APHUG Unit 3

Culture

All of a group's learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects

Visible Culture

Like material culture, artifacts, symbols, and practices. Tangible things.

Invisible Culture

Non-tangible things like beliefs or values.

Cultural traits

Trait(s) that can be tied to a culture

Cultural complex

Series or set of cultural traits

Taboos

Behaviors heavily discouraged by society

Traditional culture

Traditional, folk, and indigenous cultures mixing. Passing down long-held beliefs, values, and practices. Resistant to rapid change.

Folk culture

Beliefs and practices of tiny, homogenous groups of people. Often lives with modern culture but is isolated. Often rural and isolated, and slow to change.

Indigenous culture

Members of ethnic group live in ancestors' land and have unique cultural traits

Globalization

More interaction between people all around the world

Popular culture

Cultural traits spread quickly over a large area and adopted by many

Horizontal diversity

Each has its own customs and language, but people within groups are usually similar

Vertical diversity

Usually heterogenous but on a global scale: relatively similar.

Artifacts/material culture

Tangible things, able to be experienced by the senses.

Mentifact/non-material culture

No physical presence, believes, values, practices, aesthetics. Religion is an example of this.

Sociofacts

Ways people organize society and relate to one another. Shown through social constructs(families, governments, sports teams, etc.)

Placelessness

No sense of place(past vocab). Many modern landscapes show lots of homogeneity. Example in book of neighborhoods in different states looking the same.

Cultural landscape

Or built environment, visible reflection of culture. Any human altercation to landscape.

Traditional architecture

Reflects local culture's history, beliefs, values, adaptations to environment, uses local materials. Usually built with utility to people and community in mind

Postmodern architecture

Developed after 1960s. High rise structures with steel and glass. Evolved to include more curves and colors(and big glass atriums).

Contemporary architecture

21st century, extension of pm architecture. Rotate, curve, and stretch limits of size and height.

Ethnicity

Membership within a group of people who share common experiences/traits.

Ethnic enclaves

Neighborhoods, clusters of people w/ similar culture. Can help against discrimination.

Gendered spaces

Spaces only for one gender. This could because the activity the space is for is seen to be only for one. Women can see them as safe places to talk.

Cultural regions

Usually determined by things like religion, language, ethnicity, or physical features.

Sacred places

Places w/ religious significance. Can be mountains, rivers, or entire cities.

Christian Landscape

Churches show how environment affects architecture.
Eastern Mediterranean: Dome shaped roofs.
Northern Europe: Steep-pitched roofs(for the snow to slide off)
Usually bury dead in cemeteries.

Hindu Landscape

Often elaborately carved exteriors for temples with multiple deities. Many shrines and temples in India, devout followers construct religious structures believing it reflects well on them. Sacred sites(like Ganges river) are places to bathe for purification. Many shrines and temples around rivers because of this. Hindus do cremation, but lack of wood makes this more expensive. Ashes of deceased are spread in Ganges river.

Buddhist Landscape

Differs widely from place to place and ethnic group to ethnic group. Most emphasize meditating and living peacefully w/ nature. Pagodas are a common architectural style developed from stupas. Used as temples. Cremate/bury is personal choice. Burial sites become sacred and quiet places to meditate.

Stupas

Structures in Buddhism to store important relics and memorialize important events and beliefs. Often built to symbolize 5 aspects of nature.

Jewish Landscape

Worship in temples and synagogues. Was concentrated in middle east, now spread because of persecution and voluntary migration(known as the Diaspora). Synagogues vary in size based on the number of followers.

Diaspora

A population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its hearth.

Islamic Landscape

Mosques are most prominent structures on the landscape and usually center of towns. Domes surrounded by minarets(beacons) where daily prayer is called. Buried in cemeteries.

Shinto Landscape

Mainly in its cultural hearth, Japan. Honoring ancestors and relationship with people/nature is at center. Landscape feature: Torii, gateway which marks transition from outside word to a sacred space.

Charter group

First group to establish cultural and religious customs. Often, cultural landscape of these shows their heritage.

Ethnic islands(rural)

Form from ethnic concentrations in rural areas.

Ethnic neighborhoods(urban)

Often migrants settled in charter group's past space.

Sequent Occupancy

Process where ethnic groups move in and out of neighborhoods and make new cultural imprints on the land.

Neolocalism

Process of reembracing the uniqueness and authenticity of a place

Cultural patterns

Sets of cultural traits and complexes, which makes similar behavior across space

Culture Hearth

Where geographers start in their mental map, where religion or ethnicity started

Baptists and Methodists

Southeast, preachers in 1800s

Congregationalists

Strong in New England area where English ancestors settled

Lutherans

Midwest where German and Scandinavian ancestors were promised good farmland in 1800s

Mormons

Near or in Utah, settled in mid-1800s after being chased out of Missouri and Illinois by persecution

Roman Catholics

Urban areas in Northeast and Southwest

Jews, Muslims, and Hindus

Urban areas in general

Nationality

Based on people's connection to a country

Centripetal forces

Forces that bring people together, unify a group of people

Centrifugal forces

Forces that tear people apart, divide a group of people.

Sharia

Legal framework of a country from Islam edicts from holy book. Adopted by some, like the Taliban.

Blue laws

Laws that restrict certain activities for religion, like sale of alcohol or cars on Sunday.

Food taboos

Taboos... on food.

Fundamentalism

Attempt to follow literal interpretation of holy writings. Live lifestyle that the ones in the holy writings did.

Theocracies

Governments run by religion. Religious leaders through religious laws.

Ethnocentric

Belief that own cultural group is superior.

Cultural Relativism

Looking from their eyes and seeing that all are equal and worthy or study.

Cultural Appropriation

Action of adopting traits, icons, or other elements of another culture. Concerning when trait adopted from minority to majority and when adopted out of context, making it inappropriate or disrespectful. (Think Redskins, now Washington football team)

Diffusion

Spread of info, ideas, people, products, and other aspects of culture from hearth to wider areas.

Relocation Diffusion

Main type of diffusion, spread of culture/cultural traits by migrants who carry culture/cultural traits with them.

Expansion Diffusion

Diffusion outwards without migration. Requires different person to adopt the trait.

Contagious Diffusion

Cultural trait spreads continuously through contact between people

Hierarchical Diffusion

From most interconnected places/centers of wealth/influence. Trait from 1 powerful person to another, and eventually gets shared with other social classes.

Reverse Hierarchical Diffusion

From lower social classes to higher

Stimulus Diffusion

Adopted but tweaked to better fit the region.

Imperialism

Includes variety of ways of influencing another country or group of people by direct conquest, economic control, or cultural dominance.

Colonialism

Type of imperialism. People move and settle on land of another country.

Animism

Belief that nonliving things like rivers and mountains have spirits. Most religions by native indigenous people in Africa and North America before Europeans were forms of this.

Native Speakers

Use languages learned at birth

Lingua Franca

Common languages used by people who don't share a lanaguge

Slang

Words informally used by part of population.

Pidgin Language

Simple mix of 2 languages with little grammar/rules, smaller vocab made when they have much contact.

Creole Language

True mix of the 2 with actual rules, making a new language. Common in the Caribbean.

Social Constructs

Ideas, concepts, or perceptions that are created and accepted by people in a society and not by nature.

Time-space convergence

Greater interconnection to places that results from improvements in transportation. Usually makes places less culturally distinct.

Cultural convergence

Cultures are becoming similar as they start to share cultural traits

Cultural divergence

Idea that cultures may change over time as elements of distance, time, physical separation and modern tech make divisions and changes.

Linguists

Scientists who study languages

Language tree

Shows relationships between languages and how one grows from another

Indo-European Language family

Large group of languages that maybe came from language 6,000 years ago. About 1/2 world pop speaks one of these. 2.8 billion native speakers of 400-500 languages.

Romance languages

Derived from Latin. Most went poof (🤎) but some survived, like Spanish and French.

Isoglosses

Boundaries between variations in pronunciations/word usage

Dialects

Changes in accents, grammar, word usage, and spelling make this.

Adages

Old Major! A wise saying that dialects commonly use to express a truth about life.

Toponyms

Place names(Past vocab), can reveal a lot about a culture's history/geographic location

Official language

Designated by law to be the language of the government.

Homogenous

Made up of ethnically similar people

Adherents

Believers of their faith

Ethnic religions

Belief traditions that emphasize strong cultural characteristics among followers. Born into it or can converted though rarely recruit. Hinduism.

Universalizing religions

Open to all people, in ethnicity, language, social status, or nationality. Missionaries to convert. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism.

Hinduism

Ethnic, polythestic, but also monotheistic because all are forms of one god. From India. Believe in karma and dharma(righteous path). Worked w/ caste system. Reincarnation based on actions. Rivers symbolize life and purification

Polytheistic

Multiple deities

Monotheistic

One deity

Karma

Idea that current behaviors have consequences in present and future life(lives).

Caste system

Rigid class structure that shaped Indian society

Buddhism

Around 600 BCE, Prince Siddhartha. Accepted much of Hinduism but rejected caste system.

Four noble truths

Buddhist doctorines

Eightfold path

Buddhism. By following, you eliminate desire and suffering

Sikhism

More new, monotheistic. Founded by Guru Nanak in Punjab. About serving others and generosity, name added to make more equal society, breaking influence of family names. Most holy place: Golden Temple, Amritsar, India.

Gurdwara

Sikh place of worship