The power of place : geography, destiny, and globalization's rough landscape / / Harm de Blij

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910823652103321
• Autore: De Blij Harm J.
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Oxford : , : Oxford University Press, , 2009; ©2009
• ISBN: 0-19-975855-7; 0-19-756262-0; 1-281-52940-0; 9786611529406; 0-19-971005-8
• Edizione: [1st ed.]
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (295 pages)
• Collana: Oxford scholarship online.
• Classificazione: 355.46
• Disciplina: 304.2
• Soggetti: Human geography; Globalization; Globalisering; Geografi
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Previously issued in print: 2009.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. [257]-262) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Globals, locals, and mobals -- The imperial legacy of language -- The fateful geography of religion -- The rough topography of human health -- Geography of jeopardy -- Places open and shut -- Same place, divergent destinies -- Power and the city -- Promise and peril in the provinces -- Lowering the barriers.
• Sommario/riassunto: The world is not as mobile or as interconnected as we like to think. As Harm de Blij argues in The Power of Place, in crucial ways--from the uneven distribution of natural resources to the unequal availability of opportunity--geography continues to hold billions of people in its grip. We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively. From our "mother tongue" to our father's faith, from medical risks to natural hazards, where we start our journey has much to do with our destiny. Hundreds of millions of farmers in the river basins of Asia and Africa, and tens of millions of shepherds in isolated mountain valleys from the Andes to Kashmir, all ; live their lives much as their distant ancestors did, remote from the forces of globalization. Incorporating a series of persuasive maps, De Blij describes the tremendously varied environments across the planet and shows how migrations between them are comparatively rare. De Blij also looks at the ways we are redefining place so as to make its power even more potent than it has been, with troubling implications. --; We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively. From our "mother tongue" to our father's faith, from medical risks to natural hazards, where we start our journey has much to do with our destiny, and thus with our chances of overcoming the obstacles in our way. Incorporating a series of revealing maps, de Blij focuses on the rough terrain of the world's human and environmental geography. The world's continuing partition into core and periphery, and apartheid-like obstructions to migration from the former to the latter, help explain why, in this age of globalisation, less than 3 percent of "mobals" live in countries other than where they were born. Maps of language distribution suggest why English, the Latin of the latter day, may become as hybridised as its forerunner.