Human Geography Chapters 7+

Cultural Turn

A shift in social sciences in the 1980s that

• emphasized the importance of culture in understanding humans and their political and economic activities

• utilizes a critical geography approach

Socially-Constructed Landscapes

Symbolic and iconographic representations of landscape vary depending on

• ideology

• culture

Landscapes

The spacial constitution of culture

Focus on Differences

Questioning of static concepts and classifications

• Stems from a desire to examine

  • roles of power

  • how cultural hegemony can create identity

Race

A social construct

• classification of human beings based on skin colour and other phenotypes

Racialization

Groups are viewed through a culturally-invented racial framework

Three Myths of Race

1. Evolution is a ladder of progress (evolution produces a tree, not a ladder) Stephen Jay Gould

2. Race represents distinct human subspecies (physical traits are minor and change over time) 

3. Races can be classified according to their level of intelligence (evidence of single species)

Racism and Genocide

Organized, systematic effort to destroy a defined group

Requires

• distancing of group (they don’t belong)

• authority to promote hatred of group to justify attacks

Apartheid

European colonization practices

• emphasized ethnic differences

• imposed spatial seperation

Apartheid 

• South African policy spatially separating four ethnic groups between 1948 - 1994

• “Separate Development”

Dates of Abolition of Slavery

UK = 1834

France = 1848

Dutch = 1863

Racism and Migration

Historically, much migration has been involuntary

• Forced migration for labour reflects an unequal status of races or groups

• Prompted by Nativism, intense opposition to minorities by locals based on foreigner status

Indentured Labour

Began after abolition of slavery

• Contracted labour migration to work on plantations in colonies

Restrictive immigration policies

Direct restriction 

• Chinese Head Tax (1885)

• Chinese immigration was virtually prohibited in 1923

Indirect Restriction

• SA enforcing European language literacy requirement in 18897

• NZ did the same in 1899

Ethnicity

Difficult to define

Shared

• Cultural traits (language and religion)

• Racial Identity

• History

• Identity (not necessarily minorities)

Ethnicity both includes and excludes

Ethnic Group

A group whose members perceive themselves as different from others because of a common ancestry and shared culture

• Swedes in Sweden are not an ethnic group; Swedes in the US would be

Racial Identity and Place

Immigrant ethnic group, moving into urban areas, experience social and spatial isolation

• Ghettos, Barrios, Trailer Parks, Reserve

• Chinatowns from 1885+, CPR

  • Social constructions of Chinatown include

    • Myths of social depravity (evil, lawless, opium dens)

    • Profitable Tourist Development (commodification of the Orient, and Exoticism, which is a Eurocentric view)

Chinese Laundromats

Laundromats as proxies of density of Chinese population

• Regulation to laundry = regulation to where Chinese can live

  • Lethbridge, 1910 to 1916 blocked areas from laundromats

Chain Migration

Migrants follow patterns of settlement of previous migrants

• progression from spatial and social isolation to assimilation or acculturation

• Created geographical patterns

Assimilation

Ethnic group absorbed into larger society, loses its own identity

Acculturation

Ethnic group absorbed into larger society, retains some aspects of distinct identity

Multiculturalism

Formal state policy where multiple cultures are tolerated and encouraged

• cultural heterogeny / pluralization

• Assimilation is resisted

• Ideal of equality and mutual respect

Canadian Federal Policies regarding Multiculturalism

Federal Policy dates to 1971

• Canadian Multiculturalism Act of 1988 recognizing all Canadians as full and equal participants of Canadian society

Indigenous

Inhabitants of a territory before colonization

• Strongly connected to land and territory

• Language to express indigenous identity is complex and can have negative connotations

  • “Indian” vs. “Indigenous”

Mechanisms for Colonization

Indian Act of 1876

• Legal means for assimilation

Residential School System

• adopted from US

Indigenous Social Movements

Three Themes

• Land title and autonomy

• Environmental Stewardship (Idle No More)

• Social Justice (Recommendations about Truth and Reconciliation)