Social geography facts for kids

Social geography is a part of human geography that looks at how people and their societies connect with the places they live in. It studies how social things, like how groups of people live or interact, are shaped by space, and how space itself is shaped by people. This field is very close to sociology, which is the study of society.

Even though the idea of social geography has been around for over 100 years, experts don't all agree on exactly what it covers. In 1968, a geographer named Anne Buttimer said that social geography was mostly built by individual thinkers, not by big academic groups. Today, there are many different ideas about what "social geography" means. However, all these ideas try to answer two main questions: How does society create and use space? And how do social activities show up in different places?

Social geography often overlaps with other parts of geography and sociology. When it first became popular in English-speaking countries in the 1960s, it was often used to mean studying where different social groups lived. This made it very connected to urban geography (the study of cities) and urban sociology (the study of city societies). Later, in the 1990s, ideas about cultural geography became very important. In some European countries, social geography is seen as a way to study human geography, or even as the same thing as human geography itself.

The Story of Social Geography

Early Ideas (Before World War II)

The term "social geography" (or géographie sociale in French) first appeared in France. It was used by a geographer named Élisée Reclus and by sociologists from the Le Play School. They might have come up with the idea separately. The first time the term was definitely used was in 1884, in a review of Reclus's book. Reclus himself used the phrase in letters starting in 1895 and in his last book in 1905.

The first person to use "social geography" in a book title was Edmond Demolins from the Le Play School. His article Géographie sociale de la France was published in 1896 and 1897. After Reclus and the Le Play School leaders passed away, Paul Vidal de la Blache became the most important figure in French geography. He believed geography was about places, not just people. One of his students, Camille Vallaux, wrote a two-volume book called Géographie sociale in 1908 and 1911. Another important student, Jean Brunhes, included how groups of people interact in space as part of human geography. Before World War II, social geography mostly focused on describing rural areas and regions.

In English-speaking countries, the first person to use "social geography" was George Wilson Hoke in 1907, but his work didn't have much impact. However, the ideas of Le Play were picked up in Britain by Patrick Geddes and Andrew John Herbertson. In 1930, Percy M. Roxby said social geography was one of the four main parts of human geography. In America, the Berkeley School of Cultural Geography, led by Carl O. Sauer, was very strong. But the Chicago School of Sociology was already studying where social groups lived.

In the Netherlands, a sociologist named Sebald Rudolf Steinmetz created a field called "Sociography" in the 1930s. It mixed geography and ethnography (the study of cultures). Later, the Utrecht School of Social Geography started. They wanted to study how social groups related to their living spaces.

After World War II

Europe

After World War II, geographers like Hans Bobek and Wolfgang Hartke in Germany continued to study the link between social groups and the landscape. Bobek focused on how different "patterns of life" (Lebensformen), influenced by social factors, shaped the landscape. Hartke looked at the landscape for clues about how certain social groups behaved. A famous example of this was Sozialbrache (social-fallow), which meant land that was no longer farmed. This showed that people were moving away from agriculture.

Even though French Géographie Sociale influenced Hartke, France didn't form a clear school of social geography. However, Albert Demangeon suggested that social groups should be at the center of human geography. This idea was then explored by Pierre George and Maximilien Sorre. George, who followed Marxist ideas, focused on economic reasons for social patterns. Another French Marxist, the sociologist Henri Lefebvre, introduced the idea of the "social production of space" in 1974. This meant that space isn't just empty; it's created and shaped by society. Sorre developed a way to link society to the idea of habitat (where a group lives). This was then used to study cities by sociologist Paul-Henry Chombart de Lauwe.

In Estonia and later Sweden, Edgar Kant developed an "anthropo-ecology" approach. He looked at how people and their environment interacted. His ideas about the time dimension of social life led to the creation of time geography by Torsten Hägerstrand and Sven Godlund.

See also

In Spanish: Geografía social para niños

• Geographical segregation
• History of geography
• Human ecology
• Sociology of space
• Urban vitality