Unit 3

• Cultural Hearth: a place where new ideas originate from
• Folk culture is present among homogeneous groups of people maintaining their traditions and values, mostly in isolation (Amish)
• Material Culture: value items (furniture and clothing)
• Non-material culture: values customs (folk stories, myths, and religion)
• Taboos: restrictions imposed by social customs (unable to eat certain foods)
• Popular Culture: practiced by large, heterogeneous groups, originating from more developed regions
• Popular culture spreads due to globalization, communication, transportation, and marketing
• Ethnocentrism: biased perspective on an ethnic group being superior to others
• Culture Relativism: the objective (unbiased) view understanding a culture and belief
• Cultural Landscape: landscape made up of structures within the physical landscape caused by human imprint/activities (buildings, artwork, cathedrals)
• Cultural Ecology: the study of how the natural environment can influence a culture group
• Sequent Occupancy: The theory that a place can be occupied by by multiple groups by changing the landscape
• Adaptive Strategies: the way humans adapt to physical and cultural landscapes
• Symbolic Landscape: the significant beyond appearance due to cultural associations and interpretations
• Formal Regions: areas inhabited by people who have 1 or more characteristics in common (dialect and local activities)
• Functional Region: areas organized by function politically, socially, and economically
• Toponyms: places that reflect culture identity in a specific region
• High Maternal Morbidity: death rates of women that give birth
• High Maternal Morbidity rates are in LDC
• High Female Infanticide rates: murder of female infants
• High Female Infanticide rates are common in regions where male children are preferred (China)
• Dowry Deaths: husband’s family murders bride due to her father not paying the marriage money
• Ethnic Cleansing: when a group forcefully remove a lesser ethnic group
• Balkanization: process where a state breaks down due to conflict
• Enviormental Determinism: the idea that harmful stereotypes and associations cause a group to feel inferior
• Since of Place: a person’e connection and association to a place
• Cultural Determinism: states that the environment doesn’t play a role in human behaviors
• Possiblism: the physical environment has limitations of population
• MDC are more influenced by popular culture then LDC are
• Indigenous languages are still here due to tourism
• Diffusion: the process where a cultural trait spreads from one place to another
• A trait is often born in a cultural hearth, then diffused from there
• Historically, diffusion occurred through imperialism and colonialism which caused exploition, military conquest, missionary work, trade, and migration
• Today, diffusion occurs through social media and the internet (Popular Culture)
• Relocation Diffusion: the spread of cultural traits or ideas through movement
• Relocation diffusion can occur at a small scale (employee joint company with new ideas) or large scale (Atlantic Slave Trade)
• Expansion Diffusion: occurs when an aspect of culture spreads out from its hearth
• Contagious Diffusion: occurs when an idea or cultural trait spreads to people or places that are beside one another
• Hierarchical Diffusion: the spread of an idea or trait from a person or place of power to other places and people (Stanley fad through social media)
• Stimulus Diffusion: occurs when the idea behind a cultural trait stimulates a new innovation