Introduction to Culture (AP Human Geography)

Vocabulary-focused flashcards covering key terms and concepts from the Introduction to Culture lecture, including types of culture, diffusion, and specific historical examples.

Culture

A particular group's material characteristics, behavioral patterns, beliefs, social norms, and attitudes that are shared and transmitted.

Cultural hearth

A place where innovations and new ideas originate and diffuse to other places, including Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus River Valley.

Culture complex

A unique combination of culture traits (attributes of culture) for a particular culture group.

Habit

A repetitive act that a particular individual performs, such as brushing your teeth or exercising.

Custom

A repetitive act that a particular group performs to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group.

Folk Culture

Culture traditionally practiced primarily by small homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas, which changes slowly and spreads by relocation diffusion.

Material Culture

The physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture, such as clothing, furniture, and artifacts.

Non-material culture

Intangible values including customs, traditions, folk stories, myths, religion, oral and written languages, and institutions.

Mentifacts

The shared ideas, values, and beliefs of a culture that shape its worldview, representing the intangible oral and written languages and religion.

Sociofacts

The social structures and organizations in a culture, such as religious organizations, political institutions, and educational institutions, that influence social behavior.

Taboos

Restrictions or social/cultural prohibitions imposed by social customs that dictate what actions are considered unacceptable.

Tiananmen Square ($1989$)

A site in Beijing where anti-communist reformers protested, leading to a violent reaction by the government as they attempted to censor pop culture ideals.

Arab Spring

A series of anti-government protests and rebellions across the Arab world in the early $2010s$ (starting in $2011$) where social media bypassed government news censorship.

Popular culture

Culture practiced by large, heterogeneous groups, originating from more developed regions and varying from time to time in a given place.

Blue jeans

A type of pants invented by Jacob W. Davis and Levi Strauss in $1873$, serving as a symbol of American culture spreading via globalization.

Ethnocentrism

A biased perspective of one's own ethnic group or culture as being superior, often judging other cultures based on one's own standards.

Cultural relativism

The objective principle asserting that every culture must be understood on its own terms and evaluated in its own context, not compared to another culture.

Animal Endangerment

Species at risk of becoming extinct because of rapid changes in their environment or overhunting/poaching, which can be an issue of pop culture sustainability.

Cultural Preservation

The practice of maintaining and protecting the customs, traditions, languages, and artifacts of a society to keep unique cultural aspects alive.

Environmental Capacity

The maximum population size an environment can sustain indefinitely without degrading its resources.

Folk music

Traditional music that originates from a community's background and is typically passed down orally, often telling stories about daily activities like farming.

Globalization

The process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence and interconnection of economies and cultures on a global scale.

Housing Preferences

Types of characteristics of housing that groups prefer based on cultural background, environmental factors, and available resources like brick or wood.

Nationalist Ideologies

Political principles based on promoting national identity above all else, often emphasizing shared characteristics such as language.

Pop Music

A genre originating in its modern form during the mid-$1950s$ in the United States and the United Kingdom, written for commercial sale to a global market.

Recycling

Processing used materials into new products to prevent waste and reduce pollution from disposal.

Relocation Diffusion

A type of cultural diffusion where people move from their original location to another, taking their cultural practices with them.

Social Custom

Traditional practices and behaviors specific to societies that often originate at a cultural hearth regarded as popular culture.

Uniform Landscapes

The concept that commercial and residential areas look similar across different regions due to globalization and the spread of popular culture.