Geog. 161. INTRODUCTION TO ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY (Fall)

Meeting Schedule: M W F: 10:00 AM; Room: D5, Lecture Center

Instructor: C. E. Tiedemann
Office: 2148-B Behavioral Sciences Building
Hours: M W : 11 - 12, 2:30 - 4; Tu: by appointment
e-mail: clifft@uic.edu

Texts:

The underlying premise of this course is that geography is the science of resource behavior. In that light, geographers are concerned with prior conditions, development histories and present characteristics found on landscapes insofar as they influence or are influenced by activities of modern humans. Geographers study people's accommodations to environments and the resources within them, taking into account technological, locational and cultural aspects of societies that mold resource perceptions. The vantage from which landscapes are considered here is that of economic geography--a set of ideas holding that resources have value, and that people are willing to invest time, effort and/or money in order to gain access to and exploit them. Such activities occur at many places on the earth each and every day.

The object of this course--the first of a multi-part sequence meant for undergraduates, then, is to introduce and explore the meanings and implications of a number of basic terms and tenets of geography, along with a few from the discipline of economics that have fairly direct translations into geography. Some notions are developed formally and at length, some are introduced briefly in support of particular topics, and others show up more in application than as topics of discussion. Some materials which may be seen to be only tangential in other presentations are incorporated into this course in an effort to provide glimpses of what is needed to more fully understand problems arising from considerations of our world, the actual or potential resources it holds and our efforts to make use of them. In the end, it is intended that students recognize what they see in real landscapes generally to have order and reason, cause and effect; and that rational decisions can and must be made as we inflict our lives upon our surroundings, upon people around us near and far, now and when and, ultimately, even upon ourselves. Much that is encountered as we move about landscapes simply can not be divorced from the principles and relationships explored briefly here. Subsequent courses, incidentally, develop landscape implications of selected sectors of commercial economies on the one hand, and arrangements of production activities and their intensities on the other, leading to an appreciation of land-use patterns at local, regional, national and global geographic scales.

Activities mentioned in these notes are meant to reinforce and demonstrate ideas presented in the lectures and text. Several are assigned each term. Selections are aimed toward exploiting and enhancing students' analytic, computation, graphic and writing skills, and to introduce some fundamental issues and viewpoints appropriate to the study of economic geography.

Subsequent economic geography courses include: Areal organization of economic activity; and Location and land use.

C. E. Tiedemann; Fall 1996 Economic Geography of Crop Selection illustrating ties among market prices for a pair of alternative crops, transport costs (with resulting 'local prices') for each, local production costs, and local net returns for each crop; the two spatial margins of production, the spatial margin of transference separating production zones, and opportunity costs arising from choices that fail to maximize profits
A Simple Model of Location and Agricultural Activity
Source: C. E. Tiedemann; graphic by R. Brod, UIC Cartographic Laboratory

Course Outline:

PART ONE: BACKGROUNDS

Introduction: Points of View, Ch. 1

  1. geography a la Tiedemann
  2. ties between geography and economics
  3. matters of scale

Population, Ch. 2

  1. Arrangement
  2. Growth
  3. Movement
  4. Structure

Development, Ch. 3

  1. History
  2. Processes
  3. Infrastructure (also, pp. 86 - 89)
  4. Effects and Measures

Resources in Natural Environments, LECTURE

Resources in Human Contexts, LECTURE

  1. perceptions; classification/evaluation of resources
  2. problems arising from resource exploitation
  3. resource behavior
  4. the other side of the envirionment coin; natural hazards
First Hour Exam (ca. week 6; ca. 50 m.c. quest.)
A file of previously used questions will be made available about two weeks before the exam.
First activity due two weeks after exams are returned

PART TWO: GEOGRAPHIES OF GOODS PRODUCTION

Subsistence and Peasant Production LECTURE

  1. primitive subsistence activities
  2. taditional sutsistence agriculture
  3. peasant agriculture
  4. some simple production relationships

Commercial Agriculture; Other Primary Activities Ch. 13 & 14

Manufacturing Ch. 10 & 11

Second Hour Exam (ca. week 11; ditto; noncum.)
A file of previously used questions will be made available about two weeks before the exam
Second activity due two weeks after exams are returned

PART THREE: CONSUMERS' LANDSCAPES

Consumer Demand, Ch. 8 & 6

  1. consumption; the geography of demand
  2. retail/wholesale distribution; collection services
  3. transportation and communications
  4. facilitation; support; maintenance

Economies of Landscapes, Ch. 7 & 9

  1. urbanization
  2. internal/external structures of modern U.S. cities
  3. organization of rural landscapes
  4. urbanization elsewhere in the world

The Global Economy; World Trade, Ch. 4.

  1. historic patterns of trade
  2. modern world-trade patterns
  3. changing roles of nations/firms
  4. evolving world patterns of consumption

Continuing Development, Lecture

  1. development in developed societies
  2. development and natural environments; risk
  3. development and production; the new "urban resources"
  4. development and built environments; obsolescence

Institutional Views of Resources,

  1. evaluating development projects
  2. governmental policies; laws; regulations
  3. resource ownership/control; conflict
  4. when institutions change...

PART FOUR: WHERE ALL THIS FITS IN

Wrap-Up, Ch. 1 & Appendix

  1. summation; geography a la Tiedemann again
  2. related geography courses; related disciplines
  3. methods and technologies used by geographers
  4. what geographers, especially economic geographers, do
Third Hour Exam (final exam week; ditto; ditto)
A file of previously used questions will be made available about two weeks before the exam

Prof. T's study strategy:

  1. skim text materials as you anticipate they will be covered in upcoming lectures;
  2. attend lectures and take notes to whatever extent you are comfortable;
  3. closely re-read those materials that you can see from your notes were emphasized in lectures; and
  4. re-read those portions of the materials that are not mentioned in your notes.

CDC REQUIREMENT / EXTRA CREDIT:
Geography 161 satisfies the social sciences course-distribution requirement of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. To that end, in addition to the indicated examinations two out-of-class activities will be assigned each term. Details pertaining to these activities will be announced in class with the return of the graded first and second exams, respectively. Do not attempt to anticipate the second activity after completing the first.

Each activity requires you to submit several pages of written discussion that will be graded for content and the rudiments of grammar. Subject matter and format expectations will be specified when assignments are made. In addition to looking for specific content, readers of papers will be sensitive to things like sentence structure, including completeness, clarity and excessive complexity. They will be watching for subject/verb agreement and verb tense. And, spelling errors will be marked when noted.

Grades will be assigned to papers according to the following scale: 5(A) through 1(E) and 0(Not Submitted). Late submissions will not be accepted. Papers are to be typed or prepared using a computer printer. (Now may be a good time for you to learn how to use a word-processing program if you aren't already familiar with one. The UIC Computer Center offers access to several from which you can choose and your major department may make others available. Computer Center equipment is available at a number of locations on both ends of campus.) Don't bother with plastic folders for papers: just staple the pages in their upper left-hand corners.

You can earn extra credit by submitting additional short discussion papers dealing with the assigned topics. Each will be worth up to five points, and the number that can be turned in is determined by numerical grades earned on immediately preceding exams. Specifically, you may close the gap between your scores and the maximum exam values by up to one half following the first and second tests. If, for example, you earned 32 points on a fifty-point exam, then nine points of extra credit can be earned by submitting two discussion papers: the first--the one submitted to satisfy CDC requirements--is worth up to five points and the second up to four. An exam score of 46 means that you can earn only two points by this means.

Please note, it is not intended that extra-credit opportunities will enable you to get an "A" in the course without performing well on exams. If your exam grades are consistently "C", then your extra-credit efforts may enable you to earn a "B". Finally, there is no opportunity to earn extra credit following the third exam.

MAKE-UP, PROFICIENCY AND EARLY EXAMS:
If you miss an exam, you will be allowed to take a make-up within two weeks of the class exam. The form of make-up tests is different from that of usual class exams, and may vary from term to term. In the past, make-up exams have required short-answer essays rather than consisting of the fifty multiple-choice questions that commonly appear on regular tests. Recently, questions on make-up exams have been recast from multiple-choice questions on regular tests. For example, several one-point questions from a typical first exam might be the following:

  1. Elements of Prof. T's paradigm of geography include: a) people; b) resources; c) location; d) all the above; e) only b and c, above
  2. The "cultural stability" stage of the demographic transition differs from the "Malthusian stability" stage in that the former is characterized by one of the following while the latter is not: a) birth rates fall sharply; b) total populations are stable; c) death rates fluctuate in response to the availability of food; d) total populations fluctuate in response to variations in birth rates; e) total populations, birth rates and death rates are constant through time
  3. Routes followed by ocean-going sailing ships were very much influenced by coriolis force, which is linked to: a) dew points; b) latitudinal variations in the radius of the earth's rotation; c) equatorward or poleward surface flows in the atmosphere; d) Boyle's law as it applies to vertical flows in the atmosphere; e) only b and c, above
  4. The carbon cycle includes all the following material transitions except: a) evaporation; b) combustion; c) metabolism; d) photosynthesis; e) none of the above
  5. Davenport's game-theory analysis of Jamaican fishing activities includes all the following elements except: a) states of nature; b) fishing strategies; c) resource pyramids; d) payoff matrices; e) fishermen's regrets

Recast for make-up exams, questions addressing the same subject matter might look like the following (each is worth three to five points, so you may be required to answer as few as ten or fifteen questions on a make-up test):

  1. List five key elements of Prof. T.'s paradigm of geography. (There are seven in the initial presentation and more are added during the term.)
  2. List the ways that the "cultural stability" phase of the demographic transition differs from the "Malthusian stability" phase. What relationships are seen to give both stages "dynamic stability?"
  3. What factors about the earth's atmospheric circulation and other elements of the environment must be taken into account to understand global patterns of wind direction as regards the equatorial easterlies, the mid-latitude westerlies and the polar easterlies, which were important determinants of oceanic routes followed by sailing ships?
  4. List five transitions or flows in the carbon cycle that result in movement of that material from one reservoir to another.
  5. Davenport's game-theory analysis of Jamaican fishing activity included a number of analytical components. Name five.

As can be seen, topical coverage of exams taken at times other than those normally scheduled is considerably less broad, but requires much greater depth of knowledge.

Proficiency exams may be arranged by UIC students after obtaining approval from the dean of their college, the head or chair of this department and the current or most recent instructor of this course. If made available, such examinations are to be taken in a single three-hour sitting, and may consist of the equivalent of three make-up exams as described above (which includes materials appropriate to the first of three parts), but covering the whole range of topics normally included in the course. Students should consult the UIC Undergraduate Catalog for complete information regarding proficiency exams, their grading and credit earned.

Students enrolled in this course may arrange to take announced exams prior to scheduled times by requesting permission to take make-up tests comparable to that described above. Requests should be made at least two weeks prior to the desired date of the early make-up and, in addition to exam availability and other concerns, will be subject to University rules regarding early exams. If permission is granted, a fifty-minute appointment will be arranged during which the exam is to be taken: scores earned on early make-up exams will be made available at the time results from scheduled exams are released to the class as a whole. Early exams will cover the same ranges of material as those of regularly scheduled tests. Students taking early make-up exams will be allowed the same opportunities to earn extra credit afforded their colleagues taking the exam at the scheduled time.

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Address comments and inquires pertaining to Everyday Economic Geography to: C. E. Tiedemann.

General questions, comments and suggestions should be addressed to:

httpadm@cagis.uic.edu