Ap Human Geography | Unit 3 Vocabulary Terms 1-107

Culture

All of a group’s learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects. Develop through experiences, not merely transmitted through genetics.

Visible Culture

A visible force seen in a group’s actions, possessions, and influence on the landscape.

Invisible Culture

An invisible force guiding people through shared belief systems, customs, and traditions.

Cultural Traits

Visible and invisible elements in culture. Units of transmission that permit diffusion and create traditions.

Cultural Complex

A series of interrelated traits. A distinctive pattern of activities, beliefs, rites, and traditions associated with one central feature of life in a particular culture.

Taboos

Behaviors heavily discouraged by a culture.

Traditional Culture

Encompass all three cultural designations. All three types are the function of passing down long–held beliefs, values, and practices and are generally resistant to rapid changes in their culture. Tribes or other small groups of people that have not been affected by technology or the modern world.

Folk Culture

The beliefs and practices of small, homogenous groups of people, often living in rural areas that are relatively isolated and slow to change.

Indigenous Culture

When members of an ethnic group reside in their ancestral lands, and typically possess unique cultural traits, such as speaking their own exclusive language.

Globalization

The increased integrations of the world economy since the 1970s. The process of intensified interaction among peoples, governments, and companies of different countries around the globe.

Popular Culture

When cultural traits (clothing, music, movies, types of business) spread quickly over a large area and are adopted by various groups.

Horizontal diversity

Each traditional culture has its own customs and language that makes it distinct from other culture groups. People within each group are usually homogeneous, or very similar to each other.

Vertical diversity

Modern urban societies are usually heterogeneous, or exhibiting differences, within the society and usually contain numerous multiethnic neighborhoods.

Artifacts/Material Culture

Tangible things, or those that can be experienced by senses. (ex: art, clothing, food, music, sports, and housing types)

Mentifact/Nonmaterial Culture

Intangible concepts, or those not having a physical presence. (ex: beliefs, values, practices, and aesthetics).

Sociofacts

Ways people organize their society and relate to one another.

Placelessness

Phenomenon in which many modern cultural landscapes exhibit a great deal of homogeneity. Common culture, similar architecture, related socioeconomic status, and other related factors.

Cultural Landscape

The visible reflection of a culture or the built environment.

Traditional Architecture

Style reflects a local culture’s history, beliefs, values, and community adaptations to the environment, and typically utilizes locally available materials.

Contemporary Architecture

Style that uses multiple advances to create buildings that rotate, curve, and stretch the limits of size and height.

Ethnicity

Membership within a group of people who have common experiences and share similar characteristics such as ancestry, language, customs, and history. Based upon group cultural traits.

Ethnic Enclaves

Clusters of people of the same culture, who are often surrounded by people of the dominant culture in the region.

Gendered Spaces

Certain behaviors have been acceptable for only one gender, and often only in certain spaces. Men have commonly operated more freely than women in public spaces, while certain private spaces have been reserved for women. Clarifies the importance of cultural values on the distribution of power in societies.

Cultural Regions

Regions usually determined based on characteristics such as religion, language, and ethnicity.

Sacred Places

Specific places and natural features that have religious significance.

Christian Landscape

Churches often feature a tall steeple topped with a cross. Believe Jesus was resurrected after dying on a cross. Dome–shaped roofs in the eastern Mediterranean, steep–pitched (snow) in northern Europe. Bury the dead in cemeteries, although types of cemeteries may vary greatly. Most burials are underground except in places where the water table is high.

Hindu Landscape

Temples often have elaborately carved exteriors with multiple manifestations of deities or significant characters. Thousands of shrines and temples. Sacred sites (ex: Ganges River) provide pilgrims a place to bathe for the purpose of purifications. Many shrines and temples are located near rivers and streams. Practice cremation as an act of purification (expensive in some places [shortage of wood]). Ashes often spread in the Ganges river.

Buddhist Landscape

Emphasize meditating and living in harmony with nature. Features represented in stupas, structures to store important relics and memorialize important events and beliefs. Stupas were often built to symbolize the five aspects of nature–earth, water, fire, air, and space. Pagodas (common architectural style). Decision to cremate or bury is a personal choice.

Jewish Landscape

Worship in synagogues or temples. Once concentrated in the Middle East but spread throughout the world because of exile or persecution (the Diaspora). Burial of dead customarily occurs before sundown on the day following the death.

Diaspora

When one group of people is dispersed to various locations.

Islamic Landscape

Mosque is the most prominent structure on the landscape and is usually located in the center of town. Mosques have downs surrounded by a few minarets (beacons) from which daily prayer is called. Burial is as soon as possible in cemeteries.

Shinto Landscape

Cultural hearth is Japan. Emphasized honoring one’s ancestors and the relationship between people and nature. Common landscape feature of shrines is an impressive gateway (torii) to mark the transition from the outside world to a sacred place.

Charter Group

The first group to establish cultural and religious customs in a space.

Ethnic Islands (Rural)

Cultural imprints revolve around housing types and agricultural dwellings that reflect their heritage. Maintain a strong and long–lasting sense of cohesion.

Ethnic Neighborhoods (Urban)

Often occupied by migrants who settle in a charter group’s former space. The charter group has already shaped much of the landscape, byt new arrivals create their own influence as well.

Sequent Occupancy

Process in which ethnic groups move in and out of neighborhoods and create new cultural imprints on the landscape.

Neolocalism

The process of re–embracing the uniqueness and authenticity of a place.

Cultural Patterns

Consist of related sets of cultural traits and complexes that crease similar behaviors across space.

Culture Hearth

Where a religion or ethnicity began, and then track its movement and predict its future direction.

Regional distribution of religions in the US

*Congregationalists are still strong in New England, where their English ancestors settled in the 1600s. *Baptists and Methodists are most common in the Southeast, where these denominations were spread by traveling preachers in the 1800s. *Lutherans live mostly in the Midwest, where their German or Scandinavian ancestors, who immigrated in the late 1800s, could find good farmland. *Many Mormons live in or near Utah, where their founders settled in the mid–1800s after religious persecution drove them out of Missouri and Illinois. *Roman Catholics are most common in urban areas in the Northeast and throughout the Southwest. *Jews, Muslims, and Hindus live most often in urban areas, the traditional home to immigrants.

Nationality

Based on people’s connection to a particular country.

Centripetal Forces

Forces that unify a group of people or a region.

Centrifugal Forces

Forces that divide a group of people or a region.

Sharia

The legal framework of a country derived from Islamic edicts taken from the holy book (Qur’an).

Blue Laws

Laws that restrict certain activities on a Sunday. Also known as Sunday laws.

Food taboos

Prohibitions against eating and drinking certain items.

Fundamentalism

An attempt to follow a literal interpretation of a religious faith.

Theocracies

Countries whose governments are run by religious leaders through the use of religious laws.

Ethnocentric

They believe their own cultural group is more important and superior to other cultures.

Cultural Relativism

The concept that a person’s or group’s beliefs, values, norms, and practices should be understood from the perspective of the other group’s culture.

Cultural Appropriation

The action of adopting traits, icons, or other elements of another culture.

Diffusion

The spread of information, ideas, behaviors, and other aspects of culture from their hearths to wider areas.

Relocation Diffusion

The spread of culture and/or cultural traits by people who migrate and carry their cultural traits with them.

Expansion Diffusion

The spread of cultural traits outward through exchange without migration.

Contagious Diffusion

Occurs when a cultural trait spreads continuously outward from its hearth through contact among people.

Hierarchical Diffusion

The spread of culture outward from the most interconnected places or from centers of wealth and influence.

Reverse Hierarchical Diffusion

When a trait diffuses from a group of lower status to a group of higher status.

Stimulus Diffusion

When an underlying idea from a culture hearth is adopted by another culture but the adopting group modifies or rejects one trait.

Imperialism

A broader concept that includes a variety of ways of influencing another country or group of people by direct conquest, economic control, or cultural dominance.

Colonialism

A particular type of imperialism in which people move into and settle on the land of another country.

Animism

The belief that non–living objects, such as rivers or mountains, possess spirits.

Native Speakers

Those who use the language learned from birth.

Lingua Franca

A common language used by people who do not share the same native language.

Slang

Words used informally by a segment of the population.

Pidgin Language

A simplified mixture of two languages. Fewer grammar rules and a smaller vocabulary than either language but is not the native language of either group.

Creole Language

A blend of languages. Over time, two or more separate languages can mix and develop a more formal structure and vocabulary.

Social Constructs

Ideas, concepts, or perceptions that have been created and accepted by people in a society or social group and are not created by nature. Influence culture through media, technological change, politics, economics, and social relationships.

Time–space Convergence

The greater interconnection between places that results from improvements in transportation.

Cultural Convergence

Cultures are becoming similar to each other and sharing more cultural traits, ideas, and beliefs.

Cultural Divergence

The idea that a culture may change over time as the elements of distance, time, physical separation, and modern technology create divisions and changes.

Linguists

Scientists who study languages.

Language Tree

Suggests how several languages are related to each other, as well as how one language grows out of another.

Indo–European Language Family

A large group of languages that might have descended from a language spoken around 6,000 years ago. Includes about 2.8 billion native speakers of between 400 and 500 languages.

Romance Languages

Dozens of distinct regional languages diverged from the unifying language of Latin.

Isoglosses

The boundaries between variations in pronunciations or word usage.

Dialects

Regional variations of a language.

Adages

Sayings that attempt to express a truth about life.

Toponyms

Names of places.

Official Language

Language designated by law to be the language of government.

Homogenous

Made up largely of ethnically similar people.

Adherents

Believers in their faith.

Ethnic Religions

Belief traditions that emphasize strong cultural characteristics among their followers.

Universal Religions

Actively seeks converts to its faith regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. Open to all people regardless of their ethnicity, language, social status, or nationality.

Hinduism

Includes the worship of many deities; All deities are manifestations of one god; Believe in karma and dharma; worked closely with caste system; Believe in concept of reincarnation or rebirth based on the quality of life a person lived; A soul would spiritual advance enough to become liberated from this cycle of death a rebirth; rivers considered sacred and symbolic of life and purification of sin.

Polytheistic

Having many gods.

Monotheistic

Having one god.

Karma

The idea that behaviors have consequences in the present life or a future life.

Caste System

A rigid class structure that shaped Indian society.

Buddhism

Grew out of the teachings of a prince named Siddhartha who became known as the Buddha (enlightened one). He had been meditating for several days underneath a bodhi tree when he finally understood the cause of suffering and how to end it; Four noble truths; Eightfold path.

Four noble truths

The foundational principles of Buddhism which spark awareness of suffering as the nature of existence, its cause, and how to live without it. Simply put, suffering exists; it has a cause; it has an end; and it has a cause to bring about its end.

Eightfold path

The path to nirvana, comprising eight aspects in which an aspirant must become practiced: right views, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.

Sikhism

A relatively new universalizing monotheistic faith; founded by Guru Nanak in the Punjab region that crosses the border of India and Pakistan during the 16th century; Faith stresses serving others, honesty, hard work, and generosity rather than rituals. All men who are baptized add the name Singh (lion) and women add the name Kaur (princess); Attend service once a week at a gurdwara; most holy place is the Golden Temple in Amristar, India.

Gurdwara

A Sikh’s place of worship. Have a worship gathering space and countain a food kitchen that serves meals to people of all faiths.

Judaism

Among the first monotheistic faiths; believe that the writing known as the Torah expresses divine will; Holocaust strengthened the movement to create a predominantly Jewish state in the Middle East (Israel formed 1948).

Torah

Sacred writing expressing divine will. Supplemented by other writings as well as unwritten laws and customs.

Holocaust

The systematic murder of six million Jews by Nazi Gemany.

Christianity

Followers of a Jewish teacher (Jesus), evolved into their own religion based on the belief that Jesus was the son of God and the savior of humans. Jesus emphasized the importance of faith, love, and peace. Spread outward from the Middle East to become the dominant religion in Europe and then to America and other parts of the world. Three main branches: Roman Catholic(Romance languages), Protestant(North European and Germanic languages), and Eastern Orthodox(Eastern European languages)–with hundreds of further subdivisions. [Ethiopia southern diffusion]

Islam

Religion followed by Muslims; believe that Allah (God in Arabic) revealed his teachings to humans through a series of prophets; last was Muhammad (lived in Saudi Arabia); Quaran–Five Pillars of Islam; sharia; Sunni & Shia.

Five pillars

Core principles of the Quran: Belief in one god–Allah; ritual prayer; almsgiving (giving of wealth or volunteering for charitable causes); fasting (abstaining from food or drink); pilgrimage to Mecca.

Sunni

90 percent of Islam adherents.