The World's Great Divisions: A Narrative Review of the Continents and Their Detailed Subregions, from the Classical Oikoumene to the United Nations Geoscheme
Year: 2026
Type: review
Abstract: The division of the world into continents and subregions is geography's oldest and most consequential act of ordering: it fixes the frames within which data are gathered, comparisons are made, and identities are formed. This article presents a narrative review of the primary literature that founded and refined that division. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the continent as classical category, from the Greek oikoumene and the biblical tripartite world through Ratzel, Vidal de la Blache, and Hartshorne's region; the subregion as operational unit, in which Mackinder's pivot, the United Nations M49 geoscheme, and the taxonomic world scheme of Brummitt turned the continents into working hierarchies of realms, subregions, and countries; and the metageographical critique, in which Lewis and Wigen's The Myth of Continents, Diamond's continent-scale arguments, de Blij and Muller's realms, and Paasi's territorial consciousness exposed the division as a historical construction rather than a natural fact. It is concluded that the continents and their subregions endure because they are useful fictions—frames that must be named, questioned, and rebuilt as the world they describe changes.
Authors: Revista, Zen, GEOGRAPHY, 10
Institution: Faculdades Guarulhos
Language: English
Subfield: Geography, Planning and Development
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7204800519