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2. Geography: Taylor & Cumberland
Outline of Lecture
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Introduction
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The attempt here is to add a little value to the survey
of physical geography customary in a course like this. The lecture
introduces not only geography but also the geographers, Taylor
and Cumberland,
or order to encourage critical thinking about environmental thinking. The
introduction also encourages humility as to the certainty of knowledge,
either historical or geographic.
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Landforms
& Landmarks
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The national identities of both Australia and New Zealand draw significantly
on the land itself; certainly, too, you don’t have to be a rank environmental
determinist to recognize that physical circumstances figure powerfully in
historical developments. Thus here, early in the course, we seek some
familiarity with the physical geography of the two countries, including
ways in which the land has been powerfully altered by European
colonization.
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Griffith Taylor &
Environmental Determinism
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Griffith Taylor, a pioneering geographer of Australia,
got in trouble for saying things about the land that people did not want to
hear. He was an environmental determinist who said the development of Australia
would be limited by the fact that most of the country is a desert. So Taylor left Australia
for a distinguished career at Chicago and
then Toronto.
We pause here to consider both the explanatory power of environmental
determinism and its implicit dangers.
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Kenneth
Cumberland & Soil Erosion
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Kenneth Cumberland is the most influential geographer in
the history of New
Zealand and was nationally famous for
his popular television series, Landmarks.
He devoted much of his life to combating soil erosion—a laudable cause that
nevertheless illustrates the pitfalls to taking environmental action on the
basis of fuzzy thinking about the environment.
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