Cultural Patterns: Language, Religion, and Ethnicity

3.3 Cultural Patterns

Objective and Essential Learning

• Explain patterns and landscapes of language, religion, ethnicity, and gender.

• Regional patterns of language, religion, and ethnicity contribute to a sense of place, enhance placemaking, and shape the global cultural landscape.

• Language, ethnicity, and religion are factors in creating centripetal and centrifugal forces.

Regional Patterns

• Regional patterns of language, religion, and ethnicity contribute to a sense of place, enhance placemaking, and shape the global cultural landscape.

• Sense of Place: Unique attributes of a specific location - cultural influences and feelings evoked by people in a place. Distinctiveness.

  • Example: Great Wall of China

Regional Patterns

• Cultural Realm: Areas of the world that share cultural traits such as language families, religious traditions, food preferences, architecture, and/or a shared history. These cultural traits comprise a similar cultural landscape (although not the exact same) in each cultural realm.

• Note: Remember the importance of scale of analysis! A small scale view will not always be totally accurate.

Regional Patterns: Anglo-American

• Language: English (Indo-European Family)

• Religion: Christianity

• Shared History: European settlement & colonization

• Ethnicity: Indigenous, European, African, Hispanic

Regional Patterns: Latin America

• Language: Spanish (Indo-European Family)

• Religion: Roman Catholicism

• Ethnicity: Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latino, European, Indigenous

• Shared History: Colonized by Europeans

Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces

Cultural factors such as language, ethnicity, and religion can be:

• CENTRIPETAL FORCES: Characteristics that unify a country and provide stability.

  • Examples: Common language, ethnicity, religion

• CENTRIFUGAL FORCES: Characteristics that divide a country and create instability, conflict, and violence.

  • Examples: Multiple competing ethnicities, languages, or religions

Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces

• Examples:

  • Religion in Northern Ireland: Shows a map of religious dominance by district in 2013, distinguishing between Protestant, Catholic, and Mixed areas.

  • Religion in Iran: Shows the Estimated distribution of Shia Muslims in the Middle East.

Objective and Essential Learning (Repeated)

• Explain patterns and landscapes of language, religion, ethnicity, and gender.

• Regional patterns of language, religion, and ethnicity contribute to a sense of place, enhance placemaking, and shape the global cultural landscape.

• Language, ethnicity, and religion are factors in creating centripetal and centrifugal forces.