AP HUG Unit 3 Vocab/Concepts

Culture

A set of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by a group of people

Ex: Catholicism

Material culture

Physical things that people make and often give value to

Ex: Sports jerseys, cars, homes

Non-material culture

The ideas of a culture often held dear to the group

Ex: Judaism’s belief in God

Folk culture

Local and homogeneous culture, rooted in tradition (Is often rural and static)

Ex: Mariachi band in Mexico

Pop(ular) culture

Interregional and often global culture that is heterogeneous (Often urban and changing)

Ex: Modern slang, style, and music

Shared practices

• Birth rituals

• Death rituals/burials

• Weddings

• Education

• Coming of age ceremonies/practices

Ex: Schools, funerals

Technologies are methods of:

• Communication

• Transportation

• Life-automation

Ex: Trains, phones

Roles

• Gender roles

• Age roles

• System of government

• Religious roles

Ex: Whether or not teens are expected to get jobs

Types of cultural traits

• Language

• Clothing/fashion

• Art

• Food preferences

• Architecture

• Land use

Ex: People eat ham vs. turkey

Some types of cultural groups

• Ethnicity

• Gender

• Religion

• Nationality/country of origin

Ex: Puerto Ricans and Costa Ricans

Cultural Relativism

Requires evaluating a cultural group by its own standards and is a celebration of diversity

Ex: Looking at Chrsitian beliefs from a Christian belief standpoint

Ethnocentrism

Evaluates one culture with the ideals and perspective of another culture (can lead to thoughts of violence and cultural superiority)

Ex: Looking at Christianity through a nonreligious standpoint and devaluing Christianity

Cultural landscape

The visible effect of culture on the landscape

Ex: Skyscrapers in NYC, usage of arable land to make farms

Elements of a cultural landscape

• Physical features

• Agricultural and industrial areas/practices

• Religious and linguistic characteristics

• Evidence of sequent occupancy

• Traditional and modern architecture

• Land use patterns

Ex: Building of a park rather than more homes

Possibly indicated features in a cultural landscape

• Role of women in the workforce

• Ethnic neighborhoods

• Indigenous communities and lands

• Gender roles and accepted areas(Ex: locker rooms)

Ex: Latino vs black vs white ethnic neighborhoods

Placemaking

A process in which a community or cultural group gets together to plan public space

Centripetal

Unites a group of people

Ex: Common language, common religion, nationalism

Centrifugal

Divides people

Ex: Racism, political unrest, economic inequality

Core

Greatest concentration of character traits that characterize a region (typically around an hearth)

Ex: High concentration of Dodger fans in LA County

Domain

Area outside the core where culture is still dominant but less intense

Ex: Southern California is affected by Dodgers but there are some other fans

Sphere

Zone of outer influence for a culture region

Ex: California as a whole has a lot of Dodger fans but also many Giants fans

Assimilation

Complete change of culture to a dominant culture (sometimes forced)

Ex: All US immigrants need to learn English at a certain level to become a citizen

Acculturation

Change of culture by adding traits from a dominant culture

Ex: Chinese immigrants deciding to take certain American traits

Syncretism

Blending and merging of different cultures together (typically religion)

Creolization

Process of mixing traits, typically languages

Acommodation

A change in a place/culture to work with new people

Ex: Billingual assistance

How is local culture maintained?

• Ethnic enclaves

• Community effort

• People talking about culture with each other or through some sort of media

Ethnic enclave

Areas created for people with a common culture and their culture is expressed (helps them feel at home)

Ex: Little Tokyo, Chinatown

Cultural appropriation

Adaptation of culture for benefit (usually for $)

Ex: Americans selling Mexican ponchos

Custom

Practice a group routinely follows

Ex: Brushing teeth

Commodification

The marketing of something not necessarily tangible turned into profit

Ex: “Pura Vida” t-shirts in Costa Rica

Reterritorialization

When an idea goes to a new place and is produced in a new fashion (type of stimulus diffusion)

Ex: The spread of Chinese food to create Americanized Chinese food like Panda Express

Ways to identify modern cultural diffusion

• Media

• Technological changes

• Politics

• Economics

• Social relationships

Global-local continuum

The idea that every scale impacts another

Glocalization

The idea that as much as global impacts local, local impacts global

Ex: Impact of destruction of the Capitol

Placelessness

The lack of a sense of place

Ex: The feeling of being in the middle of nowhere

Identity

How we define ourselves

Ex: Aubrey identifies herself as female.

Identifying against

Using a comparison against others to define ourselves

Ex: I am not as tall as Ryan.

Gender

A social construct creating social differences between men and women

Race

Social grouping of people based on arbitrary difference (like skin color)

Ex: Asians and Europeans

Residential segregation

Separation of groups by color or other characteristics by neighborhoods and housing

Ex: Asian neighborhoods, white neighborhoods, etc.

5 measures of segregation

• Evenness

• Exposure

• Concentration

• Centralized

• Clustered

Invasion and succession

New immigrants move into old immigrant neighborhood

Ex: Irish, English, and Italians to poor America

Ethnicity

Common ancestry, culture, origin

Ex: Russian

Gendered spaces

Spaces in which only men or women are expected to enter

Ex: Locker rooms

Queer theory

Spaces created for people of common sexuality

Ex: WeHo, parts of San Francisco

Gender inequality

Differences in the treatment of men and women (More developed typically means less gender inequality)

Barrioization

The creation and maintenance of ethnic neighborhoods with primarily Hispanic people

Gentrification

The buying of houses to drive up prices

Standard language vs. official language

Language taught in schools and used generally vs. language mandated and while others are not expected to be used

Dialects

Differences in vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation but the same language

Isogloss

Geographic boundaries of differing dialects

Mutual intelligibility

Dialects vs. language debate

Effects of communication technologies

• Reshapes and accelerates interactions among people

• Changes cultural practices

  • Increases use of English and loss of indigenous languages'

• Creates cultural convergence and divergence

The English language

• Is prominent on the Internet and social media

• Used the most in trade and business (world’s lingua franca)

• Used in Hollywood and with U.S. celebrities/movies

• Large number of English-speaking tourists

• May make people lose their indigenous language

Language divergence vs. language convergence

When languages split or come together into a single language

Origin of (most) language

Proto-Indo-European language from Mesopotamia

Dispersal hypothesis

Language went east of Mesopotamia near India, north near the modern-day -stans, then came back around the Caspian Sea

Renfrow hypothesis

Languages diffused from the Fertile Crescent area

Europe language families

• Indo-European

  • Germanic

  • Slavic

  • Romance

• Uralic

  • Finland, Estonia, Hungary

• Altaic

  • Turkey and the -stans

• Basques

  • Euskera

Sub-Saharan Africa language families

Niger-Congo

• Khaisan(clicks)

• Bantu

• Nigeria: over 400 languages (English is official language)

Effect of Gutenberg

• Invented printing press

• Assisted language diffusion

• Martin Luther’s ideas were spread

• Protestantism was spread

Lingua franca

Language of international business (typically taken from more powerful country or better economy)

Ex: Between US and Mexico is English

Pidgin language

When 2+ languages blend together

Ex: Frankish (French + English) and Swahili (Arabic + Bantu)

Multilingual states

States with more than one language

Ex: US, Mexico

Monolingual states

Languages with one dominant language

Ex: Japan, Venezuela, Ireland

Global language

Global language of trade and commerce (global lingua franca)

Right now is English but may become Mandarin

George Stewart

Created 10 categories of toponyms (Descriptive, associative, etc.)

Changing toponyms

• Impacts culture (is part of cultural landscape)

• Often

  • Memorials

  • Commodification (Ex: Disney owning a company increases its value)

• Occured:

  • Post-Colonial

  • Post-Revolution

Official language

Legally country’s main language (Monolingual states usually have one)

Religion

System of beliefs regarding social expectations

• Creates understanding

• Can be used for exploitation

• Often features a sort of moral compass

• Often very apparent in cultural landscape

Secularism

The separation of religion and government (aka separation of church and state)

Universalizing religions

Reaches as many people as possible

Ex: Christianity, Buddhism

Ethnic religions

Needs a specific groups often close to home and doesn’t seek as many converts

Denomination

A more localized subgroup of a religion, often with religious autonomy (smaller than a branch)

Monotheistic religions

• All for one

• Began with Zoroastrianism 3500 years ago

• Common today

• Single god/deity

Polytheistic religions

Multiple gods/deities, all for one (Most of human history with animism and many gods explained many processes)

Animism

Worship things like cats, trees, etc.

4 major hearths

• Mediterranean Sea (ancient religions)

• Indus River Valley, South Asia (Hinduism/Buddhism)

• Eastern Mediterranean (Israel/Jerusalem and parts of Mesopotamia)

• Huang He River Valley (Daoism and Confucianism in North China)

Mesopotamia, Nile Valley, Indus Valley, and North China according to College Board

Hinduism

• 3rd largest religion

• Karma

• Monotheistic, ethnic religion (God is Brahman)

• Reincarnation and nirvana (based on karma)

• Cows are revered

• Caste system

Caste system

Strict unmoving class system (people are reincarnated into different castes)

Untouchables have basically no rights

Hinduism in the cultural landscape

• Tons of shrines, many around natural landscape

• Typically near water for ritual bathing(Ganges River)

• Very evident in a visit to India

Buddhism

• Grew since 2500

• Prince Siddhartha —> Buddha after seeing suffering

• Reformed issues in Hindu Caste system

• Anyone can reach enlightenment and salvation by following Eightfold Path

• Focus more on spirituality than material items

• Diffused hierarchically after Emperor Ashoka converted

• Not so big in India (because of Hinduism) but big in SE Asia

• Dalai Lama: Head of Tibetan Buddhism

Buddhism in the cultural landscape

• Bodhi tree (Bodh Gaya, India): Where Buddha received enlightenment

• Stupas: Protect burial mounds

• Temples with Buddha statues

• Pagodas

Shintoism

• Buddhism + traditional Japanese religion

• Emperor was the head of religion until WWII

• Shrines as opposed to temples

• Torii gates

D(T)aoism

All about harmony with nature (Avoid competition and possesion, focus on tranquility)

Feng Shui

A method of organization that promotes benefits as a result

Confucianism

Virtues and abilities determine person’s position (became state religion of China)

Judaism

Monotheistic, Abraham, Covenant with God (10 Commandments and Canaan)

Diaspora

Dispersion of ethnic group

Ex: Jews in ancient Egypt, WWII Germany

Zionism

Desire to create Jewish homeland (Jews come back to Canaan)

Christianity

• Grows out of Judaism (Old Testament and Abraham + more)

• Eastern Orthodox Church: Eastern Europe

• Roman Catholic Church: Western Europe

• Protestants grew from RCC following Martin Luther, John Calvin, etc.

• Expansion and relocation diffusion, the contagious, then hierarchical (Constantine)

Christianity in the cultural landscape

• Cathedrals, churches, monasteries, chapels (often major tourist attractions)

• Vatican City

• Tons of cemeteries

Islam

• Allah speaks to Muhammad and Muhammad creates the Qu’ran

• Mecca, Saudi Arabia is head of Islam (hajj is pilgrimage there)

• Very similar to Christianity (believes in Abraham)

• 5 Pillars of Islam

• Sunni: Majority, family and community

• Shi’ite: Minority, imam(relative of Muhammad) is source of true knowledge

• Spread through hierarchical/expansion diffusion (Islamic Empire led by Muhammad), then relocation/contagious

Islam in the cultural landscape

• Minarets: Tall towers typically with bells to signal when to pray

• Roman-influenced domes cover mosques

• Mecca

Sharia

Islamic legal framework for a country

Ex: Constitutions of Iraq and Syria

Shamanism

People follow the shaman (holy man who is often older)

Theocracy

Government based on religious leadership

Pilgrimage

Travel to a sacred site (required in some religions)

Sacred sites

Places with particular religious meaning