KBATs in General

• Acculturation


  adoption of cultural traits by one group under power still maintaining elements of their own culture
• Agnosticism


  belief that nothing can be known about whether or not God exists
• Animism


  belief that objects have a spirit
• Assimilation


  process of absorbing one cultural group into another
• Atheism


  belief that God doesn’t exist
• Centrifugal force


  forces that tend to divide a state and pull people apart
• Centripetal force


  forces that bring people together and enhance support for the state
• Charter group


  first group to establish cult and religious customs in a place
• Contagious diffusion


  a person spreads an idea to other people and so on
• Creole


  a mix of indigenous and colonizer language
• Cultural convergence


  when two cultures become more similar when more they interact
• Cultural divergence


  when culture become less similar to other group over time
• Cultural landscape


  the structure inside the physical landscape caused by human activities
• Cultural relativism


  the principle that an individual human‘s beliefs and actions that should be understood by others
• Culture


  all group’s learned behaviors, actions, beliefs, and objects
• Custom


  a repetitive act that becomes characteristic
• Dialect


  a variation of a language distinguished by different vocab, pronunciation, and spelling
• Diaspora


  when people of one group are dispersed to various locations but still maintain their heritage
• Diffusion


  the process by which an idea spreads from one place to another
• Distance decay


  the idea that the interaction between two places decreases as the distance between them increases
• Environmental determinism


  the belief that the physical environment shapes culture
• Ethnic enclave


  ethnically homogeneous enclaves situated within a larger and more diverse cultural context
• Ethnicity


  identity with a group who shares cultural traditions of a homeland
• Ethnic religion


  religion that appeals to one group of people living in a particular place
• Stimulus Diffusion


  when an idea spreads but is changed by the people who adapt it
• Taboo


  a restriction on behavior imposed by a social custom
• Time Space Compression


  the reduction of the time it takes to diffuse something, as a result of improved communication and transportation technologies
• Syncretism


  when traits from two distinct cultures fuse to form a new cultural trait
• Sequent Occupance


  an inhabited place that is taken by various groups, each establishing its own cultural imprint
• Universalizing religion


  religions that attempt to appeal to all people, everywhere in the world, not just those of one culture or location
• Ethnocentrism


  the belief that one’s own culture or ethnic group is superior to others; judging other groups through the lens of one’s own culture
• Expansion Diffusion


  the spread of an idea from one area to another one
• Extinct Language


  a language that is no longer spoken in daily activities by anyone in the world
• Folk Culture


  culture that is traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogenous groups living in isolated rural areas
• Fundamentalism


  a type of religious movement characterized by strict conformity to a religious text.
• Globalization


  the spread of businesses, products, people and ideas around the world.
• Hearth


  the place where an idea or innovation originates from.
• Hierarchical Diffusion


  the spread of an idea from one key person or in power to other people/places with less power.
• Isogloss


  word usage boundaries, determined by data collected directly from

  people.
• Isolated Language


  A language unrelated to any other and therefore not attached to any

  language family.