Fields of human geography

The main fields of study in human geography focus around the core fields of:

Cultural

Cultural geography is the study of cultural products and norms and their variation across and relations to spaces and places. It focuses on describing and analyzing the ways language, religion, economy, government, and other cultural phenomena vary or remain constant from one place to another and on explaining how humans function spatially.[1]

* Subfields include: Children's geographies, Animal geographies, Language geography and Religion geography


Development

Development geography is the study of the Earth's geography with reference to the standard of living and quality of life of its human inhabitants.

Economic

Economic geography is the study of the location, distribution and spatial organization of economic activities across the Earth. The subject matter investigated is strongly influenced by the researcher's methodological approach.

* Subfields include Marketing geography

Health

Health geography is the application of geographical information, perspectives, and methods to the study of health, disease, and health care.

Historical

Historical geography is the study of the human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and "real" geographies of the past. Historical geography studies a wide variety of issues and topics. A common theme is the study of the geographies of the past and how a place or region changes through time. Many historical geographers study geographical patterns through time, including how people have interacted with their environment, and created the cultural landscape.

* Subfields include Time geography


Political

Political geography is concerned with the study of both the spatially uneven outcomes of political processes and the ways in which political processes are themselves affected by spatial structures.

* Subfields include Electoral geography, Geopolitics, Strategic geography and Military geography


Population

Population geography is the study of the ways in which spatial variations in the distribution, composition, migration, and growth of populations are related to the nature of places.

Tourism

Tourism geography is the study of travel and tourism as an industry, as a human activity, and especially as a place-based experience.

* Subfields include Transportation geography

Urban

Urban geography is the study of urban areas. That is the study of areas which have a high concentration of buildings and infrastructure. These are areas where the majority of economic activities are in the secondary sector and tertiary sectors. They probably have a high population density.

Philosophical approaches

Within each of the subfields, various philosophical approaches can be used in research; therefore, an urban geographer could be a Feminist or Marxist geographer, etc.

Such approaches are:

* Behavioral geography
* Critical geography
* Feminist geography
* Marxist geography
* Non-representational theory
* Poststructuralist geography
* Psychoanalytic geography



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