Cultural Dimensions in Geographical Studies: A Review

Abstract

Cultural dimension is one of the techniques of approaching geography and its objectives in its own ways. This paper aims to analyze culture in geographical perspective and highlight the importance of culture in geographical studies.  Cultural geography developed as a sub-field of human geography under the leadership of Carl Sauer. The central themes in Cultural geography are culture, cultural process, cultural landscape, cultural region, cultural diffusion, cultural ecology and cultural interaction. This discipline witnessed the challenges posed by new geographers who (front runners were Denis Cosgrove, James Duncan, and Peter Jackson) claimed that the scholarship of the Berkeley school as static, empiricist, and obsessed with relict landscapes and material artifacts. Rather, they advocated for revitalizing the sub-discipline. Despites these obligations, the reorganization of the state and the degree of coherence between the political/institutional and socio-economic sub-system certainly depends upon cultural harmony of the state. If cultures in general and ethnic identities in particular do not become policy for development project, these cause the resistance to change for development.