Unit Three: Cultural Patterns and Processes

1. Unit Three: Cultural Patterns and Processes

2. Culture • What is culture? • How and why is culture diffused? • How is culture imprinted on landscape? • How is culture affected by globalization? • What are the advantages and disadvantages of globalization? • How can language, religion, ethnicity, race and gender be represented spatially?

3. Introduction to cultural processes

4. Culture as a Geographical Process • Cultural geography • Folk culture • Popular culture Cultural practice called “gothic”

5. Sauer’s Cultural Landscape This figure summarizes the ways the natural and cultural landscapes are transformed.

6. How do cultural traits diffuse? Hearth: the point of origin of a cultural trait. Contagious diffusion Hierarchical diffusion

7. With Distance Decay, the likelihood of diffusion decreases as time and distance from the hearth increases. With Time-Space Compression, the likelihood of diffusion depends upon the connectedness among places. Which applies more to popular culture?

8. How are hearths of popular culture traits established? • Typically begins with an idea/good and contagious diffusion. • Companies can create/manufacture popular culture. (ie. MTV) • Individuals can create/manufacture popular culture. (ie. Tony Hawk)

9. Material Culture The things a group of people construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, and food. Nonmaterial Culture The beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people. Material and Nonmaterial Culture

10. Folk Culture • spreads slowly, unchanging • isolated • promotes diversity

11. Popular culture: • global • wide-spread; ephemeral • tends toward homogeneity • many cultures

12. The Culture of Hip-Hop The sources and diffusion of U.S. rap

13. U.S. Religious Population Distribution by county, 2000

14. Cultural Systems A cultural system is a collection of interacting components that shape a group’s collective identity, and includes traits, territorial affiliation, and shared history. • Geography and Religion • Geography and Language • Culture and Society Origin of the world’s major religions >

15. Cultural Landscape The visible human imprint on the landscape. How have people changed the landscape? What buildings, statues, and so forth have they erected? How do landscapes reflect the values of a culture?

16. Placelessness: the loss of uniqueness in a cultural landscape – one place looks like the next.

17. Convergence of Cultural Landscapes: • The widespread distribution of businesses and products creates distinctive landscape stamps around the world.

18. Convergence of Cultural Landscapes: • Borrowing of idealized landscape images blurs place distinctiveness.

19. House Types • Kniffen’s traditional American house types: New England Mid-Atlantic Southern Tidewater

21. Language Language – a set of sounds, combinations of sounds, and symbols that are used for communication.

22. Language and National Identity Standard Language a language that is published, widely distributed, and purposefully taught. Government usually plays a big role in standardizing a language.

23. Language and Political Conflict Belgium: Flanders (Flemish language) Wallonia (French language)

24. Percent of People 5 Years and Older Who Speak a Language other than English at Home

26. Dialectvariants of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines- vocabulary-syntax- pronunciation- cadence- pace of speech Isogloss A geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs

27. Mutual Intelligibility • Means two people can understand each other when speaking. • Problems: • Cannot measure mutual intelligibility • Many “languages” fail the test of mutual intelligibility • Standard languages and governments impact what is a “language” and what is a “dialect”

28. Distribution of Major Languages Classifying languages by family and mapping their occurrence across the globe provide insights about human geography.

29. World Language Families

30. Indo-European Language The Indo-European language blossomed in northeast central Europe in the fifth millennium B.C.

31. Language Maps Extinct or threatened languages in Africa India’s linguistic landscape is complex with hundreds of distinct languages in use

32. Languages & Dialects of France 1789 On the eve of the French Revolution, language diversity in France was not so dissimilar from other European regions that were consolidating into states.

33. How are Languages Formed? • Can find linkages among languages by examining sound shifts – a slight change in a word across languages over time. eg. Milk = lacte in Latin latta in Italian leche in Spanish lait in French

34. How are Languages Formed? • Language divergence – when a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks the language into dialects and then new languages. • Language convergence – when peoples with different languages have consistent spatial interaction and their languages collapse into one.

35. How do Linguists Study Historical Languages? • Backward reconstruction – tracking sound shifts and the hardening of consonants backward to reveal an “original” language. • Can deduce the vocabulary of an extinct language. • Can recreate ancient languages (deep reconstruction)

36. Historical Linkages among Languages • Indo-European language family • Proto-Indo-European language • Nostratic Language

37. Renfrew Hypothesis: Proto-Indo-European began in the Fertile Crescent, and then: From Anatolia diffused Europe’s languages From the Western Arc of Fertile Crescent diffused North Africa and Arabia’s languages From the Eastern Arc of Fertile Crescent diffused Southwest Asia and South Asia’s languages.

38. Agriculture Theory With increased food supply and increased population, speakers from the hearth of Indo-European languages migrated into Europe.

39. Dispersal Hypothesis Indo-European languages first moved from the hearth eastward into present-day Iran and then around the Caspian and into Europe.

40. The Languages of Europe Romance languages Germanic languages Slavic languages

41. Nigeriamore than 400 different languages.

42. How do Languages Diffuse? • human interaction • print distribution • migration • trade • rise of nation-states • colonialism

43. Spatial Interaction helps create: • Lingua franca – A language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce. • Pidgin language – a language created when people combine parts of two or more languages into a simplified structure and vocabulary. • Creole language – a pidgin language that has developed a more complex structure and vocabulary and has become the native language of a group of people.

44. Global LanguageIs a global language the principle language people use around the world in their day-to-day activities?ORIs a global language a common language for trade and commerce used around the world?

45. Place • Place – the uniqueness of a location, what people do in a location, what they create, how they impart a certain character, a certain imprint on the location by making it unique.

46. Toponym • Toponym – a place name • A toponym: • Imparts a certain character on a place • Reflects the social processes in a place • Can give us a glimpse of the history of a place

47. Changing Toponyms • When people change the toponym of a place, they have the power to “wipe out the past and call forth the new.” - Yi-Fu Tuan

48. Religion “a system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate priorities.” - Stoddard and Prorak “perceived ultimate priorities” often translate into a list of things a follower “should” do and ways a follower “should” behave.

49. Classifications of Religions • Monotheistic religions – worship a single deity. • Polytheistic religions – worship more than one deity, even thousands. • Animistic religions – belief that inanimate objects posses spirits and should be revered.

50. Classifications of Religions • Universalizing religions – religions that actively seek converts because members believe they offer belief systems of universal appropriateness and appeal. • Ethnic religions – religions whose adherents are born into the faith and whose members do not actively seek converts.