Human Geo Chap 4

Monotheistic

the belief in one god

Polytheistic

The belief in many or multiple gods

Assimilation

When a minority group loses cultural traits such as dress, food, speech, and adopts the customs of the dominant culture. Can be forced or voluntary 

Cultural Appropriation 

When one culture adopts customs and knowledge from another culture and uses them for its own benefit

Neolocalism

Conscious effort to define a sense of place for local or regional culture. Seeking out regional culture and reinvigorating it in the response to the uncertainty of the modern world. Leads to creation of ethnic enclaves

Glocalization

The process of adapting global products, ideas, and services to fit local cultures and contexts, resulting in a combination of global and local elements. 

Animism

Traditional or indigenous religion where animals or objects are significant

Ethnic Religion

A religion into which people are born and whose followers don’t actively seek converts

Universalizing Religions

A religion believed by its followers to have universal application and to which followers actively seek converts 

Cultural Landscape

The visible human imprint on the landscape

Placelessness

Loss of uniqueness of a location so that one place looks like the next

Reterritorialization

When a local culture shapes an aspect of popular culture as their own, adopting the popular culture to their local culture. McDonalds, stimulus diffusion

Commodification

When a name, good, idea becomes an entity to be bought, sold or traded on the world marker that wasn’t previously

Standard Language

The variant of a language that a country’s political and intellectual elite seek to promote as the norm for use in schools, government, media

Dialect

Variants of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines

Isogloss

A geographic boundary line where linguistic features occur

Creolized Language

A pidgin language (syncretized language) that formed by combining a colonial language with an indigenous language 

Language Divergence

Process where discrete, new languages are eventually formed from one language. A lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks the language into dialects and then new languages

Fundamentalism

A return to the foundation of faith. Religion and government should be connected

Secularism

Indifference to or rejection of religion. Religion and government should be separate 

Pilgrimage

Purposeful travel to a scared site for religious reasons

Conquest Theory

Idea that early speakers of Proto-Indo-European left the hearth area and moved westward on horse, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion and differentiation of Indo-European tongues. How a dominant group uses military force and control to take over a territory and its people

Lingua Franca

A language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce