Ap Hug: Unit 3 Vocab

Cultural relativism

Individual humans beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individuals own culture.

Ethnocentrism

Below that one’s own culture is superior to others. Judging others through one’s own culture.

Toponyms

Place names. Insights into physical geography, historical. Or culture of location.

Sequent Occupancy

Ethnic groups move in and out of neighborhoods and create new cultural imprints on the landscape.

Exmpl: pyramids in Egypt viewed from the city

Postmodern architecture

More high rise buildings rather than boxy concrete/brick structures.

Traditional architecture

Influenced by the environment and built with avaible local materials reflective of history culture and climate.

Globalization

The trend towards increased cultural and economic connections between people, businesses, and organizations throughout the world across borders.

Cultural convergence

The process of 2 or more cultures coming into contact with eachother and adopting eachothers traits to become more alike.

Exmpl: McDonald’s adopting traits in other parts of the world to for their needs.

Cultural Diffusion

The spread of cultural items, like ideas, technologies, and styles from one culture to another, or within a single culture.

Exmpl: by migration, trade, or mass media.

Hearth

A place from which an innovation, culture, and ideas originates and then spreads.

Relocation diffusion

The spread of an idea through physical movement of people from one place to another.

Expansion diffusion

The spread of an idea, innovation, or cultural trait from a central location resulting in a continuous increasing number of individuals/groups adopting it.

Contagious diffusion

The rapid, widespread, diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population.

Hierarchical Diffusion

The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of high authority or power to other other ‘lower class’ persons or place.

Syncretism

The combining of characteristics of 2 groups into a new cultural or religious entity.

Stimulus Diffusion

The spread of an idea but not the idea itself, but a new idea or innovation derived from the original one.

Assimilation

The process by which a groups cultural features are altered to resemble those of another group to where they become indistinguishable.

Acculturation

The process where one culture group adopts traits, like language or practices, from another culture due to contact. Which results in modification of the original culture.

Creolization

The process of blending different cultures and languages to create new ones.

Language family

A collection of languages related through common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history.

Dialects

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

Lingua Franca

A language used as a common means of communication by people who speak different native languages especially in trade, business, or diplomacy,

Exmpl: English is considered the lingua Franca for international business, education, and tech.

Universalizing religion

A religion that actively seeks to converts and seeks to be practiced by people from all over the world.

Ethnicity

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

Centripetal force

A cultural value that tends to unify a people.

Exmpl: sharing a common language

Centrifugal forces

A cultural value that tends to pull people apart.

Colonialism

Effort of a country to establish settlements in another territory to impose its political, economic, and cultural principles on that territory.

Ethnic neighborhoods

Area/neighborhood occupied by migrants who share a common ethnic background and settle in an area within a city.

Judaism

First monotheistic faith. Which follow in the teaching of the Torah and believes in one god. Deeply influenced the development of universalizing religions like Christianity and Islam.

Multiculturalism

Allowing many individual cultures to exist within one country.

Indigenous communities

Ethnic group that are original inhabitants of a region and have historical connections to the land.

Imperialism

Political strategy that involves a country extending its power and influence to another country often through force, economic control, or political domination.

Hinduism

Ethnic religion that worships many deities. Centered in India and considered its local religion.

Sikhism

New universalizing monotheistic faith. Origins in the Punjab region of Indian subcontinent. Monotheistic faith that believes in one god.

Buddhism

Global Non-monotheistic universalizing religion and philological tradition. Centered in Southeast Asia, China, and Japan.

Islam

Monotheistic religion centered on the techings of the prophet Muhammad and Quran diffused from Saudi Arabia.

Christianity

Belief in god/jesus and that he died for our sins.

World religion

Religion that considered large, influential, and widespread.

Exmpl: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism

Indo-European

Large group of languages that might have descended from a language spoken thousand of years ago from Europe and the Indian subcontinent.