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The Nature of Cultural
Geography
Chapter 1
The Human Matrix
Discussion
• Pair up into dyads
• Discuss these two questions for 10
minutes, five minutes each
– What does culture mean to you?
– Would you identify yourself as belonging to a
cultural group? Why or why not?
Introduction
• Humans are by nature geographers
– Possess awareness of and curiosity about the
distinctive character of places
– Can think territorially or spatially
– Each place on Earth is unique
– Places possess an emotional quality and
significance that contribute to our identity as
unique human beings
– Geographers, over the centuries, generated a
number of concepts and ideas that literally
changed the world
Seven Cultural Geographical Idea
That Changed the World
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Maps
Human adaptation to habitat
Human transformation of the earth
Sense of place
Spatial organization and interdependence
Central place theory
Megalopolis
Geography as an academic
discipline
• Natural human geographical curiosity and
need for identity
• First arose among the ancient Greeks,
Romans, Mesopotamians, and
Phoenicians
• Arab empire expanded geography during
Europe’s Dark Ages
Geography as an academic
discipline
• Center of learning shifted to Europe during
the Renaissance period
• Modern scientific study of geography
arose in Germany
• Analytical geography began in the 1800s
asking what, where, and why
• Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter
What is cultural geography?
• The meaning of culture
– For this course defined as learned collective
human behavior, as opposed to instinctive, or
inborn behavior
– Learned traits
– Cultural geography: the study of spatial
variations among cultural groups and the
spatial functioning of society.
Cultural geography
• Focuses on cultural phenomena that may
vary or remain constant from place to
place
• Explains how humans function spatially
What is cultural geography?
• Physical geography brings spatial and
ecological perspectives
• Bridges the social and earth sciences
• Seeks a integrative view of humankind in
its physical environment
• Appears less focused than most other
disciplines making it difficult to define
No easy explanations for cultural
phenomena
• Many complex causal forces
• Wheat cultivations (next slide)
• Cultural geography seeks explanations of
diverse casual factors
Themes in cultural geography
• Culture region: a geographical unit based
on human traits
• Maps are an essential tool for describing
and revealing regions
• Major types of culture regions
– Formal
– Functional
– Vernacular
Formal culture region
Kerala, India
• A formal culture region can be defined in
this picture by ethnicity, dress and social
custom.
• While people do not generally reveal their
bodies in public, at the end of the day they
dress up to go to the beach and watch the
sunset.
Kerala, India
• Boys and girls do not
mingle but observe
each other from a
distance.
• Unchaperoned dating
is rare and marriages
are typically arranged.
• These are learned,
collective human
behaviors.
Formal culture region
• An area inhabited by people who have one
or more cultural traits in common.
• More commonly multiple related traits
• No two cultural traits have the same
distribution.
Complex multiculture regions
• Territorial extents of a
culture region depend
on what defining traits
are used.
Formal culture regions
• Many different formal regions can be created
• Depends on traits
• Geographer’s intuition
Boundaries
• Formal culture regions must have
boundaries
– rarely sharp because cultures overlap and mix
– Culture regions reveal a core where all
defining traits are present
– Farther from core regional characteristics
weaken and disappear
– Formal regions display core/periphery pattern
• Human world is chaotic
Functional culture region
Minneapolis, Minnesota
• This mobile post-office is the node of a
functional region.
• People come to the node at specific times
during the week to deposit their mail.
• This vehicle is one of several linked to a
particular post office which is part of of a
larger network of post offices.
• Each post office is a node in its own mail
delivery region.
Functional culture region
• The scene is in the
city’s CBD where
individual buildings
are nodes of activities
linked to other
buildings and places.
• Note the skywalk
which facilitates
interaction between
structures.
Functional culture regions
• An area organized to function politically,
socially, or economically
• Examples: city, independent state, church
diocese, a trade area
• Have nodes or central points from which
functions are coordinated and directed.
• Many functional regions have clearly
defined borders
Farm as a formal culture region
• all land owned and leased, farmstead is
node, borders marked by fences, hedges
Functional culture region
• States in the United States and Canadian
provinces
• Not all functional areas have clearly
defined borders: newspapers, sales area
– Fans of UT vs TAMU
• Generally functional culture regions do not
coincide spatially with formal culture
regions
Vernacular culture regions
• A region perceived to exist by its
inhabitants, has widespread acceptance
and uses a special regional name.
Vernacular culture region
• Generally lack sharp borders
• Can be based on many different things
– physical environment
– economic, political, historical aspects
– often created by publicity campaigns
• Grows out of a people’s sense of
belonging and regional self consciousness
Vernacular culture region
Vernacular culture region
• Not unique to North
America
• Northern Territory =
“Outback Australia”
• Transcends state
lines
• Japanese ties
• Heavy duty bumper
and “roo bars” to
deflect wildlife
Differences
• How do vernacular culture regions differ
from formal and functional regions
– Often lack the organization necessary for
funtional regions
– Unlike formal regions, they frequently do not
display cultural homogeneity
– Many are rooted in the popular or folk culture
Cultural diffusion
• Spatial spread of learned ideas,
innovations, and attitudes.
• Each cultural element originates in one or
more places and then spreads.
• Some spread widely, others remain
confined to an area of origin.
• “100 Percent American”
• Torsten Hägerstrand
Cultural diffusion
Expansion diffusion
• Ideas spread throughout a population from
area to area.
• Creates a snowballing effect
• Subtypes:
– Hierarchical diffusion: ideas leapfrog from one
node to another temporarily bypassing some
– Contagious diffusion: wavelike, like disease
– Stimulus diffusion: specific trait rejected, but
idea accepted
Relocation diffusion
• Relocation diffusion occurs when
individuals migrate to a new location
carrying new ideas or practices with them
• Religion is prime example
Time-distance decay factor
• Ripples on a pond.
• Acceptance of an innovation is strongest
where it originated.
• Acceptance weakens as it is diffused
farther away.
• Acceptance also weakens over time.
Barriers to diffusion
• Absorbing barriers completely halt
diffusion: Afghanistan.
• More commonly barriers are permeable,
allowing part of the innovation wave to
diffuse, but acting to weaken and retard
the continued spread.
Diffusion
Guangzhou (Canton), China
• PRC recently opened it’s doors to foreign
investment and a number of cities have
been designated as Special Economic
Zones.
• An absorbing barrier has become
permeable.
• Sincle coastal cities were the first to allow
foreign instrusions, these have highest
influx of joint-venture projects.
Diffusion
• Proctor and Gamble
has designed soaps
and detergents for
China’s specific water
conditions.
• Just as P&G diffused
from North America to
China, other
manufacturers will
diffuse into other
parts of China.
Diffusion
• As more cities are opened China’s urban
economies will become increasingly
internationalized and each city will function
as a key center of diffusion to places lower
on the social-economic hierarchy.
• How does time-distance decay play a role
here?
Stages of innovation acceptance
• First – acceptance takes place at a slow
steady rate.
• Second – raid growth in acceptance and
the trait spreads rapidly
– fashion or dance fad
– neighborhood effect
• Third – slower growth and acceptance of
innovation
Neighborhood effect
Hägerstrand
Hägerstrand
• Hägerstrand’s explanation of the
core/periphery spatial arrangement of
diffusion resembles pattern in culture
regions
– others say too narrow and mechanical
– assumes all innovations are beneficial
throughout geographical space
– nondiffusion more prevalent than diffusion, but
not accounted for
Susceptibility to an innovation
• More crucial when world communications
are rapid and pervasive
• Friction of distance is almost meaningless
• Must evaluate and explain on a region-byregion basis
• Inhabitants of two regions will not respond
identically to an innovation
• Geographers seek to understand spatial
variation in receptiveness
Cultural ecology
• Ecology is two-way relationship between
an organism and its physical environment
• Cultural ecology is the study of the causeand-effect interplay between cultures and
the physical environment
• Ecosystem entails a functioning ecological
system where biological and cultural
Homo sapiens live and interact with the
physical environment.
Cultural ecology
• Culture is the human method of meeting
physical environmental challenges.
– adaptive system
– assumes plant and animal adaptations are relevant
– facilitates long-term, successful, nongenetic human
adaptation to nature and environmental change
– adaptive strategy that provides necessities of life:
food, clothing, shelter, defense
– No two cultures employ the same strategy, evenin
within the same physical environment
Cultural ecology
• The physical environment
plays a powerful role in
the cultural landscape of
this remote region of
Pakistan’s northern
frontier.
• The Muslim, Pathan have
an adaptive strategy of
harnessing local
resources for their needs.
Bahrain, Pakistan
• The settlement hugs the
valley walls and the river
is harnessed to provide
water power for turning
grinding stones (primarily
corn) in the foreground
structure.
• Since limited wood supply
precludes its widespread
use, houses are
constructed of drymortared stones and
many have sod roofs
Cultural ecology
• Four schools of thought developed by
geographers on cultural ecology
– Environmental determinism
– Possibilism
– Environmental perception
– Humans as modifiers of the earth
Environmental determinism
• Developed during the first quarter of the 20th
century.
• Physical environment provided a dominant force
in shaping cultures
• Humans were clay to be molded by nature
• Believed mountain people, because they lived in
rugged terrain were:
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Backward
Conservative
Unimaginative
Freedom loving
Environmental determinism
• Believed desert dwellers were:
– Likely to believe in one god
– Lived under the rule of tyrants
• Temperate climates produced:
– Inventiveness
– Industriousness
– Democracy
• Coastlands with fjords produced navigators and
fishers
• Overestimated the role of environment
Possibilism
• Took the place of determinism in the
1920s
• Cultural heritage at least as important as
physical environment in affecting human
behavior
• Believe people are the primary architects
of culture
Possibilism
• Chongqing and San
Francisco
• Similar environment
• Street patterns
• SF has smaller
population but larger
area
• Culture
Possibilism
• Physical environment offers numerous ways for
a culture to develop.
• People make culture trait choices from the
possibilities offered by their environment to
satisfy their needs.
• High technology societies are less influenced by
physical environment.
• Geographer Jim Norwin warns control over
environment may be an illusion because of
possible future climatic changes.
Environmental perception
• Each person’s or cultural group’s mental images
of the physical environment are shaped by
knowledge, ignorance, experience, values, and
emotions
• Environmental perceptionists declare-choices
people make will depend more on how they
perceive the land’s character than its actual
character
• People make decisions based on distortion of
reality with regard to their surrounding physical
environment
Environmental perception
• Geomancy—a traditional system of landuse planning dictating that certain
environmental settings, perceived by the
sages as auspicious, should be chosen as
the sites for houses, villages, temples, and
graves (feng-shui)
– an East Asian world view and art
– affected the location and morphology of urban
places in countries such as China and Korea
– diffused (look up feng-shui on internet)
Natural hazards
• Human’s perceptions of natural hazards
– Flooding, hurricanes, volcanic eruption, earthquakes,
insect infestations, and droughts
– Some cultures consider them as unavoidable acts of
the gods sent down as punishments because of the
people’s shortcomings
– During times of natural disasters, some cultures feel
the government should take care of them
– Western cultures feel technology should be able to
solve the problems created by natural hazards
Natural hazards
• In virtually all cultures, people knowingly
inhabit hazard zones
– Especially floodplains, exposed coastal sites,
drought-prone regions, and active volcanic
areas
– More Americans than ever live in hurricaneand earthquake-prone areas of the United
States
Monserrat - 1996
Missouri River
Hazard Perception
• Levees failed to prevent the Mississippi
and Missouri rivers from flooding.
• Floods are natural occurrences and
contrary to the perception of some, human
made devices are directed toward control
rather than prevention.
• When the water recedes and tons of muck
and debris are removed, will the farmer
move back and start over?
Natural hazards
• Migrants tend to imagine new homelands
as being more similar to their old
homelands than is actually the case
• Human’s perceptions of natural resources
– Hunting and gathering cultures
– Agricultural groups
– Industrial societies
Humans as modifiers of the earth
• Another facet of cultural ecology
• In a sense, the opposite of environmental
determinism
• George Perkins Marsh
• Example of soil erosion around Athens in
ancient times
Humans as modifiers of the earth
• Human modification varies from one
culture to another
– Geographers seek alternative, less
destructive modes of environmental
modification
– Humans of the Judeo-Christian tradition tend
to regard environmental modification as
divinely approved
– Other more cautious groups take care not to
offend the forces of nature
Environmental modification
Queensland, Australia
• Rainforest north of
Cairns, signs
demonstrate
conflicting
perceptions of a
particular resource.
• Thousands of acres
of Australian
rainforest destroyed
yearly.
Cultural integration
• Cultures are complex wholes rather than series
of unrelated traits
• Cultures form integrated systems in which parts
fit together causally
• All cultural aspects are functionally
interdependent on one another
– Changing one element requires accommodating
change in others
– To understand one facet of culture, geographers must
study the variations in other facets and how they are
causally interrelated and integrated
Cultural integration
• The influence of religious beliefs
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–
–
–
Voting behavior
Diet and shopping patterns
Type of employment and social standing
Hinduism segregates people into social classes
(castes), and specifies what forms of livelihood are
appropriate for each
– Mormon faith forbids consumption of alcoholic
beverages, tobacco, and other products, thereby
influencing both diet and shopping patterns
Cultural integration
• If improperly used can lead the
geographer to cultural determinism such
as:
– physical environment is inconsequential as an
influence on culture
– culture offers all the answers for spatial
variations
– nature is passive while people and culture are
the active forces
Cultural integration
• Social science
– Those who view cultural geography as a
social science apply the scientific method to
the study of people
– Devise theories that cut across cultural lines
to govern all of humankind
– Believe economic causal forces more
powerful in explaining human spatial behavior
than any others
Models
Model of Latin American city
Humanistic geography
• Celebrates the uniqueness of each region and
place
– Place is the key word connoting the humanistic view
– Topophilia—word coined by Yi-Fu Tuan, literally
meaning “love of place”
• Has witnessed a resurgence in recent decades
• Social-science approach has declined in
popularity
Humanistic geography
• Anne Buttimer
• Seek to explain unique phenomena—place and
region-rather than universal spatial laws
• Most doubt that laws of spatial behavior even
exist
• Believe in a far more chaotic world than
scientists could tolerate
• Reject the use of mathematics—feel human
beliefs and values cannot be measured
Who is right?
• Debate between scientists and humanists
in cultural geography
– Necessary and healthy
– Both ask different questions about place and
space
• Geography is the bridging discipline,
joining the sciences and humanities
• Postmodernism
Cultural landscape
• The visible, material landscape that
cultural groups create in inhabiting the
Earth
• Cultures shape landscapes out of the raw
materials provided by the Earth
• Each landscape uniquely reflects the
culture that created it
• Much can be learned about a culture by
carefully observing its created landscape
Cultural landscape
• Some geographers regard landscape
study as geography’s central interest
• Reflects the most basic strivings of
humankind
– Shelter
– Food
– Clothing
• Contains evidence about the origin,
spread, and development of cultures
Cultural landscape
• Accumulation of human artifacts, old and new
• Can reveal much about a past forgotten by
present inhabitants
• Landscapes also reveal messages about
present-day inhabitants and cultures
– Reflect tastes, values, aspirations, and fears in
tangible form
– Spatial organization of settlements and architectural
form of structures can be interpreted as expression of
values and beliefs of the people
– Can serve as a means to study nonmaterial aspects
of culture
Cultural landscape
• How architecture reflects past and present
values of landscape
– Example of centrally located, tall structures
built of steel, brick, or stone
– Example of medieval European cathedrals
and churches that dominated the landscape
Cultural landscape
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Now capital; prior to 1997
administrative center for
British colony of Malaya.
• During 20s an 30s Art
Deco architecture
popular.
• Built in 1928, originally
“wet market” for mean,
poultry and fish were
rendered and sold.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
• Renewed, it now
contains a shopping
bazaar selling local
handicraft products,
souveniers and food.
• Heritage revealed
through architecture
and sign.
• Only traditional cart
suggests truth.
Cultural landscape
• Humanistic view of cultural landscape
– Content to study the cultural landscape for its
aesthetic value
– Obtain subjective messages that help describe the
essence of place
– Geographer Tarja Keisteri distinguishes the factual,
concrete, physical, functioning landscape from the
experimental, perceived, symbolic, aesthetic
landscape
– Distinction between scholarly analysis and subjective
artistic interpretation are often blurred
– Provides people with landmarks and reassures
people they are not rootless without identity or place
Cultural landscape
• Most geographical studies have focused on
three principal aspects of landscape
– Settlement forms—Describe the spatial arrangement
of buildings, roads, and other features people
construct while inhabiting an area
– Land-division patterns—reveal the way people divide
the land for economic and social uses
• Example of land division of small and large farms
• Example of urban housing and street patterns
Cultural landscape
• Architecture
– North America’s different building styles
– Regional and cultural differences
Conclusion
• Five themes of geography are interwoven
– Culture region
– Cultural diffusion
– Cultural ecology
– Cultural integration
– Cultural landscape
Folk and popular architecture
reflect culture