Geography: Chapter 1

Front 1

absorbing barriers

Back 1

- a barrier that completely halts diffusion of innovations and blocks the spread of cultural elements.
- ex: cultural diffusion of tv's reversed because taliban abolished televisions.

Front 2

Alexander von Humboldt

Back 2

- one of founding fathers of modern geography.
- extensive travels in Europe and the Americas ( south and central america).
- focus on natural settings, physical settings, climate.
- noticed that as you rise a mt. (andes mt) climate changes and vegitation diversifies.
- altitutudinal zonation: diff ranges in altitude, diff crops/vegitation.

Front 3

Alexander von Humboldt

Back 3

- one of founding fathers of modern geography.
- extensive travels in Europe and the Americas ( south and central america).
- focus on natural settings, physical settings, climate.
- noticed that as you rise a mt. (andes mt) climate changes and vegitation diversifies.
- altitutudinal zonation: diff ranges in altitude, diff crops/vegitation.

Front 4

Carl Ritter

Back 4

- one of founding fathers of modern geography
- first academic chair of geography in germany
- focus on connections between humans and nature.
- wrote book.

Front 5

core-periphery pattern

Back 5

- formal regions defined by core-periphery patterns. general cultural patterns ( ex: pasture, vineyards)
- moving away from the central core, the characteristics weaken and disappear. many formal regions thus display a core-periphery pattern.
- refers to a situation where a region can be divided into two sections, one near the center (where the particular attributes that define the region ex. language or religion, are strong and other portions of the region further from the core called the periphery, where those attributes are weaker.

Front 6

Cultural Geography

Back 6

Cultural geography, also known as human geography, covers a wide swath of human interaction with the land. Cultural geography includes language, religion, medicine, cities, economics, entertainment, and much more.
- cultural approach to the study of human geography implies an emphasis on the meanings, values, attitudes, and beliefs that different groups of people around the world lend to and derive from places and spaces.
- cultural approach to human geography studies relationships among space, place, and environment, and culture. examines ways in which culture is expressed and symbolized in the landscapes around us.

Front 7

Culture

Back 7

- a total way of life held in common by a group of people, including such learned features as speech, ideology, behavior, livelihood, technology, and government. or the local, customary way of doing things- a way of life, an ever changing process in which a group is actively engaged; a dynamic mix of symbols, beliefs, speech,and practices.
- culture is learned, collective human behavior, as opposed to innate, or inborn behavior.
- learned simiilarities in speech, behavior, ideology, technology form a way of life common to a group of people.
- culture involves a means of communicating these learned beliefs, memories, perceptions, traditions that serves to shape behavior.
- culture is not a fixed phenomenon and it doesn't always govern its members.
- culture is a process where people are actively engaged.
- individuals can and do change a culture, meaning that ways of life constantly change and tensions between opposing views are usually present.
- cultures never internelly homogenous because individual humans never think or behave in exactly the same manner.

Front 8

environmental determinism

Back 8

- one of schools of thought
- environment shapes culture
- humans are clay to be molded by environment

Front 9

environmental perception

Back 9

- third school of thought
- each person has a mental image of the environment shaped by knowledge, ignorance, experience, values, and emotions
- people's choices depend more on their perceptions than reality.
- because perceptions are learned and influenced by culture, people's views are distortions of reality.
- perception in turn is colored by the teachings of culture.

Front 10

Expansion Diffusion

Back 10

- on of the types of diffusion
- spread of innovations within an area in a snowballing process, so that the total number of knowers or users becomes greater and the area of occurance grows.

Front 11

Contagious Diffusion

Back 11

- ex: religion is spread through contact conversion
- involves wavelike spread of ideas in the manner of a contagious disease, moving throughout space without regard to hierarchies.
- hierarcial and contagious diffusion often work together.
- ex; hiv/aids diffused first to urban areas and from there out.

Front 12

Stimulus Diffusion

Back 12

- idea moves, not the specific trait.
- ex: idea of domesticating cattle, instead of domesticating reindeer.
- sometimes a specific trait is rejected but the underlying idea is accepted.

Front 13

Hierarchical Diffusion

Back 13

- spread of fashion from paris, ny, than to okolohoma. from higher status to lower status.
- ideas leapfrog from one important person to another or from one urban center to another, temporarily bypassig other persons or rural territories.

Front 14

Formal Region

Back 14

- most have a core & periphery. defined by that pattern.
- area inhibited by people who have one or more traits in common, like language or religion.
- area commonly homogenous with regard to one or more cultural traits.
- geographers use this concept to map spatial differences throughout the world. ex: arabic language formal region can be drawn on a map of languages and would include arabic speaking countries.
- wheat farming formal region would include parts of the world where wheat is a major crop.
- no two cultural traits have the same distribution, terrirorial extent of a culture region depends on what and how many defining traits are used.

Front 15

Functional Region

Back 15

.- something that has some sort of activity associated with it, have nobs, central focal point (ex: bell tower, lee hall). functional regions have very defined boundary. ex: newspaper, circulation zone headquarters is the nob.
- not culturally homogenous. area organized to function politically, socially, or economically as one unit.
- ex: city, church, independent state.
- functional regions have nodes> central points where the functions are coordinated and directed.in this sense, functional regions also possess a core-periphery configeration, in comon with formal regions.
- ex: metropolitan area is a functional region that includes all the land under the jurisdiction of a particular urban government.
- not all functional regions have fixed, precise borders. ex: newspaper circulation area. node for paper would be plant where it is produced. newspaper may have sales extended into city's suburbs, nearby towns.

Front 16

Geography

Back 16

- describing things
- geo-earth
- graphy- to write about
- through geography we describe land forms, travel, conquest, and trade.
-geography is a greek word meaning "to describe the earth"
- ancient geographers began to ask questions about why cultures and environments differ from place to place, initiating study of geography.
- through geography we can now describe land forms, structure of populations, demographics, and death and birth rates.

Front 17

George Perkins Marsh

Back 17

- believed that we utilize resources for our own benefit, manage forests by planting and producing trees.

Front 18

humanistic approach to culture

Back 18

look it up

Front 19

place

Back 19

- defined by scale and specific characteristics or features.
- place is the key word implying more humanistic view of geography.

Front 20

topophilia

Back 20

- means love of place
- describes people who exhibit a strong sense of place and the geographers who are attracted to the study of such places and peoples.

Front 21

humans as modifiers of the earth

Back 21

- fourth school of thought
- Humans mold nature
- Varies by culture

Front 22

Nature-Culture

Back 22

- fourth theme,focuses attention on how people inhibit the earth. their relationships to the physical environment.
- theme of nature culture is the meeting ground of cultural and physical geographers, has traditionally provided a focus point for geography.
- human geographers developed many perspectives on the interactions between humans and the land: four schools of thought developed.environmental determinism, possibilism, environmental perception, and humans as modifiers of the earth.

Front 23

spatial approach to culture

Back 23

- the human geographer must study the interaction between culture and environment to understand spatial variations in culture.

Front 24

possibilism

Back 24

- people are primary archetects of culture by choosing from the possibilities offered by the environment.
- high tech cultures are less influenced by environment but also have more influence on the environment.
- possibilists claim that any physical environment offers a number of possible ways for a culture to develop. in this way local environments help shape its resident culture
- however, a culture's way of life depends on the choices people make among the possibilities that are offered by the environment. these choices are guided by cultural heritage and are shaped by a particular political and economic system. - possibilists see physical environment as offering opportunities and limitations, ppl make choices among these to satisfy their needs.

Front 25

nodes

Back 25

- central focul point ex: lee hall

Front 26

independent invention

Back 26

- ideas that originate in different locations and are used for different purposes.

Front 27

organic v. mechanistic view of nature

Back 27

- organic: humans are part of nature
- mechanic: humans are removed from nature

Front 28

permeable barriers

Back 28

look it up in chap. 13

Front 29

Relocation Diffusion

Back 29

- ex: religion; people bring their religion with them spread their traditions. spread from original core group.
- ex: migration of christianity with european setlers who came to america.

Front 30

space

Back 30

- space identifies the perspective of the model-building geographer, place.

Front 31

Yi-Fu Tuan

Back 31

- geographer who coined the word "topophilia to describe people who exhibit a strong sense of place and the geographers who are attracted to the study of such places and people.

Front 32

model building

Back 32

look it up

Front 33

Region

Back 33

- have own characteristics
- grouping of similar places or of places with similar characteristics.
- a region is a geographical unit based on characteristics and fuctions of culture.
- 3 types of regions recognized by geographers: formal, functional, and vernacular.

Front 34

The Five Themes:

Back 34

- region
- mobility
- globalization
- nature culture
- culture landscape

Front 35

Vernacular Region

Back 35

- Perception of place
- Vague borders
- percieved to exist, usually by the people who live there.
ex: dixie (country area). vernacular regions organic, change alot.

Front 36

Mobility

Back 36

- mobility seen through the concept of diffusion of ideas
- some originate in one location and spread from there.
- others start in multiple locations at once.

Front 37

time-distance decay

Back 37

- acceptance of ideas generally decreases with distance and time.
- mass media have greatly accelerated diffusion, diminishing the impact of time-distance decay.

Front 38

globalization

Back 38

- world increasingly linked, in which international borders are diminished in importance and a worldwide marketplace is created.
- this interconnected world created from a set of factors: faster and more reliable transportation, instant communication, computers.
- globalization and the shrinking world
- new interactions and relationships between regions
- economic divides
- most developed countires
- less developed countries
- geographer's concern is the distribution of resources and wealth and how that distribution occurs.

Front 39

What are the three key aspects of landscape?

Back 39

idk?

Front 40

What factors contribute to the distribution of wheat production around the world?

Back 40

- there are spatial patterns that exist because wheat production is major in some areas but minor in other areas
- this spatial pattern results from environmental factors such as climate, terrain, and soils. some regions have been too dry for wheat cultivation. the land in others is too steep or infertile. there is a strong correlation between wheat cultivation and climates.

Front 41

In what ways do vernacular culture regions identify themselves?

Back 41

- they identify themselves because there is a wide spread acceptance and use of the special regional name.

Front 42

Why is a cultural geography course considered a topical approach and not a regional approach to geography?

Back 42

becuase cultures aren't always focused in one region. a culture is a topic because cultures can spread to different regions, and aren't just maintained in one region.

Front 43

Why is it difficult to define the borders of vernacular regions?

Back 43

- its difficult because a vernacular region depends on the people's perception and everyone may not have the same perception so its difficult to define a set border.

Front 44

Why did possibilism replace environmental determinism as the favored theme of geographers in cultural ecology?

Back 44

- possibilisism replaced environmental determinism because determinists overemphasized the role of environment in human affairs. physical environment is only one of many forces affecting human culture and is never the sole determinant of behavior and beliefs.
- possibilism claim that any physical environment offers a number of possble ways for culture to develop.

Front 45

What are some significant differences between organic and mechanistic views of nature?

Back 45

look it up

Front 46

What problems arise from trying to study culture from a spatial perspective? What technique is used to counter this?

Back 46

look it up