Human Geography: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring

Human geography offers answers to some of the most important challenges of our time. To understand contemporary struggles over global economic inequality, forced migration, racial injustice, gender justice, and the climate crisis, we must grasp the ways in which these are fought over and through space.

Human Geography, A Very Short Introduction by Patricia Daley and Ian Klinke explains how the subject can aid a better knowledge of the modern world. It examines the formation of power systems and the ways in which they have been constructed, subverted, and resisted over time. This Very Short Introduction explores the topic through seven spaces that define the present: the colony, the pipeline, the border, the high rise, the workplace, the conservation area, and outer space. In addition, the authors take a critical view of the discipline and its history, but argue for its continuing vitality.

ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Author: Patricia Daley,Ian Klinke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 11/26/2025
Pages: 160
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 6.50h x 4.50w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9780192869302

About the Author
Patricia Daley, Professor of the Human Geography of Africa at University of Oxford, Ian Klinke, Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford

Patricia Daley is Professor of the Human Geography of Africa at the School of Geography and the Environment at Oxford University and Vice-Principal & Helen Morag fellow and Tutor in Geography at Jesus College Oxford. She is the author of Gender and Genocide in Burundi: The Search for Spaces of Peace in the Great lakes Region of Africa (2008), co-editor, with Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, of The Routledge Handbook on South-South Relations (2018), and with Dr Amber Murrey, Decolonizing Development Studies Disobedient Pedagogies for Decolonial Futures.

Ian Klinke is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St John's College. He is the author of Life, Earth, Colony: Friedrich Ratzel's Necropolitical Geography (2023) and Cryptic Concrete: A Subterranean Journey into Cold War Germany (2018).