Nature itself is first and foremost a category of the human imagination, therefore best treated as a part of culture.' Discuss? This assignment is effectively based on the systematic branch of geography,

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Essay Title: ‘Nature itself is first and foremost a category of the human imagination, therefore best treated as a part of culture.’  Discuss?

Total Word Count: 1655 words

‘Nature itself is first and foremost a category of the human imagination, therefore best treated as a part of culture.’  Discuss?

This assignment is effectively based on the systematic branch of geography, otherwise known to most as cultural geography.  The earliest days of the increasingly popular topic of cultural geography can be fundamentally traced to the seminal work of Carl

Sauer, and as a result of this numerous people worldwide believe that Sauer laid the foundations with which people built on, therefore we find ourselves in the situation we are today.  In R.J. Johnson’s dictionary of human geography a highly distinguished definition of cultural geography is outlined.  It states;

“Cultural geography deals with mans culturally determined activities and especially with the differential impact of cultural groups on the exploitation, form and personality of landscape.”  (Johnson 1981)

From around the beginning of the nineteenth century Anthropology as a subject has grown significantly and became more and more complex as time has passed.  Anthropology is of course the study of humankind, of ancient and modern people and their ways of living, and furthermore it is a subject which helps draw comparisons to both nature and culture as a whole.

As a term culture is extremely wide-ranging in that it provides many linkages to various other concepts.  It may not be clear to people but many use the term culture without thinking much about it and therefore they use it in incorrect circumstances.  The word culture derived form the Latin word cultra and from then onwards the word developed entering England around the fifteenth century.  Since then many authors and geographers alike have put forward there own analysis of culture however the one which makes the most sense to me is that of Harris (1981) which reads;

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“Culture is the learned patterns of behaviour and thought characteristics of a societal group.”  (Harris 1981)

This short but detailed definition provides a foundation with which relative learning patterns of the term culture can begin and develop.

On the other hand nature is a term which is nearly always culturally construed and defined, in other words made meaningful through practical engagement and cognition.  Many people stress that nature, and the extent to which it exists varies between different populations, various ethnic groups and most of all different countries.  Therefore as a result, as also is the case ...

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