AP Human Geo 3.1 - 3.8

Introduction to Culture

  • Culture:
    • Learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects of a group.
    • Material Culture: Physical artifacts.
    • Non-Material Culture: Non-physical ideas and belief systems.
  • Three major types of culture:
    • Indigenous, Local, and Popular.

Types of Culture

  • Indigenous Culture: People native to an area.
  • Local Culture:
    • Homogenous group with strong beliefs and customs.
    • Rarely changes.
    • Tries to remain isolated.
  • Popular Culture:
    • Large, diverse, and heterogeneous group.
    • Heavily influenced by social media, television, and film.
    • Widespread and constantly changing.
    • Can lead to placelessness.

Cultural Traits

  • Single attribute of a culture; building blocks of culture.
  • Material (visible) traits: Food, clothing, land use, architecture, sports, and dance.
  • Non-Material (invisible) traits: Language, religion, family structure, and beliefs/practices.

Culture Region

  • Area of similar culture with common language, beliefs, behaviors, and artifacts.
  • Varies in scale from small (street) to large (region).

Attitudes Toward Cultural Difference

  • Cultural Relativism:
    • Cultures should not be judged based on another culture.
    • Beliefs/activities should be understood in their own cultural context.
  • Ethnocentrism:
    • Judging other cultures based on the rules of your own culture.
    • Belief that one's own culture is superior.
    • Can lead to racism.

Cultural Landscapes

  • Landscapes shaped by human involvement; visible reflection of culture.
  • Narratives of culture and expressions of regional identity.
  • Examples include:
    • National Parks - preserve unique environments
    • Bilingual Signs - reflect heritage retention
    • Gender-Segregated Schools - reflect attitudes toward gender roles
    • Skyscrapers - reflect economic power.
  • Characteristics:
    • Agricultural & industrial practices.
    • Religious & linguistic elements.
    • Evidence of sequent occupance.
    • Traditional & postmodern architecture.
    • Land-use patterns.

Characteristics of Cultural Landscapes

  • Agricultural Landscape: Use of traditional/modern techniques; influence of natural features.
  • Industrial Landscape: Large industrial presence indicates lack of transition to post-industrial economy.
  • Religious Characteristics: Houses of worship, cemeteries, food taboos.
  • Linguistic Characteristics: Visible signage

Cultural Landscapes and Cultural Beliefs

  • Sequent Occupance: Successive societies leave cultural imprints, contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape; shows the history of a location.
  • Traditional (Vernacular) Architecture: Use of local materials and knowledge; simple and practical.
  • Postmodern Architecture: Reaction against formality and lack of variety; started in the 1960s.
  • Cultural Attitudes: Impact on the cultural landscape (e.g., ghettos, ethnic neighborhoods).
  • Gendered Spaces: Areas considered appropriate for specific genders.

Cultural Patterns

  • Language: Mutually intelligible sounds and symbols used for communication; reflects and shapes culture.
    • Standard Language: Published, widely used, and taught.
  • Regional Patterns of Language: Contribute to sense of place and placemaking.

Regional Patterns of Language - Dialects

  • Variations of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines.
    • Spelling, vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation, cadence, and pace of speech.
  • Isogloss: Boundary between variations in word usage or pronunciations.

Regional Patterns of Religion

  • Christianity:
    • Three main branches: Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox.
    • Shapes global cultural landscape and contributes to sense of place.
    • Christians bury the dead in cemeteries.
    • Roman Catholic churches tend to be ornate; Protestant churches are more modest; Eastern Orthodox churches have domes with a cross.
  • Islam:
    • Houses of worship are called mosques, generally have a dome and minarets.
    • Muslims bury the dead in cemeteries.
  • Judaism:
    • Houses of worship are called synagogues; look for the Star of David.
    • Jews bury the dead in cemeteries.
  • Buddhism:
    • Houses of worship are called temples; symbolize five elements.
    • Buddhists traditionally cremate the dead but may bury them in cemeteries.
  • Hinduism:
    • Communal houses of worship are called Mandirs.
    • Hindus cremate the dead.
  • Sikhism:
    • Houses of worship are called Gurdwaras.
    • Sikhs are generally cremated.

Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces

  • Centripetal Forces: Promote national unity and solidarity (e.g., common religion, language, ethnicity).
  • Centrifugal Forces: Divide a state from within.

Religion as Centripetal and Centrifugal Force

  • Religion as a Centripetal Force: Unites people sharing the same religion.
  • Religion as a Centrifugal Force: Divides people (e.g., religious hostilities, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia).

Ethnicity as a Centripetal and a Centrifugal Force

  • Ethnicity as a Centripetal Force: Uniting force when people share the same ethnicity.
  • Ethnicity as a Centrifugal Force: Ethnic conflict in heterogeneous populations.
  • Hanification in China: Diluting the power of minority ethnic groups by moving Han Chinese into minority ethnic areas.

Cultural Diffusion

  • The spread of cultural beliefs and social activities from one group of people to another.
    • Two main types: Relocation and Expansion.

Relocation Diffusion

  • Movement of people who bring an idea with them to a new place.
  • Example: Christianity brought to Africa by missionaries and colonists.

Expansion Diffusion

  • Idea or innovation spreads outward from the hearth (origin).
    • Contagious: Rapid, widespread diffusion by direct contact; affects all areas uniformly.
    • Hierarchical/Reverse Hierarchical: Spreads to interconnected people or places first; may skip some people and places. Reverse Hierarchical - The idea spreads from rural to urban areas.
    • Stimulus: People adopt an underlying idea or process but modify the idea.
    • Example - McDonalds restaurants in India don’t sell hamburgers due to religious taboos.

Slowing/Preventing Diffusion

  • Time-distance decay: The farther away and the longer it takes for an idea to reach an area, the less likely it will be adopted.
  • Cultural barriers (taboos).
  • Cultural lag: When a social group is economically or psychologically unresponsive to change.

Historical Causes of Diffusion

  • Interactions between cultural traits lead to new forms of cultural expression.
    • Pidgin: Simplified grammar and vocabulary for specific functions like trade; not a native language.
    • Creolization: Language resulting from mixing a colonizer's language with the indigenous language.
    • Lingua Franca: Language spoken between speakers of two different languages for commerce or trade.

Shaping the Patterns and Practices of Culture

  • Colonialism and Imperialism: One nation assumes control over another; policy extending a country's power and influence through force.
  • Trade: Ideas and goods move across space.

Contemporary Causes of Diffusion

  • Urbanization and Globalization: Both cause cultural change.
  • Globalization: Intensified interaction among people, governments, and companies of different countries.
  • Urbanization: Product of rural to urban migration.
  • What influences cultural change today?
    • Media.
    • Technological Change.
    • Politics.
    • Economics.
    • Social Relationships.

Communication Technologies and Cultural Change

  • Time-Space Convergence: Caused by technological changes in transportation and communication (the internet); accelerates interactions and cultural change.
  • Cultural Convergence: Two cultures become more alike as their interactions increase.
  • Cultural Divergence: When a culture separates or isolates itself.

Diffusion of Religion and Language

  • Language Divisions:
    • Language family.
    • Language branch.
    • Language group.
    • Language.
    • Dialect.
    • Accent.

Language Families, Branches, and Groups

  • Language Families: Related languages derived from an earlier common language.
  • Language Branch: Languages derived from a common family, but split into individual languages.
  • Language Group: Several languages sharing a recent common origin.

Origin of Indo-European Languages

  • Germanic, Romance, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian languages stemmed from Proto-Indo-European.
    • Nomadic Warrior Theory: Kurgans (nomadic pastoralists and warriors) spread the Proto-Indo-European language through migration.
    • Sedentary Farmer Theory: Proto-Indo-European speakers in Eastern Turkey spread language and agricultural practices.

Diffusion of Indo-European Languages

  • Most spoken language family.
    • 3. 5 BILLION people speak an Indo-European language.
  • Four Main Branches: Germanic, Romance, Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic.

Origin of English

  • Evolved from language spoken by Germanic tribes.
  • Viking invasion from Norway.
  • Norman (French) invasion.

Diffusion of English

  • British colonialism.
  • English is the official language in many former British colonies.

Diffusion of Language - Toponyms

  • Toponyms: Place names.
    • Migration.
    • Changes in power and influence.
    • Colonial renaming of local places.
    • Post-colonial independence.
    • Indigenous People.
    • Religion.

Two Main Types of Religion

  • Universalizing Religions:
    • Faiths that claim applicability to all humans.
    • Open to anyone willing to commit.
    • Individual Founder.
    • Relatively recent origin.
    • Holidays based on events in founder’s life.
    • Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, and Buddhism.
  • Ethnic Religions:
    • Strong territorial and cultural group identification.
    • Do not proselytize.
    • Adherents tend to be spatially concentrated.
    • No known founder.
    • Holidays based on local climate and agricultural practice.
    • Shinto, Hinduism, Taoism, and Judaism.

Diffusion of Universalizing Religions

  • Christianity:
    • Hearth: Middle East.
    • Missionaries diffused the religion worldwide (Relocation and Expansion Diffusion)
  • Islam:
    • Hearth: Middle East.
    • Relocation and Expansion Diffusion.
  • Buddhism:
    • Hearth is in South Asia.
    • Relocation and Expansion Diffusion.
  • Sikhism:
    • Hearth: Punjab in Northern India.
    • Relocation and Expansion Diffusion.

Diffusion of Ethnic Religions

  • Judaism:
    • Hearth: Middle East.
    • Relocation Diffusion due to persecution.
    • Jews clustered in the USA and Israel today.
  • Hinduism:
    • Hearth: South Asia.
    • Hindus are clustered in India.

Effects of the Diffusion of Culture

  • Diffusion causes changes to the cultural landscape.
    • Acculturation: Adopting practices of a larger group while maintaining elements of own culture.
    • Assimilation: Total loss of culture due to contact with a more dominant culture.
    • Syncretism: Mixing of religion and cultures to create unique rituals, artwork, and beliefs.
    • Multiculturalism: Coexistence of several cultures in one society.