Themes and Specializations
Geography examines how human behavior is necessarily constructed in spatial terms, at all levels from small-scale personal activities to the global geopolitical practices of nation-states. Geographers are concerned with how people create place from the raw materials of space. The natural environment is an essential piece of this puzzle, since it provides the building blocks from which humans produce place, and after all, we have only one world to live in. Geographical method is directed at understanding the production of place, utilizing a full battery of quantitative, qualitative, and representational skills.
Just as historians use time as an organizing principle, geographers privilege space and place in their studies. We understand human society as a two-dimensional 'time-space fabric,' upon which are engraved the practices of social, cultural, political and economic life. Geography's tasks is to understand the relationship between society and space, and to forge new time-space relationships to make the world a better place.
At USC, we focus on four aspects of geographical understanding:
- Cities, with emphasis on Los Angeles and international urbanism;
- Environment, particularly questions of sustainability and environmental health;
- Social justice, especially the implications of race and ethnicity; and
- Geographical Information Systems, understood through basic science and in applications.