SocSci Section III: Cultural Patterns and Processes

Vocabulary practice flashcards generated from the lecture transcript covering cultural patterns, geography, architecture, survey systems, diffusion, and social dynamics.

Cultural Geography

The study of how cultures differ across space, change over time, and spread to new locations.

Culture

Customs, art expressions, social norms, institutions, and other collective characteristics of a social group.

Material Culture

A physical component of culture that includes items such as tools, weapons, utensils, machinery, decorations, artwork, structures, monuments, documents, religious imagery, apparel, and any other material items made or utilized by people.

Nonmaterial Culture

The non-physical components of culture, such as language, moral principles, social conventions and practices, beliefs and ideologies, and symbolic meaning.

Sociofacts

Structures and institutions that organize and affect social norms, including familial, governmental, educational, and religious institutions.

Mentifacts

Shared ideals, values, and belief systems that shape culture, including religious, political, moral, and social points of view.

Cultural Hearth

The location where a certain culture first appeared.

Cultural Traits

Singular aspects of culture, such as language, cuisine, and fashion.

Cultural Complexes

Groups of cultural traits that cluster and exchange effects.

Cultural Systems

Groups of cultural complexes that define broad features of culture, including how religion, education, and politics work in a society.

Habit

A personal behavior that is frequently repeated, such as getting dressed, going to the same restaurant, or taking a walk.

Custom

Group behavior that is frequently repeated, such as dressing in business attire, celebrating holidays, or playing team sports.

Folk Culture

Culture characteristic of smaller, more isolated, and more culturally unified groups, including rural populations, Indigenous tribes, and immigrant communities.

Popular Culture

Culture characteristic of larger, denser, and more diverse groups, including urban and industrial centers.

Food Taboos

Social, cultural, and religious prohibitions on particular foods.

Homogenization

The sameness of cultures resulting from the rapid intermixing of cultural elements.

Ethnocentrism

The attitude of judging another culture's values against the values of one's own culture.

Cultural Relativism

The attitude of judging another culture based on the values of that different culture.

Cultural Landscape

A geographic area, including its natural and built environments, shaped by human development and use over time.

Traditional Architecture

Architecture that reflects longstanding cultural features of a location, such as the Greco-Roman style of government buildings or adobe style architecture.

Postmodern Architecture

Architecture that is more imaginative and symbolic and can be purposefully unconventional.

Symbolic Landscape

A place that holds deep felt significance for a culture, such as the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Sequent Occupancy

The cultural imprints that successive societies leave on a place over time.

Feminism

Advocacy for women's equality to men, made tangible in the cultural landscape through women-only spaces, monuments honoring significant women, and visible contributions.

Patriarchy

The preference for males in a society, manifesting in the cultural landscape via portrayals of women as objects of desire or domestic servants.

Toponyms

Culturally significant place names that reflect artifacts of language, tradition, and cultural understanding.

Cultural Ecology

Refers to how communities respond to nature through culture.

Adaptive Strategies

The ways that people adjust their lifestyles according to their environment, including foraging, agriculture, industrialization, and sustainability efforts.

Long Lot Surveying

A survey system that uses long, narrow plots extending along water, common in French colonized regions including Quebec, Canada, and Louisiana.

Metes and Bounds Surveying

A survey system using natural landmarks, such as forests, mountains, and bodies of water, to delineate land.

Township and Range Survey System

A survey system that uses a grid to evenly determine property lines.

Rectangular Survey System

A nationalized survey system used in the United States, also known as the public land survey system, which is similar to township and range.

Placelessness

A decline in distinctiveness between locations causing environments to blend together, resulting from globalized popular culture and suburban sprawl.

Ethnic Cleansing

The systematic, forced removal of an ethnic, racial, or religious group from an area.

Centrifugal Forces

Factors that divide a state, pulling its population apart and weakening internal cohesion, including social unrest, revolt, and political violence.

Balkanization

The fragmentation of a larger state or region into smaller, often hostile, and ethnically homogeneous units.

Cultural Shatterbelt

An unstable region where diverse cultural groups—often with conflicting interests—coexist and interact.

Cultural Patterns

The shared beliefs, values, norms, and behaviors of a society.

Centripetal Forces

Factors that unify a state, pulling its population together and strengthening internal cohesion, such as shared language, religion, ethnicity, and history.

Placemaking

The process where humans use cultural practices and rituals to create meaning for a place.

Language Families

Groups of languages related via their descent from a common ancestral language, sharing many similarities in grammar, vocabulary, and structure.

Indo-European Language Family

The world's largest language family, with over 445 living languages and 3 billion native speakers.

Sino-Tibetan Language Family

The world's second-largest language family, comprising over four hundred to five hundred languages spoken by 1.4 billion people across East, South, and Southeast Asia.

Lingua Franca

A shared language used to facilitate communication between people who do not have the same native tongue.

Endangered Languages

Living languages that are at risk of falling out of use as speakers die out or shift to a dominant language.

Extinct Languages

Languages that have no fluent speakers remaining, though they may still be studied or used for purposes of cultural or religious heritage.

Universalizing Religions

Faiths that seek global appeal, actively convert others, and aim to be practiced by people worldwide regardless of ethnicity or culture.

Ethnic Religions

Faith systems that are linked to a specific ethnic group, culture, or geographic location and do not actively seek global conversion.

Segregation

The condition where spaces are separated or divided along ethnic, racial, sexual, or religious lines.

Cultural Diffusion

The various ways that cultural characteristics, beliefs, and practices pass from one culture to another and between individuals.

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of cultural traits, ideas, or innovations through the physical movement of people from one place to another.

Expansion Diffusion

The spread of ideas, innovations, or cultural traits outward from a central hearth to new areas.

Contagious Diffusion

The rapid, widespread, person-to-person spread of ideas and cultural traits.

Hierarchical Diffusion

The spread of ideas and trends from nodes of high authority or large population centers down to smaller, less influential areas.

Stimulus Diffusion

Diffusion occurring when an underlying idea, trait, or innovation spreads from one culture to another but is adopted in a modified or adapted form.

Maladaptive Diffusion

The spread of cultural traits, innovations, or practices to a new environment or society where they are impractical, inefficient, or harmful.

Diffusion S Curve

A model representing the evolution of cultural diffusion over time, illustrating a slow start, rapid growth (acceleration), and eventual saturation (leveling off).

Colonialism

The policy or practice of acquiring political control over another nation, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting its economy.

Imperialism

A policy of extending a country's power and influence through diplomacy or military force.

Scramble for Africa

The rapid invasion and partition of nearly the entire African continent by European powers.