Answers to Thinking Geographically Questions

Figure 6.1: Some possible suggestions include independence for the Palestinians, Scotland, and Chechnya, although such developments are very speculative. The status of Taiwan also remains uncertain.

Figure 6.2: Elongation and fragmentation (including exclaves) make communication among the various parts of the country difficult. The different parts of the country may be physically, ethnically, culturally, and economically very different. These factors make unification difficult. Enclaves introduce a foreign force into the middle of a country, leading to potential conflict.

Figure 6.3: Although the future is impossible to predict with certainty, the demise of the Berlin Wall shows how impermanent such barriers can be.

Figure 6.4: More and more countries are joining together in various ways and in various degrees for common purposes. The idea of doing so is spreading to more parts of the world.

Figure 6.5: The (former) Soviet Union (USSR), which controlled Europe’s Eastern Bloc countries, disbanded in 1991. In the years following this dissolution, many of the newly independent states of Eastern Europe sought to join the EU as a means of strengthening economic ties and trade relationships with more powerful and affluent western European states.

Figure 6.6: Many formerly communist areas continue to vote socialist or leftist (note especially Germany). Major exceptions appear in eastern Poland and western Ukraine.

Figure 6.7: Districts may be gerrymandered to give advantage to a particular party (as was the case in the original gerrymander in Massachusetts) or to give an incumbent an advantage for reelection.

Figure 6.8: “Red” states tended to be in the central part of the country (except for the southern Rocky Mountains) and in the Southeast (except for Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida). “Blue” states were along the Pacific Coast, the southern Rocky Mountains, the Northeast with a southward extension along the Atlantic Coast, and Florida.

Figure 6.9: Very few areas voted 100 percent for either party. Variations within states show up on this map, for example, the strongly Democratic votes in the lower Mississippi Delta of Mississippi and Arkansas, the “black belt” of Alabama and Mississippi, and the Indian reservations of the Southwest. Nebraska and Kansas show more strongly Republican voting in their western parts than in their eastern part.

Figure 6.10: To the west were stronger powers to resist Russian expansion; the east was largely uninhabited, and peoples who lived there were small in number and had little or no sophisticated military technology. Goals included acquisition of a warm-water seaport and sources of furs, a valuable resource for a country in a cold climate.

Figure 6.11: Namibia was under the rule of South Africa, where a powerful, entrenched white minority, who controlled most of the economy as well as the government, long resisted black majority rule for Namibia or South Africa. The dictatorial government of Portugal was also loath to allow its colonies of Angola and Mozambique to gain independence. Zimbabwe also had a powerful white population that did not want to allow black majority rule.

Figure 6.12: There continues to be a more traditional attitude, some of it derived from religious beliefs, about appropriate roles for men and women in the Deep South.

Figure 6.13: Over the course of the Arab Spring movement, both hierarchical and contagious diffusion occurred. The geographic proximity of the countries involved indicates that contagious forces were at work in spreading the revolutionary political ideas of the movement. However, the importance of the Internet and social media in spreading these ideas through virtual space also highlights the operation of hierarchical diffusion.

Figure 6.14: Military aircraft have diminished the effectiveness of landforms in forming a folk fortress, as the French learned in World War I and World War II. Nevertheless, even if an initial assault is made by air, ground troops must still secure the conquest.

Figure 6.15: Americans today are concerned with terrorists, whose center is perceived to be in Southwest Asia. However, terrorist operations are more widely scattered and do not display the kind of expansion from a heartland that Mackinder’s model describes.

Figure 6.16: Answers will vary, but it is likely that habitat-preservation organizations would encounter resistance from governments attempting to provide assistance to refugees and other war-ravaged populations. These individuals urgently need land for housing and food production in addition to medical care, educational services, and other assistance. In the minds of government officials, these needs would likely take precedence over the protection of wildlife and the provision of scarce lands for their survival.

Figure 6.17: Among the possibilities are the status of Canada because of the separatism of Québec and the status of North Korea, which is ethnically homogeneous.

Figure 6.18: Communication, and therefore organization to fight apartheid, among various African tribal groups would be hindered by their different languages.

Figure 6.19: The Kurds are a minority in each of the countries where they live, and none of the countries wants to lose its territory, which also includes the location of valuable resources: the sources of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers oil deposits.

Figure 6.20: The cultural element here is the land survey system, which produces the dominant pattern of square fields and ownership parcels on the United States side.

Figure 6.21: Depending on where you live, there may be restrictions on heights or on architectural styles that are deemed incompatible with the history and traditions of the place.

Figure 6.22: Surveying the land in regular north-south and east-west lines, forming squares, made it easy to describe and thus to sell land to settlers. Settlement of the frontier was an important way to tame it and to bring the land firmly within the control of the United States.

Figure 6.23: Even neighbors at peace need to know exactly where their territory begins and ends because modern governments have great responsibilities throughout their territories.

Figure 6.24: Examples include the wall between the United States and Mexico and between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank. The Berlin Wall and other walls between East and West Germany, now demolished, are other examples.

Figure 6.25: Answers will vary, but you may consider that the political and cultural ideas of a nation are symbolically reinforced when people interact through shared celebrations that involve dressing in national colors or costumes, displaying national flags or other symbols, or otherwise exhibiting membership in a particular nation. National identity is strengthened and perpetuated and a sense of belonging is created.

Figure 6.26: Answers will vary, but you may think of the Pearl Harbor memorial in Hawaii, the memorial to victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City.