Main Idea Review for 2025 Final Exam

2025 Final Exam: Main Idea Review Guide

General Information

• Exam Date: Friday, May 9, 2025

• Total Points: 140

• Content Coverage: Culture, Agriculture, Urbanization, and Industrialization/Development units.

• Preparation Resources: PowerPoints, notes, key terms, and reading guides.

Culture (General Concepts)

• Cultural Landscape: The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the environment.

• Cultural Diffusion: The spread of cultural beliefs and social activities from one group to another.

  • Expansive Diffusion: An idea or innovation spreads outwards from the hearth, remaining strong there.

  • Relocation Diffusion: The spread of an idea or innovation through physical movement of people from one place to another.

• Assimilation: The process by which a person or a group's culture come to resemble those of another group.

• Acculturation: The process of cultural change and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures.

• Culture Across the Landscape: Ways culture is measured and manifested in different areas.

• Ethnic Neighborhoods: Areas with a high concentration of people of the same ethnicity.

Culture (Gender, Race, Ethnicity)

• Identity: How people make sense of themselves and how they see themselves in the broader world.

• Race: A social construct based on the idea that humanity can be divided based on skin color and physical characteristics.

• Racism: Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

• Gender: Social and culturally constructed differences between males and females.

• Gender Roles: The role or behavior learned by a person as appropriate to their gender, determined by prevailing cultural norms.

• Ethnicity: A shared cultural heritage or group identity.

• Segregation: The enforced separation of different racial groups in a country, community, or establishment.

• Gender Inequality Index (GII): An index that measures gender inequality using three dimensions: reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market.

• Power Relationships: Examples of power relationships, how they are promoted and maintained, and their influence on individuals and societies.

Culture (Language)

• History of Indo-European Languages: Understanding the origins and dispersal of the Indo-European language family.

• Emergence of the English Language: Factors contributing to the development of English.

• Standard Language vs. Official Language:

  • Standard Language: A dialect that is widely used and recognized throughout a region or country.

  • Official Language: A language designated by law to be the language of government.

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

• Factors that Contribute to a Dialect: Isolation, historical events, and cultural identity.

• Pidgin Languages: A simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common.

• Creole Languages: A language that began as a pidgin language but was subsequently adopted as a native language by a speech community.

• Lingua Franca: A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages.

• Toponym: The name given to a place on Earth.

• Family-Branch-Group-Language-Dialect Structure: Hierarchical organization of languages.

• Effects of Language Convergence vs. Divergence:

  • Convergence: The merging of languages.

  • Divergence: The splitting of a language into dialects and eventually new languages.

• Review Maps: Consulting textbook maps for the regional location of different language families.

Culture (Religion)

• Ethnic vs. Universalizing Religions:

  • Ethnic Religions: Religions that are primarily associated with a particular ethnic group and tend not to seek converts.

  • Universalizing Religions: Religions that seek to appeal to all people, regardless of location or culture.

• Four Elements of All Religions: Beliefs, rituals, community, and ethics.

• Diffusion Patterns/Concentrations of Major Religions: Understanding how major religions spread and their current distribution.

• Influence of Religion on the Landscape: How religion shapes the physical environment.

• Interfaith vs. Intrafaith Conflict:

  • Interfaith Conflict: Conflict between different religions.

  • Intrafaith Conflict: Conflict within the same religion.

• Religious Fundamentalism vs. Religious Extremism:

  • Religious Fundamentalism: A strict adherence to the basic principles of a religion.

  • Religious Extremism: Religious fundamentalism carried to the point of violence.

• Secularism: The principle of separation of the state from religious institutions.

Agriculture

• Three Agricultural Revolutions: Understand the characteristics of each revolution and their impacts.

• Rise of the Organic Food Movement: Factors contributing to the growth of organic farming and consumption.

• Types of Agriculture: Luxury, Mediterranean, etc.

• Labor Intensive vs. Labor Extensive Agriculture:

  • Labor Intensive: Agriculture that requires a lot of human labor.

  • Labor Extensive: Agriculture that requires less human labor

• Regional Location of Different Types of Agriculture: Where different types of agriculture are practiced around the world.

• Commercial vs. Subsistence Agriculture:

  • Commercial Agriculture: Agriculture undertaken primarily to generate products for sale off the farm.

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

• Land Patterns: Long-lot, township and range, metes and bounds, etc.

• Agribusiness: Commercial agriculture characterized by integration of different steps in the food-processing industry, usually through ownership by large corporations.

Urbanization

• Food Deserts/Food Insecurity:

  • Food Deserts: An area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food.

  • Food Insecurity: The state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

• Urban Hierarchy: A ranking of settlements according to their size and economic functions.

• Village Shapes: Understanding different patterns of village layout.

• Redlining and Blockbusting:

  • Redlining: A discriminatory real estate practice in North America in which members of minority groups are prevented from obtaining money to purchase homes or property in predominantly white neighborhoods.

  • Blockbusting: 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.

• Urban Sprawl: The uncontrolled expansion of urban areas.

• Suburbanization: The growth of areas on the fringes of cities.

• Edge cities: A large node of office and retail activities on the edge of an urban area.

• Cities in the Periphery: Characteristics of urban areas in less developed countries.

• Basic vs. Non-Basic Jobs:

  • Basic Jobs: Jobs that produce goods or services for export out of the area, bringing money into the local economy.

  • Non-Basic Jobs: Jobs that provide goods or services to people within the local economy; they recirculate money within the community.

• Smart Growth City Examples: Urban planning that promotes compact, transit-oriented, walkable, and mixed-use land development.

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

• Megacities: Cities with more than 10 million residents.

Industrialization/Economic Development

• LDCs vs. MDCs: Socio-economic development characteristics of less developed countries (LDCs) versus more developed countries (MDCs).

• Human Development Index (HDI): An indicator of the level of development for each country, constructed by the UN, that is based on income, literacy, education, and life expectancy.

• Gender Development Index (GDI): Measures the gender gap in human development achievements by accounting for disparities between men and women.

• SEZ/EPZ/Maquiladora:

  • Special Economic Zone (SEZ): An area within a country that has different (more liberal) economic regulations than other regions of the same country.

  • Export Processing Zone (EPZ): Areas where governments create favorable investment and trading conditions to attract export-oriented industries.

  • Maquiladora: A factory in Mexico run by a foreign company and exporting its products to the country of that company.

• Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): A collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a