culture: a set of beliefs, traditions, and aspects of lifestyle that are particular to a group of people

• cultural traits: attribute of a culture (can be intermixed with other groups)

• cultural complex: combination of all cultural traits (unique to every culture)

• culture systems: cultural complexes sharing common cultural traits

• culture regions: region with people of similar cultures

  • share a sense of common culture and regional identity

  • borders defined by perceptions and opinions

cultural geography: study of people’s lifestyle, creations, and relationships with nature

• how and why people express culture in certain ways

• material components (ie. artifacts, clothing, architecture) + abstract components (thoughts, ideas, religion, laws)

cultural landscape: built landscape that is connected to various cultural ideals

• physical imprint of culture on the environment

  • ex. buildings, artwork, music (Carl Sauer)

cultural ecology: study of human interaction with the environment (vice versa)

sequent occupancy: theory that a place can be occupied by multiple groups of people; one group after another

• ex. england (diverse groups have their own contribution to the cultural landscape in the area)

environmental determinism: human behavior is determined/controlled by environmental conditions

• ex. more ideal climates produce better nations

possibilism: natural environment limits the choices available to a group of people

cultural determinism: environment places no restrictions on people, but rather cultural norms/standards

cultural diffusion: creations spread across time (generations) and space (different places)

• expansion diffusion: spreads outward to new places remaining strong at its origin

  • stimulus (stimulates imitative behavior), hierarchical (goes from the higher classes to the middle to lower social classes; birkenstocks), contagious (spreads like wildfire; domino theory)

    • ex. hybrid corn, religious creed

• relocation diffusion: actual movement of adapters from origin to new place

  • only lasts for a little bit of time before adapting to the culture of a new place

• spatial diffusion: the spread of any phenomena across space and time

cultural hearths: areas where innovation and creation began (origin of cultural creation)

• ancient hearths were near bodies of water

• distance = less likely innovation in adopted

  • less diffused in areas further away from cultural hearth

cultural convergence: two cultures adopt each other traits and become similar

cultural divergence: two cultures become increasingly different

s-curve: graph of the diffusion of immigrants based on time and space (distance-decay theory)

colonialism: process where a country takes over new land for its benefit

• ex. British

imperialism: powerful country spreads cultural traditions (language, ethnicity, religion, etc.) to smaller less powerful countries

trade: exposes goods and services from different cultures to others around the world