Environmental determinism, or the idea that the environment (including geography and climate) determines the personality and attributes of cultural and ethnic groups, was once traditionally used to justify Western colonization. In the following article, Matthew Kearnes reviews the principle of “environmental determinism” through the discussion of two well-known twentieth-century texts. Specifically, it explores how racism is intertwined with these determinist narratives. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One primarily solid lineage running through the development of modernist environmental questions is the concept of environmental determinism "the grand claim that environmental dispositions decide the personality and attributes of (geographically distinct) cultural and ethnic groups. Although this deeply frustrating principle has enjoyed a certain degree of influence throughout Western philosophical and cultural history, it was once particularly evident in the early part of the 20th century, shaping the development of the cutting-edge disciplines of regional studies, anthropology, and anthropology and environmental studies. Civilization and Climate, an ordinary text of this technology according to Ellsworth Huntington, is a particularly striking example of this style of environmental thinking. First published in 1915 (and reprinted at least ten times), Huntington's textual content opens with perhaps the clearest expression of environmental and climate determinism, arguing that “the races of the earth are like trees. Each, according to its species, produces the fruit considered a civilization." Huntington's idea of ​​race is clear from the beginning. If special races can be individual because of the sophistication of their culture and civilization, it is a quick step for Huntington to posit his central tenet that climatic conditions affect the cultural sophistication of unique racial and ethnic groups. Perhaps predictably, racial groups residing in temperate climates appear positively as substitutes in Huntington's account, while in comparison "the inhabitants of the torrid region are slow and backward, and we almost universally agree that this is connected with the humid and constant heat ”. Huntington's climate determinism is obviously a thin veil over a virulent structure of Eurocentric racism. It should be noted that Huntington's theories of racial superiority are an expression of the emergence of fascist political movements in Europe and America (Huntington was once a well-known advocate of eugenics and wrote sympathetically about Hitler and the onset of National Socialism German). They fit into a broader geopolitical discourse of Western colonialism which, in the words of Denis Cosgrove, “sought to base political and military approaches on what were once seen as enduring patterns of lands, seas, climates and resources across the terrestrial sphere”. Huntington's specific way of reasoning, which seeks to establish causal relationships between environment and civilization, is by no means a skill exclusive to the disciplines of geography and environmental science. The biological selection method has led to this diploma of freedom. For Smuts, the idea is an ensemble organ with the capacity to organize a social self and a social environment, and an ability that carries over into “different intervals of culture” depending on the “level of intellectual lifestyle and holistic impulse”. In the same way that Huntington's explicitly racist environmental principle sought to establish causal relationships between local climate and cultural sophistication and expression,..