Unit 3 Cultural Patterns and Processes Vocabulary

A comprehensive vocabulary review of Unit 3 topics including cultural landscapes, types of diffusion, language families, religions, architecture, and cultural change.

Culture

The set of shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors that a society learns, develops, and passes down from one generation to the next.

Culture Trait

A single aspect of a given culture or society.

Architecture (Agriculture)

The tending of crops and raising of livestock to produce food, feed, and fiber for human consumption (farming).

Cultural Relativism

An approach to understanding other cultures that seeks to understand individuals and cultures from a wider perspective of cultural logic, viewing cultures with an open mind.

Ethnocentrist (Ethnocentrism)

An approach to understanding other cultures that evaluates them from the perspective of the observer's culture (viewing cultures from your culture's point of view).

Indigenous Culture

A local culture that is no longer the dominant ethnic group within its traditional homeland because of migration, colonization, or political marginalization (e.g., Native Americans).

Multiculturalism

A set of policies and social conditions that promote the active participation and inclusion of minority groups in national histories, politics, and institutions, allowing multiple distinct groups to coexist while maintaining their unique cultural identities rather than blending into a single melting pot.

Folk Culture

Culture practiced by a small, homogeneous, and rural group living in relative isolation.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom, religion, or law.

Cultural Landscape

The built forms that cultural groups create in inhabiting Earth.

Linguistic Landscape

The visible presence of a language in a public or geographic area, primarily seen on street signs, government signs, and public buildings.

Sequent Occupance

The fact that many places have been controlled or affected by a variety of groups over a period of time, reshaping the functions and meanings of those places and leaving behind meaning (e.g., an old textile mill turned into an upscale restaurant).

Traditional Architecture

Building styles, forms, and construction methods that are passed down from one generation to another, reflecting culture.

Postmodern Architecture

A design style that is a reaction against modernist architecture, featuring a flair for the dramatic, creating a spectacle while serving a variety of functions, and not being perfectly rational.

Ethnicity

An identity with a group of people who share the distinct cultural traditions, heritage, and ancestry of a particular homeland or hearth.

Ethnic Neighborhood

An urban area with a high concentration of a specific ethnic group within a dominant culture.

Indigenous Community

A community that lived in an area, was taken over, and is no longer the dominant culture.

Sense of Place

The distinctive feeling of a place, or a person's perception of a place based on its characteristics.

Placemaking

Efforts to use and design public places to better serve the needs of residents and to foster a stronger community.

Centripetal Force

A force that brings people together and unifies a neighborhood, society, or country.

Centrifugal Force

A force that threatens the cohesion and unification of a neighborhood, society, or country.

Relocation Diffusion

A type of diffusion occurring when individuals or groups migrate from one location to another, bringing an idea or practice to a new area.

Expansion Diffusion

The process by which ideas or practices spread throughout a population from area to area.

Contagious Diffusion

A wavelike spread of an idea or practice in the manner of a contagious disease.

Hierarchical Diffusion

A type of diffusion that leapfrogs from one influential person to another.

Stimulus Diffusion

A type of diffusion where a specific trait's underlying idea is accepted and adapted, changing the form while keeping the underlying idea.

Creolization

The linguistic process where languages converge and create new languages and forms of communication.

Lingua Franca

A language of communication and commerce spoken across a wide area where it is not a mother tongue.

Colonialism

The act of forcefully controlling a foreign territory, which becomes known as a colony.

Imperialism

The motivating impulse to control greater amounts of territory.

Trade

The voluntary exchange of goods, services, and money across local, national, or international borders.

Urbanization

The process by which an increasing proportion of a country's population lives in towns and cities rather than in rural areas.

Globalization

The expansion and increasing interconnectedness of economic, political, and cultural processes on a global scale, allowing ideas, goods, services, and people to transcend national borders.

Time-Space Convergence

The phenomenon whereby the introduction of new transportation technologies progressively reduces the time it takes to travel between places.

Cultural Convergence (Convergence Hypothesis)

The idea that cultures are converging, or becoming more alike, resulting in placelessness.

Cultural Divergence

The process by which two or more cultures become increasingly distinct, dissimilar, or isolated from one another over time.

Language Family

A group of related languages that share a common ancestry.

Dialect

A regional variation of a language that is understood by people who speak other variations.

Culture Hearth

A focused geographic area where important innovations are born and from which they spread.

Indo-European Language Family

The largest language family, spoken by half of the global population.

Toponym

The names given to places.

Universalizing Religion

A faith that actively seeks new members and aims to convert all humankind (e.g., Christianity and Islam).

Ethnic Religion

A faith tied to a specific ethnic group or geographic region, which does not actively seek global converts.

Christianity

The largest religion in the world, which is a monotheistic and universalizing faith.

Islam

A monotheistic universalizing religion located largely in the desert belt of Asia and North Africa, founded by Muhammad, whose adherents follow Allah.

Buddhism

A universalizing faith with Hinduism as its parent religion, founded by Prince Siddhartha Guatama, centered on the noble truths and reaching nirvana.

Judaism

A monotheistic religion that arose from Southwest Asia, centered on the Torah.

Hinduism

A polytheistic religion originating in India, centered on Brahman and its manifestations.

Sikhism

A religion originating in South Asia, founded by Guru Nanek Dev Ji, centered on belief in a formless God.

Acculturation

Occurs when an ethnic or immigrant group adopts enough of the ways of the host society to be able to function economically and socially while keeping their own culture.

Assimilation

Occurs when an ethnic or immigrant group blends in with the host culture and loses many culturally distinctive traits.

Syncretism

The blending of beliefs, ideas, practices, and traits, especially in a religious context.