Untitled Flashcards Set

UNIT 1:  NATURE & PERSPECTIVE

Accessibility: the quality of being easy to obtain or use; transportation networks improve accessibility. It is also affected by the topography of the land (mountains, rivers, etc.) Space-time compression has improved accessibility of places.

Cartography: the science of making maps

Cartogram: a map in which some thematic mapping variable (Population, Income) is substituted for land area. The geometry or space of the map is distorted to convey the information of this alternate variable

Choropleth Map: shows the level of some variable (with shadings or colors) within predefined areas such as counties, states or countries

Climate: the long-term average weather condition at a particular location

Concentration: similar to a cluster, the geographic location of a dense group (buildings, trees, people)

Cultural landscape: The human imprint on the physical landscape.  Carl Sauer first used the term. An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area. 

Connection: the relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space 

Culture: the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition

Density: the frequency with which something exists within a given unit of space

Diffusion: the process of spread of a culture trait or trend from one place to another over time, there are types

Distance decay: the diminished importance and eventual disappearance of interaction, or a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin

Distribution: the arrangement of something across Earth's surface

Dot Maps: use a dot to represent the occurrence of some phenomenon in order to depict variation in density in a given area

Ecology: the scientific study of ecosystems

Environmental Determinism: A nineteenth and early twentieth century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. Geography was therefore the study of how the physical environment caused human activities.

Fieldwork: Field work is the process of observing and collecting data about people, cultures, and natural environments. Field work is conducted in the wild of our everyday surroundings rather than in the semi-controlled environments of a lab or classroom.

Formal Region: a region with one or more shared characteristics, such as a language region or a political entity like a city or state

Functional Region: based on an activity, a functional region has a node or starting point for the activity. The activity will decrease in frequency as you move away from the node (soda bottling, newspaper delivery, pizza delivery, commuting)

Geographic Information Science: the development and analysis of data about Earth acquired through satellite and other electronic information technologies

Geographic Information Systems (GIS): a computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data

Global Positioning System (GPS): a system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers.

Globalization - actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope

Hearth: the region from which innovative ideas originate

Hierarchical Diffusion: The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places. (something spreads down a hierarchy, like large cities to small ones, celebrities to everyone else)

Isolines: connect points of equal value on maps with the same name

Latitude : The numbering system used to indicate the location of parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance north and south of the equator. 

Location: The position of anything on Earth's surface. One of the five themes of geography.

Longitude: The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian (0 degrees). 

Map scale: The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface.

Mental (cognitive) map: a representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place that contains personal impressions of what is in the place and where the place is located.

Meridian: An arc drawn on a map between the north and south poles (known as longitude lines).

Networks: Connections that have a linear pattern and nodes, which are connecting points (indicated by dots on diagrams) or places of intersection, changing direction, etc. A transportation network refers to the framework of routes within a system of locations, identified as nodes. A route is a single link between two nodes that are part of a larger network that can refer to tangible routes such as roads and rails, or less tangible routes such as air and sea corridors. Communication networks can be drawn with similar diagrams.

Nonrenewable resources: something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by humans.

Parallel: A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and at right angles to the meridians (latitude lines).

Place: What is like, qualitatively, as opposed to just explaining its location. People infuse places with meaning and emotion.

Possibilism: The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives.

Reference maps: maps that contain a lot of information about the physical or cultural features of a place. Often used when traveling.

Region: Areas with shared processes or characteristics. The way geographers group places with similar characteristics. These can be based on culture, physical geography, agriculture or any activity, such as industry.

Relocation diffusion: The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

Remote sensing: The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long-distance methods.

Renewable resource: Something produced in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by humans.

Scale: Generally, the relationship between the portion of the Earth being studied and Earth as a whole. Changing scale means to study something at more than once scale (local, regional, global).

Sequent Occupance: the sequential imprints of occupants, whose impacts are layered one on top of the other so that these are seen in the cultural landscape

Site: the physical characteristics of a place

Situation: the location of a place relative to another place (relative location)

Space-time compression: The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems.

Spatial association: the relationship between the distribution of one feature and the distribution of another feature (industry and wealth; language and religion, for example).

Spatial pattern: placement, or arrangement of objects on Earth. It also includes the space in between those objects. Patterns may be recognized because of their arrangement; maybe in a line or by a clustering of points.

Stimulus diffusion: The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected.

Sustainability: The use of Earth's renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resource use in the future. The ability of something to go on as is, in the future.

Thematic Maps: maps that communicate data around a theme, or for a specific purpose. Types include Cartograms, Choropleth maps, Isoline (Contour), proportional symbol maps, flow or direction maps, etc.

Toponym: The name given to a portion of Earth's surface. Place name. Strongly indicates culture.

Vernacular (or perceptual) region: An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity. Characteristics may be hard to define or inconsistent between people. General rule, if people define their home that way, believe them. These regions exist as a conceptualization or an idea

UNIT 2: POPULATION & MIGRATION

Agricultural Density: the number of farmers per unit of agriculturally productive (arable) land.

Anthropocene: the current geological age; the period in which human activity has been the dominant influence on the environment.

Anti-natalist policy: (restrictive policy) a government policy that discourages more births in the population (one-child policy, birth control, sterilization)

Arithmetic Density: the total population divided by the total land area.

Baby Boom:  A cohort of individuals born in the United States between 1946 and 1964 (post WWII) in a time of relative peace and prosperity.  These conditions allowed for better education and job opportunities, encouraging high rates of marriage and fertility.

Baby Bust:  Period of time during the 1960's and 1970's when fertility rates in the U.S. dropped as large numbers of women from the baby boom generation delayed marriage and child-bearing for more education and more competitive jobs.  The fertility rate dropped in contrast to the baby boom.

Carrying Capacity: the maximum population size of the species (humans in this case) that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water, and other necessities available in the environment.​ Carrying capacity is related to the concept of overpopulation. It can be increased through technology.

Census: a count of the population that occurs in the U.S. every ten years per the U.S. Constitution. This occurs in other countries as well and is the source of most population data.

Child Mortality Rate (CMR): number of deaths of children between the ages of 1 and 5. High in parts of Africa and Asia and in areas that are protein deficient.

Chronic v. Genetic Diseases:  Chronic diseases are also called degenerative diseases and are afflictions of middle and old age.  Ex) are heart disease, cancers and strokes.  Genetic diseases are transferred from one generation to the next and often display some clustering that raises questions about the environment. An example is lactose intolerance.  People lack the enzyme to break down the milk sugar lactose (very common in China).  Other genetic diseases include Cystic Fibrosis and Sickle Cell Disease.

Demography: the statistical study of human populations; especially size, density, distribution and vital statistics.

Demographic Equation: specifically crude birth rate minus crude death rate plus net migration (generally, fertility - mortality +/- migration)

​Demographic Momentum: is the tendency for a growing population to continue growing after a fertility decline because of their young age distribution. 

Dependency Ratio: the number of people under the age of 15 and over age 64 compared to the number of people active in the labor force.

Demographic Transition: the shift in population growth that occurs (in the Demographic Transition Model) from a stable population level with high CBR's and CDR's to stable population level with low CBR's and CDR's, after a period of rapid population growth caused by lower death rates than birth rates.

Doubling Time:​ the time it takes a country's population to double in size. At a 10% growth rate it takes 7 years to double.

Echo Boom: The large population cohort created by the children of the Baby Boomers.  Sometimes known as Millennials.  Born between early 1980's and early 2000's.

Ecumene: the portion of Earth's surface inhabited by humans.

Epidemiological Transition: also known as the mortality revolution, this took place during the mid-nineteenth century when death rates dropped dramatically while birth rates remained high. The rate of natural increase exploded.  (Stage 2 of the DMT). The population in Europe became partially immune to fatal epidemic diseases.

Eugenic population policies: national policies designed to favor one racial or cultural sector of the population over  others. Nazi Germany was the most drastic example of this.

Infectious Diseases: examples are Malaria, HIV/AIDS, influenza.  Some infectious diseases are "vectored" or transmitted by an intermediary vector such as a mosquito.  They pass the disease by stinging an already infected person or animal, then carrying the parasites to the next person they sting.  Mosquitos also carry Yellow Fever and Dengue.  Other vectors are fleas, flies and worms which transmit diseases like river blindness and guinea worm.  Malaria has taken more lives than any other disease in human history.  The majority of the 3000 people who will die from it today are children.  Many other lives are shortened or weakened since infection also causes exhaustion and anemia throughout life.

Infant Mortality Rate (IMR): The number of babies that die before their first birthday per 1,000 live births. Highest Sierra Leone & Afghanistan (around 165/1,000) low is Japan at 3/1,000. Higher among African-Americans in the U.S. than amongst non-Hispanic whites.

Life Expectancy: The number of years on average that someone may expect to remain alive. An average for a country does not take gender differences into account. Women tend to live longer than men.

Megalopolis: One large urban area that includes Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. The North American population concentration is centered here.

Neo-Malthusians: continue to be alarmed about population increase. Paul Ehrlich popularized this view with a book entitled The Population Bomb, published in 1968.  Since that time there have been international programs created for population control (family planning, birth control).

One Child Policy: China's program created in 1979 by Deng Xiapoing, which included penalties and incentives to assure that couples produced only one child.  Late marriages were encouraged, and free contraceptives, abortions and sterilizations were provided to couples who followed the policy.  Penalties (fines) were imposed on couples who had a second child.

Overpopulation: The number of people in an area exceeds the capacity of the environment to support life at a decent standard of living.This is somewhat subjective since the capacity to support life can be enhanced by the presence of technology (think Singapore, Japan, Netherlands v. Bangladesh or Nigeria).

Population Composition: The number of men and women in the population and their ages. Also known as the age/sex structure of a population. What is shown in a population pyramid.

Population explosion:  the trend of rapid population increases has occurred since 1750.  Doubling time has dropped fast since the mid-20th century as the world population grew to 6.5 billion by the early 21st century. (begins in stage 2 of the demographic transition)  The population "J" curve illustrates this exponential growth of the population.

Physiologic density: the number of people per unit area of agriculturally productive land or total number of people divided by the amount of arable land.

​Pro-natalist policy: (expansive policy) a government policy that encourages more births in the population. (free education, childcare, baby bonuses, common in Europe)

Thomas Malthus: a British economist who became the first critic to note that population was increasing faster than the food supplies needed to sustain it.  Malthus used the principles of exponential growth versus linear growth to make his point.

Total Fertility Rate: TFR  The average number of children born per woman in a country or region.  In the U.S. this hovers around 2.  Replacement level TFR is 2.1, but some countries in sub-Saharan Africa still have TFRs over 7. This number has been dropping globally (almost everywhere) over the past 30 years.

UNIT 3: CULTURE, LANGUAGE, & RELIGION

CULTURE

Acculturation: When cultures come into contact and a less dominant culture adopts some of the traits of the more influential or dominant one.  If, over time, the less dominant culture loses its distinctness and drops its traits, assimilation has occurred.  The dominant culture has absorbed the less dominant one.

Assimilation: the process through which people lose originally differentiating traits, such as dress, speech particularities or mannerisms, when they come into contact with another society or culture (usually a dominant one).  Often used to describe immigrant adaptation to new places. Can be forced, such as in the treatment if Native Americans by European settlers.

Culture: the sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society. This is anthropologist Ralph Linton's definition; many others exist.

Cultural Appropriation: the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by another culture.  

Cultural Barrier: Prevailing cultural attitude rendering certain innovations, ideas or practices unacceptable or unadoptable in that particular culture.

Cultural Hearth: Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture.

Cultural Landscape: The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape.  Layers of buildings, forms and artifacts sequentially imprinted on the landscape by the activities of various human occupants.

Cultural Relativism: is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture (contrasts with ethnocentrism).

Culture Trait: a single attribute of a culture.

Culture Complex: When a trait combines with others in a distinctive way a culture complex is formed. This includes common values, beliefs, behaviors and artifacts that make a group in an area distinct from others.  China has many cultural complexes.

Culture System: a group of interconnected culture complexes.  On the map a culture region can represent an entire culture system that intertwines with its locational and environmental circumstances to form a geographic region.

Custom: The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.

Habit: A repetitive act performed by a particular individual (not a cultural trait because it doesn't belong to a group).

Ethnocentrism: the belief that one's own culture (or ethnic group) is superior to others.  Judging other groups through the lens of one's own culture.  This is something humans do naturally, but can be overcome by seeking understanding of other cultures.

Folk Culture: Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.(true folk culture doesn't exist in the U.S. apart from Anabaptist communities, so this term gets used interchangeably with Local Culture).

Popular Culture: Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Maladaptive Diffusion: diffusion of an idea or innovation that is not suitable for the environment in which it diffused into (e.g., New England-style homes in Hawaii, or Ranch-style homes in northeast US).

Syncretism: when cultural traits from two distinct cultures fuse to form a new cultural trait.  "Sikhism is syncretic because it includes characteristics of Islam and Hinduism."

Taboo: A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Terroir: The contribution of a location's distinctive physical features to the way food tastes (associated with France, Italy).

LANGUAGE

British Received Pronunciation (BRP): The dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in London and now considered standard in the United Kingdom.

Conquest Theory: A theory that holds that speakers of early  Proto-Indo-European migrated east to west  on horseback, overpowering earlier inhabitants and beginning the diffusion of Indo-European tongues.

Creole or creolized language: A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated. A pidgin language becomes a creole when it becomes the language that is used daily by the people (example, in Haiti).

Denglish: Combination of German and English.

Dialect:  A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation.

Ebonics: Dialect spoken by some African Americans.

Extinct Language: A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used (no more native speakers).

Franglais: A term used by the French for English words that have entered the French language; a combination of francais and anglais, the French words for French and English.

Ideograms: The system of writing used in China and Japan in which each symbol represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound, as is the case with letters in English.

Isogloss: A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate.

Isolated Language: A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family.

Kurgan Hypothesis: (same as Conquest Theory) theory of diffusion for Indo-European languages - horseback riding herders near the Caspian Sea conquered neighboring tribes diffusing their language in the process.

Language: A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning.

Language branch: A collection of languages (within a family) related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago.  Differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family. Examples: Germanic or Romance

Language divergence: this occurs when spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks down and the language fragments first into dialects and then into distinct tongues.  For example - between the Spanish and the Portuguese.

Linguistic Diversity Index: A measure that expresses the likelihood that two randomly selected individuals in a country speak different first languages. Values range from .00 to .99.  LDI's close to 1 mean high linguistic diversity. Papua New Guinea in Southeast Asia has both the highest LDI ranking and the greatest total number of languages spoken within its borders. Other examples: U.S. = .35, Mexico .13, Myanmar .64.

Language family: A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history. For example: Sino-Tibetan

Language group: A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary. Examples: West Germanic, North Germanic

Lingua franca: A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.  It is a language of interaction for commerce or possibly education.  English is the global lingua franca today.  Other lingua francas include Swahili in East Africa and French during the 17-19th centuries.

Literary tradition: A language that is written as well as spoken. Only about 700 of Africa's 2000 or so languages have a literary tradition.

Multilingual states: are countries with more than one language in use.  Sometimes linguistic fragmentation occurs (like in Belgium or Quebec, Canada or African countries with many languages (Nigeria) where language is a divisive force.

Official language: The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents. Many former British colonies use English and several local languages as "Official" languages.

Pidgin language: A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua franca; used for communications among speakers of two different languages.

Renfrew Hypothesis (Anatolian): Archaeologist Colin Renfrew argued that Indo-Europeans diffused into Europe and S. Asia along with agricultural practices rather than by military conquest (Kurgan).  The language triumphed because its speakers became more numerous and prosperous by growing their own food instead of relying on hunting.

Sound Shift: a slight change in a word across languages within a subfamily or through a language family from the present backwards towards its origin.

Spanglish: Combination of Spanish and English, spoken by Hispanic Americans.

Standard Language: The form of a language that becomes accepted for education and mass communication.  Typically, a dialect in a center of commerce or government becomes the standard version.For example when Martin Luther translated the Bible into German that dialect eventually became "High German," or the standard version for all of Germany even though there were many dialects.

Toponym: a place name

Vulgar Latin: A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard dialect, which was used for official documents.

RELIGION

Animism: Belief that objects, such as plants, stones or natural events like thunderstorms have a discrete spirit and conscious life.

Autonomous religion: A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally. (Southern Baptists)

Balkanization: Process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities or cultural groups.

Branch: A large fundamental division within a religion. (Sunni/Shia or Catholic/Protestant/Orthodox)

Caste: The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned.

Cosmogony:  A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe.

Denomination:  A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations into a single legal and administrative body. (Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist)

Ethnic religion: A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated.

Fundamentalism: Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination or sect).

Ghetto: During the Middle Ages, a neighborhood in a city set up by law to be inhabited only by Jews.  Now used to denote a section of a city in which any members of a minority group live because of social, legal or economic pressure.

Hierarchical religion:  A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control.

Interfaith boundary:  a boundary between the world's major faiths, a fault line between two completely different religions. ex) North Africa with Islam/Christianity, India/Pakistan (Hinduism/Islam)

Intrafaith boundary: a boundary within a single major faith, usually where there is conflict. This often occurs between two branches or denominations of a religion.  Example: Ireland/Northern Ireland, Catholic/Protestant, or former Yugoslavia (Bosnia - Orthodox & Roman Catholics).

Missionary:  An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion. 

Monotheism:  The doctrine or belief of the existence of only one god.

Pagan:  A follower of a polytheistic religion in ancient times.

Pilgrimage:  A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes.

Polytheism:  Belief in or worship of more than one god.

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

Secularism:  The idea that ethical and moral standards should be formulated and adhered to for life on Earth, not to accommodate the prescriptions of a deity and for promises of a comfortable afterlife.  A secular state is the opposite of a theocracy.  Example: Turkey

Shamanism: Community faith in traditional societies in which people follow a Shaman, or religious leader, teacher, healer or visionary.  At times, an especially strong Shaman might attract a regional following, but most remain local figures.

Theocracy:  church and state are combined and government is ruled by religious law and leadership.  Examples - Saudi Arabia (Sunni), Iran (Shi'a).  A secular state is the opposite of this -  example Turkey for Islam.

Universalizing religion:  A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location.

Wahhabi:  The fundamentalist, ultra-conservative sect of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.  This sect believes that Shari'a law should be strictly enforced through the government.  Osama Bin Laden was part of this sect.

UNIT 4: POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY

Barrioization:  The dramatic increase in Hispanic population in a given neighborhood.

Blockbusting:  A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood.

Centrifugal Forces: A centrifugal force is the exact opposite of a centripetal force. It is a force or attitude that tends to divide a state. Centrifugal forces destabilize and weaken a state by disrupting the internal order of the state.

Centripetal Forces: A centripetal force is a force or attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state. They provide stability, strengthen the state, help bind people together, and create solidarity. 

Diaspora:  (literally "dispersed") It is often used to refer to Jews or blacks of African descent who maintain aspects of their common heritage despite living in diverse communities throughout the world. 

Ethnic cleansing:  Process in which a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogeneous region.  This could involve genocide, or could be limited to forced removal of an ethnic group from their homes or neighborhoods, thus creating refugees.

Ethnic Enclaves: is a place with a high concentration of an ethnic group that is distinct from those in the surrounding area. Ethnic neighborhoods in cities are often referred to as ethnic enclaves, but there are other types (Hungarians in Romania)

Ethnic landscape: an area that has an ethnic culture, like an ethnic neighborhood, will reveal the visible imprint of that culture on the landscape, for example signs in the language of the culture group or symbols of culture such as certain colors or icons will be present. (usually in the context of urban ethnic neighborhoods).

Ethnic neighborhoods:  Concentrations of people from the same ethnicity in certain pockets of the city (ethnic enclaves)  

Ethnicity: Identity with a group of people that share distinct physical and mental traits as a product of common homeland and cultural traditions.  A person's perceived social and cultural identity. "African-American" "Irish" "Lakota" "Greek"

Ethnoburb:​ suburban area with a cluster of a particular ethnic population. 

Ethnocentrism: evaluating other peoples and cultures by the standards of one's own culture, thinking one's own culture is superior to the culture of others

Genocide: A premeditated effort to kill everyone from a particular ethnic group.

Ghetto:  A segregated ethnic area within a city.

Ghettoization: to turn something into a ghetto, to isolate people in a ghetto and neglect the area thus reinforcing poverty. Housing practices we discussed in Ethnicity were part of this process in the United States.

Great Migration:  was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between the first Great Migration (1910–1930), numbering about 1.6 million migrants who left mostly rural areas to migrate to Northern and Midwestern industrial cities, and, after a lull during the Great Depression, a Second Great Migration (1940 to 1970), in which 5 million or more people moved, including many to California and various western cities.

Nation: culturally defined group of people with a shared past and common future

Nation-State:  A sovereign state made up of people who see themselves as one united group, joined by history, culture or ethnicity. Examples include Denmark, Japan, Germany, and most of Western Europe.

Nationalism: is loyalty and devotion to a nationality. This typically promotes a sense of national consciousness that exalts one nation above all others and emphasizes its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nationalities. 

Nationality: is identity with a group of people who share legal attachment to a particular country. "American" "Peruvian"

Public housing: a form of housing in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local.

Race:  Identity with a group of people who are perceived to share a physiological trait, such as skin color. (socially constructed).  "Black" "White" 

Racism:  Belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Racist:  A person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism.

​Racial Steering: Realtors steering whites away from African-American neighborhoods and African-Americans away from white neighborhoods. Although made illegal by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 studies have shown it still happens.

Redlining: A lending practice by banks. Maps were created by the Federal Housing Administration that deemed certain, primarily African-American neighborhoods as in decline, and the FHA would not back loans in those neighborhoods. Banks used the maps to draw lines around neighborhoods where they would not make loans. This led to deterioration and low home values and rents in those neighborhoods.

Restrictive Covenants: legal agreements built into property deeds that prohibited sellers from selling their houses to African-Americans or other non-caucasians. Click for more.

Self-determination:  Concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves. Relates to nation-state concept and rise of nation-states. Woodrow Wilson made this one of his 13 points which were ideas about how the world should be reorganized politically following World War I.

Sharecropper:  A person who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent and repays loans by turning over to the landowner a share of the crops.  Many African-American former slaves had this occupation until technology reduced the need for large numbers of farmers.

Social Distance:  the extent to which people are willing to interact and establish relationships with racial or ethnic groups other than their own.

Succession: process by which new immigrants to a city move to and dominate or take over areas or neighborhoods occupied by older immigrant groups. (Invasion & Succession)

Symbolic landscape:  the signs and images found in the landscape used to convey meaning and messages.  These can include statues and public monuments or street signs.  Many reflect regional cultures and give people a sense of place ("Genius of Water" in Fountain Square or our riverboat imagery on the riverfront and in the Reds stadium).  

UNIT 5: AGRICULTURE

 Agribusiness:  Commercial agriculture characterized by the integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.  They provide a vast array of goods and services to support the agricultural industry.

Agricultural Density: The number of farmers per unit of arable land. This will be higher in areas where agriculture isn't mechanized and subsistence agriculture is dominant.

Agriculture: The deliberate effort to modify a portion of Earth's surface through the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock for sustenance or economic gain.

Agricultural hearths:  where a crop originally came from; a place where an innovation originated from (like settled agriculture)

Agricultural industrialization:  replacing labor-intensive work with technology-intensive work (began with the 2nd Agricultural Rev.)

Agroecology: linking ecology, culture, economics, and society to sustain agricultural production, healthy environments, and viable food and farming communities

Animal domestication:  breeding a wild animal in captivity to get the traits you want (more docile, better milk producer)

Bid-rent Theory: The bid rent theory is a geographical economic theory that refers to how the price and demand for real estate change as the distance from the central business district (CBD) increases. It states that different land users will compete with one another for land close to the city center, driving up the price (Von Thunen).

Cereal Grain: A grass yielding grain for food. (wheat, corn, rice, millet, barley)

​Clustered rural settlement: a settlement pattern where houses and farmland are close together (round, grid & walled villages in most of the world)

Collective Farm:  pooling labor, capital and land to produce higher yield.  (Communist governments in the USSR and China forced large-scale versions of these on the people resulting in famine.  Subsistence farmers often work land in common today, however as a matter of choice and tradition.)

Combine:  A machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field.

Commercial Agriculture:  Agriculture with the primary goal of making a profit by selling off the farm.

Commodity Chain: a process used by firms to gather resources, transform them into goods or commodities, and finally, distribute them to consumers. It is a series of links connecting the many places of production and distribution and resulting in a commodity that is then exchanged on the world market.

Dairying:  commercial milking of cows, common in North America and Europe

Crop:  Grain or fruit gathered from a field as a harvest during a particular season.

Crop rotation:  The practice of rotating use of different fields from crop to crop each year to avoid exhausting the soil.  Farmers have multiple fields and use only a few at a time so they can switch to unused ones when nutrients in the soil need to be replenished.

Desertification:  Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting. Today the Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert in Africa is experiencing desertification.

Dispersed rural settlement: a settlement pattern where houses are situated far from neighbors, and farmland plots are usually large (American West, Midwest)

Double cropping: Harvesting twice a year from the same field.

Extensive commercial:  Uses more land to get high yields.  Large areas are under cultivation due to large machines and economies of scale.  Usually involves monocultures of crops like wheat, soybeans or corn.  Example:  Great Plains in US and Canada.

Extensive subsistence: Uses more land than intensive subsistence, but with lower yields per acre than intensive subsistence. Pastoral Nomadism, Shifting Cultivation such as slash & burn (because a lot of land is needed since plots must change every few years). Not commercial, therefore these are subsistence.

Feedlot/ (CAFO) Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation:  Caging/feeding animals to prepare them for slaughter, used in factory farming.

First Agricultural Revolution:  took place in the Fertile Crescent (and at other hearths simultaneously) with the creation of settled agriculture through domesticating seed plants (grains).  This was a slow innovation that happened around  10-12,000 years ago.  It may have happened earlier with root crops in SE Asia.

Food Desert: A low-income urban area where residents lack access to affordable, healthy food. The USDA defines food deserts and uses data that includes income levels and pinpoints residents who live more than a mile from a grocery store. People with low incomes usually don't have cars.

GMOs: Genetically Modified Organisms. Developed since the 1990's, the genetic engineering and modification of plants and animals.  This happens in a laboratory.  Transgenic technology is synonymous with this.

Grain:  Seed of a cereal grass (includes corn)

Green revolution: Rapid diffusion of new agricultural technology, especially high-yield seeds and synthetic fertilizers.  This began in Mexico in the 1940's with the work of Normal Borlaug.

High Yield Varieties (Seeds): hybrid seeds (first created by Norman Borlaug) bred to produce more grain per acre (wheat, rice were first crops), they are Green Revolution crops and require fertilizers and irrigation.

Horticulture:  The growing of fruits, vegetables and flowers.

Intensive commercial agriculture: using less land and getting a high yield because of biotech or things like crop rotation.  This happens in areas where population pressure reduced the size of landholdings.  For example, in India.

Intensive subsistence agriculture: A form of subsistence agriculture in which farmers must expend a relatively large amount of effort to produce the maximum feasible yield from a parcel of land.

Location theory: an element of contemporary human geography that seeks to answer questions about where things are or where they should be.  For example why villages, towns or cities are spaced apart as they are, or where the best location of a new Super WalMart would be or Von Thunen's theory of agricultural location.

Locavore: A person who tries to eat locally-grown food (buy from farmer's markets or direct from local farmers)

Mediterranean Agriculture: a type of agriculture used only in the dry Mediterranean climate (fruits, grapes for wine, dates, olives)

Milkshed:  The area surrounding a city from which milk is supplied. It is about 150 miles today due to refrigeration.

Monoculture: growing a single crop for efficiency and commercial profit (usually grains, but also oranges, strawberries, bananas, grapes and other commercial fruits and vegetables). The opposite of polyculture which is found in traditional, subsistence agricultural systems.

MDC: "More Developed Country," (The United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, S. Korea, etc.). Countries with high levels of infrastructure, education, life expectancy, and economic prosperity.

LDC: "Less Developed Country," a country experiencing poverty, extreme wealth inequality, etc., where many citizens lack clean water, access to education or consistent law making and enforcement. Includes most of the global south except Australia and New Zealand.  In LDCs there is typically a higher proportion of the population working in the primary sector (lots of subsistence farmers) than in MDCs. This term is fluid, new ways of discussing this include "Global North versus Global South," and "Core, Periphery and Semi-periphery." Old ways include "First, Second and Third World."

Organic agriculture:  approach to farming and ranching that avoids use of synthetic herbicides, pesticides, growth hormones and other similar synthetic inputs.  Its products are often more expensive because of lower yields and/or lack of economies of scale in distribution.

Paddy:  Malay word for wet rice field

Pampas:  the Pampas are fertile South American lowlands, covering more than 750,000 km2 (289,577 sq mi), that include the Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and Córdoba; most of Uruguay; and the southernmost Brazilian State, Rio Grande do Sul.  This is prime agricultural land.

Pastoral nomadism:  A form of subsistence agriculture based on herding domesticated animals.

Plant domestication:  deliberately breeding plants for desired traits (sweeter, bigger)

Plantation:  A large farm in tropical and subtropical climates that specializes in the production of one or two crops for sale, usually to a more developed country.

Polyculture: cultivating more than one crop and or different kinds of animals at the same time 

Prime agricultural land:  The most productive farmland.

Primogeniture:  the Germanic system of land inheritance where all land passes to the eldest son.  Land doesn't get subdivided as much.

Ranching:  a form of commercial agriculture in which livestock graze over an extensive area.

Ridge tillage:  System of planting crops on ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation.

Carl Sauer:  the scholar who coined the term Cultural Landscape and also studied and identified the hearths of Agricultural innovation. 

Sawah:  a flooded field for growing rice that involves engineering; a man-made system that takes care of irrigation and drainage and allows fertilizers to be used effectively.

Second Agricultural Revolution:  composed of a series of improvements and techniques which happened in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark, where European farming underwent changes that led to an agricultural surplus which was enough to improve life expectancies and grow populations.  The improvements allowed for more workers for industry as fewer farmers were needed to work the land and gain the food supply that was needed (18th and early 19th centuries).

Seed Selection:  farmers saving the seeds from the plants with the most desirable characteristics in order to improve crop yields (happens in the field, not GMO)

Shifting cultivation:  A form of subsistence agriculture in which people shift activity from one field to another; each field is used for crops for a relatively few years and left fallow for a relatively long period.

Slash and burn agriculture:  A type of shifting cultivation, so named because fields are cleared by slashing the vegetation and burning the debris which gives fertility to the soil.

Spring wheat:  Wheat planted in the spring and harvested in the summer (Dakotas & S. Canada).

Subsistence agriculture:  Agriculture designed primarily to provide food for direct consumption by the farmer and the farmer's family.

Sustainable agriculture:  Farming methods that preserve long-term productivity of land and minimize pollution, typically by rotating soil-restoring crops with cash crops and reducing inputs of fertilizer and pesticides.  Related to Agroecology.

Swidden:  A patch of land cleared for planting through slashing and burning.

Terroir: French term to describe the contribution a location's distinctive physical features have on the way food tastes (soil, climate, etc.) Lots of foods are named after places in France and Italy, ​Champagne, Parma(sean), Bologna, most grapes - etc.

Third Agricultural Revolution:  also called the Green Revolution dates as far back as the 1930's  when agricultural scientists in the American Midwest began experimenting with seed varieties to increase crop yields.  High yield varieties of rice in Asia followed wheat in Mexico and the result has been great progress in global food production in the developing regions.  The new varieties do require more inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides thus sparking controversy about the ultimate success of the Green Revolution.  GMOs have been developed since the 1990's.

Township and Range:  Designed to facilitate the movement of non-Indians evenly across farmlands of the United States interior, this land parcel system imposed a gridlike pattern on the land.  The one-square mile section became the basic unit of land division.  This imposed a uniform grid pattern across the American Midwest and West.

Transhumance:  The seasonal migration of livestock between mountains and lowland pastures.

Truck farming:  Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named because truck was a Middle English word meaning bartering or the exchange of commodities.  

VonThunen's agricultural location model:  a circular land use model for agricultural land surrounding a city- Von Thunen Model Info

Wet rice:  Rice planted on dry land in a nursery and then moved to a deliberately flooded field to promote growth. A common intensive subsistence crop in E. Asia.

Winter wheat:  Wheat planted in the autumn and harvested in the early summer (U.S. Great Plains, Kansas & Nebraska).

UNIT 6: URBAN GEOGRAPHY

Bid-Rent Theory: The amount of money different land users are prepared to pay for locations at various distances from the city center. The closer to the city center, the higher the cost of land. Click for the bid-rent curve.

Boomburbs: is a rapidly growing, sprawling city of 100,000 or more on the edge of a major metropolitan area. A boomburb has the look and feel of a big city but generally lacks a large, vibrant downtown. Some become larger than the cities they are "satellites" of . LINK

Brown Fields: a former industrial or commercial site where future use is affected by real or perceived environmental contamination.

Built Landscape: a landscape designed and created intentionally by man" an "organically evolved landscape.

Census Tract: an area delineated by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for which statistics are published: in urbanized areas, census tracts correspond roughly to neighborhoods.

Central Business District (CBD): a concentration of business and commerce in the city's downtown.  The American CBD typically has high land values, tall buildings, busy traffic, converging highways and mass transit systems.

Central Place: any point or place in the urban hierarchy such as a town or city, having a certain economic reach or hinterland.

Central Place Theory: Walter Christaller created this to explain where cities, towns and villages are likely to be located.  He ranked settlements from smallest to largest as:  hamlets, villages, towns and cities; and his assumptions, including the idea that population and purchasing power would be evenly distributed limit the theory's usefulness.  He created an interlocking model of hexagon-shaped trade areas which suggest the urban hierarchy.  Cities have the largest trade areas and offer both high and low order central place functions to their populations; hamlet's offer only the lowest order c.p. functions to their residents.

Colonial City: a city founded by colonial powers, mostly in Latin America, Southeast Asia, India & Africa.

Commuter Zone: wherever people who live outside the city drive into it for work (Cincinnati's commuter zone stretches from Lebanon, Ohio south to Crittenden, KY)

Concentric Zone Model: resulted from sociologist Ernest Burgess's model of a city divided into five concentric zones, defined by their function and the social status of residents.  See page 295 for detailed descriptions of each zone. 

Conurbation: A megalopolis or a continuous, extended urban area formed by the growing together of several formerly separate, expanding cities and their suburbs with little or no rural land in between.

Counterurbanization: moving from the city to the countryside in hopes of a better lifestyle (may still commute, but may not), trend in MDC's.

Disamenity Sectors (or zones): the very poorest parts of cities that in extreme cases are not even connected to city services (amenities) and are controlled by gangs and drugs (Favelas in Rio, Barrios in Mexico, Slums in India).

Economic Base: the idea of "Basic" activities (those that bring wealth from outside the city/region) and "Nonbasic" activities (recirculating the same money).  "Proctor & Gamble is an essential part of Cincinnati's economic base." The main business or industry that supports and sustains the city.

Edge City: introduced by Joel Garner to describe how urbanization is shifting the population from the CBD to the suburbs (in Cincinnati - Mason or Hebron, KY come closest to meeting the definition).  It is a concentration of business, residences, shopping and entertainment outside the traditional downtown.  To qualify it should have more jobs than bedrooms, so Mason & Hebron are not quite there yet.

Entrepôt: is a port, city or trading post where merchandise may be imported, stored and/or traded, typically to be exported again. In the days of wind-powered sailing, such centers had a critical role. In modern times customs areas have largely made such entrepôts obsolete, but the term is still used to refer to duty-free ports with a high volume of re-export trade. 

Exurbs : a rural space that is far enough from the city that it lacks the kinds of amenities typically offered in the city. LINK 

Favela : Brazilian term for Shantytowns (as they exist in Rio and Sao Paulo)

First Urban Revolution: the innovation of the city occurred and it happened independently in five separate hearths as an independent invention where something triggered the establishment of a leadership class and an agricultural surplus.

Forward Capital:  When a country moves its capital city into a frontier region, usually for one of the following reasons:  to spur economic growth in a sparsely populated area, to satisfy a political/diplomatic purpose because a particular ethnic group identifies strongly with the capital city which causes strife (new city is seen as neutral) or to populate the interior of a country (Brazil) because the population is too concentrated in one region.

Functional Zonation: each model of the city is a study of the way cities are divided into certain zones used for certain purposes (functions).  They have residential zones which are separate from industrial zones which are separate from garbage dumps.  Geographers draw models by examining where the zones are with respect to one another.

Gated Communities: fenced-in neighborhoods with controlled access gates for people and automobiles.  They often have security cameras and private police and are becoming more common across the globe. 

Gateway City: Cities that serve as the entry point (to a country or region) for goods, services and people. They are the primary arrival point and usually found on coasts (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco)

Gentrification: a process of converting an urban neighborhood from a predominantly low-income, renter-occupied area to a predominantly middle-class, owner-occupied area.

Greenbelt: a ring of land maintained as parks, agriculture, or other types of open space to limit the sprawl of an urban area (common in Europe). Density will remain higher inside the city when sprawl is not allowed to continue indefinitely.

Hermit Crabs: businesses that occupy space tailored for a previous owner (a Chinese restaurant in a building that was obviously formerly a Pizza Hut). Just for fun!

Hinterland: adjacent region to the city that still feels its influence (example:  Newport, Kenwood), related to trade area or market area of a city

Hoyt's Sector Model: answered the limitations of the zone model.  He focused on residential patterns explaining where the wealthy in a city chose to live and argued that the city grows directionally outward from the center, but not in perfect rings.  A sector could extend far in one direction, more like a wedge of pie. LINK to details.

LULU: locally unwanted land use.  Disamenities that are deemed undesirable for proximity to a residential area.  (power plants, dumps, prisons, roads, factories, mines and hospitals)  "As a city planner, if you propose a LULU you might experience NIMBY."

Megacity: a Metropolitan area whose population and density exceeds 10 million and 2,000 people per sq. mile.  Top five now are Tokyo, Guangzhou, Seoul, Jakarta and Shanghai. Metacity has over 20 million (like Tokyo).

Megalopolis: A continuous, extended urban area formed by the growing together of several, formerly separate, expanding cities and their suburbs. Also known as a conurbation. There is little-to-know rural land left in between. (BOSNYWASH) Know examples in the USA and Japan.

Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA): In the United States, a central city of at least 50,000 population, the county within which the city is located, and adjacent counties meeting one of several tests indicating a functional connection to the central city (# of commuters, for example).

Mixed Use: buildings with more than one function (office, retail, residential) allowing closer proximity to needed services for residents. Mixed-use zoning improves walkability making it a smart-growth strategy that also helps to limit sprawl because it increases density of housing (more vertical land use = less horizontal growth).

New Urbanism: an attempt to counter sprawl; new urbanists promote urban revitalization and suburban reforms that create walkable neighborhoods with a diversity of housing and jobs as well as regional planning for open or greenspace, appropriate architecture and planning and the balanced development of jobs and housing.

NIMBY: "not in my backyard"  describes opposition by residents to a proposal for new development close to them.  This is most often to something like a chemical plant, a mine or a landfill, but can sometimes be against a new highway (Newtown, Eastern Corridor) or other infrastructure that brings the potential for rapid change.

Planned Communities: communities, usually residential, that are entirely planned out before building begins. They are often difficult to get into and you sometimes need to know someone.  (Mariemont, OH, Seaside, FL, Celebration, FL, The Villages, FL, The Woodlands, TX (Houston) and Brasilia, Brazil)

Postindustrial City: city whose economy and urban organization are conforming to the dominance of service-sector, nonindustrial economic functions.

Primate cities: A city that is 2X as large as the next biggest city in a country (example - London (Birmingham) None in the United States.  In LDCs many former colonial capitals are Primate cities. These are often centers of government, commerce and culture.

Public Housing: Housing owned by the government; in the U.S. it is rented to residents with low incomes, and the rents are set at 30% of the families' incomes.

Range: the maximum distance people are willing to travel to purchase a good or access a service.

Rank-size Rule: holds that in an ideal (or model) urban hierarchy, the population of a city or town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy.  For example, if the largest city has 12 million people, the second largest will have about 6 million (1/2) and the third will have 4 million (1/3).  So n= the population ranking and the ratio will be 1/n.  This leads to evenly spaced cities which provide services for the population in a somewhat uniform way.  When there is a primate city the rank-size rule does not hold.  This means there may be significant portions of the population of a country who have to travel a long way for access to even lower-order central place functions.  The rank-size rule is suggested by Christaller's idea of the urban hierarchy.

Second Urban Revolution: last decades of the 18th century, coincided with the industrial revolution and thousands migrated to cities which had exploding populations.

Slow Growth policies: slowing the growth of a city is a way to limit the problems associated with growth and improve sustainability. 

Sprawl: development of new housing sites at a relatively low density and at locations that are not contiguous to the existing built-up area.

Squatter Settlement: an area within a city in a less developed country in which people illegally establish residences on land they do not own or rent and erect homemade structures. Many of these are also shantytowns, or collections of makeshift shelters built of scrap metal and lumber.

Suburb: an outlying, functionally uniform part of an urban area which is often adjacent to the central city.  Most are residential but there are increasingly other land uses such as shopping centers and malls and office parks.

Suburbanization: the process by which lands that were previously outside the urban environment become urbanized as people and businesses from the central city move into these areas.

Sustainable Design: in urban areas these include walkable, mixed-use commercial and residential areas as well as smart-growth, slow-growth policies, new urbanism and greenbelts.

Teardowns: suburban gentrification where buyers purchase a house with the intention of tearing it down and building a much larger home.  The new homes are sometimes McMansions or "super-sized" homes which are often unoriginal and frequently take up the entire lot they are sitting on. Just for fun!

Tenement: a building in which several families rent small rooms or apartments with little sanitation or safety. Found in the inner-city in the United States.

Third Urban Revolution: the rapid urbanization of the late 20th Century.  Somewhere between 2008-2010 half the world's population was living in cities.  The rapid growth has led to squatter settlements (many shantytowns) and other such slum areas in large megacities in LDCs.

Threshold:  From a business' or service-provider's perspective,  the minimum population needed to justify the provision of a certain good or service. This may be expressed crudely, in population numbers, ex) 15,000 for a post office.

Trade Area: every city and town has an adjacent region within which its influence is dominant.  In a city's trade area its newspapers are read, television stations are watched, and people travel there for its high order central place functions. Another name for this is "hinterland." 

Urban Heat Island: In large cities, expanses of paved surfaces absorb heat during the day and give off heat at night. Temperatures in cities are usually 3-5 degrees hotter than surrounding countryside.

Urban Hierarchy: a ranking of settlements according to their size and economic functions. Related to central-place theory.

Urban Morphology- the layout of the city, its physical form and structure.

Urban Renewal: program in which cities identify blighted inner-city neighborhoods, acquire the properties from private owners, relocate the residents and businesses, clear the site and build new roads and utilities and then turn the land over to private developers.

Urban Realms Model: a spatial generalization of the large, late 20th century city in the U.S.  It is shown to be a widely dispersed, multi-centered metropolis consisting of increasingly independent zones or realms, each focused on its own suburban downtown.  The only exception is a shrunken, sometimes struggling central realm which is focused on the CBD. 

World cities: cities that function at the global scale as centers of power and influence in the global economy.  They supply producer services for the global economy.  They are at the top of the global urban hierarchy (top 3 are London, New York and Tokyo).

Zoning: Legally dividing an area into sections reserved for different purposes such as residential, commercial and industrial. Only certain specific land uses are allowed in each section. Zoning for homogenous land uses creates sprawl and car-dependency because residential and commercial zones are separated.

UNIT 7: INDUSTRY &  DEVELOPMENT 

Absolute advantage: a country has absolute advantage in international trade over other producers if it is the most efficient producer of that product. That means the country can achieve more output of that product from any given amount of resource inputs than any other producer.

Asian Tigers: South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong. These were newly industrialized countries right after WWII. They followed a model of specializing in inexpensive exports when their labor costs were low, and then spending on infrastructure and education to diversify their economies. 

Agglomeration: when a substantial number of enterprises cluster in the same area, as happens in a large, industrial city, they can provide assistance to each other through shared talents, services and facilities.  Excessive agglomeration leads to deglomeration.

Break-of-bulk point: a location where transfer is possible from one mode of transportation to another.

BRIC: "Brazil, Russia India and China" an acronym to lump these newly developed/industrialized countries into a group that acknowledges their similar development statuses as emerging economies. Some say Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey are emerging as the "MINT" countries - the new ones that fit this rising economies description.

Bulk-gaining industry: an industry in which the final product weighs more or comprises greater volume or fragility than the inputs.

Bulk-reducing industry: an industry in which the final product weighs less or comprises a lower volume than the inputs.

Comparative Advantage: an economic concept related to Free Trade that says a country should specialize in certain products for export when they hold an advantage in producing those products, and import other products in which they do not have an advantage as compared to other countries. In theory everyone benefits from the specialization and gets richer. A country has a comparative advantage when they can produce that product at a lower opportunity cost than other producers. (Adam Smith argued for specialization in international trade and his thinking was "liberal' at the time, so this is called liberal economic theory).

Complementarity: Simply stated, two places are said to exhibit a degree of complementarity if each offers something to the other that it needs or wants. At a basic level, it could be that one community produces things that another place is willing to purchase. In this situation, the first place has a product and the other place has money. Thus, they exhibit a degree of complementarity. 

Cottage industry: manufacturing based in homes rather than in a factory, commonly found prior to the Industrial Revolution.

Economies of Scale: a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production.

Fairtrade(c): A movement that tries to ensure that products are made and traded according to standards that protect workers and small businesses/producers in the Global South (LDC's). Fairtrade as a movement emphasizes supporting small producers over large plantations and often pays a Fairtrade premium to producers to help them scale up, protect against price shocks, and do community development projects. Excellent summary here.  I also have a one-page handout on it in chart form, see me if you want one.

Footloose industry: an industry in which the cost of transporting both raw materials and finished product is not important for determining location of the firm.  Examples include catalog companies in the U.S. (shipping charges are based on weight not distance), expensive and light items such as expensive shoes, computer chips and diamonds (secondary not primary).

Fordist production: form of mass production in which each worker is assigned one specific task to perform repeatedly. Is vertically integrated. Pioneered by Henry Ford for mass production with interchangeable parts. Large factories were needed to produce all the parts of a manufactured good.

Free Trade: is aimed at increasing a nation's economic growth and involves policies such as lower tariffs, and loosening environmental and labor standards.  It benefits MNC's (multi-national corporations) and its rules are enforced by the WTO (World Trade Organization, think Carl Lindner suing the European Union), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.

Industrial Revolution: a series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods.  Began in England with the move of production of spinning and weaving from homes into factories using water as energy to run machines, and later steam power.

Just-in-time Delivery: rather than keeping large inventories of components, companies keep just what they need for short-term production and new parts are shipped quickly as they are needed.  This leads to parts manufacturers needing to locate near auto assembly plants, for example.

Labor-intensive industry: an industry for which labor costs comprise a high percentage of total expenses.  (textiles are labor-intensive, even though workers are low-paid)

Maquiladora - factories built by U.S. companies in Mexico near the U.S. border to take advantage of much lower labor costs in Mexico.  (started in 1960's with initiatives by Mexico, have more recently lost jobs to China even though NAFTA increased the number in the mid 90's)

Multiplier effect: because there is a circular flow of money in the economy, an increase in jobs, especially jobs in a "Basic" industry, will create more jobs. For example, someone who sells video games to people in China brings in income for the company that gets spent in the local area on creating new jobs, hiring people for business services, and the personal spending of all the employees which stimulates a local or regional economy.

New International Division of Labor (or Global Division of Labor) - transfer of some types of jobs, especially those requiring low-paid, less skilled workers, from more developed to less developed countries.

Outsourcing: A decision by a corporation to turn over much of the responsibility for production to independent suppliers (aka, the job goes to a different company which is often overseas today, but don't confuse it with "offshoring" which is when the job moves to a different country). All offshoring is NOT outsourcing because the job could stay within the company.  All outsourcing is not offshoring, because company A could contract with company B to do certain work (like Aramark with your school lunch) but company B is still in the USA.

Primary sector: The portion of the economy concerned with the direct extraction of materials from Earth's surface, generally through agriculture, although sometimes mining, fishing and forestry.

Productivity: The value of a particular product compared to the amount of labor needed to make it. Productivity per worker is examined by summing production over the course of a year and dividing it by the total number of persons in the labor force.  A more productive workforce points to more mechanization in production.

post-Fordist production: the idea that modern industrial production has moved away from mass production in huge factories, as pioneered by Henry Ford, towards specialized markets based on small flexible manufacturing units. Another name for this is "lean production" because companies order the parts they need "just-in-time" to manufacture a good and don't even warehouse the parts.

Secondary sector: The portion of the economy concerned with manufacturing useful products through processing, transforming and assembling raw materials.

Site factors: location factors related to the costs of factors of production inside the plant such as land, labor, and capital.

Situation factors: location factors related to the transportation of materials into and from a factory. (Bulk-gaining and Bulk-reducing).

Technopole: an area planned for high technology (usually by government through incentives, near universities where R&D occurs) where agglomeration built on a synergy among technological companies occurs.  Examples:  Boston (Harvard, MIT), Silicon Valley (San Francisco area, Stanford, Cal Berkley), Washington DC, near Dulles airport in the suburbs, and Plano Texas (outside Dallas) for telecom industries.  These exist globally except for fewer in sub-Saharan Africa.

Transnational corporation: A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located. Sometimes also referred to as Multi-national corporations (MNC's). Examples: Proctor & Gamble, Unilever, Coca-cola.

Tertiary sector: The portion of the economy concerned with transportation, communications, and utilities, sometimes extended to the provision of all goods and services to people, in exchange for payment.

Textile: a fabric made by weaving, used in making clothing or linens, etc. This is a labor-intensive industry.  This is also often one of the first industries to be affected by industrialization.  England's industrial revolution began with textiles, which had formerly been a cottage industry.

Value added: The gross value of the product minus the costs of raw material and energy. Goods with high value added produce wealth.

Core: The 'core' consists of Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, and Israel. Within this region is where most of the positive characteristics of globalization typically occur: These are the developed, industrialized countries. Within countries and cities there can be Core Regions, as well, as seen in the uneven development in places like China and India.

Development (economic): A process of improvement in the material conditions of people.

Development Gap:  The development continuum gap is the socio-economic division that exists between the more developed countries in the north and the less developed countries in the south. With the exception of Australia and New Zealand all the 'rich' countries are in the Northern hemisphere. The Human Development Index (HDI) serves as a good indicator of which side of the gap a country lays.

Ecotourism: developing regions try to develop this industry. Tourists experience nature and the environment in a sustainable way that benefits the local economy.

Foreign direct investment: Investment made by a foreign company in the economy of another country.

Gender Empowerment Measure: Compares the ability of women and men to participate in economic and political decision making. 

Gender-Related Development Index (GDI): Compares the level of development of women with that of both sexes.

Gini Coefficient: represents the income distribution of a nation's residents. Is used to measure inequality.  Compare the countries of the world here. Low numbers indicate countries with the least income inequality (most equal distribution).

Gross Domestic Product (GDP):The value of the total output of officially recorded goods and services produced in a country in a given time period (normally 1 year), a measure of national wealth.  When stated as a per-capita figure this is a measure of standard of living.

Gross National Product (GNP): is a measure of the total value of the officially recorded goods and services produced by the citizens and corporations of a country in a given year.  It includes things produced inside and outside the country's territory and is therefore broader than GDP.

Gross National Income (GNI): Calculates the monetary worth of what is produced within a country plus income received from investments outside the country.  A more accurate way of measuring a country's wealth in the context of the global economy.

Millennium Development Goals: Eight international development goals that all members of the United Nations have agreed to achieve by 2015.

More Developed Country (Minority World): A country that has progressed relatively far along a continuum of development.

Periphery: the periphery consists of the countries in the majority world: Africa, South America, Asia (excluding Japan and South Korea), and Russia and many of its neighbors. Although some parts of this area exhibit positive development (especially Pacific Rim locations in China), it is generally characterized by extreme poverty and a low standard of living. Health care is non-existent in many places, there is less access to potable water than in the industrialized core, and poor infrastructure engenders slum conditions in places. Within countries there are core and peripheral regions (uneven development).

Purchasing power parity: is a monetary measurement of development that takes into account what money buys in different countries (PPP after GNI or GDP)

Rostow's Development Model: assumes that all countries follow a similar path to development and modernization, advancing through the five stages of development.  Also known as "ladder of development."  This model is a liberal development theory, or "Modernization" theory.

Structural Adjustment Programs: Economic policies imposed on less developed countries by international agencies to create conditions encouraging international trade, such as lowering taxes on high earners, reducing government spending, reducing tariffs to promote trade, controlling inflation, selling publicly owned utilities to private corporations and charging citizens more for public services. (Many believe this was harmful and resulted in increased poverty in LDCs) This program was encouraged by the World Bank and loans from the World Bank were made contingent on implementing structural adjustments. 

Uneven Development:The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy.

Wallerstein's World Systems Theory: (Core,Periphery, Semi-Periphery)  A dependency theory, a structuralist theory.  This emphasizes power relationships and the interconnections between places in the global economy.  Core processes generate more wealth in the places where they occur because they require higher levels of education, more sophisticated technology and pay higher wages and benefits to those who perform them.  Peripheral processes require little education, little technology and pay lower wages and benefits.  Many of the people who perform these processes live in LDCs today; thus creating a New International Division of Labor.

Development: A process of improvement in the material conditions of people.

Development Gap: The development continuum gap is the socio-economic division that exists between the more developed countries in the north and the less developed countries in the south. With the exception of Australia and New Zealand all the 'rich' countries are in the Northern hemisphere. The Human Development Index (HDI) serves as a good indicator of which side of the gap a country falls.  Development gaps also exist within countries (uneven development) between rich and poor. Cities have wealthier people and a larger middle class in China and Japan, for example. The United States has uneven development and our ranking on the HDI drops when you account for wealth inequality. 

Dependency Ratio:  Countries in the global periphery face numerous demographic, economic and social problems including high dependency ratios.  Most of the LDCs have high birth rates and as much as half the population is 15 years old or younger.  This is a high dependency ratio since there are fewer adults in the working-age population to care for and support them (pay taxes or provide care).  It is difficult for the young people to receive higher education in this situation because their labor may be needed, or there isn't enough tax revenue for schools. 

Formal Economy: the legal economy that governments tax and monitor.  Countries with low per-capita GNI usually have a significant informal economy (garden plots, black market, illegal drug trade, bartering). The informal economy could be said to be the "real" economy for people in poor areas of less developed countries.

Gender:  A culture's assumptions about the differences between men and women including their characters and the roles they play in society.  This is seen in many cultures around how labor is divided.

Gender Inequality Index: A United Nations measure of well-being for women based on health, empowerment and economic status (labor force).

Gini Coefficient: the most widely used measure of inequality. This is calculated by the World Bank. 

Human Development Index:  A development index published by the United Nations.  It includes three dimensions (Health, Education, Wealth), and four indicators (see below).  Countries are ranked by their composite score and categorized as Very High, High, Medium and Low Development.

Infrastructure: the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g., buildings, roads, and power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise. Tax dollars normally pay for infrastructure meaning countries with low tax bases due to large informal economies have trouble paying for this.

Life Expectancy:  A figure indicating how long, on average, a person may be expected to live.  Normally expressed for a particular country as an average.

Literacy rate: the percentage of a country's people who can read and write

Total Fertility Rate:  The average number of children born to a woman of childbearing age (15-45) expressed as the average for a country.

Gross National Income Per Capita (PPP):  The total value of all goods and services produced by a country's economy in a given year plus all income from investments; divided by the total number of the population to get a "per person" figure, then made equivalent with other countries by evening it out based on the purchasing power that amount of money has in that country(PPP=purchasing power parity).

Infant Mortality Rate:  A figure that describes the number of babies per 1,000 live births that die before their first birthday in a country.

Less Developed Country (LDC): (Majority World)  A country that is at a relatively early stage in the process of economic development

Millennium Development Goals: Eight international development goals that all members of the United Nations agreed to achieve by 2015.  http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Sustainable Development Goals: after assessing progress made on the Millennium Development Goals which expired in 2015, the United Nations launched a new set of goals which take into account things learned over the past 25 years and look towards development with sustainability. 

More Developed Country (MDC): (Minority World) A country that has progressed relatively far along a continuum of development.

Uneven Development: within countries there are gaps in wealth and health between people living in wealthier cities and poorer rural areas. China and India both have a large middle class, but also many rural poor who are subsistence farmers.

United Nations: Or UN is an intergovernmental organization created in 1945 (post WWII) to promote international cooperation. They do a lot of development work globally through the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)

Vectored Disease:  diseases spread by one host (person) to another by an intermediate host - or vector.  Vectors abound in warm, tropical climates.  Malaria is a vectored disease.