APHUG Unit 3

• Culture


  The collection of beliefs and artifacts that represent values and social institutions
• Types of culture


  • Material culture
  • Non-material culture
• Material culture


  Concrete artifacts
• Non-material culture


  Abstract beliefs and ideals
• Types of cultural study


  • Folk culture
  • Popular culture
• Folk culture


  Typical of isolated, homogenous communities
• Popular culture


  Seen in large, heterogenous societies with access to modern communication and technology
• Cultural landscape


  The imprint humans place on their environment, the combination of human activities
• Migration


  The movement of people across space
• Diffusion


  The spread of ideas, behaviors, and information
• Types of diffusion


  • Relocation diffusion
  • Expansion diffusion
• Types of expansion diffusion


  • Contagious
  • Stimulus
  • Hierarchical
  • Reverse hierarchical
• Syncretism


  When a group combines elements of different cultures to forge a new cultural idea
• Historically, the diffusion of ideas...

  ... has been coupled with the migration of people
• Modern communication technologies


  Have accelerated cultural interactions and diffusion among people, thus changing cultural practices
• Cultural convergence


  The tendency for cultures to become more and more similar over time
• Cultural divergence


  Cultures become less and less similar over time
• No two places are the same—people will represent who they are—and what they value—based on how they shape the use of space
• As communication technology increases, so too does the spread of ideas and information. Cultural ideas and innovations change, disappear, and influence so much of human identity
• Acculturation


  When an ethnic group moves to a new location and adopts both cultures—the culture they left and the culture they entered
• Assimilation


  When the migratory group no longer resembles the culture they left—they resemble the culture they entered
• Multiculturalism


  When various cultures co-exist
• Nativism


  The belief that foreign cultures should be excluded from the accepted cultural beliefs and expressions of a society
• Language


  Mutually understood sounds used to communicate between people
• Dialect


  A regional variety of a language
• Isogloss


  The boundary between linguistic differences
• The most spoken native or first learned language is Mandarin Chinese, but the most spoken language is English
• Lingua franca


  A third language used for communication between speakers of different languages
• Major language families


  • Indo-European
  • Sino-Tibetan
• Ethnic religion


  A religion related to—and attempts to appeal to—a particular ethnicity
• Universalizing religion


  A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, regardless of ethnicity
• Major universalizing religions


  • Christianity
  • Islam
  • Buddhism
  • Sikhism
• Fundamentalism


  Strict interpretation of a religion's holy text
• Conservatism


  Belief in the holy text with some human interpretation
• Liberalism


  Belief with higher degrees of human interpretation
• Globalization


  The process of becoming world-wide in scope
• Globalization


  Increases the likelihood of interaction between places, regardless of distance
• Transnational corporations


  Conduct business in multiple countries and help create an interdependent global distribution of goods
• The globalization of culture can be seen as the cultural landscapes of the world become increasingly similar. As artifacts and ideas of popular culture spread around the world, use of space can become less distinctive