1. Human Geography Jerome D. Fellmann Mark Bjelland Arthur Getis Judith Getis

2. Human Geography Chapter2 Roots & Meaningof Culture Insert figure 2.19b Photo credit: Getty RF 3. Components of Culture

Culture Traits

Culture Complex

Culture System

Culture Region

Culture Realm

Globalization

Human Geography11e Photo credit: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc./Barry Barker, photographer 4. Components of Culture

Culture Traits

• Units of learned behavior

• Tools

• Languages

• Objects

• Techniques or beliefs

• Elementary expressions of culture

Culture Complex

• Traits that are functionally interrelated

• The assemblage of traits

Human Geography11e 5. Components of Culture

Traits and complexes have areal extent and they can be plotted on maps

Culture System

• A broader generalization than a cultural complex

• Refers to the collection of interacting cultural traits and cultural complexes that are shared by a group within a particular territory

Human Geography11e 6. Components of Culture

Culture Region

• A portion of the earths surface occupied by populations sharing recognizable and distinctive cultural characteristics

Culture Realm

• A set of culture regions grouped whenever they show related cultural complexes and landscapes

Globalization

• Homogenization of cultures as economies are integrated and uniform consumer demands are satisfied by standardized commodities

Human Geography11e 7. People and Environment

Environments as Controls

• Environmental Determinism

• • The belief that the physical environment exclusively shapes humans, their actions, and thoughts

• Possibilism

• • A reaction against environmental determinism; people are dynamic forces of development (the environment is not as dynamic like human beings)

Human Impacts

• Cultural Landscape

Human Geography11e 8. Roots of Culture

Hunter-Gatherers

• Pre-agricultural people dependent on the year-round availability of plant and animal foodstuffs they could secure

• Rudimentary stone tools and weapons

• Hunters and gatherers required considerable territory to support a relatively small number of individuals

Human Geography11e 9. Seeds of Change

Cultural Divergence

Carrying Capacity

Human Geography11e 10. Agricultural Origins and Spread

Domestication of Animals and Plants

• Farming

• Plant Domestication

• • Food crops cultivated

• • Raising crops

• Animal Domestication

• • The successful breeding of species that are dependent on human beings

Human Geography11e 11. Neolithic Innovations

New Stone Age

Human Geography11e 12. Culture Hearth

The place of origin of any culture group whose developed systems of livelihood and life created a distinctive cultural landscape.

Human Geography11e 13.

Multilinear Evolution

• The common characteristics of widely separated cultures developed under similar ecological circumstances

• Environmental zones tend to induce common adaptive traits in the cultures of those who exploit these areas

• Comparable events cannot always be explained in the basis of exporting techniques

• • Significant time and space differences

Human Geography11e 14.

Diffusionism

• Cultural similarities are the product of spatial spread from common origin sites

Cultural Convergence

• Differences between places are being reduced by improved communications leading to homogenization

• Sharing of technologies so evident among widely separated societies in a modern world united by efficient communication systems

Human Geography11e 15. The Structure of Culture

Ideological Subsystem

• Mentifacts

Technological Subsystem

• Artifacts

Sociological Subsystem

• Sociofacts

Cultural Integration

Human Geography11e 16. Culture Change

Innovation

• Cultural Lag

• • Resistance to change

Diffusion

• The process by which an idea or innovation is transmitted from one individual or group to another across space

Human Geography11e 17.

• Expansion Diffusion

• • Contagious diffusion affects nearly uniformly all individuals and areas outward from the source region

• • Hierarchical Diffusion involves processes of transferring ideas first between larger places or prominent people, and later to smaller or less important points or people

• • During stimulus diffusion, a fundamental idea, not the trait itself, stimulates imitative behavior

• • • Spread of the concept but not the specific system

Human Geography11e 18. Culture Change

• Relocation Diffusion

• • The idea is physically carried to new areas by migrating individuals

• Acculturation

• • A culture is modified

• • Adoption of traits of another dominant group

• • Immigrant populations take on the values, attitudes, customs, and speech of the receiving society, which itself undergoes change from absorption of the arriving group.

Human Geography11e 19. Contact between Regions

Diffusion Barriers

• Any conditions that hinder either the flow of information or the movement of people and thus retard or prevent the acceptance of an innovation

Syncretism

• The process of the fusion of the old and new is called syncretism and is a major feature of culture change

Human Geography11e