Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global …south.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/lecture_08_3.pdf · Key Concepts •Cultural Geography: a sub-field within human geography which studies

Chapter 5 Lecture

Human Geography: Places and

Regions in Global Context Sixth Edition

Wendy A. Mitteager

State University of New York, Oneonta

Cultural Geographies

© 2013 Pearson Education, Inc.

Key Concepts

• Cultural Geography

• Cultural Complexes

• Cultural Regions

• Cultural Systems

• Diaspora

• Cultural Hearths

• Identity

• Americanization Figure 5.1 Maori men with traditional tattoos

Key Concepts

• Cultural Geography: a sub-field within

human geography which studies cultural

products and norms and their variations

across and relations to spaces and places.

• Cultural Complexes: a group of culture

traits all interrelated and dominated by one

essential trait: ex: Nationalism is a culture

complex.


Key Concepts

• Cultural Regions: a geographical area with one

relatively homogeneous human activity or

complex of activities . These are often

associated with an ethnolinguistic group and the

territory it inhabits. Can also be called a “cultural

sphere,” or “cultural area.”

• Cultural Systems: the interaction of different

elements of culture. While a cultural system is

quite different from a social system, sometimes

both systems together are referred to as the

sociocultural system.


Key Concepts

• Diaspora: an ancient Greek word meaning

"to scatter about." People of a diaspora

scatter from their homeland to places

across the globe, spreading their culture

as they go.

– The Bible refers to the Diaspora of Jews

exiled from Israel by the Babylonians. But the

word is now also used more generally to

describe any large migration of refugees,

language, or culture.


Key Concepts

• Cultural Hearths: any place where certain

related changes in land-use appeared due

to human domestication of plants and

animals.

• Identity: How we make sense of ourselves

• Americanization

– Ghetto: A group of people, all of the same

ethnicity, that live in the same area of a city



• Cultural geography

– Space, place, and

landscape

– Ongoing process

• Folk culture

• Popular culture

Culture as a Geographical Process

• Complex concept

• Shared set of

meanings

• Globalization impacts

culture

Figure 5.2 Road accident memorial


• Globalization impacts culture

– How does Globalization impact culture?



• Cultural geography

– Space

– place

– landscape

– Ongoing process



• Folk culture vs. Popular culture

– Folk Culture: Culture traditionally practiced by

a small, homogeneous, rural group living in

relative isolation from other groups.

– Popular Culture: Entertainment spread by

mass communications and enjoying wide

appeal.



The Culture of Hip-Hop

Figure 5.B Internationally

successful rapper, Nicki

Minaj

Figure 5.A Sources and diffusion of U.S. rap


Cultural Complexes

• Carl Sauer – American Geographer (UC-

Berkley 1923-1957)

– considered how cultural

landscapes are made up of

environmental and man-

alterations on the physical

landscape.

– Was a contradiction to the

believed theory of

“environmental determinism”

(Belief that environment

predisposes human social

development towards

particular trajectories

Figure 5.3 Cultural landscape in Kenya

Cultural Complexes

• Historical geography: is the study of the

human, physical, fictional, theoretical, and

"real" geographies of the past.

– Historical geography studies a wide variety of

issues and topics.

– A common theme is the study of the

geographies of the past and how a place or

region changes through time.


Cultural Complexes

• Genre de vie

– Created by French Geographer Paul Vidal de

la Blache

– Again contrary to Environmental Determinism

– Said human beings are not confined by their

environment, rather this environment creates

opportunities

– What is possible is what can happen


Cultural Complexes

• Cultural traits: any trait of human activity

acquired in social life and transmitted by

communication.

• Rites of passage: a ceremony or event

marking an important stage in someone's

life, especially birth, puberty, marriage,

and death.



Cultural Complexes, (cont'd)

Figure 5.4 Sauer's cultural landscape, summarized


Figure 5.6 A cultural trait of mature

Tuareg men in Niger

Figure 5.8 A coming-of-age ceremony

in South Korea is a rite of passage

based on age

Apply your knowledge: Identify traits characteristic of

your cultural group




Figure 5.9 Cultural regions based on religion in the U.S.


Cultural Systems

Figure 5.11 The world's four major

religions: origins and diaspora Figure 5.13 The spread of

Christianity


Cultural Systems, (cont'd)

Figure 5.10 World distribution of major religions


• Religion: a belief system and set of

practices that recognize the existence of a

power higher than humans

– Monotheism vs. Polytheism

– Major Religions




• Religious groups

• Religion and globalization

Figure 5.16 Megachurch in Illinois Figure 5.15 Tibetan monks protest in

Nepal


Cultural Systems, (cont'd) • Language: the method of human communication, either

spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a

structured and conventional way.

– Dialects: a particular form of a language that is peculiar

to a specific region or social group.

– Language family (same as Language Group): a group

of languages related through descent from a common

ancestor, called the proto-language of that family.

– Language branch, a newer, or less commonly spoken

language that has a older "parent language“

Apply your knowledge: Identify different dialects of

American English. On a map identify, where these dialects

are spoken and consider these regions in terms of culture

and power. Do certain dialects have different cultural

power?


• Largest Language Families – Atlantic-Congo (1,432 languages)

– Austronesian (1,276 languages)

– Indo-European (585 languages)

– Sino-Tibetan (472 languages)

– Afro-Asiatic (372 languages)

– Nuclear Trans-New Guinea (315 languages)

– Pama-Nyungan (240 languages)

– Otomanguean (178 languages)

– Austroasiatic (164 languages)

– Tai-Kadai (96 languages)

– Dravidian (81 languages)

– Arawakan (76 languages)

– Mande (74 languages)

– Tupian (71 languages)



• Kinship: Related by blood

– Kinship Links: types of push or pull factors

that influence a migrant's decision to go

where family or friends have already found

success

• Tribe: form of social identity created by

groups who share a set of ideas about

collective loyalty and political action



• Cultural nationalism: an effort to protect

regional and national cultures from the

homogenizing impacts of globalization,

especially the penetrating influence of U.S.

culture

• Islamism: a popular reform movement

advocating the reordering of government

and society in accordance with laws

prescribed by Islam.



Figure 5.17 World distribution of major languages



Figure 5.18 India's linguistic landscape is

complex with hundreds of distinct

languages in use



[Insert Figure 5.22]

Just include the 2003 map


Figure 5.22 World distribution of TV sets



Figure 5.23 The broad reach of Muslim cultural, colonial, and trade

activities.


Culture and Identity

• Sexuality: set of practices

and identities that a given

culture considers related to

each other and to those

things it considers sexual

acts and desires

Figure 5.24 Gay pride

parade in Brazil

Apply your knowledge: Investigate ethnicity and

territory by mapping out your city's places of worship.

What does the distribution tell you about the local ethnic

geography?


• Ethnicity: socially created system of rules

about who belongs and who does not

belong to a particular group based upon

actual or perceived commonalities, such

as language or religion

• Race: a problematic classification of

human beings based on skin color and

other physical characteristics

– According to M. El-Kati there is no such thing

as race



• Racialization: the practice of creating

unequal castes where one ethnicity is

considered the norm or unexceptional

• Gender: the social differences between

men and women rather than the

anatomical differences that are related to

sex



• Hybridity: a mixture of 2 or more cultures



Culture and Identity, (cont'd)

Figure 5.C Islamic veiling fashion is highly variable


Culture and Identity, (cont'd)

Figure 5.27 Indian women in the informal

sector

Figure 5.26 Chinatown, San Francisco:

voluntarily chosen by immigrants or a

place of exclusion and racism?

Apply your knowledge: What are the gender

constructions in your culture? What are gender

constructions in other cultures?


Emergent Cultural Geographies

• Actor-network theory

(ANT): is an approach

to social theory and

research, originating in

the field of science

studies, which treats

objects as part of social

networks.

Figure 5.28 Family watching TV in China

Emergent Cultural Geographies

• Non-representational theory (NRT):

Unconscious awareness of human life as ever-

changing

– Ben Anderson

• Materialism: a tendency to consider possessions

and physical comfort as more important than

spiritual values.

– Post Materialism: theory that claims growing equality

and prosperity in the rich industrialized countries have

resulted in a shift from class-based to value-based



Globalization and Cultural Change

• Americanization

• A global culture?

• World music

• Global film industry

Figure 5.30 Nollywood film industry centered

in Nigeria

Apply your knowledge: What films are available in your

local video store (or the web) from Indian or Nigerian

production companies? How do the issues in the films

reflect culture?


Geographies of Protest and Care

Figure 5.D The 2011 Wisconsin Protests


Future Geographies

Figure 5.31 UNESCO world heritage sites: 936 properties considered to have

outstanding universal value


End of Chapter 5

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Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global …south.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/lecture_08_3.pdf · Key Concepts •Cultural Geography: a sub-field within human geography which studies