APHG Unit 3 Vocab

Acculturation

People within one culture adopting traits from the other.

Artifact

Visible, physical objects created by a culture.

Culture Hearth

The geographic origin of a culture or cultural trait.

Culture Complex

The group of traits that define a particular culture

Culture Trait

A single distinguishing visible feature of regular occurrence within a culture.

Culture Realm

Areas of the world that share cultural traits such as language, religious traditions, food preferences, architecture, and/or shared history.

Culture Region

A geographic region that is characterized by a predominantly uniform culture.

Cultural Convergence

The process of two or more cultures coming into contact with each other and adopting each other’s traits to become more alike.

Cultural Divergence

Cultures become less alike due to both cultural and physical barriers. The process of a culture restricting contact with other cultures in an attempt to retain its originality.

Cultural Landscape

Natural landscape that has been modified by humans, reflecting their cultural beliefs and values.

Nonmaterial culture

Anything on the landscape that comprises culture that cannot be physically touched

Habit

Repetitive acts of individuals.

Custom

Repetitive acts of groups.

Folk Culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Popular Culture

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

Globalization

Actions of processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.

Independent (parallel) invention/innovation

Innovations developed in two or more unconnected hearths by individuals of groups acting independently.

Mentifact

The ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge of a culture.

Sequent Occupance

The idea that societies or cultural groups leave their cultural imprints when they live in a place, each contributing to the overall cultural landscape over time.

Sociofact

The ways in which a society behaves and organizes institutions.

Syncretism

When two cultures blend together and form a new cultural trait.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Terroir

The contribution of a location’s distinctive physical features to the way food tastes.

Uniform Landscape

Loss of uniqueness of a place in the cultural landscape so that one place looks like the next or does not inspire any strong emotional or cultural ties.

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.

Creole (Creolized)

A language that results from mixing a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated

Dialect

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

Extinct Language

A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used.

Ideogram

System of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or concept rather than a sound

Isogloss

A boundary line between two distinct linguistic regions.

Isolated Language

A language that is unrelated to any other language and therefore not attached to any language family

Language Branch

A collection of languages related by a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago, derived from the same family.

Language Group

A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display few differences in grammar and vocabulary

Language Family

A collection of languages related by a common ancestor long before recorded history

Lingua Franca

A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people with different native languages

Official Language

The language (s) adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents

Protolanguage

Language ancestral to several daughter languages.

Standard Language

The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications

Vernacular

A language or dialect spoken by the common people of a region

Agnosticism

The view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable.

Animism

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

Atheism

The belief that there is no God

Autonomous Religion

A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally

Caste

The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned according to religious law

Cosmogony

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

Branch

A large and fundamental division within a religion.

Denomination

A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations into a single legal or administrative body

Ethnic Religion

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

Fundamentalism

Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a region

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 promises of a comfortable afterlife, rejects religion.

Universalizing

A religion that claims global truth, applicability, and seeks the conversion of all human-kind.

Missionary

An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion

Monotheism

Belief system in which one Supreme Being is revered as creator and arbiter of all that exists in the universe; belief in one god.

Polytheism

Belief system in which multiple deities are revered as creators and arbiters of all that exists in the universe; belief in multiple gods.

Pagan

A follower of a polytheistic religion in ancient times.

Pilgrimage

A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes.

Sect

A relatively small group that was broken away from an established denomination

Hierarchical Religion

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

Interfaith Boundary

Boundaries between the world’s major faiths

Intrafaith Boundary

Boundaries within a single major faith

Centripetal

Characteristics that unify a country and provide stability.

Centrifugal

Characteristics that divide a country and create instability, conflict, and violence.

Assimilation

When one culture abandons their original culture and adopts another culture. Sometimes voluntary, other times forced.