Week 3 Readings

I found a unifying theme in this week’s articles: dealing with change. Of course, things are always changing and indeed the geographer would soon be out of a job if nothing changed, but simply cataloguing and identifying the changing thing is not the essence of what I noticed as a common thread throughout these articles. The geographer’s primarily offering to the world is a clear understanding of how all aspects of this world interrelate, and therein lies the key to beneficial change. I see in each of these articles the idea that we need to implement, manage and encourage beneficial change in the world, and I don’t think anyone else has quite as well-rounded of an understanding as the geographer, who connects history with geology with sociology with economics with international relations…those “interconnections that bind together the disparate ingredients of place” (Hart 22). We should not fear change, but work diligently to make change that is beneficial while at the same time avoid or find alternatives to change that is degrading and destructive.

In reading the two articles about oil wells in California and shepherding in Wyoming, I was struck by a sadness over what is being lost for the sake of progress and development. In “Sheep Ranching,” it said, “If and when they disappear completely, a warm aspect of the character of the region will go with them” (52). What a tragedy that something beautiful may forever be lost for the sake of progress and development. Yet at the same time and ironically, when Wallach asks at the end of “Sheep Ranching,” “Will a future generation look back at the relics of today’s mineral boom and regret the passing of coal and trona?” I say the answer is evident in the article “The West Side Oil Fields:” yes. The Wyoming mining industry, which is sadly destroying the sheep culture, is similar in nature to the oil drilling industry in California which itself gave rise to a culture whose loss is mourned in “The West Side Oil Fields.” Both articles raised a question in my mind as I read them: How do we have progress without losing the beneficial aspects of culture which make life rich, multifaceted, layered, and meaningful?

While Hart gives a thorough overview of the purpose of geography and its modern goals, I conclude that the ultimate purpose of geography should be for problem solving and improvement, not just study for the sake of scholarship or academics, because “We will be known by our products” (3). While reading the book review of Losing Asia, I had the thought that all CEOs of all major businesses should be required to get degrees in geography because they all have one narrowminded focus—to further the financial gain of their businesses—at the expense of all things beautiful and valuable that might be in their way. The article stated that “development…comes at an enormous price…the consequent ‘aesthetic cost of modernizing the Asian countryside’” (756). I see this happening in America all around me. The WalMart that just moved in adjacent to my neighborhood is an ugly thing, flanked by a terribly gaudy Del Taco and other chain stores. As much as I appreciate the convenience of all that has arrived in the area, my senses are assailed by their unattractive development. As I look around the rest of Carson City, I see such similarly unattractive architecture and the loss of some of what I think is beautiful about the city. It doesn't have to be this way. Beauty and meaning does not have to be lost for the sake of convenience, and in this way, “Development projects have to be rooted in the local context” (from Losing Asia, page 757).

In the article “50 people who could save the planet,” I saw potential for the beneficial change that can occur to rout the grime and ugliness that our cultures have created without losing the beauty of what we already have. These people “give us hope” (3) that a well-rounded perspective can guide change on what is valuable and what is beneficial. The value these 50 people, and many more like them, offer is a grassroots perspective because they can see what is most needed simply by living in it, and this should be the starting place for the geographer. It is what Hart expresses (and what Wilbur Zelinsky demonstrated): “most good geography of any stripe begins by looking. We start with the things we see…Our search for understanding quickly transcends these visible physical features, however, and we attempt to get inside the minds of people…Good regional geography begins in the field…We cannot understand an area until we have explored it for ourselves” (24). The geographer’s unique ability to see “the totality of places, and … how apparently disparate things fit together in the real world” (24) provides the key to open the door to well-rounded decision-making in the midst of inevitable progress. We cannot stop development, but we can be an effect on it in such a way that it preserves what is valuable and meaningful to us at the same time it is bringing beneficial change.