What is Population Geography? Nature and Scope of Population Geography.

 

What is Population Geography? Nature and Scope of Population Geography.

                INTRODUCTION:-    Human geography concentrates on the spatial organization and processes shaping the lives and activities of people, and their interaction with place and nature.
Human geography consists of a number of sub-disciplinary fields that focus on different elements of human activity and organization.

WHAT IS POPULATION GEOGRAPHY?

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

Population geography involves demography in a geographical perspective. It focuses on the characteristics of population distribution that change in a spatial context. This often involves factors such as where population are found and how the size and composition of these population is regulated by demographic processes of fertility, mortality and migration.

DEFINITION OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY: - 

    G. T. Trewartha , an U.S. Geographer, who is known as father of population geography. He has defined the population geography in the context of nature of geography. Trewartha stressed that,‘population geography is concerned with the understanding of regional differences in the earth’s covering of people.’                                                                                                                                  

    According to Wilbur Zelinsky, ‘the sciences deals with the ways in which the geographic character of a, its distribution and the changes taking place over a period of time. places are formed by and, in turn, reacts upon a set of population phenomena that vary within it through both space and time interacting one with another, and with numerous non-demographic phenomena.’ 

 So, the population geography is concerned with people and their size or numbers, its structure and characteristics. 

THE MAIN CONCERN OF POPULATION GEOGRAPHY REVOLVES ROUND THE POPULATION:  FOLLOWING THREE ASPECTS OF HUMAN: - 

1. Size and distribution, including the rural-urban distribution of population. 

2. Population dynamics-past and present trends in growth and its spatial manifestation; components of population change, viz. Fertility, mortality and migration. 

3. Population composition and structure. They include a set of demographic characteristics (such as age-sex structure, marital status and average age at marriage etc.), Social characteristics (such as caste, racial/ethnic, religious and linguistic composition of population; literacy and levels of education attainment etc.), And economic characteristics (such as work force participation rate and work force structure etc.) 

 Fig.- Nature of Population Geography 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS SYSTEMATIC IN NATURE:-

    Systematic nature in geography means general or a particular aspect of physical or human phenomena in a defined geographical space and present it in an orderly manner according to a system of plan. After Trewartha’s presidential address of 1953, population studies in geography shifted from the realm of regional geography to that of systematic geography. 

    Under this nature, various topics or aspects of population in a 

given area are studied systematically. It is concerned with the systematic study of distribution and density of population, population change and composition, population and resources, population problems, planning and policies of a well-defined geographical area 

    So, it is the systematic nature of population geography, which is able to make generalized and to formed theories and models. 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS REGIONAL IN NATURE: - 

  Regional geography is the study of all features of a given region. This nature gives emphasis on a particular region. 

 

Prior to Trewartha’s introduction of population geography in 1953, population studies constituted a part of regional geography. Invariably each regional geography included a chapter on population while explaining the elements of regional character. For example - To analysis population characterize of India the country is divided in various small areal units called region and such regions may be delimited by homogeneity of physical, political, cultural or demographic features. 

  

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS DYNAMIC IN NATURE: - 

    Population geography is very dynamic in nature as day by day different contemporary issues are incorporated within its periphery. The size, population growth, age composition of population is studied under its dynamic nature. Birth rate, death rate, immigration, and emigration are also included. 

For example- In India, before the development of medical facilities and health care facilities, fertility and mortality both are high. At that time population growth is nominal. But after the improvement of medical and health care facilities, death rate decreases and IMR is also decreases, as a result population growth increases at higher rate. So, nature of population geography is also changed with this transformation. 

                       

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS HUMANISTIC IN NATURE: - 

    In its sense, it not only describes and explains the cause effect consequences by quantitative statistical techniques but it also intimates with qualitative categories of human geography. Concentrates on the development of human skill, knowledge, behavioural modification to produce an enriched and equipped citizen for good society. Moreover, different value-oriented problems like exploitation child and women even man power, slavery, unequal consumption, under nutrition, malnutrition – all kinds of problems are expressed through humanistic nature of population geography. 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS ECOCENTRIC IN NATURE: - 

With growing population quantity, pressure on existing natural resource is increasing. To cope-up with resources, desperate resource use, violation of natural rules and principles etc. collectively have brought some problems related to human life. In population geography also, whatshould be our way interaction, optimally of resource use without disturbing nature etc. also getting proper priority. 

The nature of population geography is a wide range of synthesis among different demographic dynamic. The major elements of population study that is highly dynamic into nature. That is why, a wide spectrum of descriptive description of demographic dimensions to ecological ethics have genetically expressed in different section of study. 

POPULATION GEOGRAPHY IS MULTIDISCIPLINARY IN NATURE: -  

  Population studies are not the exclusive domain of any single social science. Apart from geography,demography, sociology, anthropology, economics, mathematics, social sciences, history are making positive contributions to understand various aspects of population.  

For example –the study of population size, growth, structure and components is entirely done with the help of mathematics. Thus, it is an important tool in understanding population phenomena.Population studies and biology are closely related, as the study of fertility provides a good illustration of the relationship between population and biology. The theory of demographic transition is based on an understanding of other disciplines as economics, sociology, anthropogeography etc. This make the population geography multi-disciplinary in nature. 

SCOPE:-   

The scope of population geography is quite wide. Population geography helps to understand the various facts pertaining to the spatial variation in the distribution of human population across the earth with reference to the physical, cultural and socio- economic environment. It’s also helps to the planning for the human development. 

• Meaning of scope: - 

                                The meaning of scope is related to the three questions - 

                                            1. Where it is applied 

                                            2. how its knowledge is applied 

                                            3. The opportunity 

Edward Ackerman indicates that the first set of problems in population geography involves the identification of generic relations, which includes the categorization, classification and differentiation procedures. The next level of inquiry involves the establishment of genetic relationships or dynamic aspects (processes) of spatial distributions in which the temporal variable is highly significant. The last step is the determination of co-variant relations, i.e. The search for understanding the space relations of spatial processes, which are express in terms of areal association and interaction between and among phenomena. 

                            The main field of population geography is the areal differentiation which is help full for solving the problem of static relationships between variables. Population study by geographers should lead to a better understanding of the processes creating areal distribution as expressed in the concepts inherent in, and by the study of spatial interaction over time. 

• According to G. T. Trewartha- The scope of population geography can be delineated as follows: - 

                      1. Distribution of population 

                      2. Density of population 

                      3. Migration (Movement of people across space) 

                      4. Growth of population 

                      5. Composition of population 

                      6. Literacy and quality of population 

                      7. Rural and Urban population 

                      8. Technological Development and population resources ratio 

• Clarke focused mainly on three aspects of population: - 

1. Size and Distribution (Absolute Number): -  This includes the distribution of population in the rural and urban areas and the density of 

population 

2. Population composition and structure (Physical, Social and Economic characteristics): - This refers to the qualities of a population which can be either physical qualities like - Age-Sex structure, Marital status, Health etc. Or socio-economic qualities like – Religions, Race and Ethnicity, language, Education, Occupation customs and habitat. 

3. Population Dynamics: - An analysis of the world population and its spatial manifestation including the trends in and present growth influenced by the past migration, fertility and mortality.   

In the modern society the study of population is very much interdisciplinary in scope with contributions by Sociologists, Economists, and Anthropologists, the Geographic perspective especially valuable. 

• The quantitative aspect is concerned with a quantitative study of the size structure characteristics and traditional distribution of human populations and the changes occurring in them.(Under the planed socialist economy, the practical tasks of population geography include quantitative and qualitative assessment of labour resources and a search for the forms of settlement most responsive to the requirements of production and the cultural and domestic needs of the population.) 

• Population geography is a study if conditions of habitation in different natural geographic regions reveals the connection between population geography and medical geography. 

• The scope of research on ethnography and the economics of labour is closely associated and sometimes intertwined with population geography. 

• The development of methods of making population map is very important.  Hence, while describing, comparing, or explaining the determinants and consequences of population phenomena, social phenomena, have to be taken into consideration.  

• Population geography has a special place in economic geography, because people, as the main productive force, are employed in all economic sector, and, up to a point, their location has an all- encompassing significance in the productivity of the people and the consumption of the products. Hence the population is both the producer and consumer. 

• Population geographers’ studies, System and Structure - The forms of settlement in relation to the spatial nature of population, the characteristics of the geographical environment, the economic geographical condition of population employment, and, population migrations. Together with differences in the natural growth of population migrations determine the course of territorial re-distribution of population. 

• Population composition and structure, they include a set of demographic characteristics and social characteristics such as - Age-Sex structure, Marital status, age at marriage, caste, religions, and, linguistic composition racial or ethnic composition of people, literacy and levels of educational attainment etc. 

• With the advent of Geographical Information system (GIS) and the use of more sophisticating remote sensing technology, the study of population geography has seen a change in the availability of information and its applications.                                      

                     over space and time, the important of the study of geography in the population studies has become prominent in all social sciences. Population geographers mainly focus on the different aspects of population depending on the geographical and economic aspects of a region. At the end as R.J.Proyer very actually suggested that the population geography deals with the analysis and explanation of interrelationship between population phenomena and the geographical character of places as they both vary.