AP Human Geography Unit 3: Culture

Culture: Shared beliefs, values, practices, behaviors & technologies shared by a society

• Cultural Traits: visible & invisible attributes

  • Artifacts: visible, physical objects

    • ex: house, clothing, etc

  • Sociofacts: way(s) a society behaves

    • ex: family, government, etc

  • Mentifacts: beliefs, values, knowledge of culture

    • languages, food, etc

Types of Culture

• Folk Culture: small, homogenous groups of people

  • living in rural areas

  • unlikely to change

    • Architecture:

      • materials from the environment

    • Land Use:

      • agricultural

      • sense of place: unique attributes of specific a place

• Pop Culture: large, heterogenous groups of people

  • living in urban areas

  • quick to change or adapt a change

    • Architecture:

      • manufactured

    • Land Use:

      • urban & suburban

      • placelessness: loss of uniqueness

Cultural Norms: Agreed upon cultural practices

Cultural Taboos: Behaviors heavily discouraged

Ethnocentrism: Looking at a culture with a owns’ own standards

Cultural Relativism: An unbiased view of someone’s culture

Acculturation: A change that occurs within a culture when it a practice(s) from another culture

Transculturation: An equal exchange/two-way flow of traits between cultural groups

• ex: using chopsticks to pick up chips

Syncretism: Two cultural traits blend together to make a new cultural trait

• languages

• intermarriage

Assimilation: One culture is abandoned & the person adopts a new culture

Multiculturalism: the acceptance of different cultures which exists in close proximity

Cultural Appropriation: The unknowledgeable or the inappropriate adoption of customs in a culture

Language

• English is the official language of 57 countries, besides America.

Dialect: regional variation of a language distinguished by distinctive vocabulary

Isogloss: a word that is not used by the whole nation

Language Family: a collection of languages - before recorded history

Language Branch: a collection of languages connected by an ancestral languages - several thousand years ago

• branches are within a language family

Language Groups: a collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin - relatively few differences

Germanic Branch:

• English belongs to the West Germanic language group

  • structurally similar

  • some words are similar

• High Germanic

  • founded in high elevations

  • basis of modern German

• Low Germanic

  • founded in lower elevations

  • includes Dutch, Flemish, Afrikaans, etc

Indo-Iranian:

• has the most speakers of the Indo-European languages

• Easter Groups (Indic)

  • spoken in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh

• Western Groups (Iranian)

  • spoken in Iran & neighboring countries

Boltic Slavic:

• East Slavic & Baltic

  • Russian most widely spoken language

• West & South

  • most spoken Polish, Czech, & Slovak

  • a small difference found in the languages

Romance:

• mostly spoken in Spain, Portugal, France, & Italy

• developed from Latin

• vulgar latin - spoken by the masses

Creolized Language: Mixing of colonists & indigenous

• Germanic, Boltic-Slavic, Romance, and Indo-Iranian all stem from the Indo-European family

  • all come from one ancestor: Proto-Indo-European

Lingua Franca: the common language people use when they speak different native languages

Pidgin Language: a simplified version of a lingua franca

• no native speakers

• Trade is a main way in which languages diffuse

• Crede Language: a pidgin language that develops into a new combined language

• centripetal can unit a country

• centrifugal can isolate languages/people

Religion

Monotheism: belief in one god

Polytheism: belief in multiple gods

Animism: belief that inanimate objects & animals have spirts & conscious life

All Religions Have:

Cosmogony: a set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe

Calendars: aligns with important things in the religion

• different from a year calendar

Sacred Spaces: place where religious figures & congregations meet to perform religious ceremonies

Sacred Places: a place that is important to the religion

Universalizing Religions: religions that actively seek out to convert others

• believe that their religion can help

Ethnic Religions: religions that their members are born into the faith

• do not actively seek out new members

Universalizing:

Branch: large fundamental division of a religion

Denomination: division of a branch

Sect: small group that broke away from the denomination

• spread through expansion and relocation diffusion

• hearth is in Asia

• Christianity spread through relocation diffusion and missionaries

• ex: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism

Ethic:

• found near the hearth of the religion

  • spread through relocation diffusion

• universalizing religions can and often replace ethnic religions

• ex: Hinduism, Judaism

Religious Fundamentalism: a literal interpretation & strict adherence of a religion

Government in Religion:

• separation of church & state

• some believe including religion as a way of life

  • ex: Islam

• Sharia: “the path”, set of principles that governs moral and religious lives of Muslims

• Taliban controls the Afghanistan government

  • strongly don’t like Western values

    • banned all Western culture

  • banned all things that do not represent Islam

Religion v. Religion:

• conflict most likely occurs at a boundary between two religious groups

• Interfaith Boundary: the boundaries between the worlds major religions

  • a religion v. another religion

• Intrafaith Boundary: the boundary within a religion