Human, Cultural, and Political Geography Review

Comprehensive review flashcards covering population dynamics, cultural geography, spatial diffusion, world religions, migration, and political geography based on lecture notes.

What historical factors drove past human population growth?

The retreat of glaciers (prompting human migration), the Agricultural Revolution (population reaching $5$-$10\text{ million people}$), the Industrial Revolution ($18\text{th}$-$19\text{th}\text{ centuries}$), and the Medical Revolution (post-WWII).

What are the major current and future population issues noted in geography?

Natural resources, malnutrition, climate change, deforestation and loss of farmland, and rising prices of fossil fuels.

How is a demographic 'rate' defined?

The frequency of occurrence during a given time period for a designated population.

What is a demographic 'cohort'?

Data of a population group in terms of a specified common characteristic.

What is the 'ecumene'?

The part of the earth permanently inhabited by people.

What is the Crude Birth Rate (CBR) and what factors influence it?

The number of annual births per $1{,}000\text{ people}$. It is influenced by the age/sex structure of the population, customs and family size expectations, poverty, and population policies.

What is the Crude Death Rate (CDR)?

The number of deaths per $1{,}000\text{ people}$ in a year.

How is the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) measured?

The number of children born per $1{,}000$ who do not live one year.

What are the five leading causes of infant deaths?

Birth defects, premature births, low birth weight, SIDS, and maternal pregnancy complications.

What key epidemiology statistics are associated with HIV/AIDS?

It is the 4th most common cause of death worldwide; new infections and deaths are decreasing; $90\%$ of infected live in developing countries; and $2/3$ live in Sub-Saharan Africa ($60\%$ of whom are women).

What is doubling time and how is it calculated?

The time required in years for a population to double, calculated as $70 / \text{rNI}$ (for example, $70 / 2.0 = 35\text{ yr}$).

How is net migration calculated from immigration and emigration?

$\text{Immigration (arriving)} - \text{Emigration (departing)} = \text{Net migration}$.

What is the difference between crude density, physiological density, and agricultural density?

Crude (arithmetic) density is the number of people per unit of land regardless of distribution; physiological density is the number of people per unit of arable land; agricultural density is the number of rural population per unit of agriculturally productive land.

What is carrying capacity and what is a homeostatic plateau?

Carrying capacity is the number of people an area can support. A homeostatic plateau is reached when an area arrives at its carrying capacity.

What is Neo-Malthusianism?

The philosophy aimed at raising standards of living by reducing birth rates through government policy and NGOs.

What characterizes each stage of the Demographic Transition Model?

Stage 1: no growth, pre-industrialization; Stage 2: high growth where birth rates remain high while death rates fall; Stage 3: growth begins to even out, birth rates decrease and level off; Stage 4: both birth rates and death rates are low.

How is 'culture' defined in cultural geography?

Specialized behavioral patterns, understandings, and adaptations that summarize a way of life of a group of people; it is learned rather than innate or biological, containing both visible and invisible aspects.

What are the structural components of culture (traits, complex, system)?

Culture traits are individual units such as language, tools, beliefs, or agricultural techniques; a culture complex consists of functional interrelations of traits; a culture system is a set of interrelated traits and complexes shared within a particular area.

What is the distinction between Environmental Determinism and Possibilism?

Environmental Determinism posits that the physical environment determines lifestyle, whereas Possibilism challenges those assumptions by arguing humans have choices to adapt.

What constitutes a cultural landscape?

The Earth's surface as modified by human action, including house types, transportation networks, and parks.

What are the three subsystems of culture?

Technological (tools, techniques for survival), Sociological (institutionalized patterns of interaction including religious, educational, political, economic systems and norms), and Ideological (beliefs, ideas, knowledge, mythologies, philosophy, folk wisdom, legends, and 'common sense').

What is cultural integration and what is cultural lag?

Cultural integration is the interlocking nature of all aspects of a culture (e.g., clothing serving for protection, identity, and status). Cultural lag is the gap between a newly adopted technology and other slower-paced social traits.

What is spatial diffusion and what historical trade route was a major step for it?

The process by which a cultural trait spreads from a point of origin to other areas; the Silk Road trade route across Europe and Asia was a huge step for cultural diffusion.

How do amalgamation and assimilation differ?

Amalgamation occurs when the receiving society and newcomer groups merge into a composite mainstream culture incorporating traits of its components; assimilation occurs when the integration process is complete.

What is the difference between a pidgin and a creole?

A pidgin is a crude combination of two or more languages, whereas a creole is a new language that has developed its own syntax and an extensive vocabulary.

What are the three major classifications of religions?

Universalizing religions (open to all humans through conversion, e.g., Buddhism, Christianity, Islam), Ethnic religions (membership from birth with strong ethnic identity, e.g., Judaism, Hinduism, Shintoism), and Tribal/traditional religions (localized culture groups, e.g., Shamanism, Animism).

What are the distinguishing historical details of Judaism?

It is a monotheistic faith founded $3{,}000$-$3{,}500\text{ yrs ago}$, descended from Israel, with the Torah as its religious text, whose followers historically migrated to Poland and Russia.

What is the primary distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims?

Sunnis recognize the first four caliphs as Mohammad's rightful successors, whereas Shiites reject the first three caliphs and believe rightful leadership belonged exclusively to the 4th caliph.

What are the origins of Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism?

Hinduism is the oldest major religion (over $4{,}000\text{ yr old}$); Sikhism is a syncretic faith combining elements of Hinduism and Islam; Buddhism was formed by dissident Hindus.

What is an ethnoburb?

A suburban community with a significant concentration of a single ethnic group.

What is spatial interaction and what concepts describe its friction?

The movements, communication, and interdependences between places. Key concepts include distance decay (interaction declines as distance increases) and critical distance (the threshold beyond which cost, effort, and perception influence the decision to travel).

What is psychological distance?

The way people perceive distance, influenced by age, mode of transport, familiarity, and perception of similarity.

What are contagious, hierarchical, relocation, and stimulus diffusion?

Contagious: spreads via direct contact; Hierarchical: spreads up or down a spatial or social hierarchy; Relocation: involves actual physical movement of original adopters to a new place; Stimulus: an idea spreads outward from its hearth but is modified by new adopters.

What is the difference between step migration and chain migration?

Step migration is a series of less-extreme location changes (e.g., farm to small town to suburb to city); chain migration is when an advance group is followed by subsequent migrants.

How did political organization evolve into the modern state?

From tribal groups (territories without rigid boundaries), to feudal systems (vassals paying tribute to an overlord), to empires (culturally diverse territories held by force), to the modern state (people owing allegiance to the state rather than to specific rulers).

What is the distinction between a state, a nation, and a nation-state?

A state has sovereignty over a territory; a nation is a group sharing a common culture; a nation-state aligns cultural identity with sovereign political borders; a multinational state encompasses multiple cultural groups without a single dominant group (e.g., the former USSR); a stateless nation is a cultural group lacking an independent state (e.g., the Kurds).

What was the significance of the Berlin Conference of 1884?

It established superimposed boundaries in Africa without regard to cultural patterns.

What are the characteristics and examples of compact, elongated, fragmented, and perforated states?

Compact: efficient for defense and transportation networks (Poland); Elongated: narrow and long, creating communication difficulties and diverse climates (Chile); Prorupt: mostly compact with a narrow protruding land extension; Fragmented: separated into discontinuous island or mainland portions (Philippines); Perforated: completely encircles an independent territory it does not rule (Lesotho).

What is the difference between antecedent and subsequent boundaries?

Antecedent boundaries are drawn before major settlement occurs, whereas subsequent boundaries are established after major settlement has taken place.

What is a relic boundary?

A former boundary that no longer functions as such, exemplified by abandoned castles on the frontier zone between England and Wales.

What are unitary states, federal states, and asymmetric federalism?

Unitary states have highly centralized governments with few internal cultural contrasts; federal states associate roughly equal provinces with strong regional governments; asymmetric federalism occurs when formerly strong unitary states grant strong regional control to specific units (e.g., Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland having their own capitals).

What are centripetal and centrifugal forces in political geography?

Centripetal forces promote state cohesion (nationalism, unifying institutions like schools and armed forces, administration, transportation). Centrifugal forces challenge state authority (subnationalism, regionalism, ethnic cleansing, irredentism).

How do reapportionment, redistricting, and gerrymandering operate in the US?

Every $10\text{ yr}$, the US Census triggers reapportionment, which redistributes the $435$ House seats based on population shifts; state legislatures then undertake redistricting to redraw boundaries; gerrymandering is the unfair drawing of these boundaries to favor one political party over another.

What is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR)?

The average number of children a woman is expected to bear during her childbearing years within a given population.

What is a population pyramid?

A bar graph displaying the distribution of a population by age cohorts and sex, illustrating age-sex structure, dependency ratios, and demographic growth trends.

What is the Rate of Natural Increase (RNI) and how is it calculated?

The annual percentage rate of population growth excluding migration, calculated as Crude Birth Rate minus Crude Death Rate: $\text{RNI} = \text{CBR} - \text{CDR}$.

What is the Malthusian Point of Crisis and how does it compare population to food production?

The theoretical threshold where population growth outpaces agricultural capacity, based on the principle that human population expands exponentially/geometrically while food production increases only arithmetically.

What is a culture realm?

A large, continuous geographic region composed of multiple culture regions that share fundamental cultural traits, complexes, and societal structures.

What is cultural convergence?

The tendency for distinct cultures to become increasingly similar over time as a result of shared technologies, widespread telecommunications, transport, and global organizational ties.

What is cultural divergence?

The process whereby cultures separate or remain distinct from one another through geographic barriers, physical isolation, or deliberate political/religious resistance to outside influence.

What are the primary mechanisms of culture change (innovation, independent invention, and diffusion)?

Innovation refers to novel ideas or improvements originating within a social group; independent invention refers to the parallel creation of the same trait across separate societies without contact; diffusion refers to the outward spread of traits from their source to other populations.

What is a cultural hearth?

A geographic heartland or point of origin where innovative traits, agricultural techniques, and societal practices emerge before diffusing outward.

What is the Indo-European language family?

The world's largest and most widely dispersed language family, encompassing major branches such as Germanic (including English), Romance (Spanish, French), Slavic, and Indo-Iranian.

What are the Afro-Asiatic and Niger-Congo language families?

Two dominant African language families: Afro-Asiatic across North Africa and the Middle East (including Arabic), and Niger-Congo across central and Southern Sub-Saharan Africa (including the Bantu subfamily).

What is the Sino-Tibetan language family?

The dominant language family of East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia, comprising Sinitic varieties (such as Mandarin Chinese) and Tibeto-Burman languages.

What is the Malayo-Polynesian language family?

A vast language family distributed across the South Pacific and maritime Southeast Asia, extending from Madagascar in the Indian Ocean to Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.

What are cognates in linguistic geography?

Words across separate languages that share a common ancestral linguistic root, exhibiting similar pronunciations and shared meanings.

What is a toponym?

A place name assigned to a portion of the Earth's surface that reflects the historical, linguistic, physical, or cultural heritage of its settlers.

What is ethnocentrism?

The practice of judging other cultures by the standards, values, and practices of one's own culture, often accompanied by a drive to preserve shared ancestry and cultural boundaries.

What is territorial segregation?

The spatial separation and clustering of distinct ethnic or racial groups within designated residential enclaves, such as Chinatowns or Little Italies.

What is the friction of distance and what is time-distance?

The friction of distance represents the obstacle or resistance that spatial separation poses to human movement; time-distance measures this friction by the actual travel time needed to complete a trip rather than geometric mileage.

What are the major barriers to spatial interaction?

Physical barriers (topography and oceans), economic barriers (travel and transport costs), cultural barriers (linguistic and religious divides), and policy barriers (borders, tariffs, and immigration laws).

What is an activity space?

The local territory or spatial zone within which an individual conducts regular, routine daily movements, constrained by stage of life, mobility, occupation, and gender.

What distinguishes intercontinental, intracontinental, regional, and forced migration?

Intercontinental involves movement across oceans or between continents (often colonizing); intracontinental involves relocation between countries on the same continent (frequently from less affluent to more affluent states); regional involves moves within a national territory; forced involves involuntary relocation under duress (e.g., the Trail of Tears).

What are push factors and pull factors in migration?

Push factors are negative circumstances that compel people to leave an area (e.g., lack of jobs, poor services, civil unrest); pull factors are attractive conditions drawing migrants to a destination (e.g., employment opportunities, family networks, better public services).

What is economic and political integration in human geography?

The establishment of formal supranational agreements and institutions among sovereign states to reduce trade barriers, harmonize laws, and integrate political or military policies.

How does territorial size relate to a state's geopolitical power?

Size alone does not guarantee power; geopolitical power depends on geographical location, population distribution, arable land, and available natural resources (with Russia being the largest state by land area).

What is the difference between absolute location and relative location in political geography?

Absolute location gives precise mathematical coordinates (latitude and longitude); relative location evaluates a state's position in relation to oceans, neighboring sovereign entities, and international trade routes, which heavily influences strategic accessibility.

What is the difference between natural (physical) and artificial (geometric) boundaries?

Natural boundaries follow prominent physical landforms like rivers, crests of mountain ranges, or lakes; artificial boundaries are straight lines drawn without regard to topography, frequently following lines of latitude or meridians of longitude.

What is a superimposed boundary?

A political boundary drawn across a territory by an outside or imperial power without regard to the preexisting cultural, ethnic, or tribal divisions of the inhabitants (e.g., borders drawn during the Berlin Conference of 1884).

What is the difference between positional and resource boundary disputes?

Positional disputes arise from disagreements over the precise physical delimitation or legal interpretation of a boundary treaty; resource disputes occur when bordering states compete over ownership or extraction of cross-border resources (e.g., Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait over shared oil reservoirs).

How are maritime boundaries structured between territorial seas and Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs)?

Territorial sea encompasses sovereign coastal waters extending up to $12\,\text{nautical miles}$ from shore; the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extends seaward up to $200\,\text{nautical miles}$, granting the coastal state exclusive rights to manage and exploit marine life, minerals, and subsoil resources.