Human Geography Week 4 | Social & Cultural Geographies

cultural geography

focuses on the way space, place, and landscape shape culture at the same time as culture shapes those things as well

what is culture?

shared set of meanings that is lived through the material and symbolic practices of everyday life

material culture

all objects or things made and used by members of a cultural group

non-material culture

wide range of beliefs, values, myths, and symbolic meanings transmitted across generations

folk culture

traditional practices of small groups, especially rural people who typically have homogenous and stable beliefs/values

popular culture

produced by large, relatively heterogenous groups of people, closely connected to consumerism and urban lifestyles

cultural landscape

the way cultural + environmental processes come together to create a unique landscape

cultural traits

single aspect of the routine and complex practices that constitute a particular culture group

cultural complex

combination of traits/characteristics of a certain group

cultural region

an area where certain cultural practices are practiced by many people who live there

cultural systems

includes shared territory, history, standardized education, shared language, political norms, attachment to national sports

kinship

a form of social organization of shared relationship

tribe

a form of social identity created by groups who share a set of ideas about collective loyalty and political action

ethnicity

socially created system of rules about who belongs to a particular group based on actual or perceived commonalities

racialization

practice of creating unequal groupings based on their relationship to whiteness

actor network therapy (ANT)

views the world as heterogenous assemblages

• gives as much credence to non-human objects as humans in the composition of social life

non-representational theory (NRT)

understands human life as dynamic, always unfolding, response to the involuntary

materialism

emphasizes that the material world is at least partly separate from humans and has the power to affect us

language family

a collection of individual languages believed to be related in their prehistoric origin

language branch

a collection of languages that share a common origin but have split into individual languages

language group

a cluster of individual languages that are part of a language branch, share common origin

diaspora

spatial dispersion of a previously homogenous group

positionality

recognition of the ways that our different intersecting identities inform our different understandings of and experiences in the world

intersectionality

recognition of the ways that different forms or systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination overlap