Why Focus a World Regional Geography Text on "Global Connections, Local Voices"?

"Globalization" is a term that is widely used, often with little precision and much controversy. Some globalists even suggest it implies the end of geography because globalization to them means that everyone will eventually become the same, with no variation between geographic places! The authors take a different view-that a focus on globalization is the beginning of a new and particularly satisfying approach to regional geography. Globalization implies an overview of worldwide events and interconnections, together with the contributions from and impacts on world regions, countries, and local areas within countries. We live in a connected world of rapid personal travel and communication of information. What happens in one part increasingly affects all of us in the rest of the world.

Geographic regions within this world can no longer be considered as isolated, unique entities, but have to be seen in an interactive and comparative context. Geography ceases to be encyclopedic and becomes an analytic subject considering the resources and challenges in each part of the world. What driving forces affect human actions in different parts of the world?

Localization is not merely the opposite of globalization. Local character and local actions often result from, or respond to, globalization. They also give local meaning and outcomes to the global systems. Countries are still the most significant political and economic units in our world and, together with local areas within them, provide the basis of study within our globalizing - but not globalized-world.

Globalization and the Text

Globalization and localization are introduced at the start of Chapter 1 and viewed in the context of a fourfold scale of geographic region: global, world region, country, and (within country) local. The definition of the world regions is carried out in this context, and there is a short discussion of the emergence of increasingly global interconnections through human history. Chapter 2 is a broad overview of the main human and physical geography concepts that will be met in the regional chapters and has an inevitably global view.

In some chapters there are boxes that are termed "Global Focus." These highlight specific situations of global significance. For example, "Global Focus: 9/11" in Chapter 1 picks up on the events of September 11, 2001 in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. In Chapter 5, "Global Focus, Toyota" examines a multinational corporation; in Chapter 6, "Global Focus, Singapore" studies a port city that has a global as well as a regional significance.

The world region chapter sequence gets the student to embark on a world tour. This tour begins with Europe (Chapter 3), where, although the text avoids a merely Eurocentric view, many of the modern global processes began-from capitalism to modern colonialism and many technologies. While many of the technologies and trading products built on previous Arab, Asian, and African achievements, the European role was often seminal-although not always beneficial to the rest of the world. This provides a significant start to the tour.

Chapter 4 moves eastward to Russia and its neighboring countries, where the European-origin communist principles applied for most of the 1900s until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Culturally, this region is rooted in both European and Asiatic traditions. The region struggles to shift from the self-sufficient central command system to incorporation in the global economic and political systems while retaining the "Russian Empire" motivation.

The tour then turns southward for a study of the contrasting East Asia (Chapter 5) with emphases on Japan and China and their ancient cultures in increasingly global roles. Global considerations also allow the joining of Southeast Asia with the South Pacific (Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific islands) in Chapter 6 despite their differences of physical and human backgrounds. The increasing trade and interactions among Pacific Ocean rim countries make a new center of global development in the 2000s.

South Asia (Chapter 7) brings together the study of countries that attempted to be largely self-sufficient after independence and develop their own non-Western ways of modernization, but changed their attitudes toward the global system with varied outcomes in the 1990s. Chapter 8 examines the central (Arab) part of the Islamic world and internal stresses caused by the presence of Israel, as well as the uneven distribution of oil and water resources.

In Africa South of the Sahara (Chapter 9) the tour completes the study of the Eurasia-Africa-Australia continents with a consideration of the impacts of European colonialism and modern independence on many small countries and a few larger ones that face poverty, exploitation, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Skipping across the South Atlantic Ocean, Chapter 10 studies Latin America, its colonization as part of European expansion, and its modern relationships to the United States. The final regional chapter, covering the U.S.A. and Canada (Chapter 11), brings together many of the elements of people, movements, and economic and political processes that make the United States the sole world superpower.

We have concluded with a unique chapter (12) that explores two areas in a geographic context and as an endpiece to the book. After studying the global-local interactions in different world regions, a further and deeper consideration of the nature of globalization is relevant. A study of world terrorism combines the global and the local effects of a series of processes instigated outside the worlds' formal political systems. The position of Somalia within this context highlights the strengths of geographic study and the dilemmas in the contemporary world.

This tour could be carried out in varied orders. Some courses will prefer to start with one of the materially poorer regions, such as Africa, and others will take a different route or perhaps select a small number of the regions for more intensive study. This text aims to make that possible. Speak with your McGraw-Hill sales representative about customizing this text to best fit your needs or about online content delivery.