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DNA and RNA, which act as the repositories of
genetic information in the cell), usually by ren-
dering them visible as a pattern of bands in an
acrylamide gel that can then be ‘read’ manually
(with the naked eye) or scanned photographic-
ally, to translate the banding sequence into a
digital code made up of four genetic digits – A,
C, G, T – which can be stored in large computer
databases such as the Human Genome Project
Database.
The sequencing of the human genome was
achieved almost simultaneously by a team at
the University of Cambridge led by Peter
Sanger, in competition with a team led by
Craig Ventner in the USA in 2001. Not only
did the methods of these two teams differ but
so, crucially, did their research ethos. Whereas
the Sanger team advocated that genomic data-
bases should be a publicresource, the Vent-
ner team advocated the commercialization of
such databases through the ascription of
intellectual property rights. (See also
genetic geographies.) swSuggested reading
Parry (2004); M’charek (2005).human geography A major field ofgeog-
raphythat is centrally concerned with the
ways in whichplace,spaceandenvironment
are both the condition and in part the conse-
quence of human activities. The history of
geography (seegeography, history of)asa
systematic and ordered body of knowledge
was long dominated by the physical and nat-
ural sciences. This did not preclude studies
focusing on the variation of human activities
on the surface of the Earth (on the contrary:
seeareal differentiation), but the modern
sense of geography as a disciplined mode of
intellectual enquiry emerged through those
scientific formations and their constitutive
interest in ‘making sense of nature’
(Stoddart, 1986, p. ix). The templates of the
physical and natural sciences shaped the
human sciences and the social sciences as a
whole, but geography’s concern with the rela-
tions between peoples and their physical en-
vironments ensured that they marked human
geography more than most. Those formations
were not purely ‘scientific’: they were also
philosophical, theological and irredeemably
political and social. All of them were caught
up in (and constituted through) relations of
power.
A separate and distinctive human geography
emerged alongsidephysical geographysoon
after the admission of geography to the mod-ern academy towards the end of the nine-
teenth century, and it gained considerable
momentum in the 1920s from the reaction
against environmental determinism. This
‘new’ human geography took two main sys-
tematic forms on both sides of the Atlantic: a
commercial geographythat laid many of the
foundations for modern economic geog-
raphy (epitomized by the handbooks pro-
duced by G.G. Chisholm from 1889 through
to 1928) and apolitical geography(domin-
ated by F. Ratzel, H.J. Mackinder and later
I. Bowman) that was primarily concerned with
thestate,territoryandgeopolitics. Like
many other disciplines of the period, both
under-laboured forcapitalismandempire:
for the extension of European and American
power abroad throughnetworksofcommod-
itycirculation and military (especially naval)
might (see Smith, N., 2005a). In doing so, the
two sub-disciplines also underwrote what
eventually came to be recognized ascultural
geography, which at that time was charged
with inculcating a sense of nationalidentity
andnationalismat home, while exhibiting
the non-white world in a series of overseas
tableaux.
These systematic geographies intersected in
several ways, most visibly in studies ofre-
gional geography, and the political, eco-
nomic and cultural interests that animated
them were articulated with a special force in
a distinctive ‘tropical geography’ (cf.tropi-
cality). Regional geographies all treated the
physical environment as a foundation for
human activity, but none of the systematic
geographies was divorced from the study of
nature either. Much of commercial geog-
raphy focused onresourceinventories; secur-
ing access to those same resources was a
strategic concern of political geography; and
cultural geography emphasized the varying re-
lations between peoples and environments in
different parts of the world. Ratzel’santhro-
pogeographyhad made this a touchstone
of human geography, and subsequently
PaulVidaldela Blache (in France) and Carl
Ortwin Sauer (in the USA) made equally
cogent cases for the incorporation of the phys-
ical environment. For Vidal, this was a matter
of disciplinary identity, even survival. He was
no narrow disciplinarian, and geography was
always closely allied to history in his vision of
la ge ́ographie humaine. But he was taken aback
by Emile Durkheim’s new science of soci-
ology, which was laying claim to much of
human geography as ‘social morphology’,
and Vidal insisted that this would leave societyGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 350 1.4.2009 3:18pmHUMAN GEOGRAPHY