Geographical thinking is vital for addressing some of the critical geopolitical, environmental, and socio-economic challenges facing the contemporary world. Yet the insights geography can offer on the changes unfolding around us are often overlooked because of the tendency to view geography in static, descriptive terms--and indeed rank ignorance of the subject. Alexander Murphy will highlight how geography's concern with spatial patterns and assumptions, mapping, and integrative place-based modes of analysis can enhance understanding of matters ranging from uprisings in the Middle East, to human alteration of natural systems, to the spread of disease, to the impacts of technology on contemporary society. Examples will range widely, but will include developments of contemporary significance to Asia such as growing tensions in the South China Sea, the sustainability challenges facing Asian cities, and disputes over water resources in the Mekong region.
9. Core Geographical Concerns
• Spatial patterns and relationships
• The nature of places and regions
• Human-environment interactions
• How where something happens affects what
happens (locational context)
13. Core Geographical Concerns
• Spatial patterns and relationships
• The nature of places and regions
• Human-environment interactions
• How where something happens affects what
happens (locational context)
14. John Snow – mapping of cholera
cases in London, 1854
Spatial Patterns/Relationships
16. A three-dimensional geographical visualization of the residential mobility of 1000
2842 cases of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in southeastern Finland.
Boyle et al., 2003.
Spatial Patterns/Relationships
18. Bosnia – Proposed Partition
From Murphy, 1994
Spatial Patterns/Relationships
19. Another View of the Bosnian Peace Plan
(From Murphy, 1994)
Spatial Patterns/Relationships
20. Core Geographical Concerns
• Spatial patterns and relationships
• The nature of places and regions
• Human-environment interactions
• How where something happens affects what
happens (locational context)
27. 1994
Regimes of Territorial
Legitimation (RTLs)
The institutions, practices,
and discourses that are
designed to legitimate and
sustain particular territorial
conceptions of the state
Places and Regions
30. Core Geographical Concerns
• Spatial patterns and relationships
• The nature of places and regions
• Human-environment interactions
• How where something happens affects what
happens (locational context)
38. Core Geographical Concerns
• Spatial patterns and relationships
• The nature of places and regions
• Human-environment interactions
• How where something happens affects what
happens (locational context)