Concept

Environmental determinism

Overview

Environmental determinism (also known as climatic determinism or geographical determinism) is the study of how the physical environment predisposes societies and states towards particular economic or social developmental (or even more generally, cultural) trajectories. Jared Diamond, Jeffrey Herbst, Ian Morris, and other social scientists sparked a revival of the theory during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This "neo-environmental determinism" school of thought examines how geographic and ecological forces influence state-building, economic development, and institutions. While archaic versions of the geographic interpretation were used to encourage colonialism and eurocentrism, modern figures like Diamond use this approach to reject the racism in these explanations. Diamond argues that European powers were able to colonize, due to unique advantages bestowed by their environment, as opposed to any kind of inherent superiority. Michał Apollo demonstrated that guest-host relations in mountain tourism are determined by altitude (vertical) and distance from the main route (horizontal).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But the human race does not alone afford evidence of the violent heat in these regions; it is shown also by all other animals and by the state of the surrounding atmosphere. The natives of those countries which lie under the more remote northern parallels (that is to say, under the Arctic circle and beyond it[68]) have their zenith far distant from the zodiac and the Sun’s heat. Their constitutions, therefore…
Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos
States what Environmental determinism is.
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Notwithstanding this general parallelism in the conditions of Old and New Worlds, how widely different are their living productions!
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
Close in meaning to Environmental determinism; the term itself is not named.
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Moreover, it must not be forgotten that there has been simultaneously going on a gradual differentiation of climates. As fast as the Earth cooled and its crust solidified, there arose appreciable differences in temperature between those parts of its surface most exposed to the sun and those less exposed.
Herbert Spencer, Essays on education and kindred subjects
Close in meaning to Environmental determinism; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Environmental determinism

Petre P. Negulescu

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Environmental sociology.

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