This Earth is diverse in all its glory, from people to cultures to regions. Is it not fascinating that different attributes of different places make us stand apart, but the unifying factor of co-existence links us a whole?

A person living in India works in the paper factory, which exports its products to the USA, where a book is produced and a British child reads it aloud to narrate it to an Indonesian friend.

Did you get lost in that string of cultures? With the vastness of the world, this is expected; if it had not been for geographers, we would have never known how the world is so different.

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So What Is World Geography?

Geography basically is the study of the earth and the formation of comparative relations in order to analyse the diversity prevailing over regions of the world. It understands that each region complements the other, as indicated by the example mentioned earlier. World geography, in a similar way, is responsible for building the net of different regions with their special attributes and forming the unified character of the world, with the condition that each region is dependent on its specific allocation of Earth.

World geography locates a place in two ways: physically and relatively. Physical or “absolute” location is the actual placement of a country or city as you see it on the map; it is recorded in the form of latitude and longitude. On the other hand, the relative location involves locating a place in comparison with the nearby regions. For instance, if you have to explain to a person where Afghanistan is, you can simply say that it is between Iran and Pakistan.

What Are Different Types Of World Geography?

Let us now jot down different types of geographical approaches that make up world geography:

  • Regional Geography: It refers to the physical attributes of a region on the Earth’s surface and relates it to other regions. A region is defined by its specific attributes and distinct characteristics that allow it to interact with other regions in a certain way. It enlists each region in a worldly or global context and evaluates the uniqueness and similarities of a region.
  • Spatial geography: This analytical approach is based on the linkages existing in between regions of the world. It focuses on a certain aspect of regions and links it with other regions, thus forming a relationship in world geography. It treats regions as a point and connects lines to understand the relationship between regions and in the region itself.
  • Physical Geography: This geographical approach is based on the environments of different regions. Excluding the human aspect, it connects different environments and drafts the fabric of climatic change in world geography.
  • Human Geography: This studies the attributes of people and their activities like culture, economies and politics. However, a link between physical and human geography is highly important as they cannot be studied effectively in isolation.

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How Do Regions Form A Global Order?

You must be wondering how different regions actually form a global appearance with tensions and collaborations in between them. Regional geography forms an approach to understand world geography in a way that highlights how different political or economic practices of different countries affect the global trends. Regions within the global sphere that are placed on different geographic scales are described as follows:

  • World regions: These regions are made of different countries grouped together as per their human, physical and cultural geography and you will notice that they form a major proportion of most of the continent.
  • Countries: These exist within world regions as independent entities with borders separating world regions and setting them apart on the map of world geography.
  • Local regions: These are subsectors of countries and constitute as urban, rural or areas sharing the same attributes, such as agricultural practices.

The global order of world geography signifies how populations spread their geographical influence inside and outside of their domain. It highlights the remarkable periods that this world witnessed with a thriving world economy, and it also looks into the rough time period of war breakouts in certain regions, which led to the disruption in the global linkages.

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References:

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0770414.html

http://www.saylor.org/site/textbooks/World%20Regional%20Geography.pdf
http://www.academia.edu/491338/Building_Regions._The_Regionalization_of_the_World_Order._London_Ashgate

Ian
Ian