1. Introduction to Geography
Arthur Getis, Judith Getis, & Jerome D. Fellmann

2. Cultural Geography
Chapter 7

3. Overview Components of Culture Interaction of People and Environment
Subsystems of Culture
Culture Change
Cultural Diversity
Language
Religion
Ethnicity
Gender and Culture
Other Aspects of Diversity

4. Components of Culture Culture is learned, not biological
Through imitation, instruction, example
Culture is not homogenous

5. Components of Culture Spatial Hierarchy of Cultural Geography
Culture trait
Single distinguishing feature of a culture
Culture complex
Group of culture traits that are functionally interrelated
Culture system
Collection of interacting cultural traits and cultural complexes that are shared by a group within a particular territory

6. Components of Culture Spatial Hierarchy of Cultural Geography
Culture region
Portion of the earth’s surface occupied by people sharing recognizable and distinctive cultural characteristics
Culture realm
Collective of culture regions sharing related culture complexes and landscapes

7. Interaction of People and Environment
Cultural ecology
Study of the relationship between a culture group and the natural environment it occupies
Environments as controls
Environmental determinism
Peaked in popularity in late 19th - early 20th Centuries
Taught that physical environment, in particular climate, determined which cultures would become the most advanced and economically developed
However, cultural variations that occur around the world are not determined by a society’s physical surroundings

8. Interaction of People and Environment
Environments as controls (continued)
Possibilism
People, not environments, are the dynamic forces of cultural development
Physical environment offers a set of opportunities and limitations
Human impacts on environment
Cultural landscape
The earth’s surface as modified by human action
Tangible physical record of a given culture
Relationship exists between technological advancement and impact on the environment

9. Three Subsystems of Culture
Technological subsystem
Material objects and techniques people use to carry out their productive activities
Cultural divergence
Cultural convergence
Technologically advanced countries
Many people employed in manufacturing or services
High per capita incomes, levels of education, nutrition, life expectancies, medical services
Economic and political power

10. Three Subsystems of Culture
Technological subsystem (continued)
Technologically less-advanced countries
High percentage of people engaged in farming
Lower GNI and per capita incomes, life expectancies, literacy rates
Labels
Advanced-less advanced
Developed-underdeveloped
Industrial-nonindustrial
The North-The South
Can be misinterpreted to mean “superior-inferior”

11. Three Subsystems of Culture
Sociological subsystem
Common patterns of interpersonal relations, behaviors and interactions
Regulate how the individual functions relative to the group, whether it be family, church or state
Includes religious, political, educational and other social institutions
Social institutions are closely related to the technological subsystem

12. Three Subsystems of Culture
Ideological subsystem
Ideas, beliefs, knowledge and means of their communication
Passed from one generation to the next
Changes in ideological subsystem may affect sociological and technological subsystems
Cultural integration
Interlocking nature of all aspects of culture
Means that any cultural object or act may have a number of meanings

13. Culture Change Cultures are always in a state of flux
Change within cultures is induced by:
Innovation
Spatial diffusion
Acculturation

14. Culture Change: Innovation
Change results from ideas created within the social group and adopted by it
Premodern and traditional societies typically are slower to innovate and accept change
Cultural lag
Agricultural Revolution
Occurred independently in several areas
Affected every aspect of society

15. Culture Change: Innovation
Culture hearth
Area of innovation from which key culture elements diffused to exert an influence on surrounding regions
Only a few produced the trappings of civilization
Innovation is common in modern societies

16. Culture Change: Spatial Diffusion
Process by which a concept, a practice, an innovation or a substance spreads from its point of origin to new territories
Two processes are involved
People move to a new area and take culture with them
Or information about an innovation can spread
Parallel innovation

17. Culture Change: Spatial Diffusion
Barriers to diffusion - Receiver culture may selectively adopt some goods or ideas and reject others
Syncretism is a major feature of culture change
Fusion of old and new culture elements

18. Culture Change: Acculturation
Process by which one culture group undergoes major modification by adopting many characteristics of another, usually dominant, culture group
May involve changes in the original cultural patterns or either or both of the two groups involved
May occur in a conquered or colonized region
May occur when a population relocates

19. Culture Change: Acculturation
Amalgamation theory
Multiethnic societies become a merger of the culture traits of their member groups
“Melting pot”
“Salad bowl” or “lumpy stew”
Assimilation
Completion of integration process
Does not necessarily mean that consciousness of original identity is reduced or lost
Competition theory

20. Cultural Diversity
Prominent differentiating culture traits of societies and regions
Language
Religion
Ethnicity
Gender

21. Language
Organized system of speech by which people communicate with each other with mutual comprehension
Most important medium by which culture is transmitted
Nearly 7000 different languages are spoken in the world
Many languages are disappearing

22. Language Language (linguistic) family
Group of languages thought to have descended from a common ancestral tongue (proto-Indo-European)
E.g., Indo-European languages
Spoken by about ½ the world’s peoples
Subfamilies exist within language family
E.g., the Romance languages and the Germanic languages

23. Language: Language Spread and Change
Language spreads through dispersion of speakers or acquisition of new speakers
Language spread may, through segregation and isolation, give rise to mutually unintelligible tongues
Language evolution may be gradual and cumulative or it may be massive and abrupt

24. Language: Language Spread and Change
Evolution and spread of English
Within ≈400 years developed from localized language of 7 million islanders to international language
English today
≈ 400 million native speakers
≈ 600 million use it as a second language
Millions more have some competence in English as a foreign language
Official language of 60 countries
Dominant language facilitating increased global interaction

25. Language: Standard and Variant Languages
A speech community usually possesses both a standard language and a number of dialects
Standard language
Comprises accepted community norms of syntax, vocabulary, pronunciation
Dialect
Ordinary speech of areal, social, professional or other subdivisions of the general population
Most dialects exhibit spatial patterns
Linguistic geography
Study of the character and spatial pattern of geographic, or regional, dialects

26. Language: Standard and Variant Languages
Pidgin
New auxiliary language which is an amalgam of languages, usually a simplified form of one of them with borrowings from another
Simplified grammatical structure and reduced vocabulary
Not the mother tongue of any of its speakers, second language for all its users
Generally used for commerce, administration or work supervision
If a pidgin becomes the first language of a group of speakers, a creole has evolved

27. Language: Standard and Variant Languages
Creole
Native tongue developed from a pidgin
Acquires more complex grammatical structure and enhanced vocabulary
E.g., Swahili, Afrikaans, Haitian Creole and Bazaar Malay
Lingua franca
Established language used habitually for communication by people whose native tongues are mutually incomprehensible
It is a second language for its users

28. Language: Language and Culture
Language embodies the culture complex of a people, reflecting both environment and technology
Linguistic differences between the sexes
A common language fosters unity among people
Bilingualism or multilingualism complicates national linguistic structure

29. Language: Language and Culture
Toponyms
Place-names (language on the land)
Record of past and present cultures
Toponymy
Study of place-names
Revealing tool of cultural geography

30. Religion Cultural innovation
Value system that involves formal or informal worship and faith in the sacred and divine
Joins adherents into a single moral community
May intimately affect all facets of a culture
Varies in its cultural role – dominating in some societies, unimportant or even repressed in others

31. Religion: Classification of Religions
Monotheism/Polytheism
Universalizing religions
Claim applicability to all persons and seek conversion
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism
Ethnic religions
Identified with a particular ethnic group
Judaism, Hinduism, Shinto

32. Religion: Classification of Religions
Tribal (traditional) religions
Ethnic religions specific to small, preindustrial cultures having close ties to nature
Animism
Shamanism
Secularism
Indifference to or rejection of religion and religious belief
An increasing part of many modern societies

33. Religion: Principal Religions
Judaism
Monotheism laid foundation for Christianity and Islam
Emerged years ago in the Near East
Ethnic religion, determining factors of which are descent from Israel, the Torah, Jewish traditions
Diaspora
State of Israel was a fulfillment of Zionism

34. Religion: Principal Religions
Christianity
Jesus, a Jewish preacher, is believed to be the messiah promised by God
The new covenant he preached was not a rejection of traditional Judaism but a promise of salvation to all humankind, rather than to just a chosen people
Universalizing religion
Division of Christianity, by dissolution of Roman Empire, into Western Church and Eastern Church
Protestant Reformation of 15th and 16th Centuries
Catholic vs. Protestant cultural landscape

35. Religion: Principal Religions
Islam
Mohammed revered as the prophet of Allah (God)
Koran contains rules of worship, details of doctrine and instructions on the conduct of human affairs
Observance of “five pillars” and surrender to will of Allah unites faithful into community that has no concern with race, color or caste
Spread quickly outward from source region of Arabia through Islamic political and military expansion
Disagreement over succession of leadership after Mohammed led to division between Sunnis and Shi’ites
Cultural landscape - mosque

36. Religion: Principal Religions
Hinduism
Oldest major religion (≈ 4000 or more years old)
No founding event or initial prophet
Ethnic religion
Adherents may believe in one god or many or none
A Hindu is one born into a caste, a member of a complex social, economic and religious community

37. Religion: Principal Religions
Sikhism
Syncretism of Islam and Hinduism
Rejects formalism of both
Proclaims gospel of universal tolerance

38. Religion: Principal Religions
Buddhism
Reform movement of Hinduism
Universalizing faith
Founded in 6th century B.C. in northern India
Moral philosophy taught by Siddhartha Gautama
Enlightenment and salvation lie in “four noble truths”
Spread to other parts of Asia
Today - Various schools of thought
Cultural landscape
Stupa
Temple or pagoda enshrining Buddha image or relic
Monastery

39. Religion: Principal Religions
East Asian ethnic religions influenced by Buddhism
Confucianism
Taoism
Japanese Shinto

40. Ethnicity
Usually refers to the ancestry of people who share common characteristics
Language, religion, national origin, unique customs
Ethnocentrism
Feeling that one’s own ethnic group is superior
Territorial segregation
Strong and sustaining trait of ethnic identity
Ethnic enclaves

41. Gender and Culture
Socially created distinctions between femininity and masculinity
Gender relationships and role assignments differ among societies
Influenced by economic development, religion, customs
General egalitarianism in hunting and gathering cultures
Agriculture altered the structure of gender roles
Ideal Victorian woman
Subordinate role of women changed only in the later 20th century in more-developed countries - Feminist revolution

42. Gender and Culture
Mixed impact of economic globalization on female participation in the paid labor force
On worldwide basis, increase in women’s share of paid employment; however, has not necessarily reduced gender discrimination
Distinct gender-specific regionalization has emerged
Arab or Arab-influenced Muslim areas of western Asia and North Africa – proportion of female population that is economically active is low
Sub-Saharan Africa – highly dependent on female farm labor and market income

43. Gender and Culture
Mixed impact of economic globalization on female participation in the paid labor force
Distinct gender-specific regionalization has emerged (continued)
Japan – Males nearly exclusively run the huge industrial and political machinery
Scandinavian countries – economic and social equality is more advanced than perhaps any portion of the industrialized world

44. Other Aspects of Diversity
Culture is the sum total of the way of life of a society
Economic development levels, language, religion, ethnicity and gender all are important and common distinguishing culture traits, but they only tell a partial story
Many other elements of culture exist, including:
Architectural styles
Music
Food
Games

45. Other Aspects of Diversity
Spatial interaction, another aspect of culture, is the subject of chapter eight