Overall Unit Key Themes

1. Introduction to Culture

2. Cultural Landscapes

3. Cultural Patterns

4. Types of Diffusion

5. Historical Causes of Diffusion

6. Contemporary Causes of Diffusion

7. Diffusion of Religion and Language

8. Effects of Diffusion

Topic 3.1: Introduction to Culture

terms to know

• Culture comprises the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors transmitted by a society

• Cultural traits include such things as food preferences, architecture, and land use

• Cultural relativism  and ethnocentrism are different attitudes toward cultural difference

geography and culture

• __Culture: __ a shared set of meanings that are lived through the material and symbolic practices of everyday life (values, beliefs, practices, religion, family, sexuality, etc.)

  • Learned, not biological

  • Transmitted within a society to next generations by imitation, tradition, instruction

cultural relativism vs. ethnocentrism

• Cultural Relativism: is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture (contrasts with ethnocentrism)

  • Ex: Having different beliefs from what you were taught

• Ethnocentrism: Belief in the superiority of one's nation or ethnic group

  • Ex: Racism

• Cultural Relativism: is the principle that an individual human's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual's own culture (contrasts with ethnocentrism

  • Ex: Having different beliefs from what you were taught

Topic: 3.2: Cultural Landscapes

terms to know

• Cultural landscapes are combinations of physical features, agricultural and industrial practices, religious and linguistic characteristics, evidence of sequent occupancy, and other expression of culture including traditional and postmodern architecture and land-use patterns.

• Attitudes toward ethnicity and gender, including the role of women in the workforce; ethnic neighborhoods; and indigenous communities and lands help shape the use of space in a given society.

Using Region to Describe Location

An area of Earth defined by one or more distinctive characteristics

• Cultural landscapes often demonstrate Sequent Occupance: each group of inhabitants leave their distinctive imprint on the landscape.

Carl Sauer (1889-1975)

• Study of cultural landscapes

• Regions are areas fashioned from nature by a cultural group

religion on the cultural landscape

• Religious architecture

• Sacred space

• Religious symbols

• Toponyms

Topic 3.3: Cultural Patterns

terms to know

• Regional patterns of language, religion, and ethnicity contribute to a sense of place, enhance placemaking, and shape the global cultural landscape

• __Sense of place:__infusing a place with meaning and emotion

• Language, ethnicity, and religion are factors in creating centripetal and centrifugal forces.

  • Centripetal: bringing people together

  • Centrifugal: splitting people apart

Topic 3.4: Types of Diffusion

terms to know

• Relocation and expansion - including contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus expansion - are types of diffusion.

types of diffusion

• Relocation

  • Example?

  • Relevance to culture?

• Expansion

  • Hierarchical

    • Example? Relevance to culture?

  • Contagious

    • Example? Relevance to culture?

  • Stimulus

    • Example? Relevance to culture?

Topic 3.5: Historical Causes of Diffusion

terms to know

• Interactions between and among cultural traits and larger global forces can lead to new forms of cultural expression; for example, creolization and lingua franca.

• Colonialism, imperialism, and trade helped to shape patterns and practices of culture.

Topic 3.6: Contemporary Causes of Diffusion

terms to know

• Cultural ideas and practices are socially constructed and change through both small-scale and large-scale processes such as urbanization and globalization. These processes come to bear on culture through media, technological change, politics, economic, and social relationships.

• Communication technologies, such as the internet and time-space convergence, are reshaping and accelerating interactions among people; changing cultural practices, as in the increasing use of English and the loss of indigenous languages; and creating cultural convergence and divergence.

Topic 3.7: Diffusion of Religion and Language

terms to know

• Language families, languages, dialects, world religions, ethnic cultures, and gender roles diffuse from cultural hearths.

• Diffusion of language families, including Indo-European, and religious patterns and distributions can be visually represented on maps, in charts and toponyms, and in other representations.

• Religions have distinct places of origin from which they diffused to other locations through different processes. Practices and belief systems impacted how widespread the religion diffused.

• Universalizing religions, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism, are spread through expansion and relocation diffusion.

• Ethnic religions, including Hinduism and Judaism, are generally found near the hearth or spread through relocation diffusion.

cultural hearths

• Origins of cultural practices (identified by Carl Sauer)

• Language hearth:  source areas of language (a subset of cultural hearths)

Indo-European: Origin and Diffusion

• Romance Languages

  • Originated from Latin “Romans’ language”

  • diffusion through conquests

  • Vulgar Latin - spoken by the common people

  • Worldwide importance

    • Colonial activities of European speakers

• Indo-European Languages

what happens when cultures interact?

• **__Assimilation: __**process whereby people of a culture learn to adapt to the ways of the majority culture. There is a loss of one’s own culture as a person gives more value to the cultural aspects of the majority community in the process of assimilation

• Acculturation: when a person belongs to a minority community in a country and retains their culture but adopts enough of the host society’s ways to be able to function economically and socially in the majority culture.

• Syncretism: the combination of elements of two groups into a new cultural feature

  • 2 cultural groups come together to form a new culture

  • EX: Baha’i religion

• Multiculturalism: The policy of maintaining a diversity of ethnic cultures within a community.

  • EX:New York City is an example of a multicultural society.