APHG Unit 3 Terms

Culture: The body of customary beliefs, social norms, and material traits that together constitute a group of peoples’ distinct traditions. Religion and language are big parts of culture.

Cultural Trait: Material objects and activities, such as food and clothing, as well as languages and other shared cultural practices that most group members do.

Artifacts: The visible objects and technologies that a culture creates, such as houses and buildings, clothing, tools, toys, and land-use practices.

Sociofacts: Structures and organizations that influence social behavior, such as families, governments, educational systems, and religious organizations.

Mentifacts: The central, enduring elements of a culture that reflect its shared ideas, values, knowledge, and beliefs.

Popular culture: The widespread behaviors, beliefs, and practices of ordinary people in society at a given point in time.

Traditional culture: Composed of long-established behaviors, beliefs, and practices passed down from generation to generation, such as languages, food, ceremonies, and customs.

Cultural norms: The shared standards and patterns that guide the behavior of a group of people, play an important role in upholding traditions and keep traditional culture from changing.

Ethnocentrism: The tendency of ethnic groups to evaluate other groups according to preconceived ideas originating from their own culture.

Cultural Relativism: The evaluation of a culture solely by its unique standards. 

Cultural Landscape: The human imprint on the landscape, and it offers clues to cultural practices and priorities, both past and present.

Identity: How humans make sense of themselves and how they wish to be viewed by others – how do cultural landscapes influence and reflect a group’s identity, and vice-versa?

Sequent Occupance: The notion that successive societies leave behind their cultural imprint, a collection of evidence about human character and experiences within a geographic region, which shapes the cultural landscape.

Ethnicity: The state of belonging to a group of people who share common cultural characteristics. 

Ethnic neighborhoods: Cultural landscapes within communities of people outside of their areas of origin.

Traditional architecture: Established building styles of different cultures, religions, and places – was originally influenced by the environment and is based on localized needs and construction materials

Postmodern architecture: Emerged in the 1960s as a reaction to “ modern” designs, which emphasized form, structure, and materials. 

Religion: A system of spiritual beliefs that helps form cultural perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, and values – the motives behind observable cultural behaviors and practices.

Pilgrimage: A journey to a holy place for spiritual reasons. 

Language: The carrier of human thoughts and cultural identities.

Toponyms: Help define what is unique about a place, such as its geographic features or history.

Gendered spaces: When a society has strict roles for men and women, certain spaces may be designed and deliberately incorporated into the landscape to accommodate gender roles. 

Gender identity: One’s innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves.

Safe spaces: Spaces of acceptance for people such as members of the LGBTQIA+ community who are sometimes marginalized by society.

Gentrification: The renovations and improvements conforming to middle-class preferences, has driven up the demands for housing and the cost of living in these neighborhoods, making it difficult for less affluent more vulnerable LGBTQIA+ populations to live there.

Third place: Coined in the late 1980s, refers to a communal space such as a coffee shop, fitness center, or bookstore that is separate from home (first place) or work (second place).

 Sense of place: Fill a geographic location with meaning by connecting memories and feelings to it. 

Placemaking: A community-driven process in which people collaborate to create a place where they can live, work, play, and learn.

Dialects: A variation of a standard language specific to a general area.

Adherents: The people who are loyal to a belief, religion, or organization.

Denominations: Separate organizations that unite a number of local congregations. 

Sect: A relatively small group that has separated from an established denomination.

Centripetal force: A force that unites a group of people. 

Centrifugal force: A force that divides a group of people. 

Diffusion: The process by which a cultural trait spreads from one place to another over time.

Cultural hearth: Where traits originate from and spreads.

Expansion diffusion: When an aspect of culture spreads outward from where it originated. As it spreads, the trait also remains in its place of origin – that is, it expands outward from its hearth.

Contagious diffusion: Occurs when an idea or cultural trait spreads adjacently, or to people or places that are next to or adjoining one another, like a disease.

Hierarchical diffusion: The spread of an idea or trait from a person or place of power or authority to other people and places.

Stimulus diffusion: Occurs when the fundamental idea behind a cultural trait stimulates a new innovation.

Lingua franca: A common language used among speakers of different languages, as the conquered peoples adopted the language of the conqueror.

Creolization: Sometimes rather than leading to the adoption of of a common cultural trait, interactions between cultures can result in two or more cultural elements blending together.

Cultural convergence: As cultures interact with one another, they become more similar, sharing and adopting one another’s ideas, innovations, and other cultural traits.

Cultural divergence: As cultures interact with one another, they become less similar.

Acculturation: When cultures come together, either through migration or some form of expansion diffusion.

Assimilation: A category of acculturation in which the interaction of two cultures results in one culture adopting almost all of the customs, traditions, language, and other cultural traits of the other.

Syncretism: Sometimes traits from two or more cultures blend together to form a new custom, idea, value, or practice.

Multiculturalism: Often occurs in large cities, where people from many different cultures live in close proximity.

Cultural appropriation: The act of adopting elements of another culture

Collectivist cultures: People are expected to conform to collective responsibility within the family and to be obedient to and respectful of elder family members.

Language family: The largest group of related languages and includes those languages that share a common ancestral language from a particular hearth or origin.

Isolate: Has no known historic or linguistic with any other known language.

Language branch: This collection of languages within a family shares a common origin and was separated from other branches in the same family thousands of years ago.

Language groups: Languages within a branch that share a common ancestor in the relatively recent past and have vocabularies with a high degree of overlap.

Universalizing religions: Attempt to appeal to a wide variety of people and are open to membership by all, regardless of a person’s location, language, or ethnicity.

Christianity: The religion is based on the teachings of Jesus, a man believed by the faithful to be God’s son. Jesus taught his followers that they should love and care for their fellow humans. Started in what is now the West Bank and Israel around the beginning of the common area.

Islam: Muhammad, who is considered by adherents the last messenger of Allah (God), introduced Islam to the Arab people, it has deep ties with Christianity and Judaism. The world’s second-largest religion originated in the cities of Mecca and Medina on the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century.

Buddhism: Is based on the teachings of Siddartha Gautama, known as Buddha, or the “Enlightened One.” Arose in northeastern India between the mid-sixth and mid-fourth centuries B.C. (B.C.E)

Sikhism: Sikhs followers of Sikhism identify ten gurus or religious teachers who guided the community in its first century and a half. Its hearth was in northwestern India in the area of Punjab.

Ethnic religion: These are closely tied with a particular ethnic group generally in a particular region.

Hinduism: Hindus believe in one eternal spirit called Brahman. Hindu deities, or gods and goddesses, are different expressions of Brahman. The earliest evidence dates from 1500 B.C. (B.C.E) in South Asia, and is practiced by 80% of India.

Judaism: Founded by Abraham in Southwest Asia in present-day Israel and Lebanon about 4,000 years ago, and is the origin of both Christianity and Islam. A monotheistic religion that believes in God.

Secularized: A status many Jewish people practice, not religious identifying as Jews through ethnicity and culture, not a religious practice.

Apartheid: (in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.