Regional Geography Overview

Regional geography is a branch of geography that studies the worlds regions. A region itself is defined as a part of the Earths surface with one or many similar characteristics that make it unique from other areas. Regional geography studies the specific unique characteristics of places related to their culture, economy, topography, climate, politics and environmental factors such as their different species of flora and fauna. Also, regional geography also studies the specific boundaries between places. Often these are called transition zones which represent the start and end of a specific region and can be large or small. For example, the transition zone between Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa is rather large because there is mixing between the two regions. Regional geographers study this zone as well as the distinct characteristics of Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. History and Development of Regional Geography Although people had been studying specific regions for decades, regional geography as a branch in geography has its roots in Europe, specifically with the French and geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche. In the late 19th century, de la Blanche developed his ideas of the milieu, pays, and possibilisme (or possibilism). The milieu was the natural environment and pays was the country or local region. Possibilism was the theory that said the environment sets constraints and limitations on humans but human actions in response to these constraints are what develops a culture and in this case aids in defining a region. Possibilism later led to the development of environmental determinism which says the environment (and thus physical regions) is solely responsible for the  development of human culture and societal development. Regional geography began to develop in the United States specifically and parts of Europe in the period between World Wars I and II. During this time, geography was criticized for its descriptive nature with environmental determinism and lack of a specific focus. As a result, geographers were seeking ways to keep geography as a credible university-level subject. In the 1920s and 1930s, geography became a regional science concerned with why certain places are similar and/or different and what enables people to separate one region from another. This practice became known as areal differentiation. In the U.S., Carl Sauer and his Berkeley School of geographic thought led to the development of regional geography, especially on the west coast. During this time, regional geography was also led by Richard Hartshorne who studied German regional geography in the 1930s with famous geographers such as Alfred Hettner and Fred Schaefer. Hartshorne defined geography as a science To provide accurate, orderly, and rational description and interpretation of the variable character of the earth surface. For a short time during and after WWII, regional geography was a popular field of study within the discipline. However, it was later critiqued for its specific regional knowledge and it was claimed to have been too descriptive and not quantitative enough. Regional Geography Today Since the 1980s, regional geography has seen a resurgence as a branch of geography in many universities. Because geographers today often study a wide variety of topics, it is helpful to break the world down into regions to make information easier to process and display. This can be done by geographers who claim to be regional geographers and are experts on one or many places across the world, or by physical, cultural, urban, and biogeographers who have a lot of information to process about given topics. Often, many universities today offer specific regional geography courses which give an overview of the broad topic and others may offer courses related to specific world regions such as Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, or smaller scale such as The Geography of California. In each of these region-specific courses, topics often covered are the physical and climatic attributes of the region as well as the cultural, economic and political characteristics found there. Also, some universities today offer specific degrees in regional geography, which normally consists of general knowledge of the worlds regions. A degree in regional geography is useful for those who want to teach but is also valuable in todays business world that is focused on overseas and long distance communications and networking.

Being Mortal By Atul Gawande - 1329 Words

In Being Mortal, Atul Gawande painted a little depressing picture of the realities faced by the elderly in the US nowadays: declining health status, economic insecurity, and loss of independence. It seems once the older people move into nursing homes or assisted living facilities, they lose autonomy, dignity and privacy as the institutions are not able to fully individualize care. Even though the situation has been improving, it still shocks me to see how unhappy some of the elderly are in these circumstances. Realizing senior care facilities often fail to address all aspects of well-being, I would like to explore the issues of promoting both objective and subjective component in quality of care for the older people. This paper examines the quality of care received by the elderly with an emphasis on measurements for care, recommending additional tools to be adopted to measure the overall well-being for the elderly in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the quality of care for those living in senior care facilities. The fact that the American population is aging has raised concerns. In 2011, the number of adults over the age of 65 reached 41.4 million, which account for 13.3% of the population (A Profile of Older Americans: 2012, 2012). It is estimated that there will be about 71 million older adults by 2030 (Healthy Aging-Improving and Extending Quality of Life among Older Americans, 2009). Approximately 2.1 million elderly are currently living inShow MoreRelatedBeing Mortal By Atul Gawande1587 Words   |  7 Pages Part One: In the documentary Being Mortal by Atul Gawande talks about the death of patients and how it s a surprise to a large amount of the patients. He also explains the fear in the medical field, and as a doctor your suppose to help people and cure them, that you re supposed to give them a better shot and if it later doesn t go they way you expected,the doctors start to tell themselves what went wrong or what happen everything was going so well. Gawande talks about how he wants to learnRead MoreAnalysis Of Atul Gawande s Being Mortal1211 Words   |  5 Pagesthe prospect of death with patients. In Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Gawande delves into what really matters as life comes to an end, new ways of helping the elderly enjoy their waning days, and the role of doctors and medicine in curing diseases and dealing with patients. Sheri Fink, a reporter for the New York Times, reviewed this book on November 6, 2014 for The New York Times Sunday Book Review in â€Å"Atul Gawande’s ‘Being Mortal’†. She thinks Being Mortal is a â€Å"valuable contribution to the growingRead MoreAnalysis Of Atul Gawande s Being Mortal854 Words   |  4 Pagesthe relationships we form with our family are unparalleled to that of any other. Family members are the people we count on in times of need and help make decisions that are in our best interest. Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal focuses on patients and their end of life care. On a visit to Lou Sanders, Gawande asked, â€Å"What makes life worth living to you?† and Lou hesitated before answering, â€Å"I have moments when I would say I think it’s time, maybe one of the days when I was at a low point†¦Ã¢â‚¬  As people nearRead MoreReview Of Atul Gawande s The New York Times Bestseller Being Mortal2112 Words   |  9 PagesIn the New York Times bestseller Being Mortal, surgeon and author Atul Gawande tackles just what may be the most difficult challenge of his profession, learning how to handle the ‘end-of-life process.’ Throughout his book, he recites the stories of several individuals, in which the trajectory from a state of independence to one of death can easily be traced in each. Although Gawande does acknowledge that death is inevitable, he emphasizes that individuals of society, especially those that work inRead MoreDeath : How The P erspective Of People Changes When They Are On The Edge Of Life1173 Words   |  5 Pageshuman’s life. When confronting the death, passively or actively, people usually have a different viewpoint from before and that assertion is proved in Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, Wit by Margaret Edson and the last pages of The Stitches by David Small. On Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, the author tells a story of Jewel Douglass, who gets a metastatic ovarian cancer. The doctors mention a lot of methods to cure her disease; howeverRead MoreBeing A Practicing Surgeon, Atul Gawande Essay1699 Words   |  7 PagesBeing a practicing surgeon, Atul Gawande approaches the dilemma of aging from a unique perspective. The study and implementation of traditional medical practices, he suggests, contributes to a problem solving, solution-based approached to over coming the hurdles of old age. The medical field, he says, puts the entirety of its focus on fixing the concrete problems that patients come into the emergency room with, instead of focusing on the best overall solution to satisfy the patients primary desiresRead MoreBeing Mortal : Medicine And What Matters753 Words   |  4 PagesAtul Gawande’s book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End presses on an extremely difficult subject: death. Gawande talks about the need to confront death and not ignore it by taking steps in having a meaningful and satisfying end. Readers say that Gawande does demand a lot from people and the book is eye opening but it does not have a guide to having a better end in life. I agree that Gawande is demanding a lot but people still to listen to him but I think Gawande does give a guideRead MoreThe Hippocratic Oath, By Atul Gawande1344 Words   |  6 Pagespatient’s stories. Rita Charon in her article â€Å"What to do with Stories? The sciences of Narrative Medicine,† explores narrative writing and how to use it as a tool in healing patients. While Charon focuses on the writing of these stories, Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal reflects on how to make more meaningful endings out of the stories of patients who are on the brink of death. Medicine is for the health of thriving communities achieved through doctors’ success in devotion, close understanding, and treatingRead MoreThe Death Of Death1218 Words   |  5 Pagescomfortable conversation to have with others but death is common especially among the elderly population. Atul Gawande in Being Mortal talks about how death takes many people by surprise and the descriptions of aging and dying. All the while living better through the understanding of death. The author is trying to express that even those in the medical field struggle with death and not ensuring the well-being of the patients that are coming in. He emphasis the idea of the elderly feeling â€Å"comfortable† inRead MoreBeing Mortal By Sheri Fink1211 Words   |  5 PagesIn Being Mortal, Atul Gawande brings to revelation something we as humans know that will happen but in reality never really want to face: we are mortal and death will not escape us. Throughout the book, Gawande navigates the reader through a series of obstacles and choices faced to make when the ill and old have hit the stage of life when death is near. The New York Times reviewer Sheri Fink writes, â€Å"Being Mortal is a valuable contribution to the growing literature on aging, death and dying.† This

A Comparative Study of Criminal Justice Major Students Free Essays

The study probes the perceptions of criminal justice majors. In essence, the study aims to determine if the formal educational background of a criminal justice major is a vital factor in the shaping of an individual’s perception of the criminal justice system as compared to those who do not have any. Students from the university were sampled to serve as the respondents for the study who were divided into two groups: criminal justice majors and non majors. We will write a custom essay sample on A Comparative Study of Criminal Justice Major Students or any similar topic only for you Order Now The study’s assumption was: there is no significant difference between the perception of the criminal justice majors and non majors. Chapter I: Introduction Over the years, studies have been made to shed light on the issue of criminal justice as perceived by the general public and by the criminal justice majors. The perception of the general pubic and the criminal justice majors, of course, differs in a lot of aspects. Logically, non criminal justice majors or the public mainly rely on the mass media for the information that they need while the criminal justice majors have a broader background on the issue of crime and criminal justice. Criminal justice majors are usually exposed with researches that would explain phenomena in the field of criminal justice. Thus, there is a definite difference between the perception of the criminal justice majors and the public (Tsoudis, 2000). But then, an exploratory study is needed to further back up this claim. Does the education background of the criminal justice majors has something to do with their perception of crime and criminal justice? How can this educational background of the criminal justice majors would eventually influence or affect the perception of the general public? How influential can the media be in shaping the public’s perception of crime and criminal justice? These questions are only few that have to be answered to prove that the claims of the previous studies are valid and logical. The media has also been the main source of information among the public. Undeniably, groups of people mainly rely their notion and perceptions over things on the information that they consume provided by the media. There have been debates over the influence of the media and its tendency to veer away from truth. Some media outfits are guilty of exaggerating news items especially those dealing with crimes for the simple reason of getting a â€Å"controversial scoop† or because they have doing it unconsciously. Nadler (2005) writes, â€Å"Such media play can undermine the public’s perception of the legitimacy of law enforcement generally.   This loss of legitimacy and distrust of the fairness of the legal system, can in turn lead to more widespread lawbreaking.† Connie McNeely (1995) writes that most of what Americans understand about law enforcement comes from what they view in the media, mainly television and movies. Aside from these media experiences, many Americans do not have the first hand knowledge of the inter-workings of border patrol or general law enforcement at the community level. True enough, media have the great role of shaping the minds of its audience. Because her insights are somewhat outdated in this day and age of television shows like CSI and 24, it would be interesting to carry out further study of this idea.   Still her study warrants close examination as she furthers her argument by writing: How to cite A Comparative Study of Criminal Justice Major Students, Papers