Question.2. Answer the following questions in about 30 words.

(i) Define human geography.
Answer. Human geography is a sub-field of geography along with physical geography. Human geography studies the
inter-relationship between the physical environment and sociocultural environment created by human beings through mutual interaction with each other.

(ii) Name some sub-fields of human geography.
Answer. Sub-fields of human geography are:

1. Behavioural Geography
2. Geography of Social Well-being
3. Geography of Leisure
4. Cultural Geography
5. Gender Geography
6. Historical Geography
7. Medical Geography
8. Urban Geography
9. Electoral Geography
10. Military Geography
11. Population Geography
12. Settlement Geography
13. Geography of Resources
14. Geography of Agriculture
15. Geography of Industries
16. Geography of Marketing
17. Geography of Tourism
18. Geography of International Trade

(iii)How is human geography related to other social sciences?
Answer. Human geography deals with the interaction of human beings with the environment. Since no human action can possibly be viewed in isolation, the discipline of human geography, inevitably, had to establish close interlinks, and often overlaps, with other sister disciplines of social sciences.

Question.3. Answer the following questions in not more than 150 words.
(i) Explain naturalisation of humans.
Answer. Naturalisation of humans refers to the human condition when human actions were dictated by nature. It is also called ‘environmental determinism’. In the early, or rather primitive, stages of very low technological development, humans – who were unable to understand the forces of nature – were afraid of nature’s fury and worshipped it. They lived their lives in complete harmony with their natural environment, and viewed nature as a powerful force, revered and conserved it. They directly dependent on nature for resources to sustain themselves.

• For such societies, the physical environment becomes the “Mother Nature”.
• But over time, humans began to understand the forces of nature with the help of advanced technology.
• They began to move from a state of necessity to a state of freedom and began to create new possibilities with the resources obtained from the environment. The imprints of human activities are now created everywhere. Slowly, nature is being humanised or it is already.

(ii) Write a note on the scope of human geography.
Answer. Human geography is a subset of Geography. It concerns itself with the relationship between the physical / natural and the human worlds, the spatial distributions of human phenomena and how they came about, the social and economic differences between different parts of the world. The objective is to understand the earth as the home of human beings and to study all those elements which have sustained them.

Ellen C. Semple gave an interesting definition is, “Human geography is the study of the changing relationship between the unresting man and the unstable earth.” The relation is, thus, dynamic – it changes/evolves with time. Early humans lived in close harmony with nature, as they were frightened by the forces of nature – which they could not understand. Over centuries, these very same humans developed technologies that enabled them to gain knowledge of nature. Soon, technology outstripped with nature. If humans were ‘naturalised’ earlier, now nature was ‘humanised’.