1.7: Core Concepts

In addition to the core elements of the discipline of geography (observation, epistemology, methodology, and cartography) several basic concepts are useful to know to develop basic proficiency as a spatial thinker. These concepts appear throughout the text, so you should try to learn them well early in the semester.

Location

Location is the most basic concept in geography. Each physical object has an absolute location. There are a variety of strategies for expressing or communicating your absolute location. If you order a pizza, you will provide the delivery person your address. The property address system as we know it here in the United States was created by the government to help the postal service deliver letters and packages many years ago. It is a generally logical system, and most Americans have learned the logic behind it well enough to navigate their city, even without help from a GPS. If you were to travel to other countries, you may be surprised to find that some, like Japan, have very different address systems than the one used in the United States.

Figure 1-5: Greenwich, England – The author – an admitted geo-geek-stands happily astride the Greenwich Meridian marking zero degrees longitude. GPS measurements indicate this stripe should be a few yards to the east

Another common system for expressing absolute location uses a grid geographic coordinate system. The most commonly used grid system is based on lines of latitude to express distance from the equator, and longitude to express distance from the Prime Meridian, an imaginary line running through a suburb of London England. Grid coordinate systems were devised thousands of years ago to aid in navigation and map-making. There are many dozens of coordinate systems, but the most popular system used today was invented by Eratosthenes, vastly improved by Ptolemy and formalized into a modern functional system by an Englishman, Sir George Airy in 1851. Many people own smartphones capable of calculating the phone’s location (latitude and longitude) much like a global positioning system (GPS). Smartphones, and GPS devices (that use satellite data rather than cell towers or Wi-Fi) use the basic logic of the ancient coordinate system to help us find our way.

Region

Another common concept used to express location is cultural region. Each absolute location, like your address, can be mapped as a point. Points are almost always situated within one or more containing locations known as regions. Your address is on a street/road – which is a linear region expressed as a line on a map. Your address is also (at least in the US) within a ZIP code, a county, a state, a country, etc. These locations are two-dimensional regions, so geographers map these regions using polygons on paper or in a GIS.

The location and boundaries of polygonal regions can be mapped using several different strategies. One strategy for designating an area as a “region” is to identify a characteristic that is common among multiple adjacent locations. So, for example, there’s a part of the United States where most of the people are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. So, you could call that group of locations a region – perhaps the “Mormon Region”. It is a region because locations within the region generally share a common trait or a characteristic. The general uniformity of this characteristic among these locations is perhaps why this kind of region is called a formal region. Sometimes the formal region is homogenous (same) across the region, and sometimes a formal region will feature a core where the trait is more pronounced and a periphery where the trait is less common. That would be the case with the “Mormon Region”.

Figure 1-6: Map. US counties by percent Mormon. Red areas on the map, because they have a higher percentage of Mormons could be delineated as a formal region. Source: ASARB

Another way of grouping locations together as a region is by identifying a shared relationship among multiple locations that are near one another. These kinds of regions are called functional regions because they function together in some fashion. For example, a network of radio stations that all feature broadcasts of Cincinnati Reds baseball games would form a functional region of Reds baseball broadcasts. You could map that region. If there was a headquarters, or a “flagship station” for Cincinnati Reds radio broadcast stations, then some geographers would call that a nodal region. The node is the point that functions to connect, and often control, the other points in the network are subsidiary to the node.

These concepts are not mutually exclusive. Some regions are both a functional and formal region simultaneously. For example, Texas is a formal region because people who call themselves “Texans” largely live within the borders of Texas. They share a common trait. At the same time, all people living within the borders of Texas pay taxes that wind up in Austin – the node of a functional region that constitutes the State of Texas.

Even less well defined are vernacular regions because these regions exist mostly in the imagination of groups or even individuals. It is much more difficult to identify the boundaries of vernacular region on a map because opinions about boundaries often vary wildly for vernacular regions, but such regions remain important because people believe they exist. A good example of a vernacular region is “Dixie”, the name frequently applied to the American South. However, exactly which states, towns and counties are in “Dixie” is impossible to measure because there is no single variable capable of defining “southern”. Is Kentucky part of Dixie? What about Missouri? New Orleans? Miami? That depends on what variable one chooses to use as the defining characteristic of “southern”. Still, “Dixie” exists in the minds of millions of Americans, so it’s important to recognize it even if we can’t say for sure where it is.“So Cal”, “The Midwest”, “Cascadia” and even “New England” are other vernacular regions in the United States.

Figure 1-7: US Map – This is one possible version of the classic American vernacular region, Dixie. Source: Wikimedia

Diffusion

The core-periphery pattern that characterizes some regions is the result of the friction of distance, which is perhaps the most fundamental force influencing the spatial behavior of people, their ideas and their institutions. In the simplest terms, there exists what might be best thought of as a force, almost like gravity, that impedes the spread or diffusion of ideas, behaviors, people, etc. The friction of distance creates patterns on the landscape which are characterized by distance decay, a tendency of objects, ideas and behaviors to decrease in intensity or regularity as they move further from their original source – which is often at a region’s core. This process is so pervasive and predictable that geographer Waldo Tobler called the effect of distance decay, The First Law of Geography”. Tobler explained the operation of this “law” thus: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. Put more simply, things that are near each other are often more similar than things that are far from each other. According to Tobler, the idea was so self-evident to him that he didn’t realize that he had captured the essence of a fundamental principle when he wrote it down in 1970.

Though very simplistic, it is a useful notion to keep handy as you learn to think like a geographer. Tobler’s first law appears in many guises throughout this text (e.g., “the neighborhood effect”), and it appears in many guises in your daily routine. If you seek a spot in the parking lot at your college nearest your first class of the day, you’ve experienced the friction of distance. If you notice fewer cars at the back of the parking lot, you’re seeing distance decay. The cars parked in the closest spots in the lot are probably all driven by students who arrived early for an 8 AM class, confirming Tobler’s First Law of Geography.

The First Law of Geography characterizes the process of diffusion. Think of an idea, invention or behavior of any sort. Then consider its origins. Somebody or some people must have invented or thought it up or acted in an innovative way. The location where the invention or innovation occurred first is known as the hearth-which is a little-used synonym for “home” – especially the fire place.

CASE STUDY: THE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF HIP HOP

Residents of the South Bronx, a neighborhood in New York City, invented hip hop music, dance, and graffiti in the mid-1970s. Therefore, the Bronx is the source region or cultural hearth of hip hop.

Figure 1-8: Bronx, NY. This high-rise apartment building is probably the cultural hearth of hip hop since the first hip hop dances were hosted here. Source: Wikimedia.

It took some years for people living outside the Bronx to discover hip hop, but it has spread or diffused around the globe since the 1970s. The diffusion of hip hop demonstrates several key spatial patterns and processes that characterize other cultural phenomena. First, hip hop music took nearly a decade for it to emerge from the Bronx. There were many barriers to diffusion preventing music fans, even those living just a few miles away in Manhattan, from hearing this newly created genre of music. Those barriers were largely social, economic and cultural, but those barriers kept the sound of Black and Latino youths living in the Bronx from reaching the ears of music fans (and music executives) in Manhattan for nearly a decade. It is worth noting that Motown Records, the most successful black-owned recording company of all time eschewed hip hop for many years, which in turn helped doom Motown Records. Ironically, Motown Records was eventually acquired by hip hop specialty company DefJam records.

During the 1970s and early 1980s, hip hop diffused slowly, spreading first to nearby locations, notably the other boroughs of New York City and to northern New Jersey. Only after about 10 years did hip hop artists from more distant cities, like Philadelphia and Boston on the radio or MTV. This pattern of near-first/far-later diffusion is a very common type of expansion diffusion known as contagious diffusion. It gets its name because the pattern is similar to the manner in which contagious disease spreads from person to person, infecting nearby people first and distant people later. Almost all early rap acts from outside the Bronx were from Greater New York City - Queens, Harlem, Brooklyn, and Long Island. It wasn’t until a hip-hop duo known as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Jeffrey Townes and Will Smith) emerged from West Philadelphia around 1988, that an act from beyond greater New York City made it onto the record charts. In 1989, a bunch of hip-hop acts had hit records, and almost all of them were from Los Angeles, America’s second-largest city.

Once hip hop leap-frogged across the US, from big cities on the East Coast to big cities on the West Coast, hip hop then exhibited a diffusion pattern known as hierarchical diffusion. This is when innovations are adopted in the largestcities first, and smaller cities or rural areas much later. Like many inventions or innovations, hip hop began in a very large city, at the top of the urban hierarchy and from there it filtered down through other large cities, like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Houston. After about 20 years, even small towns or rural areas had accepted hip hop and were producing home-grown hip hop artists. Hip hop has diffused internationally as well, rappers rap in hundreds of languages from rural areas of Asia, the Mideast, and Africa. Occasionally, an idea or practice comes from a small town and diffuses upward through the hierarchy. Geographers call this type of expansion diffusion reverse hierarchical diffusion.

The original version of hip hop did not feature musicians playing traditional instruments. Instead, hip hop acts utilized a disc jockey or DJ who manipulated vinyl records on a turntable to create musical accompaniment for the vocalist, known as a rapper or MC (master of ceremonies). In the late 1970s, some young men from New Jersey, copying the rapping style they had learned while visiting friends in the Bronx made a record called “Rapper’s Delight”. They used trained musicians rather than a DJ for background music and beats. The alteration of an original style created in the Bronx, but modified after it was adopted in New Jersey is a great example of stimulus diffusion. This kind of diffusion occurs when the principal element of an idea or behavior spreads but other elements are significantly modified by those who adopt it elsewhere. Rappers and DJs from locations beyond the Bronx have made numerous modifications on the original style of hip hop. For example, many of the early lyrics from hip hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa were anti-gang; but when hip hop diffused to Los Angeles in the 1980s, LA-based rappers produced music that appeared to glorify gang membership and gang violence, earning some LA Rap the name “gansta rap”. As ideas or practices spread, they adapt and change to fit local conditions or local preferences, and this is the essence of stimulus diffusion.

Had an MC or DJ from the Bronx moved themselves from the Bronx to take up residence in New Jersey or Los Angeles, they may have spread hip hop themselves personally. This process of spreading hip hop by a person is called relocation diffusion. This kind of diffusion happens when an idea or practice moves with a person rather than through media, like records, radio or MTV. Relocation diffusion is not a type of expansion diffusion.

Though hip-hop is an international phenomenon today, there are a few places where you would have trouble buying a hip-hop CD, or hearing it on the radio because of effective impermeable barriers to the diffusion of hip hop. Some barriers might be technological (e.g., no electricity), cultural incompatibility, or some measure of bigotry or bias that prevents or slows adoption of new ways. Mostly though, places where hip hop is banned are largely where very serious religious or political costs are attached to the consumption of hip-hop music. For example, record stores have been bombed in Pakistan by conservative Muslims that support the Taliban. More often than not though, music (and other pop culture) “gets through” and becomes a source of resistance to authority.