unit 3

• cultural traits: architecture, land use, food preferences
• Streets, homes, building materials, and architectural styles are all culturally influenced
• long lot settlement pattern: linear settlement pattern in which each farm is located at one end of a narrow rectangular lot
• Food preferences have historically been shaped by the type of food that is locally available and cultural taboos that might prohibit some available food.
• material culture: physical objects made and used by a cultural group
• nonmaterial culture: beliefs, values, myths, symbolic meanings passed from generation to generation
• local (folk) culture: ethnic traditions to local land.
• indigenous culture: subset to local culture, no longer dominant ethnic group because of migration or colonization
• popular culture: culture influenced by urban areas and adopts new technology.
• cultural attitude: attitude that is shaped by cultures opinions, beliefs, and perspectives
• Cultural attitudes change over time and shape the societies and places created by those societies. They influence the way people think about the world, how they understand their place in a community, and how they interact with others.
• polyglots: people fluent in 2 or more languages
• religion: structured set of beliefs and practices that people seek mental an physical harmony through
• ethnocentric approach: understands others cultures, then evaluates them from the perspective of the observers approach
• placelessness: feeling from when a culturally diverse place become standard, blends in with other cultural landscape.
• sequent occupancy: place have been controlled or affect by many groups over time
• secular: less influenced/controlled by a religion
• Landscapes has things that are physical, but it also has invisible elements of culture, such as cultural attitudes, values, and beliefs.
• Architectural, agricultural, and industrial features are all visible in the cultural landscape
• centripetal force: force that brings together people, a neighborhood, society, and or country.
• example of centripetal forces are: religion, language, and ethnicities
• Ethnicity, ethnic diversity, and ethnic conflict can disrupt social cohesion
• absorbing barriers: barriers that stop the diffusion of a trait
• permeable barriers: allow innovation to partially diffused in a weakened way
• pidgin language: a trade language (restructured language) that has a small amt of common vocabulary from at least two languages of the groups in contact
• creole language: combined language that has a fuller language than pidgin language which becomes a native language
• creolization: when languages merge and create new languages
• lingua franca: language of communication and commerce that is spoke across a wide area where it isnt a mother tongue
• empires: sovereign political entities that look to expand of beyond their original territory, politically or economically
• imperialism: impulse to control greater amounts of territory
• colonialism: act of forcefully controlling foreign territory, which becomes a colony
• As these examples illustrate, ethnic and racial distinctions were central features of European colonization, and tensions based on race and ethnicity predate the modern era.
• The most basic and profoundly influential technology for diffusing language is writing. Writing is the main way language has diffused and it helped civilizations diffused.
• Transportation technology also helped the spread of languages through ships, railroads, and highways.
• Colonialism affected the cultures of the colonized as the colonizers brought their languages, religions, technologies, and other cultural traits to each colony.
• Through unequal relationships, colonialism brought new cultural patterns to both the colonies and the colonizers.
• Diaspora communities: populations that spread through scattering away from their cultural hearth
• acculturation: when a culture adopts traits of other cultures, the original culture isnt lost, rather modified
• assimilation: when a minority culture adopts a new culture, usually a more dominant culture, which results in the loss of the original minority culture
• The Spanish conquistador spread the catholic faith