitations for cultural development, but does not fully define culture.

Instead, culture is defined by the opportunities and decisions that humans make in response to dealing with such limitations.

In the 1950s, geographic determinism was almost entirely replaced in geography by environmental possibilism , effectively ceasing to be the central theory of the discipline.

Regardless of its decline, however, geographic determinism was an important component of geographic history, since it initially represented an attempt by early geographers to explain the patterns they saw in development around the world.

by Abdullah Sam
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