unit 3 Flashcards
Nonmaterial culture
Intangible elements of culture including a wide range of beliefs, values, myths, and symbolic meanings passed from generation to generation within a given society
Cultural trait
A single aspect of a given culture or society
Artifacts
Any human made item that represents a culture (artwork, clothing, etc.)
Centrifugal force
A force that threatens the cohesion of a neighborhood, society, or country
Centripetal
A force that brings people together and unifies a neighborhood, society, or country
Secularization
The process whereby religion become a less dominant force in everyday life than it was in the past
Ethnocentric approach
An approach to understanding other cultures that evaluates them from the perspective of the observer’s culture
Cultural relativism
An approach to understanding other cultures that seeks to understand individuals and cultures from a wider perspective of cultural logic
Sequent occupance
Refers to the fact that many places have been controlled or affected by a variety of groups over a period of time; those groups have reshaped the functions or meanings of those places and left behind layers of meaning
Imperialism
The motivating impulse to control greater amounts of territory
Colonialism
The act of forcefully controlling a foreign territory, which becomes known as a colony
Pidgin language
A trade language, characterized by a very small vocabulary derived from the languages of at least two or more groups in contact
Creole language
A combined language that has a fuller vocabulary than a pidgin language and becomes a native language
Lingua franca
A language of communication and commerce spoken across a wide area where it is not a mother tongue
Assimilation
Occurs when an ethnic or immigrant group blends in with the host culture and loses many culturally distinctive traits
Cultural hearth
A focused geographic area where important innovations are born and from which they spread
Extinct language
A language that has only a few elderly speakers still living or no living speakers
Race
Historically defined by the physical characteristics of a group, especially skin color
Ethnic group
A people of common ancestry and cultural tradition; characterized by a strong feeling of group identity
Sacred spaces
Natural or human-made sites that possess religious meaning and are recognized as worthy of devotion, loyalty, fear, or esteem
Toponyms
The names given to places that reflect spatial patterns of language, dialect, ethnicity
Time-space convergence
The phenomenon whereby the introduction of new transportation technologies progressively reduces the time it takes to travel between places
Dialect
A regional variation of a language that is understood by people who speak other variations of that language
