Chapter Two

1. Chapter Two Roots and Meaning of Culture “Ways of Life” A learned behaviors (figures 2.1,2.2)

2. Components of Culture • Culture Traits - smallest units of learned behavior, holy cows, chopsticks, eating habits, dialects, beliefs....(Howdy.. You’ll…), when individual traits are functionally interrelated, they create a -> • Culture Complex - from combination of Traits, fig 2.3,(African Culture) • Culture Region - areal extent, a portion of the earth’s surface occupied by population sharing recognizable and distinctive cultural characteristics. • Culture Realm - even larger area. (fig 2.4) • Globalization - interaction between cultures are high. iPod, cell phones in China

4. Interaction of People and Environment - cultural ecology: the study of the relationship between a culture group and the natural environment it occupies • Environments as Controls • Environ. Determinism – dismissed by geographers • Possibilism – people, not environments, are the dynamic forces of cultural development • Human Impacts • Cultural landscape [fig 2.5, Chaco Canyon (page 42), Easter Island (fig 2.7)] – the earth’s surface as modified by human actions, is the tangible physical record of a given culture.

5. Roots of Culture • In pre-agricultural periods - Brief History • Paleolithic (figs 2.8 & 2.9) Hunter-gatherers: used stone tools to gather foods in areas (w. central and NE Europe - covered with tundra; S Europe – forest) • By the end of Paleolithic period, humans had spread to all the continents but Antarctic. (fig 2.10) • 2 ½ day workweek is enough to support bushmen’s families. Time was available for developing skills for tools, art and sculpture. • By the end of Ice Age (11,000 to 12,000 bp) language, religion, long-dist trade, permanent settlements, and social stratification within groups have well been developed in many European culture areas.

6. Seeds of Change • Agricultural Origins and Spread • warmer climate, increased production of food, increase “carryingcapacity”, entered “Mesolithic” (Middle Stone Age) period.(11,000 - 5,000 B.C.) • Domestication of plants and animals, plants -perhaps 20,000 b.p. Major centers of plant and animal domestication (fig 2.12) • migration of first farmers (fig 2.13) • Neolithic Innovations - new and advanced tools/tech for agricultural env. (fig 2.14, 2.17a), religion, specialized professionals. • Culture Hearth • Culture Hearth - emerged in the Neolithic period (fig 2.15), Two processes • Multilinear Evolution - • Cultural Convergence

7. The Structure of Culture • Ideological Subsystem • Mentifacts (fig 2.19c) • Technological Subsystem • Artifacts (fig 2.19a) • Sociological Subsystem • Sociofacts (fig 2.19b) • Cultural Integration

8. Culture Change • Innovation (top five inventions you cannot live without?) • Diffusion • Expansion: hierarchical, contagious, stimulus • Relocation: (fig 2.21, 2.22, 2.23) • Spatial Diffusion of Wal-Mart: Contagious and Reverse Hierarchical Elements • Chinese Inventions : gunpowder, printing, and spaghetti, however, diffusion routes are not documented (silk road?) • Acculturation and Transculturation (fig 2.24) Cultural Modification • Acculturation – immigrants, tribal European in areas of Roman conquest, native Americans loss culture due to European settlement • Transculturation – Baseball in Japan and Green Tea in the U.S. • Read “A Homemade Culture” • Bed pattern from New East, modified in N Europe • Cotton, domesticated in India, Silk – discovered in China • Soap invented by the ancient Gauls • Glass invented in Egypt • Rubber discovered by Central American Indians • …….

9. Contact between Regions • Diffusion Barriers - distance, time, culture (more similar two cultures,,easier to adopt innovation)  • Diffusion is a selective process. – French Canadians less influenced by Anglo culture. • Syncretism - process of the fusion of the old and new cultures. Example….