Fields and Sub-fields of Human Geography

Human geography is not a standalone discipline. Because it studies the relationship between human life and the spaces people occupy, it must borrow ideas, methods, and perspectives from many other social sciences. This makes human geography highly inter-disciplinary — it develops a close interface with sister disciplines like sociology, economics, political science, and demography to explain the human elements on the earth’s surface.

As knowledge expands, new sub-fields keep emerging. The table below (based on Table 1.2 of the NCERT textbook) shows the major fields of human geography, their sub-fields, and the sister disciplines they interface with.

Schools of Thought in Human Geography

The textbook also traces the evolution of human geography through different schools of thought, each with a distinct focus.

Welfare or Humanistic School

This school was mainly concerned with the social well-being of people. It studied aspects such as housing, health, and education. In fact, a paper called Geography of Social Well-being was introduced at the Post Graduate level.

Radical School

This school applied Marxian theory to explain the basic causes of poverty, deprivation, and social inequality. It linked contemporary social problems to the development of capitalism.

Behavioural School

This school laid great emphasis on lived experience and on how different social categories — based on ethnicity, race, religion, etc. — perceive space. The focus was on identifying the uniqueness of each region and understanding why it is different from others.

The Quantitative Revolution and Its Aftermath

A major turning point came with the quantitative revolution (late 1950s to late 1960s). This phase was marked by the use of computers and sophisticated statistical tools. Laws of physics were often applied to map and analyse human phenomena. The main objective was to identify mappable patterns for different human activities. …