Companion Encyclopedia of Geography: The Environment and Humankind

The Companion Encyclopedia of Geography provides an authoritative and provocative source of reference for all those concerned with the earth and its people. This Companion examines both physical and human geography, and the relationship between the two. An international team of forty-seven geographers, all recognized figures in their discipline, chart the development of humankind's diverse habitat and social and economic activities within that habitat up to the present day, and look to the future.

Table of Contents:
General Introduction PART I: A DIFFERENTIATED WORLD Introduction 1 Planet Earth 2 The ever-changing climate 3 The biosphere 4 Human evolution 5 The geography of language 6 Religion: nature and origins 7 The modification of the earth by humans in pre-industrial times PART II: A WORLD TRANSFORMED BY THE GROWTH OF A GLOBAL ECONOMY Introduction 8 European settlement, 1450–1750 9 European expansion and land cover transformation 10 The origins of the capitalist world economy 11 Industrialization and world agriculture 12 Changes in global demography 13 Origins of modern environmentalism 14 The saviour city: beneficial effects of urbanization in England and Wales 15 From a ‘cultural’ world to a ‘political’ one PART III: THE GLOBAL SCALE OF HABITAT MODIFICATION Introduction 16 Unity and division in global political geography 17 The geography of conflicts and the prospects for peace 18 A new ‘geo-economy’: patterns, processes, problems 19 Third World urbanization 20 From riches to rags: the international debt crisis 21 Monitoring, modelling and mothering the environment: the impact of science and technology since the Second World War 22 Environmentalism on the move PART IV: A WORLD OF QUESTIONS Introduction 23 Climatic variation and global change 24 Ocean uses, environment and management 25 Water: confronting the critical dilemma 26 Surface instability and human modification in geomorphic systems 27 The tropical rain forest 28 Humanity’s resources 29 Environmental hazards 30 The sustainability of sustenance: land and agricultural production in the Third World 31 Famines and surplus in world food production 32 The nature of Third World cities 33 Western cities and their problems 34 Changing countrysides 35 The quality of life: human welfare and social justice PART V: CHANGING WORLDS, CHANGING GEOGRAPHIES Introduction 36 The expansion and fragmentation of geography in higher education 37 Achievements of spatial science 38 Geography and humanism in the late twentieth century 39 Structural themes in geographical discourse 40 Challenging the boundaries: survival and change in a gendered World 41 Place PART VI: GEOGRAPHICAL FUTURES 42 Concern for geography: a case for equal emphasis of the geographical traditions 43 Home and world, cosmopolitanism and ethnicity: key concepts in contemporary human geography 44 Palaeoenvironmental narrative and scenario science 45 Geographical futures: some personal speculations

About the Author :
IAN DOUGLAS is Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Manchester, England. He gained his BA and BLitt at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and his PhD at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University. From 1966 to 1971 he was a lecturer in Geography at the University of Hull, and from 1971 to 1978 he was Professor of Geography at the University of New England, Australia. RICHARD J. HUGGETT is a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Manchester, England. He studied geography at University College London, both as an undergraduate and postgraduate. After a brief spell as a geography teacher at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School, Elstree, he moved to his current post. His research interests include catastrophism, neodiluvialism, geoecology, mathematical modelling in the environmental and physical geographical sciences, and the history of ideas in the environmental and physical geographical sciences. MIKE ROBINSON has been a Lecturer in Geography at the University of Manchester, England, since 1970. He gained his BA from the University of Leicester in 1963 and his PhD from the Australian National University in 1967. He has been at the University of Manchester since 1967: to 1968 as a Demonstrator in Geography, from 1968 to 1970 as an Assistant Lecturer, and from 1970 as a Lecturer. From 1985 to 1987 he held a visiting appointment as a part-time Lecturer in Geography at De La Salle College. In 1993, with Dr D.W.Shim well, he was responsible for the establishment of the Palaeoecological Research Unit at the University of Manchester.