Social Geography and Dowries

Within the study of Human Geography, which is defined as the study of ‘how people make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each other in places and across space, and how we make sense of others and ourselves in out localities, regions, and the world’ (Fouberg, 8), is the topic of Social Geography. Social Geography is most simply described as the study of people and their environment with a large emphasis on social factors. Within the textbook Human Geography People, Place, and Culture there is only one chapter having to do with Social Geography, Chapter Five Identity: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality. Dowry death’s in India is a topic discussed in that chapter, which can be compared to a JSTOR article called Dowry as Female Competition. There are many issues concerned with dowry and Social Geography, on many different scales.
The largest part of Social Geography seems to be identity, which is ‘how we make sense of ourselves’ (Fouberg, 146), a topic that is extremely complex and has a lot of factors involved with it. Our identities are fluid, ever changing, constructed through experiences, emotions, connections, and rejections, defined by ourselves and others. A commonality in identity is identifying against other people, forming an identity around people who are believed to be the enemy or different from other people. The most common idea in this time period for people to identity with is identification with their own personal state. Nationalism defines people but it also allows other identities to exist at the same time, so one may be patriotic while also being a number of other things. People in general have different identity’s at different scales as well so at a national global scale ...

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...eography is likely the most complex because it has to do with society and people who are ever changing and developing. Most simply it can be summarized as how people identity themselves and each other, and how those identity influence lives and relationships. Social Geography can explain things, like why dowries appear in certain countries and not others, and can be used to solve certain issues, such as finding out why residential segregation has gotten better within the last decade and what we can do to improve it even more.

Bibliography
Fouberg, Erin Hogan., Alexander B. Murphy, and Blij Harm Jan De. Human Geography: People, Place, and Culture. 10th ed. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley, 2012. Print.
Boster, James S. "Dowry as Female Competition." American Anthropologist. By Steven J. C. Gaulin. Vol. 92. N.p.: American Anthropological Association, 1990. 994-1005. Print.