Saturday, September 20, 2008

Development

I apologize, I think I tend to ask a lot more questions than add much useful, but....I'm curious about the use of the word "development" in geography.  It's kind of a loaded word that gets used a lot in different fields (children developing into adults, developed/developing/underdeveloped countries, etc.).  Mass communication has it's own troubled history with "development communication" that thought media should be used in Third World (just to throw out another problematic term) countries to make them modern like Western countries. One of the problems with this venture was that the same theorists who has previously said "Western audiences are too smart to be influenced by media" were the same ones saying "certainly those other people will be affected by media."

Anyway, just curious, what exactly does "development" refer to in human geography.  Is it just urban development and the building of infrastructure?  Then how does the human part fit in (by the accumulation of people in urban centers)? 

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