Unit 3 Vocab List Words Flashcards
The spread of information, ideas, behaviors, and other aspects of culture from their hearths to wider areas.
Diffusion
Behaviors heavily discouraged by a culture.
Taboos
The area in which a unique culture or a specific trait develops.
Cultural Hearth
The increased integration of the world economy since the 1970’s.
Globalization
When cultural traits—such as clothing, music, movies, and types of businesses—spread quickly over a large area and are adopted by various groups.
Popular Culture (global culture)
Also known as the built environment, the modification of the environment by a group and is a visible reflection of of that group’s cultural beliefs and values.
Cultural Landscape (Built Environment)
Consists of tangible things, or those that can be experienced by the senses. Art, clothing, food, music, sports, and housing types are all tangible elements of culture.
Material Culture
Consists of intangible concepts, or those not having a physical presence. Beliefs, values, practices, and aesthetics (pleasing in appearance) determine what a cultural group views as acceptable and desirable.
Nonmaterial Culture
A culture included in several larger regions. They share a few traits such as language families, religious traditions, food preferences, architecture, or shared history.
Culture Realms
A force that unifies a group of people or a region.
Centripetal
A force that divides a group of people or a region.
Centrifugal
Believing that your own cultural group is more important and superior to other cultures.
Ethnocentrism
The concept that a person’s or group’s beliefs, values, norms, and practices should be understood from the perspective of the other group’s culture.
Cultural Relativism
One of the main types of diffusion, the spread of culture and/or cultural traits by people who migrate and carry their cultural traits with them.
Relocation Diffusion
One of the main types of diffusion, it is the spread of cultural traits outward through exchange without migration. It requires a different person to adopt the trait.
Expansion Diffusion
One of the main types of diffusion, occurs when a cultural traits spreads continuously outward from its hearth through contact among people.
Contagious Diffusion
One of the main types of diffusion, the spread of culture outward from the most interconnected places or from one powerful person, city, or social class.
Hierarchical Diffusion
One of the main types of diffusion, when an underlying idea from a culture hearth is adopted by another culture but the adopting group modifies or rejects one trait. Ex. Hindus in India adopted the practice of eating fast food, but since they can’t eat beef they made vegetarian and non-beef types of burgers.
Stimulus Diffusion
A broader concept that includes a variety of ways of influencing another country or group of people by direct conquest, economic control, or cultural dominance.
Imperialism
A particular type of imperialism in which people move into and settle on the land of another country.
Colonialism
A common language used by people who do not share the same native language.
Lingua Franca
When speakers of two different languages have extensive contact with each other, often because of trade, they sometimes develop a _______ _________, a simplified mixture of two languages.
Pidgin Language
The idea that a culture may change over time as the elements of distance, time, physical separation, and modern technology create divisions and changes.
Cultural Divergence
The beliefs and practices of small, homogenous (of the same kind) groups of people, often living in rural areas that are relatively isolated and slow to change.
Folk Culture (Local Culture)
Variations in accent, grammar, usage, and spelling create _______, or regional variations of a language. “Hello, everyone,” “Hi, y’all,” “Hi, you guys” are examples of ________ variations.
Dialects
Names of places
Toponyms
Belief traditions that emphasize strong cultural characteristics among their followers. Does not recruit new adherents and is tied to a specific location and/or ethnic group.
Ethnic Religion
An ethnic or immigrant group moving to a new area and adopting the values and practices of the larger group that has received them, while still maintaining valuable elements of their own culture.
Acculturation
When an ethnic group can no longer be distinguished from the receiving group.
Assimilation
The fusion or blending of two distinctive cultural traits into a unique new hybrid trait.
Syncretism
The coexistence of several cultures in one society with the ideal of all cultures being valued and worthy of study.
Multiculturalism
The political policy of promoting the interests of native inhabitants against those of immigrants, including by supporting immigration-restriction measures.
Nativism
The integration of two or more languages that develop more formal structure and vocabulary so they are no longer regarded as a pidgin language.
Creolization (creole language)
When cultures become more alike with increased interaction.
Cultural Convergence
A distinct territorial, cultural, or social unit that is completely surrounded by the territory of another entity.
Enclaves
The process by which an individual learns the traditional content of a culture and assimilates its practices and values.
Enculturation
Distinct social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced.
Indigenous
The language family that includes all European languages (which are widely spoken in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Australasia) and Indian and Iranian, is spoken by slightly over fifty percent of the world’s population.
Indo-European
Race is defined according to physiological characteristics such as skin color, blood type, hair texture, etc. Ethnicity is defined according to common origins or the quality or fact of belonging to a population group or subgroup made up of people who share a common cultural background or descent.
Race vs Ethnicity
The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape.
Sequent Occupancy
Offers belief systems that are attractive to the universal population. They look for new members and welcome anyone and everyone who wishes to adopt their belief system.
Universalizing Religions
The process by which an increasing percentage of a population comes to live in urban areas, leading to the growth and expansion of cities.
Urbanization
