Environmental Possibilism and Determinism

Somebody emailed and ask me about Environmental Possibilism and I thought I'll share the answer with every one.

According to him, the textbook wrote that re: Environmental Possibilism,

"the physical environment provides the opportunity for a range of possible human responses and that people have the discretion to weigh and choose between these option."

The opposite would be Environmental Determinism where we are limited and influenced by the environment. Wikipedia wrote that Environmental Determinism believes that the physical environment "influenced the psychological mind-set of individuals, which in turn defined the behaviour and culture of the society that those individuals formed"

For example, if faced with water shortage,

Environmental determinist will probably say "oh no.. ok we can't do anything about it so let's try to save water and live with the problem" Or say for example people become nomads to live with the water shortage.

Environmental possibilist will probably say "lets proactively try to find ways to overcome the water shortage" and in the desert example, they'll probably say let's build a well in the desert or some form of water-capture device.

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Singapore uses technology as a solution to all our environmental limitations. So you can say that Singapore's way of seeing the environment is a possibilist one because they do not feel limited by the environmental constrains. They can overcome it with their own actions.

But at the same time, if you look at another chapter, they think that by having all the heritage and cultural buildings in Singapore, it'll rub off on the people of Singapore and in turn make them more cultural - that's environmental determinism - thinking the environment will influence you.

How do you know it's a national monument?

In Singapore if you see the above sign outside a building, it indicates the place as a national monument.

Chek Jawa as "contested landscape"

One of the tutorial groups gave Chek Jawa as an example of contested landscape in tutorial 1. While it's a very straightforward example, some of you may not know what or where Chek Jawa is. Since I did my honors thesis on Chek Jawa, I thought I'll share an abridged version of why Chek Jawa is a "contested landscape".

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For more information:
Chek Jawa, Pulau Ubin, Singapore
Online Guide to Chek Jawa
Chek Jawa Mortality and Recruitment Project
Pulau Ubin Stories