AP HUG Unit 3 Vocabulary

Artifact

Any item, made by humans, that represents a material aspect of culture

Cultural Relativism

Understanding a culture on its own terms rather than judging it by the standards or customs of one's own culture.

Culture

The body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that together constitutes the distinct tradition of a group of people.

Cultural Trait

The specific customs that are part of the everyday life of a particular culture, such as language, religion, ethnicity, social institutions, and aspects of popular culture.

Ethnocentrim

superiority of your own culture or group and the tendency to view other cultures through the lens of your own.

Material Culture

tangible, physical items produced and used by members of a specific culture group and reflective of their traditions, lifestyles, and technologies

Mentifact

The shared ideas, values, and beliefs of a culture. Examples include religion, language, viewpoints, and ideas about right or wrong behavior.

Sociofact

The institutions and links between individuals and groups that unite a culture, including family structure and political, educational and religious institutions

Built Environment

The man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter to neighborhoods to the large-scale civic surroundings.

Cultural Landscape

An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area.

Ethnic Neighborhood

an area within a city containing members of the same ethnic background

Gendered Space

areas in which particular genders of people are considered welcome or appropriate, and other types are unwelcome or inappropriate.

Placelessness

the loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape so that one place looks like the next.

Sequent Occupance

the notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape

pilgrimage

A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes.

centripetal forces

A cultural value that tends to unify people

centrifugal forces

a cultural value that tends to pull people apart

hearth

the place from which an innovation originates

expansion diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in an additive process.

Hierarchical Diffusion

the spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places

relocation diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

Stimulus Diffusion

The spread of an underlying principle

creole

A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.

dialect

A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation.

lingua franca

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages

pidgin

A form of language that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages.

cultural convergence

the contact and interaction of one culture with another

Glocalization

the practice of conducting business according to both local and global considerations.

globalization

Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.

isogloss

A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.

language branch

a collection of languages within a family related through a common ancestral language that can be confirmed through archaeological history.

language family

A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history.

Acculturation

The process of changes in culture that result from the meeting of two groups, each of which retains distint cultural features.

assimilation

The process by which a group's cultural features are altered to resemble those of another group.

Multiculturalism

the policy of maintaining a diversity of ethnic cultures within a community

syncretism

the combining of elements of two groups into a new cultural feature