| Term | Definition |
|---|
| acculturation | Cultural modification resulting from intercultural borrowing. In cultural geography and anthropolgy, the term is often used to designate the change that occurs in the culture of a less technologically advanced people when contact is made with a society that is more technologically advanced. |
| assimilation | The process through which people lose originally differentiating traits, such as dress, speech particularities or mannerisms, when they come into contact with another society or culture. |
| civilization | An advanced state of a society possessing historical and cultural unity whose attributes include plant and animal domestication, metallurgy, occupational specialization, writing and urbanization. |
| contagious diffusion | The distance-controlled spreading of an idea, innovation, or some other item through a local population by contact from person to person - analogous to the communication of a contagious illness. |
| cultural diffusion | The process of spreading and adoption of a cultural element, from its place of origin across a wider area. |
| cultural landscape | The forms and artifacts sequentially placed on the physical landscape by the activities of various human occupants. |
| culture | The sum total of the knowledge, attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society. |
| culture complex | A related set of culture traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils. |
| culture hearth | Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture. |
| culture realm | A cluster of regions in which related culture systems prevail. |
| culture region | A region within which common culture charecteristics prevail. |
| culture system | include ethnicity, language, religion, and other cultural traits. |
| culture trait | A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban. |
| diffusion | The spatial spreading or dissemination of a culture element or some other phenomenon. |
| environmental determinism | The view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development. |
| expansion diffusion | The spread of an innovation or an idea through a populationin an area in such a way that the number of those influenced grows continuously larger, resulting in an expanding area of dissemination. |
| geographic realm | The basic spatial unit in our world regionalization scheme. |
| geographic region | used when describing regions with similar cultural, locational and environmental circumstances. |
| hierarchical diffusion | A form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by trickling down from larger to smaller adoption units. |
| independent invention | when people learn things on their own. |
| migrant diffusion | when something is adopted in an area for a brief, but strong time. |
| perceptual region | A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity. |
| political ecology | An approach to studying nature - society relations that is concerned with the ways in which environmental issues both reflect, and are the result of, the political and socioeconomic contexts in which they are situated. |
| possibilism | Geographic viewpoint - a response to determinism - that holds that human decision making is the crucial factor in cultural development, not the environment. |
| relocation diffusion | Sequential diffusion process in which the items being diffused are transmitted by their carrier agents as they evacuate the old areas and relocate to new ones. |
| sequent occupance | The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape. |
| stimulous diffusion | when some ideas are to vague to be fully adopted. |
| transculteration | Cultural borrowing that occurs when different cultures of approximately equal complexity and technological levvel come into close contact. |
Combine with other sets
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace