Topic 5.1

Question 1

Culture

Answer 1

Concerned with specialized behavioural patterns and social systems that summarize the learned way of life of a group of people. Includes both material characteristics that differentiate people and their occupied landscapes

Question 2

Cultural Geography

Answer 2

Branch of systematic geography focusing on the impact of material/non-material human culture on the environment and the human organization of space

Question 3

Ideological Subsystems

Answer 3

Comprise the ideas, beliefs, knowledge, and means of their communication that characterize a culture

Question 4

Mentifacts

Answer 4

Specific elements (language, religion) in the ideological subsystem of culture

Question 5

Technological Subsystem

Answer 5

Composed of material objects, together with the techniques of their use by means of which people are able to live

Question 6

Artifacts

Answer 6

(tools and housing) elements in the technological subsystem used to fill basic needs

Question 7

Sociological Subsystem

Answer 7

Composed of the totality of expected and accepted patterns of interpersonal relations common to a culture

Question 8

Sociofacts

Answer 8

Components of a sociological subsystem. Include various institutions and links between individuals and groups that unit a culture (family structure, educational institutions, etc)

Question 9

Cultural Integration

Answer 9

Implies their interlocking nature of all aspects of culture

Question 10

Environmental Determinism

Answer 10

Originally proposed that environment (climate) controls and molds human activities and cultural landscapes

Question 11

Possibilism

Answer 11

The view that choices are made by people in response to opportunities and constraints provided by the environment

Question 12

Cultural Autonomy

Answer 12

The view that cultures can develop any set of cultural traits independent of their environment circumstances

Question 13

Innovation

Answer 13

Involves the introduction of new ideas, practices, or objects that originate within the social group itself

Question 14

Diffusion

Answer 14

The process of involving the spread of an innovation over space through time. Transmitted from one individual or group to another

Question 15

Relocation Diffusion

Answer 15

The innovation or idea is physically carried to new areas by migrating individuals or populations that posses it

Question 16

Expansion Diffusion

Answer 16

Involves the spread of an item from one place to another (new fashion clothing, or new electronic technology)

Question 17

Contagious Diffusion

Answer 17

Depends upon direct contact between those who have developed or adopted the innovation and those who newly encounter it. Strongly dependent upon distance and derives its name from the spread of contagious diseases

Question 18

Cascade Diffusion

Answer 18

Where dispersal progresses rapidly from larger to smaller centers in a hierarchy (fashion clothing)

Question 19

Hierarchical Diffusion

Answer 19

Where the spread of an innovation can be either upward or reverse, or downward through a hierarchy of centers

Question 20

Accultration

Answer 20

Cultural modification or change that results when one culture group or individual adopts traits of dominant or host society. Involves cultural development of change through “borrowing”

Question 21

Assimilation

Answer 21

Three part process by which the minority population reduces or loses completely its identifying cultural characteristics and blends into the host society

Question 22

Behavioural Assimilation

Answer 22

Integration into a common behavioural pattern through shared experience, language, intermarriage, and sense of history

Question 23

Structural Assimilation

Answer 23

Fusion of immigrant groups with the social systems and occupations of the host society

Question 24

Spatial Assimilation

Answer 24

The overlap intersection and sharing of physical space between 2 cultural groups

Question 25

Diffusion Barrier

Answer 25

Any condition that hinders the spread of an innovation

Question 26

Absorbing Barrier

Answer 26

Distance between 2 areas may halt the spread of an innovation

Question 27

Interrupting Barrier

Answer 27

Imposed by the physical environment and/or lack of receptivity, by a contacted culture. When a social group is unresponsive to an innovation, it is said to exhibit cultural lag

Question 28

Cultural Ecology

Answer 28

Study of interaction between societies and the natural environments they occupy (section 3, of topic 5.1)

Question 29

Cultural Area

Answer 29

Unit in space inhabited at a given period by people characterized by shared culture

Question 30

Cultural Traits

Answer 30

Single distinguishing features of regular occurrence within a culture or culture area (language, tool, or attitude)

Question 31

Culture Complex

Answer 31

Comprises a related set of culture traits descriptive of a society’s behaviour or activities

Question 32

Culture Region

Answer 32

Formal region occupied by populations sharing recognizable and distinctive culture characteristics

Question 33

Culture Realm

Answer 33

A collective of culture regions sharing related culture systems

Question 34

Culture Hearth

Answer 34

Spatially confined area within which advanced and distinctive set of cultural traits, ideas, and technologies develop

Question 35

Multilinear Evolution

Answer 35

Occurs when similar cultural development occurs independently in different areas (development of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt)

Question 36

Cultural Convergence

Answer 36

Results from either the spread of cultural characteristics or multilinear evolution

Question 37

Paleolithic Period

Answer 37

Old stone age. Was concluded at the end of the ice age, 11 000 - 9000 BCE. Paleolithic populations were hunter-gatherers. They gradually improved their tools, extended their areas of occupance and engaged in inter group contact and trade

Question 38

Mesolithic Period

Answer 38

Middle Stone Age. Occurred from 11 000 BCE to 5000 BCE in Europe. Marked by increasing cultural divergence as populations passed from food gathering to food production and developed differing ways to life and economy

Question 39

Cultural Divergence

Answer 39

Tendency for cultures to become increasingly dissimilar with separation and the passage of time

Question 40

Neolithic Period

Answer 40

New stone age. From 8000 to 35000 BCE. Era designates the stage of cultural development in which new tools, technologies, and social structures were developed among sedentary populations

Question 41

Modernity

Answer 41

(Modern Era) The term given to the last 200-300 years of Western Culture. Main feature being the rise of industrial revolution

Question 42

Cultural Landscapes

Answer 42

The natural landscape as modified by human activity and bearing the imprint of a culture group or society. they are dynamic and have both geographic context and a natural context

Question 43

Cultural Politics

Answer 43

Theme of cultural geography that has become dominant since 1980s

Question 44

Identities

Answer 44

Socially constructed markers of cultural differences (gender, class, language)

Question 45

Environmental Politics

Answer 45

Places emphasis on culture as the site of a power struggle among different resource use strategies

Question 46

Political Ecology

Answer 46

The term that refers to some approach which essentially links politics and economy to issues of environmental control and change