Unit 4,5,6,7 Vocabulary

Country

An identifiable land area.

Nation

A population with a single culture, also known as a culture group.

State

A population under a single government, implying sovereign territory.

Nation-state

A single culture under a single government, sometimes representing a singular contemporary culture.

Sovereignty

Full independence from outside control, holding territory, and having international recognition.

Multi-national states

Made up of different nations represented by various culture groups.

Nationalism

Derives from an existing culture group desiring political representation or independence.

Stateless nations

Culture groups not included or allowed a share in the state political process.

Federal states & confederations

Provide military protection, administer foreign diplomacy, and regulate trade.

Unitary system

A single centralized government with ultimate authority lying with the central government.

Microstates

Sovereign states with a small size but holding the same position as larger states.

Autonomous regions

Parts of nations granted freedom from central authority for various reasons.

Semi-autonomous regions

Have the same freedom as autonomous regions but to a lesser degree.

Supranational organizations

Formed for trade alliances, military cooperation, and diplomacy.

Territoriality

The expression of political control over space.

Citizenship

The legal identity of a person based on the state where they were born or naturalized.

Political boundaries

Expressions of political control that must be definable and clear.

Enclave

A minority culture group concentrated inside a country dominated by a different, larger culture group.

Exclave

A fragmented piece of sovereign territory separated by land from the main part of the state's territory.

UNCLOS

United Nations Conference on the Law of the Seas, standardizing oceanic boundaries.

Territorial sea

Sovereign territory from shore out to the 12-nautical-mile limit.

Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)

Exclusive economic rights from shore out to the 200-nautical-mile limit.

Physical border

Natural boundaries such as rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, or deserts.

Cultural border

Estimated boundaries between nations, ethnic groups, or tribes.

Geometric border

Boundaries surveyed mostly along lines of latitude and longitude.

Frontier

Open and undefined territory.

State morphology

The shape of a country impacting its society and external relations.

Annexation

Addition of territory as a result of a land purchase or when a territorical claim is extended through incorporation

Capitals

Seat of government where political power is centered.

Suffrage

Voting rights (which have varied historically from state to state).

Gerrymandering

Irregularly shaped districts designed to manipulate voting outcomes.

Feudalism

Political economy with aristocracy controlling land and wealth, and peasants working the land.

Absolute monarchy

Supreme aristocrat serving as both head of state and head of government.

Constitutional monarchy

A form of government where the supreme aristocrat remains head of state, but the leader of the elected parliament is the head of government.

Prime minister (premier)

The leader of the elected parliament who appoints senior members of parliament to be ministers or secretaries of executive-branch departments.

Free-market democracies

Countries with elected-representative parliamentary systems, commonwealth countries, and other constitutional monarchies or republics that rely upon balancing the relationship between the elected-representative government, its citizens, and business interests.

Republics

Governments free of aristocracy or monarchical control and are fully under the control of the "common" people, as opposed to hereditary monarchy.

Separation of powers

Where the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government are held by separate groups of people that keep each other in check.

Marxism

Karl Marx's political-economic theories aimed at creating a class-free society with no inequalities in terms of wealth or power.

Communism

A political-economic system where the state owns all land and industry, and the government directs economic productivity, aiming for equal distribution of wealth.

Planned economy

An economy that does not rely on supply and demand like capitalism, but rather the central government calculates the economic needs and sets quotas for production.

Geopolitics

The global-scale relationships between sovereign states.

Centripetal forces

Factors that hold together the social and political fabric of the state.

Centrifugal forces

Factors that tear apart the social and political fabric of the state.

Balkanization

The political landscape going from a larger state to several smaller states.

Neocolonialism

A contemporary form of colonialism based on economic pressure rather than political control.

Heartland-Rimland model

A model designed to define the global geopolitical landscape and determine areas of potential future conflict.

Buffer states

Lands that protect hostile countries by creating a surrounding buffer of sympathetic countries.

Terrorism

Planned violent attacks on people and places to provoke fear and cause a change in government policy.

State terrorism

When governments use violence and intimidation to control their own people.

Primary Commodity of Conflict

The resource that countries are willing to fight over.

Definitional Dispute

When border treaties are interpreted two different ways by states.

Locational Dispute

Dispute caused by movement of a natural border.

Operational Dispute

When borders are agreed on but passage across the border is a problem.

Allocational Dispute

When a dispute is caused by a resource lying directly on the border accessible by both sides.

Antecedent Boundary

Boundary created by historical events or cultural factors

Relic Boundary

Former political border that no longer serves as a boundary due to changes in political or territorial divisions.

Subsequent Boundary

Boundary that is established after the settlement of an area, often resulting from political or social changes.

Superimposed Boundary

Boundary created by outside forces, often disregarding existing cultural or ethnic divisions.

Delimitation Process

Borders are put on the map

Demarcation Process

Markers are placed on the ground to show where borders lie.

Expatriate Population

Citizens living outside of their borders.

Free-trade union

No taxes charged on goods and services flowing between member states.

Open-border policy

No border-control between member states.

Speciality crops

________ form Florida, South Texas, and Southern California and imports from Newland, Mexico and Austrilia keep Candian and American stores stocked.

Aquaculture

________ in bays and estuaries has resulted in very profitable small- scale oyster and salmon farms.

amount of mineral salt

As evaporation continues over several growing seasons, the ________ can build to toxic levels and poison crops.

High daytime temperatures

________ cause water vapor to be drawn out of irrigated farmland.

Medicinal crops

________, such as herbs, were grown along with vegetables in town market gardens for local sale.

Modern science

________ has had a critical role to play in horticulture and chemistry by using laboratory techniques to develop plant and animal hybrids that grow larger or under certain climatic conditions to meet the needs of farmers in different regions.

Dwarf varieties

________ were an important plant hybrid innovation.

sound methods

By reducing inputs and using ecologically ________, farmers can reduce the risk that their farming practices may lead to long- term environmental or economic problems.

primary economy

timber, fisheries, and mineral and energy resources

intensive agriculture

requires lots of labor input, or is focused on a small plot of land, or both

extensive agriculture

requires limited labor input, or is spread across large areas of land, or both

transhumance

where groups move seasonally not only to avoid harsh climates, climates, but also to follow animal herds and walk to areas where native plants were in fruit

pastoralism

agriculture based on the seasonal movement of animals from winter to summer pastures and back again

nomadic herding

a practice where whole communities would drive their herds from one seasonal grazing area to another following an annual cycle that was repeated over centuries

ranching

grazing livestock in a single large area,

mixed farming, or general farming

where multiple crops and animals exist on a single farm to provide diverse nutritional intake and non-food items, such as bone for tools and leather for different materials such as saddles, rope, and coats

food preservation

a necessity for survival for thousands of years via drying, pickling, cooking, and storage jars that has led to many cultural variations in food consumption

result

a system that had no surplus food and not much variety available to consumers

human ecology

human interactions with nature

food chain

the order of predators in the animal world that is used to describe several integrated human and mechanical inputs, from developing seeds to planting, fertilizing, harvesting, processing, packaging, and transporting food to market and finally to your dinner plate

crop rotation

occurs when one crop is planted on a plot of land and then switched to another plot in subsequent years

multi-cropping

the planting of more than one crop on the same plot of land

irrigation

opens up more land to cultivation than would normally be possible in arid climates and is responsible for close to three-quarters of world freshwater use and up to 90 percent of freshwater use in the most poverty-stricken countries of the world

aquifers

underground water tables that gives water to irrigation farms

conservation

the practice of preserving and carefully managing the environment and its natural resources

conservation agriculture

an increasingly important way of providing a sustainable farming system without sacrificing crop production

no-tillage

involves not plowing the soil so that soil erosion is greatly reduced and soil fertility is increased by retaining natural vegetation

inter-planting

planting fast-growing crops alongside slow-growing crops, allowing a farmer to harvest the fast-growing crop before the slow-growing crop shades it out

sustainable yield

the amount of crops or animals that can be raised without endangering local resources such as soil, irrigation, or groundwater, or what can be raised without too many expensive inputs that would make farming unprofitable

slash and burn agriculture

occurred in tropical rainforest regions with farmers shifting from one plot of land to another every few years as soil nutrients become depleted

extensive pastoralism

the shifting of animal herds between grazing pastures, has remained popular in several arid parts of the world, especially Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, where dry grassland is the common landcover

desertification

any human process that turns a vegetated environment into a desert-like landscape

soil salination

the evaporation of water that can trap mineral salts on the surface soil layer

vegetative planting

where the shoots, stems, and roots of existing wild plants were collected and grown together

seed agriculture

where the fertilized seed grains and fruits of plants were collected and replanted together

horticulture

where plant varieties that thrived in different soil or climate conditions were cultivated