Aphug vocab

Acculturation

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

Agribusiness

Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.

Agricultural density

The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture.

Agricultural revolution

The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals and no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering.

Agriculture

The deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth's surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance or economic gain.

Annexation

Legally adding land area to a city in the United States.

Anocracy

A country that is not fully democratic or fully autocratic but rather displays a mix of the two types.

Apartheid

Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas.

Aquaculture (aquafarming)

The cultivation of seafood under controlled conditions.

Arithmetic density

The total number of people divided by the total land area.

Assimilation

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

Asylum seeker

Someone who has migrated to another country in the hope of being recognized as a refugee.

Autocracy

A country that is run according to the interests of the ruler rather than the people.

Autonomous religion

A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally.

Balance of power

A condition of roughly equal strength between opposing countries or alliances of countries.

Balkanization

A process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities.

Balkanized

A small geographic area that cannot successfully be organized into stable countries because it its inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other.

Basic business

A business that sells its products or services primarily to consumers outside the settlement.

Behavioral geography

The study of the psychological basis for individual human actions in space.

Biomass fuel

Fuel derived from wood, plant material, or animal waste.

Blockbusting

A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood.

Brain drain

Large-scale emigration by talented people.

Branch (of a religion)

A large and fundamental division within a religion.

Break-of-bulk point

A location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation to another.

Bulk-gaining industry

An industry in which the final product weighs more or comprises a greater volume than the inputs.

Bulk-reducing industry

An industry in which the final product weighs less or comprises a lower volume than the inputs.

Business service

A service that primarily meets the needs of other businesses, including professional, financial, and transportation services.

Census tract

An area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published; in urban areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.

Central business District

The area of a city where retail and office activities are clustered.

Central city

An urban settlement that has been legally incorporated into an independent, self-governing unit known as a municipality.

Central place

A market center for the exchange of services by people attracted from the surrounding area.

Central place theory

A theory that explains the distribution of services based on the fact that settlements serve as centers of market areas for services; larger settlements are fewer and farther apart than smaller settlements and provide services for a larger number of people who are willing to travel farther.

Centripetal force

An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state.

Chain migration

Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or member of the same nationality previously migrated there.

Circular migration

The temporary movement of a migrant worker between home and host countries to seek employment.

City-state

A sovereign state comprising a city and its immediate hinterland.

Clustered rural settlement

A rural settlement in which the houses and farm buildings of each family are situated close to each other, with fields surrounding the settlement.

Colonialism

An attempt by one country to establish settlements and to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles in another territory.

Colony

A territory that is legally tied to a sovereign state rather than completely independent.

Commercial agriculture

Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.

Compact state

A state in which the distance from the center to any boundary does not vary significantly.

Concentric zone model

A model of the internal structure of cities in which social groups are spatially arranged in a series of rings.

Consumer service

A service that primarily meets the needs of individual consumers, including retail, education, health, and leisure services.

Contagious diffusion

The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.

Cottage industry

Manufacturing based in homes rather than in factories, most common prior to the Industrial Revolution.

Counterurbanization

Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries.

Creole (or creolized) language

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

Crop rotation

The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting the soil.

Crude birth rate

The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Crude death rate

The total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society.

Cultural landscape

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

Culture

The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition.

Custom

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people preforming the act.

Democracy

A country in which citizens elect leaders and can run for office.

Demographic transition

The process of change in a society's population from a condition of high crude birth and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of natural increase, and higher total population.

Denomination

A division of a branch that unites a number of locals congregations into a sing began and administrative body.

Density

The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area.

Density gradient

The change in density in an urban area from the center to the periphery.

Dependency ratio

The number of people under age 15 and over age 64 compared to the number of people active in the labor force.

Desertification

Degradation of land, especially in semi-arid areas, primarily because of human actions such as excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting. Also known as semiarid and degradation.

Developed country

A country that has progressed relatively far along a continuum of development.

Developing country

A country that is at a relatively early stage in the process of development.

Developing language

A language spoken in daily use with a literary tradition that is not widely distributed,

Development

A process of improvement in the conditions of people through diffusion of knowledge and technology.

Dialect

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

Diffusion

The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.

Dispersed rural settlement

A rural settlement pattern characterized by isolated farms rather than clustered villages.

Distance decay

The diminished importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin.

Distribution

The arrangement of something across Earth's surface.

Double cropping

Harvesting twice a year from the same field.

Doubling time

The number of years needed to double a population, assuming a constant rate of natural increase.

Economic base

A community's collection of basic businesses.

Ecumene

The portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement.

Edge city

A large node of office and retail activities on edge of an urban area.

Elderly support ration

The number of working-age people (ages 15 to 64) divided by the number of persons 65 and older.

Enclosure movement

The process of consolidating small landholdings not a smaller number of larger farms in England during the eighteenth century.

Environmental determinism

A nineteenth- and early twentieth- century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sough by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Epidemiologic transition

The process of change in the distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition.

Ethnic cleansing

A purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.

Ethnic enclave

A place with a high concentration of an ethnic group that is distinct from those in a surrounding area.

Ethnic religion

A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth.

Ethnoburb

A suburban area with a cluster of a particular ethnic population.

Expansion diffusion

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

Extinct language

A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.

Fair trade

An alternative to international trade that provides greater equity to workers, small businesses, and consumers, focusing primarily on products exported from developing countries to developed countries.

Federal state

An internal organization of a state that allocated most powers to units of local government.

Female labor force participation rate

The percentage of women holding full-time jobs outside the home.

Floodplain

An area subject to flooding during a given number of years, according to historical trends.

Folk culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogenous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Food desert

An area that has a substantial amount of low-income residents and has poor access to a grocery story defined in most cases as further than 1 mile.

Food security

Physical, social, and economic access at all times to safe and nutritious food sufficient to meet dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.

Forced migration

Permanent movement, usually compelled by cultural factors.

Fordist production

A form of mass production in which each worker is assigned one specific task to preform repeatedly.

Foreign direct investment

Investment made by a foreign company in the economy of another country.

Formal region (uniform region)

An area in which everyone shares in common one or more distinctive characteristics.

Fragmented state

A state that includes several discontinuous pieces of territory.

Frontier

A zone separating two states in which neither state exercises political control.

Functional region (nodal region)

An area organized around a node or focal point.

Fundamentalism

Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion or (or a religious branch, denomination, or congregation).