AREAL DIFFERENTIATION AND REGIONAL SYNTHESIS

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AREAL DIFFERENTIATION & REGIONAL  SYNTHESIS

AREAL DIFFERENTIATION

DEFINITION

Areal Differentiation is defined as the study of variation in physical and human phenomena and their relation to other spatially proximate and causally linked phenomena (Hartshorne 1939)  

Areal Differentiation  was propounded by Richard Hartshorne in his book " NATURE OF GEOGRAPHY"
The main objective: To differentiate between the various areas and finding out the differences in various areas.

HISTORY

  • Areal Differentiation comes from one of the old tradition of western geographical inquiry.
  • It was first mentioned by Hecatus of Miletus in the 6th century. It was codified by Strabo in his 17 books on Geography.
  • It went out of fashion 1960 onwards because of (1) positivism inspired a quantitative revolution and (2) quantification example: space geometry.
  • Revival in the 1980s mainly due to humanistic geographers emphasizing the social construction of space.

CRITIC OF AREAL DIFFERENTIATION

  1. It presupposed Determinism; It had an inbuilt concept of determinism which could not survive long as with Vidal de la Blache theory (Possibilism) .
  2. It failed to develop with time.
  3. No finer elements that it could demarcate.
  4. Emphasized only on regional totality rather than focussing on the individual elements of a region, it focussed on the regional totality.
  5. There was no further scope of the classification.
  6. It is criticized for being incapable of contributing to effective generalization.
  7. As per R.P Mishra explanation of Areal Differentiation in the context of developing countries is difficult because of (i)lopsided development process (ii) existence of dual economies in most regions of the country along with 
These shortcomings laid down the rules for Regional Synthesis.

  REGIONAL SYNTHESIS

DEFINITION OF A REGION: Region is defined as an area with homogenous boundary. This regional study was later on called as regional science by Isard.

DEFINITION OF REGIONAL SYNTHESIS: Regional Synthesis is a spatial study combined with time. It gives the idea of the change of a region with respect to time.

Previously studying various features 

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