- published: 03 Sep 2014
- views: 4025
Human geography is one of the two major sub-fields of the discipline of geography. Human geography is a branch of the social sciences that studies the world, its people, communities, and cultures with an emphasis on relations of and across space and place. Human geography differs from physical geography mainly in that it has a greater focus on studying human activities and is more receptive to qualitative research methodologies. As a discipline, Human geography is particularly diverse with respect to its methods and theoretical approaches to study (see below).
Geographical knowledge, both physical and social, has a long history. In the History of geography, geographers have often recorded and described features of the Earth that might now be considered the remit of human, rather than physical, geographers. For example Hecataeus of Miletus, a geographer and historian in ancient Greece, described inhabitants of the ancient world as well as physical features.
It was not until the 18th and 19th Centuries, however, that geography was recognised as a formal academic discipline.