Geography

This course examines some of the issues that face human kind at the beginning of the 21st century and show how geographers approach the problems facing the modern world. It includes topics that are currently reported in the media and examine the realities and uncertainties behind these issues, focusing particularly on the tools available to address key questions. The course facilitates cross-disciplinary discussion and to promote an in-depth understanding of problems facing us all. The course provides an insight into how these issues are influenced by complex interactions between social, cultural, economic, physical, and biological processes.

This course examines how cultural, social, political and economic dynamics shape landscapes, these being rural, urban, in transitions or ‘natural. You will garner a theoretical expertise for interpreting and making sense of different places, and how there are shaped by multiple dynamics across scales (from the local to the global). 

This course reviews the fundamental theories associated with the spaciality of rural areas.  The class focuses on the pressing issues faced by people within rural areas, especially farmers within Mexico and Latin America.  It also covers a detailed explanation of how agricultural markets function in terms of productivity and values.  Last, the course evaluates the impacts of industrialization and technological advancements of agricultural economies.

The class first covers the historical-social process of capitalism through a geographic perspective by explaining the different theories of political economy and its critics, mainly Marx.  The course begins with the physiocrats, then to the mercantiles, and classical political economic theories.  The course covers feudal societies, class antagonisms, creation of port cities, and centralization of markets and power within cities.  It also addresses the hierarchical dynamics of capitalism on a global scale and changes in use value and exchange value as a result of higher quality of life.  

The course is future oriented and explores the concept of sustainability in the face of global change. It encompasses a wide range of theory and practice, including social, economic, and environmental issues, and links international examples to local context and relevance. The course challenges students to critically reflect on sustainability and current approaches to sustainability.

This course examines the increasing capacity of open-source GIS in disseminating spatial data sets in non-conventional formats. It covers a showcase of diverse datasets and their potential values and hands-on practices about the uses of these datasets. 

This course identifies the difference between soil science and soil geography, and covers soil management conservation techniques. The course also allows students to participate in environmental regeneration, ordering, planning and development of basis, valleys, alluvial plans, and deltas. 

This course seeks a methodology for geographical description and research on the state scale of the Mexican territory and, particularly, for the study of the classic fields of physical analysis of its geographical space. The course seeks to answer the questions: How does one analyze the territorial configuration of the Mexican State from the physical elements of the geographical space? What are the particularities of the physical elements of this territory? What are the problems that have currently arisen around its use and exploitation? What historical processes have influenced this and what disputes are expressed in this territorial configuration? And what are the main sources of consultation to study it?

The course begins with a reflection on the elements traditionally considered as starting points for the study of the geography of modern territorial States, and where the processes, subjects and factors that determine it and the factors from different scales are also identified. By the end of this section, participants will then have a theoretical-methodological framework that will allow them to focus on the more specific analysis of the physical elements of the geographical space of Mexico, valuing them and identifying the particularity that each of these geographical elements has in the historical configuration of the country. The second part of the course then analzes eight central elements in the production of the Mexican territorial State namely: orography, minerals, climate, soil, vegetation, continental water, hydrocarbons and maritime space. and insular; analyzing its geographical distribution, historical production and current problems.

This class in an introductory course to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which constitute one of the most powerful modern technologies for the study of territorial, socioeconomic and environmental processes and problems from a spatial point of view. GIS allow geographic and cartographic work to be carried out in an efficient way, from the data entry, its management and analysis, until the generation of results, allowing the user (planner, businessman, researcher, teacher and student) to spend a substantial part of the time in analysis, synthesis and management of the projects, overcoming limitations traditional methods of manual information processing.  In practice, geographic information systems are much more than a technological tool, since they are made up of components such as hardware, software, users, information, methods and techniques, which enable the comprehensive management of projects, regardless of the territorial and organizational level. This course provides the student with the methodological foundations and techniques for the management and analysis of spatially referenced information, emphasizing practical work, using hardware resources, software and procedures of geographic information systems.