UNIT 3 Vocab : AP Human Geography: Concepts of Culture, Diffusion, and Landscape

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering culture, cultural landscapes, spatial identities, diffusion types, and the geography of language and religion.

Cultural geography

The study of the ways humans organize space and the varying characteristics and patterns of the places people create.

Culture

The beliefs, values, practices, behaviors, and technologies shared by a society and passed down from generation to generation.

Cultural trait

A single attribute of culture, including shared material objects (like food and clothing), language, and common behavioral practices.

Artifacts

The visible objects and technologies that a culture creates—such as houses, buildings, clothing, tools, toys, and land-use practices—which change readily.

Sociofacts

The structures and organizations that influence social behavior—such as families, governments, educational systems, and religious organizations—which define how people act around others and establish rules that govern behavior.

Mentifacts

The central, enduring elements of a culture that reflect its shared ideas, values, knowledge, and beliefs (such as religious beliefs and language); they are the slowest cultural traits to change.

Socially constructed

Created jointly by people within a society rather than by individuals alone.

Heritage language

A minority language learned primarily at home in informal settings by children of immigrant families, which often differs from the language spoken in their family's country of origin.

Popular culture

The widespread behaviors, beliefs, and practices of ordinary people in society at a given point in time, which tend to change quickly and diffuse broadly.

Traditional culture

Long-established behaviors, beliefs, and practices passed down from generation to generation, including ancestral languages, food, ceremonies, and customs.

Cultural norms

The shared standards and patterns that guide the behavior of a group of people and play an important role in upholding traditions.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency of ethnic groups to evaluate other groups according to preconceived ideas originating from their own culture, which in severe forms can involve viewing one's own group as superior.

Cultural relativism

The evaluation of a culture solely by its own unique standards, requiring an individual to set aside their own cultural criteria to understand the context behind practices.

Cultural landscape

A natural landscape that has been modified by humans, reflecting their cultural beliefs and values; the observable human imprint on the land.

Carl Sauer's cultural landscape concept

The geographic theory asserting that the cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a culture group: culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, and the cultural landscape is the result.

Sequent occupance

The notion that successive societies leave behind their cultural imprint on a geographic region, creating a layered collection of evidence about human character and history that shapes the cultural landscape.

Ethnic neighborhood

A cultural landscape formed by a concentrated cluster of an ethnic minority group outside of their area of origin, allowing members to maintain their identity and practice customs.

Traditional architecture

Established building styles of different cultures, religions, and places that were originally influenced by the local environment and built using localized construction materials to meet regional needs.

Gers

Round, movable dwellings made with felt sidings used by Mongolian nomads, reflecting interactions with nature and dependency on livestock herding.

Postmodern architecture

A movement originating in the 1960s as a reaction to modernism that values diversity in design, celebrates public spaces, and uses architectural forms as vehicles of cultural expression.

Pilgrimage

A journey to a holy place undertaken for spiritual reasons, such as the Islamic hajj to the Kaaba in Mecca.

Toponym

A place name that helps define what is unique about a location, such as its geographic features, historical events, or homage to a prominent figure.

Identity

How humans make sense of themselves and how they wish to be viewed by others, heavily established by culture, ethnicity, and gender.

Gendered spaces

Spaces deliberately designed and incorporated into the landscape—within homes, workplaces, or public spaces—to accommodate specific gender roles.

Safe spaces

Spaces of acceptance created within larger, more traditional landscapes where marginalized groups (such as members of the LGBTQIA+ community) can share experiences and feel supported.

Gentrification

Renovations and improvements conforming to middle-class preferences that drive up housing demand and the cost of living, often displacing less affluent, vulnerable populations and businesses.

Third place

A communal space (such as a coffee shop, fitness center, or bookstore) that is separate from home (first place) or work (second place), where individuals can relax and form social relationships.

Sense of place

The psychological and emotional meaning people attach to a geographic location by connecting their memories, stories, and feelings to it.

Placemaking

A community-driven process in which people collaborate to design and use a public space where they can live, work, play, and learn, reflecting local culture and identity.

Perceptual (vernacular) region

A region defined by individuals' subjective perceptions and sense of place, rather than formal boundaries (e.g., the American South or the Midwest).

Dialect

A regional or social variation of a standard language distinguished by differences in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, speed of speech, and spelling.

Isolated language (isolate)

A language that has no known historic or linguistic relationship with any other known language (e.g., Basque in the western Pyrenees or Huave in Oaxaca, Mexico).

Religious branch

A large and fundamental division within a religion, such as Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy within Christianity, or Sunni and Shiite within Islam.

Religious denomination

A division of a religious branch that unites a number of local congregations into a single legal and administrative body (e.g., Baptist, Lutheran, or Methodist).

Religious sect

A relatively small religious group that has broken away from an established denomination.

Centripetal force

A cultural, social, or political force that unifies a group of people, fostering solidarity and providing stability to a state or region.

Centrifugal force

A cultural, social, or political force that pulls people apart, sowing division and potentially causing conflict, civil unrest, or state collapse.

Diffusion

The process by which a cultural trait, idea, or innovation spreads from its hearth or point of origin to other places over time.

Relocation diffusion

The spread of cultural traits, beliefs, or innovations through the bodily movement and migration of people from one location to another.

Expansion diffusion

The outward spread of a cultural trait from its hearth, wherein the trait expands to new places while simultaneously remaining strong at its place of origin.

Contagious diffusion

A form of expansion diffusion where a trait spreads rapidly and adjacently from person to person throughout a population, without regard to social class, status, or hierarchy.

Hierarchical diffusion

The spread of an idea or trait downward from persons or nodes of authority, high status, or power to other people or smaller places.

Reverse hierarchy

The spread of a cultural phenomenon from the bottom of an established socioeconomic or spatial hierarchy up toward the top (such as blue jeans spreading from miners to elite fashion).

Stimulus diffusion

A form of expansion diffusion in which an underlying idea or principle of a trait is adopted and triggers a new innovation, while the original trait itself fails to diffuse.

Colonialism

The practice in which a powerful country establishes physical settlements in a less powerful territory for economic or political gain.

Imperialism

A country's policy of extending its authority and influence over other nations through military force, political domination, or diplomacy.

Lingua franca

A common language adopted for communication, trade, and diplomacy among speakers whose native languages are mutually unintelligible.

Creolization

The process wherein two or more distinct languages or cultural traditions blend together to create an entirely new cultural expression or language (e.g., Haitian Creole).

Cultural convergence

The phenomenon whereby interacting cultures become increasingly similar, adopting shared values, behaviors, technology, and customs.

Tobler's first law of geography

The fundamental geographic principle stating that all things are related on Earth, but near things are more related than distant things.

Distance decay model

The principle stating that as geographic distance between places increases, the interaction and influence between them diminishes, causing diffusing traits to alter or fade.

Time-space compression

The shrinking of relative distance and reduction of the friction of distance caused by modern advances in communication and transportation technologies.

Cultural divergence

The process by which cultures or groups become less similar and drift apart due to physical barriers, political borders, or conflicting values and taboos.

Language family

The highest and broadest category of related languages, tracing back to a common prehistoric ancestral language that existed prior to written history.

Language branch

A division within a language family that developed thousands of years ago, containing languages with ancient commonalities that are no longer mutually intelligible.

Language group

A collection of languages within a language branch that share a common ancestor in the relatively recent past and exhibit very similar vocabularies and grammar.

Animism

Traditional or folk religious belief systems asserting that humans share the world with spirits residing in natural objects and phenomena, which have the power to aid or harm humans.