Table of contents

• A brief overview of the course
• What this course is all about
• Procedures in the course and textbooks
• Info about the World in general

Quick Overview

The purpose of Geography 128 is to examine the linkage between geography and international politics. The course is mainly concerned with human geography--the patterns and changes in nationality, distribution and density of populations, of languages, ethnic groups, of religions, of wealth and poverty, of disease--any quality of human populations which varies from place to place and over time and which has a bearing on international affairs.

What The Course Is All About

The purpose of Geography 128 is to examine the linkage between geography and international politics. By "geography," I do not mean just physical geography, although physical geography certainly plays an important role in international affairs. The course is also, indeed mainly, concerned with human geography--the patterns and changes in nationality, distribution and density of populations, of languages, ethnic groups, of religions, of wealth and poverty, of disease--any quality of human populations which varies from place to place and over time and which has a bearing on international affairs.

Two basic arguments run through the course: first, that the ambitions of nation-states, and consequently much of their political behavior, rises from a complex interaction of geography and history. We are unlikely to make much sense out of national behavior unless we know something about that history and geography, and how they fit together. Second, the course argues that the geographic facts-of-life often impose semi-permanent constraints on what a nation-state can do--regardless of what its government wishes to do. Most of the political trouble that we read about in the newspaper, both internal and international, can be understood better if it is examined now and then through geographic spectacles. It is the purpose of Geography 128 to do that.

In one semester, it is obviously impossible to cover the earth, and we shall make no attempt to do so. (Indeed, at the rate that conflicts arise and spread in the modern world, we cannot even cover all the political hot-spots.) Instead, we will take a look at a sampling of the world's nation-states. Most examples are chosen because they are chronic trouble-spots (like the Middle East), or because they have very recently caused trouble (like Japan). In each instance, we will try to identify the various ways that geography has helped fuel the fires of international conflict. There are also nations with a relatively high level of political stability, and there also geography plays an important role (Great Britain and the USA are prime examples).

In order to get a fair coverage of the world's main cultural regions, our sampling includes a pair of examples from each of the main continents. Again, to get as much variety as possible, each pair includes polar opposites in terms of economic development, or political stability, or cultural character. Thus, in Asia, we will take a look at South Asia--economically underdeveloped, with a history of colonial exploitation, and torn by internal rages--and contrast it with Japan, one of the world's richest nations and one of Asia's most stable political units. (That has not always been so. Japan was one of the world's chief trouble makers for the half-century before World War II--and was single-handedly responsible for changing the whole map of east Asia and the western Pacific). A similar pairing can be seen in the following list, except in the Middle East and Anglo-America, where only one sample is taken: from Africa --Nigeria and South Africa; from Asia --Sri Lanka and Japan; Israel and its neighbors in the "Middle East"; Britain and Germany from Europe, Mexico, the islands and Canada from the Americas. If time permits, we will discuss the United States, as affected by geography as any country.

Although the great powers--Russia, the US,.. China, and India--do not appear explicitly on the list above (until the very end), we will not ignore them. The reason is obvious. In considering the political geography of Japan, for example, it is impossible to avoid discussing either China or Russia, just as Mexican affairs make little sense if the US is ignored. Thus, while we will focus mainly on the places listed above from 1 to 10, we will digress frequently to consider the politics and geography of the great powers. By the end of the course, we will touch on nearly all areas of the world, at least occasionally.

Just as we range widely across geographic space, we will make frequent forays into the historic past. There is compelling reason for doing so: many political problems of the present can be traced directly to past events, and the geography of the present descends directly from the geography of the past. There are innumerable examples of that fact in contemporary political affairs. the problems of today's South Africa, for instance, have been under construction for about three centuries, and we will necessarily be forced to review some elementary facts of South African history before we can understand present-day South African geography and politics. And, as we look closely at other parts of the world, we will find that is true everywhere. History lays a heavy hand on present-day affairs--and geography.

,h3>Procedures in the course and textbooks

I have taught the course without a text but based on student suggestions we are using H. De Blij and P. Muller, Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts. But the major resource is a set of class lecture notes available at the university bookstore around the second week of classes. [I do not make any money from these!] That material is also available on my WWWeb site http://www.ems.psu.edu/~williams

Because the text has lots of maps (via a tie-up with Rand McNally, I'm not requiring an atlas. You may want to get a copy of the best general one anyway, Gode's World Atlas in its 19th or latest edition. Bring your text or atlas to class with you! We will be talking about the location of places, and how those locations relate to each other and to current political affairs. the most efficient way to talk about locational matters, of course, is to have a map in front of you and I may not always have a wall map available. You will find the maps/atlas helpful in following lectures (some will be impossible to follow without the a knowledge of atlas "facts."). By the end of the term, I hope that you will think highly enough of atlases to get one for your personal library, just as you would keep a dictionary. We cannot talk about the problems of Africa, Asia or Europe, indeed even the Americas, without knowing at least in a basic way how today's map developed from yesterday's. Should you be able to afford it, or have a birthday coming up, the best general historical atlas in English is the Times Historical Atlas of the World which merges good quality maps and text to help make historical geography live.

You will also need to read a good daily newspaper in order to keep abreast of current international affairs. There are only a few really good newspapers printed in the US, but the most widely read, widely respected, and easily available in State College is the NEW YORK TIMES. I will sometimes use TIMES stories as a basis for lectures, and there will always be an exam section based on them. You can read the TIMES in the library, or you can buy it on any newsstand in town for $1/ a copy. Or, you can take advantage of a special deal for students and get a Monday-through-Friday subscription or at the dorms for a price substantially below the newsstand price. I will have subscription forms in class and they're also available around campus, notably at the HUB.

Your grades will be based on the best two of three exams, part takehome, worth 60 percent; a term paper/project of which we will talk soon, worth 35 percent, and a combination of attendance and a short early paper, worth 5 percent. To minimize exam trauma, you will find exam previews and examples of previous exams within the course packet.

The first week will start off with your taking an ungraded quiz covering locations and some basic factual information. Your answers will give me a clue as to how to tailor the course to your backgrounds. To give me an idea of how you write and think, I will have you write a couple of pages analyzing the results of (a sample of answers to) the quiz. You will be given results from an earlier class or course to give you some perspective on how your group's answers compare. Numbers are only good when there is a framework to evaluate them.

We will spend one or two periods talking about maps, their uses, and some problems relating to their use. If you've already had a geography course, some of this material may not be new -- I apologize but most of the class will not have had the chance to think about maps. Then we will start looking at world problem areas, beginning with the one that, unless this class is unique, is least known -- Africa.

In addition to outlining the points I want to make, the following notes contain summaries of recent accounts of events in "our" countries and regions, mostly from the New York Times and The Economist. Unless you read the specialized literature, these two sources are good ones. Realize that like everything else, newspapers and journals have their predilections and biases. The Times tries hard to be objective about most topics, the Economist is a little less worried about giving its own slant. In that, it is like most newspapers and weeklies throughout the world [but closer to American standards than most]. The coverage of Africa and Asia is more recent and voluminous than that for the rest. This is largely to get you used to thinking about what kinds of articles you should look at as you build your own knowledge base of current happenings.

WORLD/GENERAL

"Grossly distorted picture," Economist, 5Fe94,p.79. Despite big improvements in national-income accounting, statisticians still hold up a distorting mirror to the world's economies. New System of National Accounts (SNA) replaces 1968 formulation. Will make international comparisons easier. Takes changes in world's economy and accounting practices into account. Improves accounting for inflation and measurement of trade flows. Still ignores multinational nature of many modern firms. Dissenters say defining trade based on ownership rather than location would make more sense. A recent US DOC study shows major differences. In 1991 US had 28 billion goods and services deficit. If net sales by foreign subsidiaries were included, deficit would become a $24 billion surplus. NAS group suggests moving entirely to ownership basis. If so exports would =crossborder sales to foreigners + net sales to foreigners by subsidiaries abroad + sales by American firms to American subsidiaries of foreign firms. If adopted, this would have pushed America's trade surplus to $164 billion.

"Back to the Future," Economist, 8Jn94, 21-22. A strong America, an advancing China, a struggling Russia and an uncertain Europe make up the new quartet of big powers. The interplay of their intersts and the threat of proliferation will fix the rudiments of the next world order.

"Verification, Validation, and Confirmation of Numerical Models in the Earth Sciences," Naomi Oreskes, Kristin Schrader-Frechette, Kenneth Belitz, Science 273)4Fe94,641-646. Earth Sciences and History, Dartmouth; Philosophy, University of S. Florida, Tampa; Earth Sciences, Dartmouth. Abstract: Verification and validation of numerical models of natural systems is impossible. This is because natural systems are never closed and because model results are always non-unique. Models can be confirmed by the demonstration of agreement between observation and prediction, but confirmation is inherently partial. Complete confirmation is logically precluded by the fallacy of affirming the consequent and by incomplete access to natural phenomena. Models can only be evaluated in relative terms and their predictive value is always open to question. The primary value of models is heuristic.

"The Great Reshuffle," William Safire, NYT 1Fe93, a19 (Op-Ed) talks about national separatism and its potential impacts. "They're rioting in Africa, as the old song goes; throughout that continent, warring tribes are ripping apart the once-secure borders of nationhood...The specter of national separation is haunting Europe, too; Dissolution worked out peacefully in the former Soviet empire, but breaking-up is proceeding with ancient savagery in the former Yugoslavia...This illustrates the central political fact of the post-Communist world: Peoples who are the ethnic majority in any given area are reshuffling the deck of nations...Is this a bad thing? Should today's great powers try to stop this trend and enforce old borders laid out by previous great powers after world wars?" Safire says these standards are under consideration by "Agitators for the Conceptual Frameworkers Union."

1. When a large majority of people in a region are of one ethnic group; when those people are politcally repressed or culturally stifled by a different gorup in control of that region -- then the maltreated local majority has a moral call on the world to aid in its self-determination.

2. Granting local autonomy to minorities within an etablished state is a good way of defusing power kegs; a central government can still instill national pride in a minority by offering home rule.

3. When local groups competing for the same area cannot get along, the idea of cantons -- self-governing enclaves based on ethnicity, long successful in Switzerland -- offers a good transition to federal democracy.

4. Some reshuffling along ethnic lines is necessary now to keep people from one another's throats, but in nation-building neatness does not count.

"Why are Britain, France and the U.S. struggling with the moral imperative of intervention while Germany and Japan callously turn away? Because multiracial, multicultural nations are more trained to tolerance and directed by conscience than nations of less varied makeup."