unit 1: geography, culture, and environment
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39 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Human geography | concentrates on patterns of human activity and on their relationships with the environment. |
| Physical geography | the study of physical features of the earth's surface |
| Absolute location | exact location of a place on the earth described by global coordinates |
| Relative location | the regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places |
| Spatial perspective | observing variations in geographic phenomena across space |
| Map | a diagrammatic representation of the earth's surface (or part of it) |
| Mental map | An internal representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located. |
| Distribution | the act of distributing or spreading or apportioning |
| Pattern | a customary way of operation or behavior |
| Formal region | An area in which everyone shares in one or more distinctive characteristics |
| Functional (nodal) region | an area organized around a node or focal point. |
| Perceptual (vernacular) region | A region that only exists as a conceptualization or an idea and not as a physically demarcated entity. |
| Remote sensing | The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or other long-distance methods. |
| Geographic Information Systems | A collection of computer hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed, and displayed to the user. |
| Diffusion | the act of dispersing or diffusing something |
| Expansion diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing process. |
| Relocation diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another. |
| Acculturation | the adoption of the behavior patterns of the surrounding culture |
| Assimilation | the process of assimilating new ideas into an existing cognitive structure |
| Transculturation | cultural borrowing that occurs when different cultures of approximately equal complexity and technological level come into close contact |
| Contagious diffusion | The rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population. |
| Hierarchial diffusion | a form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by passing first among the most connected places or peoples down to others |
| Stimulus diffusion | The spread of an underlying principle, even though a specific characteristic is rejected. |
| Independent invention | the term for a trait with many cultural hearths that developed independent of each other |
| Environmental determinism | the view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life including cultural development |
| Possibilism | The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives. |
| Culture | the raising of plants or animals |
| Cultural diffusion | the spread of cultural elements from one society to another |
| Cultural landscape | landscapes that have been changed by human societies |
| Cultural hearth | A center where cultures developed and from which ideas and traditions spread outward. |
| Cultural trait | A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban. |
| Cultural complex | A related set of cultural traits, such as prevailing dress codes and cooking and eating utensils. |
| Cultural realm | The combination of the cultural traits that is in a group that spreads over an area. |
| Cultural region | an area in which a group of people share a similar culture and language |
| Cultural system | a collection of elements that form a groups culture |
| Sequence occupance | the notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape |
| Folk culture | Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups. |
| Popular culture | Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics. |
| Commodification | the process though which something is given monetary value |
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