Cultures, Environments, and Regions. Culture Culture closely identified with anthropology –Has...
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Transcript of Cultures, Environments, and Regions. Culture Culture closely identified with anthropology –Has...
Culture
Culture closely identified with anthropology– Has many definitions– An all-encompassing term
Identifies tangible lifestyle of a people and prevailing values and beliefs
– Examples of definitions??– Culture consists of components
Components of Culture
Culture region: – Area within which a particular culture system
prevails
Culture trait:– A single attribute of a culture
Culture complex:– Discrete combination of culture traits
Components of CultureCulture system:– Culture complexes grouped together because
they have culture traits in common
Geographic regions:– Term preferred by many geographers instead of
culture region
Culture realm:– Most highly generalized regionalization of culture
and geography
Cultural Geographies:Past and Present
Colonization and Europeanization (and Americanization?) of the world have obliterated much of the world's earlier cultural geography
Two Maps:– Indigenous North American cultures– “Modern” cultures in Africa
Cultural Geographies:Past and Present
The world is made up of constantly changing, often overlapping mix of traditional and modern regions
The Cultural Landscape
A distinctive cultural environment
Composite of artificial features– Carl Sauer’s definition includes all identifiably human-
induced changes in the natural landscape
Sequent occupance– Cultural imprints of successive societies on a place,
contributing to the cultural landscape
Can the whole of a cultural landscape be represented on a map??
Map: U.S. CBD vs. Japanese city
Cultural Hearths
Sources of civilization
First large clusters of human population
Progress in farming techniques
Exploitation of local resources
Complex society = less subsistence time
New ideas, innovations, and ideologies spread
Cultural Diffusion
The spreading of culture
Independent invention
Expansion diffusion
Relocation diffusion
Expansion Diffusion
Three “types” of ED:1. Contagious diffusion: nearly all adjacent
individuals are affected2. Hierarchical diffusion: main channel of
diffusion lies through some segment of those susceptible or adopting what is being diffused (leapfrog)
3. Stimulus diffusion: ideas may not be adopted but may result in local experimentation– Hamburger sales in India
Relocation Diffusion
Acculturation: less technologically-advanced culture is modified by contact with a technologically-superior culture
Transculturation: cultural “borrowing” when different cultures of (about) equal complexity and technology come into close contact
Assimilation: adoption of cultural elements so complete that the two cultures become one
Migrant diffusion
An innovation loses usage at its source but is adopted farther away
Forces that work against the diffusion process:– Time-distance decay– Cultural barriers
Cultural Perception
Perceptual Regions– Based on our knowledge about regions and
cultures– Sometimes difficult to put a culture region on
a map– Example:
The Mid-Atlantic
Cultural Environments
Complex relationships
Societies modify their natural environments from slight to severe
No society can completely escape the forces of nature– Ivan: before and after
Climate
Monsoon-ish climate
Wet & Dry Seasons
St. George's, Grenada
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Grand Etang National Reserve
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Environmental Determinism
Human behavior is strongly affected by and even controlled or determined by the environment that prevails
Not new: Aristotle
Believed by many until the middle of the twentieth century– Ellsworth Huntington
Environmental Determinism
Some geographers recognized exceptions to the environmentalists’ hypotheses
S.F. Markham wrote a book based on climatic changes and their effects on cultural development
Now agreed (mostly) to be defunct
Possibilism
Natural environment limits choice– Depend on the people’s needs and
technology
As a culture rises in affluence, influence of environment declines
Other Cultural Environments
Political Ecology– Studies the environmental consequences of
specific political-economic policies
Changeable weather seems to influence significant numbers of people
Human will is powerful…
Resources
Dr. Sallie Marston, Univ. of Arizona– Video: Semiotics of Landscape– PowerPoint: Marston-LandscapeSemiotics
Discussion Question #1
A few years ago, several people in a small village near a large East Asian city got the flu. Within days, hundreds of people in the city came down with the same flu, and it spread to the surrounding countryside. Meanwhile, the Asian Flu appeared in cities around the globe (London, NYC, San Francisco, Moscow).– What processes were at work in China and
worldwide spreading this malady? Do the processes differ?
– If you were unable to get immunized, how would you use your knowledge of geography to best protect yourself (and family)?