BASIC READINGS IN
SOCIAL SCIENCES II
Geography, Demography, Ecology, and
Society
/ Chapter 5
Geography
• Geography is far more than the knowledge of where
places are.
• Geography: a social science focusing on spatial
interaction of humans and their environments
• Why are cities located where they are?
• How does environment shape culture?
• Why do only certain areas develop?
• Not only geographers answer these questions,
sociologists too
Demography
• Demography: study of the number and characteristics of a
population
• Why is population increasing or decreasing?
• State of health care and sanitation, birth control,
availability of food and other resources?
• How is population distributed among regions?
• What are characteristics of population?
• Physical, Mental, Cultural
• Demographers classify and count people on the basis of
characteristics such as age, gender, marital status,
occupation, income, nationality, and race.
Determinants of Population Growth
• Death rate
• Lower worldwide in recent years
• How much further the death rate will drop in coming years
will depend both on changes in the age composition of the
population and on the rate of advance in medical science.
• Birth rate
• Most important factor determining world population growth
• Europe and United States’ birthrates declining since the
19. century
• Social and economic forces
• Acceptance of birth control
• Children not economic asset
Population Trends
• World population growing rapidly since 1800
• Factors:
• Decline in death rate
• Due to better sanitation and health care
• Increase in food and manufactured goods (increased standard of
living for many)
• Industrial Revolution (advances in science and tech)
• Unequal growth in “developed” vs. “less developed”
(or “developing”) countries
• Increases in population in the developing areas of the
world often occurred at the expense of standards of living.
• Birthrates remained high and production expanded slowly.
Past and predicted rates of change of world
population
Malthusian Theory
Thomas Robert Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
Population As It Affects the Future Improvement of
Society (1798)
Concerning the relationship of population to the means of
human subsistence
A population tends to outrun its means of subsistence
Population will increase quickly, by multiplication
(geometrically)
Food will increase slowly, and to a limited extent
(arithmetically)
Malnutrition, famine, disease, and war may prevent
population increase.
Malthusian Theory
Law of diminishing returns
Relationships between land, labor, and food output
If more and more people are employed on a given area
of land, even though total output may continue to
expand, beyond a certain point average output per
worker will shrink.
The amount of good farmland in the world is limited.
Once all the undeveloped regions of the earth have been
settled and cultivated more or less intensively, further
attempts to increase food production will become less
and less effective.
Malthusian Theory and Technology
• Optimal population – maximize welfare for its members
• Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource
• People are the ultimate resource
• People create ideas and technology
• Technology can support ever-larger populations
• Many demographers disagree with Simon
• India, Pakistan, and China have already exceeded their optimal
quantity, USA and Europe are approaching theirs.
• Cultural divide, birthrates are imperialist control
Ecology
• Interaction of geography, demography and environment
• The social environment – human or human origin
• culture
• The natural environment – nonhuman elements
• Climate, water resources, soil, topography, plant,
animal life
• Once human beings have lived in an area for a long time,
they are certain to have made changes, for better or
worse, in their environment
Ecology
• Ecology: science concerned with the interactions
between living things and their environment.
• Human ecology is the part of ecology that deals
with how human societies adjust to their
environment
• The technology and the types of social
organization by which adjustment is achieved.
• Applies biological science to problems examined
by social science
Finding Ecological Balance
• Ecological balance is the term applied to the state
achieved when each plant or animal species, with its own
characteristics and needs, has adjusted to its
environment and survived, and when other species,
which have likewise adjusted to the environment,
prevent it from expanding indefinitely and from crowding
them out.
• Nature seeks ecological balance
• Not static, changes very slowly over time
Finding Ecological Balance
Modern society causes rapid changes in the ecological
balance. Sometimes results have been good from the
human point of view, but sometimes they have been
almost disastrous.
Threats to the ecological balance
Global warming
Industrial pollution
Acid rain
Depletion of water tables
Loss of fertile soil, animal habitats
Hazardous waste disposal
Rapid migration of viruses
Is Pollution Inevitable?
• The main concern of ecologists is pollution – the destruction
of our natural resource base by the productive process.
• Over the past fifty years, there has been extensive pollution
of rivers, lakes, and forests by sewage and industrial wastes.
• Pure air and water becoming scarce
Is Pollution Inevitable?
• Must technology lead to pollution?
• “Not In My Backyard” mentality
• Do we want more goods or a more pristine
environment?
• Costs and benefits must be considered
• “Optimal level” of pollution
Tragedy of the Commons
Because the environment belongs to society and not to
specific individuals, no individual has the incentive to
care for.
• Environmental issues have local, regional, and
international dimensions
Kyoto Protocol
To control global warming
The large majority of scientists believe that the emission of
industrial waste gases is causing global warming and that this global
warming could have dire consequences in the future.
1997, delegates from 160 countries, a ten-day conference, Kyoto,
Japan
At the end of conference Kyoto Protocol was issued.
Kyoto Protocol
• Industrialized countries must cut emissions of
industrial waste gases, especially carbon dioxide
• They are historically responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere.
• Developing countries such as China and India would
not have to comply.
• The exception of developing countries was justified by
the argument that they began emitting later than
industrial countries, and they need to “catch-up”
economically
Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto Protocol set 2000 as the date for its accomplishment.
Unfortunately no industrial nation met that deadline.
Problem - no enforcement mechanism
Key points (see the end of this chapter in your textbook for study
and review questions)
• Knowing the geography of the world is an important skill.
• The birthrate and the death rate interact to determine population
growth.
• The world population has fluctuated over time, but since the 1800s it
has grown substantially.
• The Malthusian theory is the belief that population tends to outrun
the means of subsistence.
• The law of diminishing marginal returns: If more and more people
are employed on a given area of land, beyond a certain point—even
though the total output may continue to expand—average output
per worker will shrink.
• The ecology of our world is affected by human action, the life and
death of species, climate changes, productive changes that result in
pollution, and conservation measures.
• There is often a trade-off between economic production goals and
environmental goals.
Important terms:
• census
• demography
• ecological balance
• ecology
• environment
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• geography
• human ecology
• Kyoto Protocol
• law of diminishing returns
• Malthusian theory
• natural environment
• optimal population
• pollution
• social environment