Download 6th Grade Social Studies

6th Grade Social Studies
Unit 4-Culture
Study Guide
Use your Global Investigators Notebook (GLIN) and the resources on Moodle with
lessons, vocabulary, and previous quizzes to help you review.
Vocabulary
You can study these also by using the Quizlet activities on Moodle.
Themes
 Culture is the mix of values, beliefs, behaviors, and material objects that reflect
the way of life of a particular nation or group of people.
 Components of culture include food, music, art, architecture, rituals, and ideas
about time, language, and family structure.
 Cultural components can be categorized according to economic, social, political,
aesthetic, and values/beliefs functions.
 Although there are a huge variety of cultures on Earth, they all share cultural
universals such as the need for shelter, raising children in some sort of family
setting, and playing games.
 There are many metaphors for culture including an iceberg, an onion, and
software of the mind.
 Culture is both shared and learned.
 Culture is dynamic; in other words, it is always changing.
 Culture is adaptive and can be changed to meet new circumstances.
 Culture is integrated since the components of a culture are connected.
 Culture is elastic because it is stretched an adjusted by people.
 From earliest times people have found ways to adapt to their natural
environments.
 Adaptation has allowed humans to survive in almost any environment on Earth.
 Adaptations can be seen in housing, clothing, and food as well as other cultural
components.
 Nomadic herders in Mongolia have found many ways to adapt to the challenging
geography of the country.
 From the earliest times, cultures have found ways to adapt to their natural
environments.
 As cultures adapt to the natural environment they in turn shape it.
 The natural landscape as modified by human becomes a cultural landscape.
 The cultural landscape includes buildings, agricultural features, bridges, and
thousands of other human features.
 Cultural landscapes change over time and can be useful in understanding the
history of an area.
 Where people live shapes how they live. The values, beliefs, behaviors, tools and
other material objects people use are influenced by their physical environment.
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Cultures change when people invent new things to address a problem or when
they learn new ideas from people from other places.
When people share an object or idea and it spreads to other cultures, it is called
cultural diffusion.
Culture is diffused, or spread, through factors such as migration, trade, conflict
and technology.
Through the process of cultural diffusion cultural traits are spread from one
culture to another.
Both physical and social barriers can inhibit cultural diffusion.
Physical barriers include natural characteristics such as deserts and mountains.
Social barriers include social characteristics such as language, religion or a history
of conflict.
Often cultures adapt new cultural traits to fit their own culture.
Cultures change through local invention and cultural diffusion.
Fads are short-lived, highly popular and widespread activities, styles, objects or
ideas that usually bring about cultural change for only a short time.
Fads can be the result of local invention or cultural diffusion.
Through globalization countries and cultures become socially and economically
connected.
Because of technological improvements in transportation, communication and
other areas, the pace of globalization has been rapidly speeding up.
Rapid globalization has caused rapid cultural diffusion. In some cultures this has
caused dramatic cultural change.
Many people are concerned that dramatic cultural change can result in the loss of
cultural traits and perhaps even the loss of cultures.
Globalization has often resulted in the rapid cultural diffusion of cultural traits
across the Earth. Some people believe this has caused a decrease in cultural
diversity and may lead to the disappearance of some cultures.
Some people question whether or not the Earth will eventually have just one
global culture if the trend continues.
World Heritage Cultural sites are sites that have significance to the heritage of
humankind as a whole.
Many of these sites are in danger of being destroyed or damaged. This has
become a global problem.
Factors responsible for sites being in danger include armed conflict and war,
earthquakes and other natural disasters, pollution, uncontrolled urbanization and
unchecked tourist development.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
has created a program to protect the World Heritage Cultural sites.
Unit Theme Essay Questions
1. What is cultural diffusion? Use examples to explain what it is and how it happens.
2. How has globalization influenced cultural diversity?