Human Geography Midterm Exam: Study Guide

 

Culture

• The specialized behavior patterns, understandings, adaptations, and social systems that summarize a group of people’s learned way of life.
• Cultural convergence

• The tendency for cultures (separate societies) to become more alike as they increasingly share technology and organizational structures in a modern world united by improved communication and transportation.
• Ex; McDonalds is international but in America the burgers are huge, in France they are small, and in China they have duck burgers.

• Cultural Divergence
• The likelihood or tendency for cultures to become increasingly dissimilar with the passage of time.
• Cultural Lag

• The time it takes for society to adopt a new innovation.
• Baby Boomà it took a generation for people to realize that they did not to have so many kids.

• Cultural Integration
• The interconnectedness of all aspects of a culture (sociological, technological, and ideological subsystems); no part can be altered without creating an impact on other components of the culture.

• Cultural Landscape
• The natural landscape as modified by human activities and bearing the imprint of a culture group or society.
• Ex; canal, hieroglyphics, cars polluting, and pulling up a plant from the ground.
• Ex; empty and then fill lakes with dirt so they can build there, make roads, and destroy the forests.
• ***If times change we can use land differently.
• Contagion Diffusion
• Christianity spread through from rural pageant areas (easier to convert) throughout a continent.
• Relocation Diffusion
• Missionary efforts, and in Spanish colonial areas, forced conversion of Native Americans brought the faith to the New World with European settlers.
• Spatial Diffusion
• The spread of phenomenon (culture trait, idea, practice, language, or technology) over space through time.
• Ex; relocation, expansion, contagious, and hierarchical diffusion.
• Hierarchical Diffusion
• A biggest or most influential level to another. It can apply to places or people. (Can also be small to big)
• Ex; a movie can go from LA to smaller cities.

 

• Complementarity
• The interaction that happens when one place has a supply what another one demands.
• Demand: the want and ability to purchase something.
• Means to transport also need to exist
• It is not based merely based on differences.
• Transferability
• Acceptable costs of a spatial exchange
• Over time things can become more transferable due to innovations.
• Ex; Importing fruit: You can get cheaper bananas from South Africa but you import it from Nicaragua due to the shorter distance (rotting!)

• Based on 3 interrelated conditions:
• The characteristic and value of the product.
• Distance, measured in time and money
• The ability of the commodity to bear the cost of the movement

• Intervening Opportunity
• The concept that closer opportunities will reduce the attractiveness of more distant- even slightly better- alternatives. ***Can be used to describe the actual source.
• Ex; People in New England will vacation in Florida instead of California.

 

 

• Place A needs something that Place B has and is willing to sell à Complementarity is met.
• Transferability
• Object: I value at $50
• Price: $35
• Time: 1 week
• Import Tax
• Intervening Opportunity
• Place C comes into play! The object Costs $35 or more
• Time: 2 days
• Import Tax: none
• You would buy the object from there because it (the Intervening opportunity) provides a better transferability. It is a cheaper exchange considering the actual cost, time, and import tax.

 

• Critical Distance
• The point at which interaction suddenly drops off.

• Distance Decay
• The decline of something with the increase in distance from its point of origin.
• "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." (Tobler, Waldo).  

• Chain Migration

• Assures that the mover is part of an established migration flow from a common origin to a prepared destination. Somehow the people knew each other.
• A family member moves to a place and you see that they were successful so you move there too, and more follow you.

• Step Migration

• Involves the place transition from, for example, rural to central city residence through a series of less extreme locational changes.
• Ex; from farm to small town, to suburb, and then to the city itself.

• Channelized Migration

• when someone moves somewhere because there is an established pattern of migration flow between the two places.
• People form up north retire to Florida. They know that there are communities of people like them down here.

• Push Factors
• Negative home conditions that cause that decision to migrate.
• Pull factors
• Presumed positive attractions of the migration destination.
• Territoriality

• The emotional attachment to an activity space. Defensive over a place.
• Ex; the conflicts between street groups in claiming and protecting their “turfs”.

 

• Place Perception

• Your view, opinion, and beliefs about a place, regardless of whether you have gone there or not.
• Someone may believe that China is some sort of way because of the movies they see.

• Place Utility

• A measurement of how happy a place can make you. You can’t measure it.
• Disney may give you 10 J but math class may give you 1 J

• Demography
• The statistical study of human population in its concern with spatial analysis (the relationship of numbers to an area)
• Carrying Capacity
• Is the number of people an area can support on a sustained basis given the prevailing technology.
• Arithmetic Density
• Number of people per area of land.
• Physiological density

• Expression of the population pressure exerted on agricultural land. It is more accurate.
• Total population / arable land
• It depends on uncertain definitions of arable land.

• Population Density
• Expresses the relationship between number of inhabitants and the area they occupy.

 

• Fertility Rate

• Total Fertility Rate (TFR): shows the rate and probability of reproduction among fertile women. (only segment of the population that can bear children)
• Number of babies born / population of women I their fertile years.
• Ex; A TFR of 3 means that the average woman in a population will be expected to have 3 births in her lifetime.
• The TFR minimizes the effects of fluctuation in populations and summarizes the demonstrated and expected reproductive behavior of woman.
• Due to this it is more useful and reliable for regional comparative and predictions than the CBR.
• Replacement Level Fertility: It marks the level of fertility at which each successive generation of woman produces exactly enough children to ensure that the same number of women survive to have offspring themselves.

• Mortality Rate (Crude Death Rate)

• The annual number of deaths per 1,000 population.
• Infant Mortality Rate: The ratios of the death of kids ages 1 and under per 1,000 live births.
• Much better indicator for how developed a country really is.

• Doubling Time

• The time it takes for a population to double at the current rate of growth.
• Ex: It would take 70yrs for a population with a rate of increase of 1% to double.
• The average life expectancy is about 72yrs. If you divide 72 by the growth rate you will get the doubling time.
• 4% growth rate. 72/4= 18yrs àpopulation doubling time.

• Language
• An organized system of spoken words by which people communicate with each other with mutual comprehension.
• Creole
• A language developed from a pidgin to become the native tongue of society. A real language.
• French with English with tribal influences.
• Pidgin
• A simplified mixture of 2 languages.
• Ex; Spanglish
• Language Family
• A group of languages descended from a single, earlier tongue.
• There are at least 30 to 100 families that are then divided into subfamilies, branches, or groups of more closely related tongues.
• Family relationships between languages can be recognized through similarities in their vocabulary and grammar.
• Ex: Latinà Romance languages: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Romanian.
• Lingua Franca
• An established language used habitually for communication by people whose native tongues are mutually incomprehensible.

 

• Toponymy

• Is the study of place names
• A special interest of linguistic geography.
• In England place names ending in chester (as in Winchester and Manchester) come from the Latin castra meaning “camp”.

• Genetic Classification
• The classification of languages by origin and historical relationship.
• Vernacular

• Nonstandard language or dialect native to the locale or adopted by the social group.
• Ex; the way I talk to my friends.

• Religion

• systems of formal or informal worship and faith in the sacred and divine.
• There are tangible things (artifacts) when it comes to religion: churches, books, etc…

• Ethnic Religion
• Your ethnicity is tied to that religion; you are technically “born” into that religion.
• Ex; Judaism and Hinduism.
• One usually becomes a member of an ethnic religion by birth or by adoption of a complex lifestyle and cultural identity, not by simple declaration of faith.
• Tribal Religion
• They are a type of ethnic group but they are very small, isolated, close to nature (nature has to do with their religion).

• Universalizing religion
• Are faiths that claim applicability to all humans and that seek to transmit their beliefs through missionary work and conversion.
• Ex; Christianity, Buddhism, Islamic, and Judaism.

 

• Buddhism
• Polytheistic and Universal
• Karma helps you reach your goalàNirvana (enlightment)
• Very large and universal, founded by Buddha (Enlightened One)
• The Buddha’s teachings were more a moral philosophy that offered an explanation for evil and human suffering than a formal religion.
• Believes (Like Hindu) in Karma and Nirvana.
• Spreads through contactor contagious diffusion
• Earliest, most conservative, and closest to the origins of Buddhism was Theravada (Vehicle of the Elders) Buddhism, which was implanted in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia beginning in the 3rd century B.C. Its emphasis is on personal salvation through the four noble truths; it mandates a portion of life to be spent as monk or nun.
• Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) was the dominant tradition when Buddhism was accepted into East Asia- China, Korea, and Japan- in the 4th century A.D. and later
• Vajrayana (the Diamond Vehicle) was dominant when the conversion of Tibet and neighboring northern areas began, first in the 7th century and again during the 10th and 11th centuries as a revived Lamaist tradition.
• Christianity

• Monotheistic and Universalizing religion.
• Had its origin in the life and teachings of Jesus, a Jewish preacher of the 1st century of the modern era, whom his followers believed was the messiah promised by God.
• Missionary work has led to diffusion.
• Mostly became popular because unlike Judaism (at the time) it promises of salvation to all humankind rather than to just a chosen people.

• Hinduism

• World largest ethnic religion and oldest major religion.
• Polytheistic and Universal. It is also ethnic because it influences the whole entire culture.
• The people born in Hinduism are on the caste (meaning birth) level. Their whole goal is not about God but following their own Dharma (set of rules and regulations that have to do with their caste level).
• Most of them are from India, where it claims 80% of the population.
• Hinduism derives its name from its cradle area in the valley of the Indus River.
• Hinduism’s more recent growing presence in Western Europe and North America reflects a relocation diffusion of its adherents.
• Hinduism accepts and incorporates all forms of belief; adherents may believe in one god or many or none.
• It emphasizes the divinity of the soul and is based on the concepts of reincarnation and passage from one state of existence to another in an unending cycle of birth and death in which all living things are caught.

• Islam

• Which means “submission” (to the will of Allah) springs from the same Judaic roots as Christianity and embodies many of the same beliefs: There is only one God, who may be revealed to humans through prophets; Adam was the first human; Abraham was one of his descendants.
• Monotheistic and Universal Religion.
• Most prominent on Asia, followed by Africa.
• Visible Islam; mosques
• Observance of the “five pillars” and surrender to the will of Allah unites the faithful into a brotherhood that has no concern with race, color, or caste.
• Number 2 in the number of adherents in lists!

• Judaism
• Beliefs in a single God laid the foundation for both Christianity and Islam.
• Monotheistic and ethnic religion
• Has gone through relocation diffusion (their persecution).
• Judaism is closely identified with a single ethnic group and with a complex and restrictive set of beliefs and laws.
• Ancietnt  cultural hearth regions.
• Assimilation

• Is a process by which a minority population reduces or loses completely its identifying cultural characteristics and blends into the host society. It can also be reciprocal! The host society may adopt things from the immigrants (Cuban pastries at Publix!)
• Behavioral or cultural assimilation: The common everyday lifestyle changes that happen first
• If you are Japanese not bowing at work
• Structural assimilation: Changing you whole belief and culture to become part of the host society.
• An Indian person dropping not only their ways (like food) but also dropping the caste systems.

• Acculturation

• Adapting to the host society but still keeping some of your our culture.
• Person is learning the language of the host society and will do some of the customs (shake hands and not bow) but not at home (take off shoes.

• Race

• A subset of human population whose members share certain distinctive, inherited biological characteristics. Hereditary biological characteristic
• You are born with it.
• Can change by culture!

• Ethnicity

• Term derived from the Greek word ethnos meaning a “people” or nation”. A group of people that is unified by a common characteristic.
• Can be both physical and cultural (also behavioral)
• You are not born with it, you learn it as you grow up

• Social Distance
• Measure of what separates a minority from a charter group.
• Ghetto
• A forced or voluntary segregated residential area housing a racial, ethnic, or religious minority. External control.
• Think The Help
• Japanese internment camps (WWII)
• Ethnic Enclave
• A small area occupied by a distinctive minority culture. Internal reasons for staying together.

• Chinatown or Little Italy

• Ethnocentrism
• The term describing the tendency to evaluate other cultures against the standards of one’s own.
• Tipping Point

• A point where a majority group decides to stop frequenting a place because a minority is starting to move in.
• Ex; white flight

• Explain the following concepts and provide examples when possible:
• How maps show data
• We use them so we can identify àspatial distributions, patterns, landforms, agricultural regions, languages, religion, population densities, connectivity, spatial phenomena (tangible and intangible).
• Maps are not perfect because the Earth’s a sphere and a map id flat.
• Scale! They are made to give us useful perspective about the Earth. They need to be understandable.
• Qualitative: shows the distribution. Ex; amusement parks in the nation.
• Quantitative: shows you the data. Ex; amusement parks in the nation and how many people attend each one.
• The components of the global grid
• Meridians (longitude lines) start and end.
• Lines of latitude go all the ways around the earth and they never touch, as the get closer to the pole they get shorter.
• Prime meridians are half the length of the equator.
• Meridians and parallels always intersect at right angles.
• Absolute vs. relative location
• Absolute location: identification of a place by some precise, mathematical, and accepted system of coordinates. Does not change
• Ex; street addresses and coordinates.
• Relative location: the position of a place in the relation to that of other places or activities. ***The position of a place in relation to that of other places or activities.
• Ex; Russia example. school is next to park. Can change.
• Absolute is precise and can’t change no matter where you look from, relative can change and is not set on stone.
• Site vs. Situation
• Site: Absolute location concept, the site is more descriptive within itself. Ex; Miami is hot, wide-spread out city, in south Florida. (you don’t say the names of surrounding it). Physical and cultural characteristics. Describes actual place.
• Situation: Relative location, external relations of a locale. It can change. ***The relative location with particular reference to items of significance to the place in question.
• Ex; the situation of Miamiàsouth of Frt. Lauderdale and north from the Keys. The external relation from other places.
• Contrast: Site refers to the physical and cultural, it describes a place. Situation describes what is the surroundings of the place (can change).
• Culture trait, Culture complex, Culture region, Culture realm

• Culture trait: A unit of learned behavior.
• Smallest distinctive item of culture
• Ex; Like language, pronunciation, games, and cooking. Toolsàwriting
• Culture Complex: Many cultural traits together.
• Football Complexà Jerseys, hats, fantasy football, and a tailgate (special football food).
• Americans do this but people from other countries do not understand this.
• Car Complexà in America your car reflects your status, advertising (stickers), and license is a rite of passage.
• Culture region: An area on the earth where one culture is dominant.
• In the south à Fried food, Appalachian Trail, country music, republicans, Christians, and conservative.
• Northeastà Loud, smug, fast paced, dialect, pop music, and open minded.
• Culture realm: A collective of culture regions sharing related culture systems.
• Ex; Latin America, North America, or Europe.

• Density, dispersion, and pattern
• Density: The quantity of anything per unit area.
• Arithmetic density: Number of people per area of land.
• Physiological density: The number of people per unit area of cultivable land.

• Dispersion: A statement of the amount of spread of a phenomenon on or around an area. Imagine diffusion: cluster at the middle and as it spreads out it becomes less.
• Pattern: The design or arrangement of phenomena in earth space.
• Linear pattern
• Centralized
• Randomly
• *** All of these belong in the spatial distribution category.

• Functional, formal, and perceptual regions

• Region: A part with different physical or cultural characteristics from surrounding areas. In some way is separated from the surrounds.
• ***They are decided on by their areal generalizations and intellectual concepts instead of their landscape entities.
• Functional Region: A region that is affected by what happens in it instead of physical or cultural phenomena.
• ***Common purpose.
• Formal Region: A region distinguished by an uniformity of one or more characteristics that can serve as the basics for areal generalization and of contrast with adjacent areas. One or more physical or cultural traits.
• Perceptual Region: Region perceived to exist by its inhabitants or general populace. Has reality of as an element of popular or folk culture represented in the mental maps of average people.
• Ex; locals know what regions in the city are dangerous or etc…
• 3 subsystems of culture
• Ideological: the ideas and belief systems
• Mentifact: the ideological thing.
• Ex; Siesta in the afternoon, folklore, nursery songs, morals, values. In some cultures you kiss a person on the cheek, in others you shake their hand, and in others you bow.
• Technological: all of the artifacts or tool but also the way it is used in your culture.
• Different places play the guitar in different ways.
• Sociological: the whole institution.
• Sociofact: familyà 3 generations living in 1 house. School and church.
• ***Sociofactàschool’s hierarchy or intitution  / Metifactà being respectful to a teacher /  Artifactà school supplies

• Population pyramid
• Population Pyramid: It is a model that represents a population’s age and sex composition.
• X and Y Axis: % of population and age.
• Usually also represents male vs. female populations in each time (like in year).
• Slow Growth Pyramid: it is more rectangular (growing pretty evenly)
• Decline Pyramid: bubbles out in the middle (few old and young).
• Disrupted Growth Pyramid: were population growth suddenly slowed down on stopped. A reason could be because people are in war.
• Underdeveloped region are very steep pyramids. This can be bad because these people do not have a long life expectancy and also there can be more young economic dependents than the labor force.
• Demographic transition model

• Demographic transition: The relationship between population growth and economic development.
• Stage 1: Very underdeveloped country
• Stage 2: Birth rates stay high (people are still having lots of kids) but the death rates drop. Population growth will be very high. (Cultural lag)
• Stage 3: Has a smaller population growth than stage 2.
• Stage 4: Low birth and death rates. They fluctuate.
• Stage 5: There is a decline in population in the most developed countries. Birth rates are higher than the death rates. Richer countries.
• Ex; Sweden

• Malthusian Theory
• The population will continue to grow to an uncontrollable way unless there are checks.
• Checks:
• Moral restraints/ Self-control
• Governmentà 1 child in China
• Destructive
• Amalgamation theory
• “Melting pot”à all cultures melt together to become one.
• In reality:
• Salad bowl à all cultures can be together and rub off on each other but they still keep their own identity.
• 3 major immigrant waves to the US

• The 1st wave lasted from pioneer settlement to about 1870
• Western and Northern Europe
• Ex à Britain and Germany (mostly white and Christian)
• African slaves (forced migration)
• The 2nd immigration wave was from 1870 to 1914.
• Southern and Eastern European (tan and Christian)
• Ex à Italian
• The 3rd wave of migration after 1914 into the 20th century was launched with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. (see pg.182)
• Latin Americans, Asian, and Africans
• Quickly, Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, dominated the inflow and became the largest segment of new arrivals.
• Whites are not the majority anymore
• English in America (official language)
• Official Language: A single tongue that is designated by a government. Required.
• Ex; The U.S. doesn’t have and official language: You can take your driver’s test in Spanish. However, English is our standard language.
• There have been efforts to make English the official language but they have not succeeded because:
• Immigrants formed US.
• Unfair to minorities and diversity
• We are a salad bowl!
• It would be playing favorites in a way.

• Reasons for the dominance of English around the world
• Major language around the world in politics, economy, and businesses.
• Convenient and opportunistic.
• The British colonized many parts of the world.
• US and Britain have been such dominant countries in the world for so long.

 

 

• Possible Essay Questions for the Midterm
• Essay 1
• Monolingualism: A society’s or country’s use of only one language of communication for all purposes.
• Give an example of a monolingual country.
• Colombia.
• Multilingualism: Societies in which two or more languages are commonly used.
• Multilingualism often reflects strong cultural pluralism and regional division.
• Give an example of a multilingual state (country) in either North America or Europe, and explain how linguistic diversity has contributed to regionalism in that state.
• Geographers define space, location, and distance according to both absolute and relative measures.
• Describe the difference between absolute and relative measures of distance.
• Absolute distance: Shortest path separation of 2 places. Measured in standard units. Actual measurements.
• Ex; my house is 4 miles away.
• Relative distance: The distance in terms of time or connivance. Two places are 20 miles away but one is “closest” because there is less traffic when going there.
• Ex; My school is 5 minutes away. ßHere the person assumes you are driving and not walking.
• Contrast: Absolute is the actual measurement, relative is the “around” and not the actual.
• Give two examples of instances where the degree of interaction between places is more related to connectivity than to absolute distance.
• According to the demographic transition model, population growth should slow down as a country becomes more developed.
• Where is the United States according to the demographic transition model?
• It is in the fourth stage!
• In the 1990s, the United States experienced increase population growth; explain this recent growth, and compare it to slow growth patterns in other highly developed countries.
• Consider the impact of colonialism on the world’s cultural geography.  Explain how colonialism affected global patterns of language and religion, using specific examples to support your argument.