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Cultural Geography

Cultural Geography. Chapter 5 review. Key Questions. How does culture shape space and place? How do cultural practices come into contact across distances? What effects does cultural contact have, both historically and in the contemporary world?. Plan of Today’s Lecture.

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Cultural Geography

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  1. Cultural Geography Chapter 5 review

  2. Key Questions • How does culture shape space and place? • How do cultural practices come into contact across distances? • What effects does cultural contact have, both historically and in the contemporary world?

  3. Plan of Today’s Lecture • What’s cultural geography? • Cultural Systems: Religion and Language • Cultural nationalism and cultural imperialism • Hybrid global cultures

  4. I. What’s Cultural Geography? CULTURE: CULTURE: Is not just high culture, but also folk culture and popular culture • Is a shared set of meanings lived through the material and symbolic practices of everyday life. • Is entwined with politics, economics, and history

  5. What do cultural geographers study? • Cultural landscapes: • Landscapes transformed by human activity • Genres de vie • The way a particular group lives in its environment • The possibilities and constraints that a given environment offers for a way of life.

  6. What do cultural geographers study? • Cultural complexes • The combination of traits characteristic of a group. • Cultural systems • Wider than a complex • Includes history, territorial affiliations, politics, economics, etc.

  7. II. Cultural Systems • A cultural system is the complete way of life of a people. • Cultural systems are not bounded---different people within a cultural system may live differently. • (It’s a fuzzy concept)

  8. Religion is an interesting cultural system, because it spreads spatially. Religions start in a hearth area, and then (in some cases) go through diffusion. Much of the diffusion of religion happens because of diaspora, which is when a previously homogeneous group is spatially dispersed. Cultural Systems: Religion

  9. Religious diffusion leads to spatialized religious difference Branches of Christianity • Orthodoxy vs. Catholicism • Protestantism • Mormonism • Religious syncretism in Africa

  10. Cultural Systems: Language Language is.. • Fundamental to cultural identity • Often the only real dividing line among closely associated groups • Organized into families, branches, and groups of related languages

  11. Language trees • Languages are grouped in families, branches and groups because the way they change is spatial. • When a group of speakers goes into diaspora, languages diffuse across space. • Groups of speakers spatially isolated from each other transform the language differently, creating dialects which can become new languages. • Parisian French vs. Quebecois • Polish vs. Slovak

  12. Language conversion • More than 470 languages out of the world’s 6000, considered “endangered” • Most are small, indigenous languages. • More than 200 languages lost in the last three generations • Some endangered languages • *Circassian • *Hawaiian • Provencal • If languages tend to fission through diaspora and diffusion, why are languages dying? • Official Languages • World Languages

  13. Official languages • Languages authorized by the nation-state. • These become lingua francas inside a country. • Mandarin • Russian

  14. World Languages World Languages.. Top Five World Languages Mandarin Spanish English Hindi/Urdu Arabic • Have a large number of speakers • Have many non-native speakers • Have an official status in a powerful country • Create a linguistic community not defined by ethnicity.

  15. World Languages World languages are often spread by colonialism and empire

  16. III. Cultural Nationalism and Cultural Imperialism • Cultural nationalism is the effort to protect regional and national cultures from the impact of globalization • Example: AcademieFrancaise

  17. Cultural Imperialism • Domination of one culture by another, especially through exported products and ideas • Means • Global brands • Television and movies • Global personalities • Exported technologies (eg, iPhone)

  18. Is global culture becoming homogeneous? • Hybridization and postmodernity create new global mashups. • Products of American culture are transformed into new, localized cultural products. • Bollywood • World Music Many times transformed cultural products are re-imported to the US!

  19. Key Questions • How does culture shape space and place? • Specific places provide specific opportunities and constraints • How do cultural practices come into contact across distances? • Diffusion, diaspora, colonialism, empire, cultural imperialism • What effects does cultural contact have, both historically and in the contemporary world? • Creation of new hybrid cultural products • Global circulation of cultural mashups

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