* Preface
Teaching can give one sympathy for Sisyphus, who pushed
his own personal stone toward the crest of a hill again and
again, only to have it overwhelm him each time and roll back
down:
Yet he still thrust, heaving and straining, and ever
the sweat poured down from his limbs and the dust
rose up o'er his head.
--Homer's Odyssey. Book II
There must be many instructors who tell themselves at the
end of a course that the next time will be different; Sisyphus
will roll the stone over the crest. The idea for this book
emerged from thoughts along these lines after several not very
satisfactory versions of an introductory course on Human
Geography.
The restructuring proceeded under the shadow of several
basic continuous imperatives. It is obviously important in
introducing geography -- and probably any other discipline --
to conceptualize as soon as possible and as much as the
traffic will bear. But the abstractions must also be
exemplified comprehensively; in geography that means frequent
references to particular places. Neither the
conceptualization nor the exemplification can be ad hoc.
Moreover, one cannot be supportive of environmental
determinism, which still comes in the baggage of many an
undergraduate. Neither can one be too stridently
possibilistic, what with a generally increasing appreciation
of environmental limits. Ways must be found to facilitate
thought about the actual complexity of the relationship
between people and their habitats.
As it happened, the efforts to meet these imperatives
went on simultaneously with cultural and historical
geographical research in Latin America. The examples used in
teaching tended to come from that part of the world, to the
point where students grumbled that they had unknowingly signed
up for a regional course. And, after all, Latin America might
be interesting, but it was not very relevant to North American
-- certainly Canadian -- concerns.
Some rather striking comparative material out of the
history of the Americas finally suggested a strategy for
coping with this problem. Here was a way to roll the stone
over the crest.
This book's manipulation of comparison as a learning
mechanism offers a means of introducing Latin America to North
Americans plausibly and sympathetically. Therefore, it can,
perhaps, provide perspective in a regional course. It also
suggests a way of using the mass of information in
comprehensive regional texts, a way of exploiting them as the
source books they really are. At the same time, it concerns
itself with many of the standard questions necessarily treated
by systematic introductions to human or physical geography in
ore or less abstract and categorical ways. It tends to raise
them indirectly or obliquely, however, thus perhaps avoiding a
few cliches and encouraging a rethinking of what may have been
taken for granted. The physical geographical characteristics
of the Americas, for example, are treated ecologically and
brought to a focus within the major human life zones. The
traditional regional layer cake of distributions is avoided.
The people of the Americas are portrayed culturally -- at
least as far as the data allow -- and not just
demographically. Interpretations of the more intriguing
questions in the geography of the Americas, like the origins
of the various grasslands or the regional differences in
racial discrimination, are offered not as pat formulations but
as dynamic ideas that have been refined with time, often
through a progressively more penetrating comparative analysis.
Although the organization of the book presents a tested
framework for a substantial continuum of introductory course
work, it need not be swallowed whole. The discussion proceeds
at two regional scales, one of which may be more useful in a
particular classroom situation than the other. Moreover, the
five sets of regional case studies of Part I can be used
separately; each one embodies the essence of the comparative
approach, illustrates basic aspect of human geography, and
attempts to capture the personality of two related regions.
A comparative interpretation of the Americas can be quite
controversial. Disputes have arisen from time to time over
research that seemed specifically directed toward the
elaboration of similarities or differences. Even some of the
well known scholars who made comparative statements seem to
have had some prior commitment to common elements or to
fundamental disparities. In recent decades it has become
clear that concepts emerging from the study of North America
are usually not transferable without qualification, if at all,
to Latin America. The opposite has long been taken for
granted, at least in North America. It is equally clear that
the two regions are not irrelevant to each other.
Efforts are made in the succeeding pages to avoid these
traps, to allow similarities to give way freely to differences
or vice versa, to allow an entire comparison to fade out once
it has served its purpose. The stimulus of the approach is
the point, not so much the specific outcome of any particular
comparison. And in any case, thought changes as new evidence
becomes available on issues such as whether or not the
settlement frontiers of Latin America have had the same
national development function as in North America, or the
cities in the two regions are proceeding through a common
process of urbanization.
This book cannot, of course, pretend to the extensive and
closely structural comparative research that would be
necessary to advance theory in the above and other respects.
It is meant as an assist to learning. However, what is
proposed in aid of the second of these objectives may well be
good intellectual preparation for the first.
Throughout the rather too long gestation of the
manuscript Alex Kugushev, the publisher, managed to remain
encouraging, helpful, and tolerant. Various research
assistants, especially Marilyn Gates, Gerald Moores, and
Renate Kahle, helped in the assembly of data. Lois Carrier,
head of the Social Sciences Division of the Main Library at
the University of British Columbia, and her colleagues dealt
very effectively with even the strangest requests for
information. Patrick Wong and Gordon Parker worked on the
design and drafting of maps. Mary Holmes typed the manuscript
several times with great care. To all of these associates and
my supportive family I extend my thanks. My deepest bow,
however, must go to the students who came again and again to
one particular, monstrous lecture theater in the permanently
temporary Geography Building on the U.B.C. campus. They
listened and responded.
A. H. S.
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