All the questions from the exercises of NCERT’s Fundamentals of Human Geography, Chapter 1 “Human Geography: Nature and Scope”, in the English edition’s own wording and option order, each with a complete model answer, followed by the questions the chapter asks within its own text. Try answering on your own first, then compare.
1 Choose the Right Answer from the Four Alternatives Given Below
Q. (i) Which one of the following statements does not describe geography?
(a) An integrative discipline (b) Study of the inter-relationship between humans and environment (c) Subjected to dualism (d) Not relevant in the present time due to the development of technology.
Answer: (d) Not relevant in the present time due to the development of technology. Geography remains an integrative discipline, it does study the inter-relationship between humans and environment, and it is genuinely subject to dualism, so (a), (b) and (c) all correctly describe geography. Option (d) is false: nothing in the chapter suggests technology has made geography irrelevant; if anything, geography’s reach only grows as human activity spreads across space.
Q. (ii) Which one of the following is not a source of geographical information?
(a) Traveller’s accounts (b) Old maps (c) Samples of rock materials from the moon (d) Ancient epics.
Answer: (c) Samples of rock materials from the moon. Traveller’s accounts, old maps and ancient epics can all tell us about how people and places were once described and located on the earth. Rock samples from the moon belong to planetary science, not to sources that describe the earth’s own human or physical geography.
Q. (iii) Which one of the following is the most important factor in the interaction between people and environment?
(a) Human intelligence (b) People’s perception (c) Technology (d) Human brotherhood.
Answer: (c) Technology. The chapter says human beings interact with their physical environment ‘with the help of technology’, and that technology ‘loosens the shackles of environment on human beings’. It is technology, built on an understanding of nature’s own laws, that actually changes how far people can act on their surroundings.
Q. (iv) Which one of the following is not an approach in human geography?
(a) Areal differentiation (b) Spatial organisation (c) Quantitative revolution (d) Exploration and description.
Answer: (c) Quantitative revolution. Table 1.1’s own “Approaches” column names Exploration and description, Regional analysis, Areal differentiation, Spatial organisation, the emergence of the three 1970s schools, and Post-modernism in geography. “Quantitative revolution” is only the table’s nickname for the late-1950s-to-late-1960s phase, describing its Broad Feature. The table’s own Approach label for that phase is Spatial organisation, not Quantitative revolution.
2 Answer the Following Questions in About 30 Words
Q. (i) Define human geography.
Answer: Human geography is the study of the relationship between the physical/natural and the human worlds, the spatial distribution of human phenomena and how they come about, and the social and economic differences between different parts of the world. Ratzel put it more briefly as “the synthetic study of relationship between human societies and earth’s surface.”
Q. (ii) Name some sub-fields of human geography.
Answer: Under Social Geography: Behavioural Geography, Geography of Social Well-being, Geography of Leisure, Cultural Geography, Gender Geography, Historical Geography and Medical Geography. Under Political Geography: Electoral Geography and Military Geography. Under Economic Geography: Geography of Resources, Agriculture, Industries, Marketing, Tourism and International Trade.
Q. (iii) How is human geography related to other social sciences?
Answer: Human geography is highly inter-disciplinary: it develops a close interface with other social sciences to explain the relationship between every element of human life and the space it occurs over. Social Geography links to Sociology, Political Geography to Political Science, Population Geography to Demography, Settlement Geography to Urban/Rural Planning, and Economic Geography to Economics; its many sub-fields link further still, to Psychology, Anthropology, Epidemiology, Psephology and more.
3 Answer the Following Questions in Not More Than 150 Words
Q. (i) Explain naturalisation of humans.
Answer: In the earliest stages of human society, the level of technology was very low and social development was primitive, so people were greatly influenced by nature and adapted to its dictates rather than controlling it. This interaction between a primitive society and strong natural forces is termed environmental determinism: humans at this stage listened to nature, feared its fury and worshipped it, and the physical environment became their “Mother Nature”, the direct source of every resource that sustained them. The chapter illustrates this with Benda, a tribal youth of the Abujh Maad area of central India, whose village of three huts lies deep in the forest. In the penda (forest) around him, Benda’s tribe practises a primitive form of agriculture called shifting cultivation, burning small forest patches and using the ash to fertilise the soil; his food, medicine and even the spirits he thanks for his drinking water all come directly from the surrounding forest, showing how completely nature can shape a low-technology society’s daily life.
Q. (ii) Write a note on the scope of human geography.
Answer: Human geography attempts to explain the relationship between every element of human life and the space over which it occurs, which makes its scope highly inter-disciplinary. As knowledge expands, new sub-fields keep emerging, each linking human geography to a sister social science: Social Geography interfaces with Sociology (and, through its own sub-fields, with Psychology, Welfare Economics, Anthropology, Women’s Studies, History and Epidemiology); Urban Geography with Urban Studies and Planning; Political Geography with Political Science (and, through Electoral and Military Geography, with Psephology and Military Science); Population Geography with Demography; Settlement Geography with Urban/Rural Planning; and Economic Geography with Economics (and, through its own sub-fields, with Resource Economics, Agricultural Sciences, Industrial Economics, Business Studies, Tourism and Travel Management, and International Trade). This wide reach is exactly why the chapter calls geography’s own reach extensive: almost any human event or process that varies over space and time can be studied through one of these fields of human geography.
4 In-text Questions (asked within the chapter)
In-text Q1. You have already studied ‘Geography as a Discipline’ in Chapter I of the book, Fundamentals of Physical Geography. Do you recall the contents?
Answer: That chapter introduced the nature of geography as a discipline: geography studies the earth as the home of human beings, and it is integrative, empirical and practical, so any phenomenon that varies over space and time can be studied geographically. It also introduced the important branches of geography, of which physical geography and human geography are the two main ones, and showed how human geography is linked to the mother discipline, geography.
In-text Q2. How do you see the earth’s surface? Make a list of physical and human components of your surroundings.
Answer: The earth’s surface has two major components: nature (the physical environment) and life forms, including human beings. Physical components of a typical surrounding: landforms (a hill, a plain, a river bank), soil, water (a river, a pond, a well), climate and weather, natural vegetation (trees, grass) and animals. Human components: houses, the village or town itself, roads and railway lines, farms, schools, markets, shops and factories.
In-text Q3. We often talk of the ‘face’ of the earth, ‘eye’ of the storm, ‘mouth’ of the river, ‘snout’ (nose) of the glacier, ‘neck’ of the isthmus and ‘profile’ of the soil. Can you collect such terms and expressions from your own language?
Answer: Everyday Hindi uses the same body metaphors for nature: nadi ka muhana (the ‘mouth’ of a river), pahad ki god (the ‘lap’ of a mountain), parvat ka shikhar or choti (the ‘head’/’top-knot’ of a mountain), dharti ka seena (the ‘chest’ of the earth) and dharti mata (Mother Earth). Such expressions show, as the chapter says, how closely nature and human life are intertwined in the way we think and speak.
In-text Q4. The basic question now arises: can we separate nature and human when they are so intricately intertwined?
Answer: No. The chapter’s own conclusion is that the dichotomy between physical and human is not a very valid one, because nature and human are inseparable elements and should be seen holistically. Even our language shows this: physical features are described with words for the human body (the ‘face’ of the earth, the ‘mouth’ of a river), and human features with words from nature (roads and waterways as ‘arteries of circulation’).
In-text Q5. Can you make a list of elements which human beings have created through their activities on the stage provided by the physical environment?
Answer: The chapter’s own list: houses, villages, cities, road-rail networks, industries, farms, ports, items of our daily use and all other elements of material culture. All of these have been created by human beings using the resources provided by the physical environment.
In-text Q6. The story of Benda represents the direct relationship of a household belonging to an economically primitive society with nature. Read about other primitive societies which live in complete harmony with their natural environment.
Answer: This is a reading task. Examples to read about are the forest-dwelling and island tribal communities of India, and the hunting-gathering communities of the tropical forests of Africa and South America. In every such case you will find what the chapter points out: nature is a powerful force that is worshipped, revered and conserved, and people depend directly on nature for the resources that sustain them, so the physical environment becomes their “Mother Nature”.
In-text Q7. Can you imagine what has made such a life style (Kari’s, in Trondheim) possible? Do you know about some other such instances?
Answer: It is technology that has allowed the people of Trondheim and others to overcome the constraints imposed by nature: heated offices, a glass dome that keeps out snow and lets in sunshine, special winter tyres, fruit flown in from warmer areas, computer networks and fast flights. Other instances: India’s research stations in Antarctica, where scientists live through the polar winter in heated buildings; greenhouses that grow vegetables in very cold or very dry places; and desalination plants that supply drinking water in desert countries.