| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Culture | A group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by a people. |
| Local culture | a group of people in a particular place who see themselves as a collective or a community, who share experiences, customs, and traits, and who work to preserve those traits and customs in order to claim uniqueness and to distinguish themselves from others. |
| Popular culture | Large, incorporates heterogeneous populations, is typically urban, and experiences quickly changing cultural traits. |
| Material culture | Type of culture which things that are constructed, such as art, houses, and foods. |
| Nonmaterial culture | Type of culture which includes beliefs, practices, and values |
| hearth | point of origin or the cases of first diffusion |
| assimilation | 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. |
| custom | practice that a group of people routinely follows |
| cultural appropriation | the process by which other cultures adopt customs and knowledge and use them for their own benefit. |
| neolocalism | seeking out the regional culture and reinvigorating it in response to the uncertainty of the modern world |
| ethnic neighborhoods | Neighborhood, typically situated in a larger metropolitan city and constructed by or comprised of a local culture, in which a local culture can practice its customs |
| commodification | the process through which something is given monetary value. |
| authenticity | the accuracy with which a signle stereotypical or typecast image or experience conveys an otherwise dynamic and complex local culture or its customs |
| time-space compression | how quickly innovations diffuse and how interlinked two places are through transportation and communication technologies, as defined by David Harvey |
| reterritorialization | when people within a place start to produce an aspect of popular culture themselves, doing so in the context of their local culture and making it their own |
| cultural landscape | the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape |
| placelessness | Coined by Edward Ralph, the loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape |
| global-local continuum | The notion of what happens of one scale is not independent of what happens at other scales. |
| glocalization | The process by which people in a local place mediate and alter regional, national, and global processes |
| gender | Defined by Mona Domosh and Joni Seager as "a culture's assumptions about the differences between mean and women: their 'characters', the roles they play in society, what they represent" |
| identity | defined by Gillian Rose as "how we make sense of ourselves" |
| identifying against | One of the most powerful ways of constructing ourselves, labeling them "the other" and us "not the other" |
| Race | constructed identity and is a perfect example of how identities are built. |
| racism | Feeling of superiority attached to race through differences in socioeconomic classes of people |
| residential segregation | Defined by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton as "the degree to which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of the urban environment." |
| invasion and succession | a process in which new immigrants to a city often move to areas occupied by older immigrant groups, often "invading" the neighborhood |
| sense of place | The process of infusing a place "with meaning and feeling" |
| ethnicity | affiliation or identity within a group of people bound by common ancestry and culture |
| space | Defined by Doreen Massey and Pat Jess as "social relations stretched out" |
| place | Defined by Doreen Massey and Pat Jess as "particular articulations of those social relations as they have come together, over time, in that particular location." |
| gendered | places designed for women or for men |
| queer theory | Theory defined by geographers Glen Elder and Lawrence Knopp, and Heidi Nast that highlights the contextual nature of opposition to the heteronormative and focuses on the poitical engagement of "queers" with the heteronormative |
| dowry deaths | In the context of arranged marriages in India, disputes over the price to be paid by the family of the bride to the father of the groom have, in some extreme cases, led to the death of a bride. |
| barrioization | Defined by geographer James Curtis as the dramatic increase in Hispanic population in a given neighborhood |
| Language | a set of mutually intelligible sounds and symbols that are used for communication |
| culture | In the context of language, culture is constantly reflected and shaped off of language |
| standard language | A language that is published, widely distributed, and purposefully taught. |
| dialects | Variants of a standard language along regional or ethnic lines |
| isogloss | geographic boundary within which a particular linguistic feature occurs |
| mutual intelligibility | two people who can understand each other when speaking |
| dialect chains | A set of contiguous dialects in which the dialects nearest to each other at any place in the chain are most closely related. |
| language families | Group of languages with a shared but fairly distant origin |
| subfamilies | Divisions within language where the commonalities are more definite and the origin more recent |
| sound shift | a slight change in a word across languages within a subfamily or through a language family from the present backward toward its origin |
| Proto-Indo-European | The ancestral Indo-European language |
| backward reconstruction | the tracking of sound shifts and hardening of consonants "backward" toward the original language |
| extinct language | a language without any native speakers |
| deep reconstruction | Technique using the vocabulary of an extinct language to recreate the language that proceeded the extinct language |
| nostratic | Language to be not only of the Proto-Indo-European but of Kartvelian and Uralic-Altaic Languages |
| language divergence | a process in which a lack of spatial interaction among speakers of a language breaks the language into dialects and then continued isolation divides the language into discrete languages |
| language convergence | The process of two different languages continuing or increasing spatial interaction collapsing two languages into one. |
| Renfrew hypothesis | Claims that from Anatolia was where Europe's Indo-European language was from. |
| conquest theory | theory which holds that early speakers of Proto-Indo-European spread west on horseback and conquered early inhabitants in Europe |
| dispersal hypothesis | holds that Indo-European language arose from Proto-Indo-European and spread east through Southwest Asia. |
| Romance languages | Lies in the areas once controlled by the Roman Empire, but were not subsequently overwhelmed. Language families include Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian. |
| germanic languages | language that reflect the expansion of peoples out of Northern Europe to west and south. Languages include English, German, danish, and Swedish. |
| Slavic languages | Deeloped as Slavic people migrated from a base in present-day Ukraine. Languages include Czech, Slovak, Russian, and Polish. |
| lingua franca | a language used among speakers of different languages for the purposes of trade and commerce. |
| pidgin language | A simplified structure and vocabulary trade language from two different languages |
| Creole language | A more complex pidgin language with complex structure and vocab. |
| monolingual states | Countries in which only one language is spoken |
| multilingual states | countries where more than one language is in use |
| official language | In multilingual countries, a language is selected to promote internal cohesion. |
| global language | A common language used for trade and commerce around the world |
| place | Uniqueness of a location |
| toponym | place names |
| Animistic Religions | Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life. |
| Autonomous religion | A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally. |
| Branch (of a religion) | A large and fundamental division within a religion. |
| Caste | The class of distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned according to religious law. |
| Ethnic religion | A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated. |
| Fundamentalism | Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination, or sect). |
| Hierarchical religion | A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control. |
| Missionary | An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion. |
| Monotheistic Religions | The doctrine or belief of the existence of only one god. |
| Pilgrimage | A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes. |
| Polytheistic Religions | Belief in or worship of more than one god. |
| Solstice | Time when the Sun is farthest from the equator. |
| Universalizing religion | A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location. |
| Interfaith boundary | The boundaries between the world's major faiths. |
| Intrafaith boundary | The boundaries within a major religion. |
| Religion | Defined by Robert Stoddard and Carolyn Prorak as "a system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate priorities". |
| Secularism | A doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations. |
| Shamanism | Form of a tribal religion that involved community acceptance of a shaman, a religious leader, healer, and worker of magic who, through special powers, can intercede with and interpret the spirit world. |
| Traditional/tribal religion | Special forms of ethnic religions distinguished by their small size, their unique identity with localized culture groups not yet fully absorbed into modern society, and their close ties to nature. |
| Zionism | A worldwide movement, originating in the 19th century that sought to establish and develop a Jewish nation in Palestine. Since 1948, its function has been to support the state of Israel. |
| Shintoism | Religion located in Japan and related to buddhism |
| Taoism | Religion believed to have been founded by Lao Tsu and based upon his book |
| Confucianism | A philosophy of ethics, education, and public service based on the writings of confucius |
| diaspora | term describing forceful or voluntary dispersal of a people from their homeland to a new place |
| Eastern Orthodox Church | suffered blows when the Ottoman Turks defeated the Serbs in Kosovo in 1389 |
| Roman Catholic church | claims the most adherents of all Christian denominations |
| Hinduism | Oldest religion, originated in Pakistan and became highly developed in India. |
| Judaism | Religion which started from the teachings of Abraham, who is credited with uniting his people to worship only one god. |
| Islamic | came from the teachings of Muhammed, youngest world religion and fastest growing, this religion is a branch from Judaism and Christianity |
| Cyclic Movement | Migration with a closed route and is repeated annually or seasonally. Usually lasts a few weeks to a couple months. |
| Periodic Movement | Migration involving temporary, recurrent relocation. Ex: military service, college, etc. |
| Migration | A change in residence intended to be permanent. |
| Activity Space | The space within which daily activitiy occurs. Ex: work, home, etc. |
| Nomadism | Movement among a definite set of places- often a form of cyclic movement. |
| Migrant Labor | A common type of periodic movement where people and their families (as many as 10 Mil. Americans per year) move to new locations where they will spend tours of duty lasting up to several years. |
| Transhumance | A seasonal periodic movement of pastoralists and their livestock between highland and lowland pastures, usually according to seasons. |
| Military Service | (Same definition as "Migrant Labor") |
| International Migration | Human movement involving movement across international borders. |
| Internal Migration | Human movement within a nation-state, such as ongoing westward and southward movements in the U.S. (i.e. "Snowbirds") |
| Forced Migration | Human migration flows in which the movers have no choice but to relocate. |
| Voluntary Migration | Movement in which people relocate in responce to percieved opportunity, not because they are forced to move. |
| Laws of Migration | CREATED BY ERNEST RAVENTSTEIN: 1)Every migration flow generates a return or countermigration. 2)The majority of migrants move a short distance. 3)Migrants who move longer distances tend to choose big-city destinations. 4)Urband residents are less migratory than inhabitants of rural areas. 5)Families are less likely to make international moves than you adults. |
| Gravity Model | CREATED BY, ERNEST RAVENTSTEIN: A prediction of the interaction between places on the basis of thier population size and distance between them. |
| Push Factors | Negative conditions and perceptions that induce people to leave their abode and migrate to a new location. |
| Pull Factors | Positive conditions or perceptions that effectively attract people to new locales from other areas. |
| Distance Decay | The effect of distance on interaction, generally the greater the distance the less interation. |
| Step Migration | Migration to a distant destination that occurs in stages. Ex: From farm to nearby village, and later to a town or city. |
| Intervening Opportunity | The presence of a nearer opportunity that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away. |
| Kinship Links | Types of push and pull factors that influence a migrant's decision to go where family or friends have already found success. |
| Chain Migration | Pattern of migration that develops when migrants move along and through kinship links. |
| Immigration Wave | Phenomenon whereby different patterns of chain migration build upon one another to create a swell in migration from one origin to the same destination. |
| Global Scale | Interations occurring at the scale of the world, in a global setting. |
| Explorer | A person examining a region that is unknown to them. |
| Colonization | Physical process whereby the colonizer takes over another place, putting its own government in charge and either moving its own people into the place or bringing in indentured outsiders to gain control of the people and the land. |
| Regional Scale | Interations occuring within a region, in a regional setting. |
| Islands of Development | Place built up by a government or corporation to attract foreign investment and which has relatively high concentrations of paying jobs and infrastructure. |
| Guest Workers | Legal immigrant who has a work visa, usually short term. |
| Refugee | People who have fled their country because of political persecution and seek asylum in another country. |
| Internal Refugee | People who have been displaced within their own countries and do not cross international borders as they flee. |
| International Refugee | Refugees who have crossed on or international boundaries during their dislocation, searching for asylum in a different country. |
| Asylum | Shelter and protection in one state for refugees from another state. |
| Immigraion Laws | Laws and regulations of a state designed specifically to control immigration into that state. |
| Quotas | Established limits by governments on the number of immigrants who can enter a country every year. |
| Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) | Synthetic organic compounds first created in the 1950s and used primarily as refrigerants and as propellants. The role of CFCs in the destruction of the ozone layer led to the signing of an international agreement (the Montreal Protocol). |
| Pangaea | HYPOTHESIZED BY ALFRED WEGENER: Ocean-girdling supercontinent that broke apart and formed the continents and oceans as we know them today; consisted of two parts-- a northern Laurasia and a southern Gondwana. |
| Photosynethesis | The formatiom of carbohydrates in living plants from water and carbon dioxide, through the action of sunlight on chlorophyll in those plants, including algae. |
| Mass Depletions | Loss of diversity through a failure to produce new species. |
| Mass Extinctions | Mass destruction of most species. |
| Pacific Ring of Fire | Ocean-girdling zone of crustal instability, volcanism, and earthquakes resulting from the tectonic activity along plate boundaries in the region. |
| Pleistocene | The most recent epoch of the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, beginning about 108 mill. years ago and marked by as many as 20 glaciations and interglaciations of which the current warm phase, the Holocene epoch, has witnessed the rise of human civilization. |
| Glaciations | A period of global cooling during which continental ice sheets and mountain glaciers expand. |
| Interglaciations | Sustained warming phase between glaciations during an ice age. |
| Wisconsinian Glaciation | The most recent glacial period of the Pleistocene, enduring about 100,000 years and giving away, beginning about 18,000 years ago, to the current interglacial, the Holocene. |
| Holocene | The current interglaciation period, extending from 10,000 years ago to the present on the geologic time scale. |
| Little Ice Age | Temporary but significant cooling period between the fourteenth and the nineteenth centuries; accompanied by wide temerature fluctuations, droughts, and storms, causing famines and dislocation. |
| Environmental Stress | The threat to environmental security by human activity such as atmospheric and groundwater pollution, deforistation, oil spills, and ocean dumping. |
| Renewable Resources | Resourses that can be regenerated as they are exploited. |
| Hydrologic Cycle | The system of exchange involving water in its various forms as it continually circulates among the atmosphere, the oceans, and above and below the land surface. |
| Aquifers | Subterranean, porous, water-holding rocks that provide millions of wells with steady flows of water. |
| Atmosphere | Blanket of gases surrounding the Earth and located some 350 miles above the Earth's surface. |
| Global Warming | Theory that the Earth is gradually warming as a result of an enhanced greenhouse effect in the Earth's atmosphere caused by ever-increasing amounts of carbon dioxide produced by various human activities. |
| Acid Rain | A growing envrionmental peril whereby acidified rainwater severly damages plant and animal life; caused by the oxides of sulfur and nitrogen that are released into the atmosphere when coal, oil, and natural gas are burned, especially in major manufacturing zones. |
| Oxygen Cycle | Cycle whereby natural processes and human activity consume atmospheric oxygen and produce carbon dioxide and the Earth's forests and other flora, through photosynthesis, consume carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. |
| Deforistation | The clearing and destruction of forests to harvest wood for consumption, clear land for agricultural uses, and make way for expanding settlement frontiers. |
| Soil Erosion | The wearing away of the land surface by wind and moving water. |
| Sanitary Landfills | Disposal sites for non-hazardous solid waste that is spread in layers and compacted to the smallest practical volume. The sites are typically designed with floors made of materials to treat seeping liquids and are covered by soil as the wastes are compacted and deposited into the landfill. |
| Solid Waste | Non-liquid, non-soluable materials ranging from municipal garbage to sewage sludge; agricultural refuse; and mining residues. |
| Toxic Wastes | Hazardous waste causing danger from chemicals and infectious organisms. |
| Radioactive Wastes | Hazardous-waste-emitting radiation from nuclear power plants, nuclear weapons factories, and nuclear equipment in hospitals and industries. |
| Biodiversity | The total variety of plant and animal species in a particular place; bological diversity. |
| Ozone Layer | The layer in the upper atmosphere located between 30 and 45 kilometers above the Earth's surface where stratosphereic ozone is most densely consentrated. The ozone layer acts as a filter for the Sun's harmful ultraviolet rays. |
| Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer | The first international convention aimed at addressing the issue of ozone depletion. Held in 1985, the Vienna convention was predecessor to the Montreal Protocol. |
| Montreal Protocol | An international agreement signed in 1987 by 105 countries and the European Community (now European Union). The protocol called for a reduction in the production and consumption of CFCs of 50 percent by 2000. Subsequent meetings in London (1990) and Copenhagen (1992) accelerated the timing of CFC phaseout, and a worldwide complete ban has been in effect since 1996. |
| Commodity Chain | Series of links connecting the many places of production and distribution and resulting in a commodity that is on world market |
| Developing | A country that is increasing its education levels, communications, and productivity of its workers |
| Gross National Product (GNP) | The total value of all goods and services produced by a country's economy in a given year. It includes all corporations and individuals of the country, wether or not they are in the nation. |
| Gross Domestic Product (GDP) | Encompasses only goods and services produced in a given year within a country |
| Gross National Income (GNI) | Similar to GDP, but also includes the value of income from abroad |
| Per Capita GNI | Total GNI divided by the population |
| formal economy | Legal economy that is taxed and monitored by the government |
| informal economy | The illegal and untaxed economy that is not tracked by the government |
| modernization model | a model of economic development most closely associated with the work of economist Walter Rostow; sometimes referred to as modernization theory |
| neo-colonialism | the entrenchment of the colonial order, such as trade and investment, under a new guise. |
| structuralist theory | A general term for a model of economic development that treats economic disparities among countries or regions as the result of historically derived power relations within the global economic system |
| dependency theory | A theory that explains that political and economic relations between regions have limited the extent to which some countries can develop |
| dollarization | When a poorer country ties the value of its currency to that of a wealthier country, or when it abandons its currency and adopts the wealthier country's currency as its own |
| world-systems theory | Developed by Immanuel Wallerstein and illuminated by his three-tier structure, proposing that social change in the developing world is inextricably linked to the economic activities of the developed world. |
| three-tier theory | Divides the world into Core, Periphery, and Semi-Periphery as a way to explain the interconnections between places in the global economy. |
| trafficking | When a family sends a child or an adult to a labor recruiter in hopes that the labor recruiter will send money, and the family member will earn money to send home |
| structural adjustment loans | Loans granted by the inernational financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to countries in the periphery and the semi-periphery in exchange for certain economic and governmental reforms in that country (examples: privatization of businesses, opening trade to foreign investment) |
| vectored disease | A disease spread by one hose or person to another by an intermediate host or vector like a mosquito |
| malaria | The vectored disease from the saliva of the mosquito that kills 150,000 people each month |
| export processing zones | Zones established by many countries in the periphery and semi-periphery where they offer favorable tax, regulatory, and trade arrangements to attract foreign trade and investment |
| maquiladoras | The term given to the Northern part of MeXiCo with factories supplying manufactured goods to the US. The workers in the low-wage, foreign-owned factories import raw materials and export finished goods. |
| North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) | The agreement between Canada, US, and Mexico that eliminated borders of trading and facilitating of cross-border goods and services between countries. |
| desertification | Degradation of land, especially in semiarid areas, primarily because of human actions like excessive crop planting, animal grazing, and tree cutting. |
| island of development | Place built up by a government to attract foreign investment which was high concentrations of paying jobs and infrastructure |
| NonGovernmental Organizations (NGO) | International organizations that operate outside of the political stage. Nevertheless, they are a large influence in operations of social problems and environment issues. |
| microcredit programs | Program that provides small loans to poor people, especially women, to encourage development of small businesses |
| context | The geographical situation in which something occurs;the combination of what is happening at a variety of scales at once. |
| Special Economic Zones | Specific area within a country in which tax incentives and less stringent environmental regulations are implemented to attract foreign business and investment |
| Globalization | A set of processes that are increasing interactions, deepening relationships, and heightening interdependence without regard to country borders. |
| Washington Census | Fundamental principles of free trade: 1) free trade helps all states, 2) competition increases long-term groth. |
| Networks | A set of interconnected nodes without a center |
| Participatory Development | The idea that locals should be engaged in deciding what development means for them and how to achieve it. |
| Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) | A barrier system whereby a local currency is created through which members trade services or goods in a local network separated from the formal economy. |
| Vertical Integration | Having ownership at various points of a commodity chain. |
| Synergy | Cross promotion of vertically integrated goods. |
| Gatekeepers | People or corporations who control access to information. |
| Horizontal Integration | One firm owning multiple companies on the same point of a commodity chain. |
| John O'loughlin, Lynn, Staeheli, Edward Greenburg | State that globalization is neither irreversible nor inevitable. |
| Andrew Kirby | Explains globalization is not an organized set of processes. Also says that we need to focus on living in a world instead of neighborhood or state. |
| Manuel Castells | Defined the concept of networks. |
| Leroi Henry, Giles Mohan, Helen Yanacopulos | Acknowledge power relationships within and between networks. |
| Stuart Corbridge and Sanjay Kumar | Studied participatory development and it's affects in India. |
| Miguel Mendes Pereira | Stated companies competer for delivery, content and customers. |
| Weblogs | Online journals/forums that allow for more open information sharing; combating gatekeepers. |
| Neil Wrigley, Neil Coe, Andrew Currah | Studied differences between retail and manufacturing corporations. |
| Gillian Rose | Defined identity as "how we make sense of ourselves. |
| Kenneth Foote | Studied the effects that tragedies have on a place and it's meaning. Including a sacredness of the place and the formations of shrines on the area. |
| World Social Forum | Group of antiglobalists that meet yearly to protest the actions of core countries. |
| Industrial Revolution | The term applied to the social and economic changes in agriculture,commerce, and manufacturing that resulted from technological innovations and specialization in the late 18th century europe. |
| location theory | A logical attempt to explain the locational pattern of economic activities & the manner in which its producing areas are interrelated. The agricultural location theory contained in the Von Thunen model is a perfect example. |
| variable costs | Costs that change with the amount of production (energy supplies, labor costs). |
| friction of distance | The increase in time and cost that usually comes with increasing distance |
| distance decay | The effects of distance on interactions, generally greater the distance the less interaction |
| least cost theory | Model developed by Alfred Weber according to which the location of manufacturing establishments is determined by the minimization of three critical expenses: labor, transportation, agglomeration |
| agglomeration | A process involving the clustering or concentrating of people or activities. The term often refers to manufacturing plants and businesses that benefit from close proximity because they share skilled-labor pools and technological and financial amenities. |
| deglomeration | The process of industrial deconcentration in response to technological advancing or increasing costs due to congestion and competition |
| locational interdependence | Theory developed by economist Harold Hotelling that suggests competitors, in try to maximize sales, will seek to constrain each other's territory as much as possible which will therefore lead them to locate adjacent to one another in the middle of their collective customer base. |
| primary industrial regions | Western and Central Europe; Eastern North America; Russia and Ukrane; and Eastern Asia, each of which consists of one or more core areas of industrial development with subsidiary clusters |
| break-of-bulk point | A location along a transport route where goods must be transferred from one carrier to another. In a port, the cargos of oceangoing ships are unloaded and put onto trains, trucks, and maybe smaller riverboats for inland distribution. |
| Fordist | A highly organized and specialized system for organizing industrial production and labor. Named after automobile producer Henry Ford, Fordist production features assembly-line production of standardized components for mass consumption. |
| post-Fordist | World economic system characterized by a more flexible set of production practices in which good are not mass-produced; instead, production has been accelerated and dispersed around the globe by multinational companies that shift production, outsourcing it around the world and bringing places closer together in time and space then would have been imaginable at the beginning of the 20th century. |
| just-in-time delivery | Method of inventory management made possible by efficient transportation and communication systems, whereby companies keep on hand just what they need for near-term production, planning that what they need for longer-term production will arrive when needed. |
| global division of labor | Phenomenon whereby corporations and others can draw from labor markets around the world, make possible by the compression of time and space through innovation in communication and transportation systems |
| intermodal connections | Places where two or more modes of transportation meet (including air, road, rail, barge, and ship) |
| deindustrialization | Process by which companies move industrial jobs to other regions with cheaper labor, leaving the newly deindustrialized region to switch to a service economy and to work through a period of high unemployment |
| outsource | With reference to production, to turn over in part or in total to a third party |
| offshore | Outsourcing to a third party located outside the country |
| Sunbelt | The South and Southwest regions of the United States |
| technopole | Centers or nodes of high-technology research and activity around which a high-technology corridor is sometiems established |
| Population Density | A measurement of the number of people per given unit of land. |
| Arithmetic Population Density | The population of a country or region expressed as an average per unit area of land. The figure is derived by dividing the population of the areal unit by the number of square kilometers or miles that make up a unit. |
| Phycological Population Density | The number of people per unit area of arable land. |
| Population Distribution | Description of locations on the Earth's surface where populations live. |
| Dot Map | Maps where one dot represents a certain number of a phenomenon, such as a population. |
| Megalopolis | Term used to designate large coalescing supercities that are forming in diverse parts of the world. Ex: Boston |
| Census | A periodic and official count of a country's population. |
| Doubling Time | The time required for a population to double in size. |
| Population Explosion | The rapid growth of the world's human population during the past century, attended by ever-shorter doubling times and accelerating rates of increase. |
| Natural Increase | Population growth measured as the excess of live births over deaths. Natural increase of a population does not reflect either emigrant or immigrant movements. |
| Crude Birth Rate | The number of live births yearly per thousand people in a population. |
| Crude Death Rate | The number of deaths yearly per thousand people in a population. |
| Demographic Transition | Multistage model, based on Western Europe's experience, of changes in population growth exhibited by countries undergoing industrialization. High birth rates and death rates are followed by plunging death rates, producing a huge net population gain: this is followed by the convergence of birth rates and death rates at a low overall level. |
| Stationary Population Level | The level at which national population ceases to grow. Ex: Italy- in fact, the population is starting to decline. |
| Population Composition | Structure of a population in terms of age, sex and other properties such as martial status and education. |
| Population Pyramids | Visual representations of the age and sex composition of a population whereby the percentage of each age group is represented by a horizontal bar the length of which represents its relationship to the total population. |
| Infant Mortality Rate | A figure that describes the number of babies that die within the first year of their lives in a given population. |
| Child Mortality Rate | A figure that describes the number of children that die between the first and fifth years of their lives in a given population. |
| Life Expectancy | A figure indicating how long, on average, a person may be expected to live. Normally expressed in the context of a particular state. |
| AIDS | (Aquired Immune Deficiancy Syndrome) Immune system disease caused by HIV which over a period of years weakens the capacity of the immune system to fight off infection so that weight loss and weaknesses set in and other afflictions may hasten an infected person's demise. |
| Chronic Diseases | Generally long-lasting afflictions now more common because of higher life expectancies. |
| Expansive Population Policies | Government policies that encourage large families and raise the rate of poluation growth. Ex: Aging populations in Europe are encouraged to have more children (i.e. Italy). Also, when Mao Zedong was ruler of China during the countrie's communist years, he encouraged the Chinese to have large families. |
| Eugenic Population Policies | Government policies designed to favor one racial sector over others. Ex: Nazi Germany |
| Restrictive Population Policies | Government policies designed to reduce the rate of natural increase. Ex: China's "one child" policy. |
| Political Geography | Study of political organization of the world. |
| State | Politically organized territory with a permanent population, defined boundaries and a government that is recognized by other such states. |
| City | Conglomeration of people and buildings clustered together to serve as a center of politics, culture, and economics. |
| urban | term to describe the buildup of the central city and the suburban realm |
| agricultural village | small, egalitarian village, where most of the population was involved in agriculture. Started 10,000 years ago |
| agricultural surplus | enable a formation of cities, coincides with social stratification excess of agricultural crops. |
| social stratification | enables formation of cities, differentiation of society based in classes of wealth, power, production, and prestige |
| leadership class | Group of decision-makers and organizers in early cities who controlled resources and lives of others. |
| first urban revolution | The innovation of the city, which occurred independently in five separate hearths. |
| mesopotamia | Region of great cities first urban hearth dating back from 3500 BCE |
| Nile River Valley | Second urban hearth dating back to 3200 BCE |
| Indus River Valley | Third urban hearth dating from 2200 BCE |
| Huang He River | fourth of the major urban hearths, dating to 1500 BCE |
| Mesoamerica | Fifth urban hearth dating to 200 BCE |
| acropolis | Literally "high point", an area above a city such as Greece where many would practice religious beliefs. |
| agora | Public spaces where citizens debated, lectured, judged each other, socialized, and traded in ancient Greece |
| site | The internal physical attributes of a place, including its absolute location, its spatial character and physical setting. |
| Forum | The focal point of Roman Public life, included the Colosseum in Rome. |
| situation | The city's relative location, its place in the region and world around it. |
| trade area | an adjacent region within which its influence is dominant. |
| rank-size rule | states that in a model urban hierarchy, the populaton of a city or town wil be inversely proportional to its rank in the hierarchy. |
| central place theory | Proposed by Christaller in "The Central Places in Southern Germany", explains how and where central places in the urban hierarchy should be functionally and spatially distributed with respect to one another. |
| Sunbelt phenomenon | The movement of millions of Americans from northern/northeastern states into the south/southwestern regions. |
| functional zonation | The division of a city ito different regions or zones for certain purposes or functions |
| central business district | The concentration of business and commerce in a city's downtown |
| central city | describes the urban area that is not suburban. Refers to the older city as apposed to new suburbs |
| suburb | An out lying, functionally uniform part of an urban area, and may be often adjacent to a city. |
| Suburbanization | The process lands that where previously outside the urban environment becomes urbanized. |
| concentric zone model | By Ernest Buress's study of Chicago in the 1920s, a constructed model labeling five concentric zones of a city defined by function. |
| urban realm | term to describe the spatial components of the modern metropolis, where each realm is a separate economic, social, and political entity. |
| Griffin-Ford model | model to describe Latin American city structure, having a central "spine" district |
| edge cities | Introduced by Joel Garreau, in order to describe the shifting focus of urbanization away from the CBD, characterized by extensive amounts of office space, and low residential homes. |
| disamenity sector | the poorest parts of cities that in extreme cases are not even connected to regular city services and are controlled by gangs or drug lords |
| McGee model | Model in which encompasses the southeast Asia region showing similar land patterns in medium cities |
| shantytowns | unplanned developments of crude dwellings and shelters made mostly of scrap wood, iron, and pieces of cardboard. |
| zoning laws | Legal restrictions on land use that determine what types of building and economic activities are allowed to take place in certain areas. |
| redlining | A real estate practice which obtain money by selling in only predominantly white neighborhoods property. |
| blockbusting | Rapid change in the racial composition of residential blocks in American cities that occurs when real estate agents stir fears of white flight neighborhoods. |
| commercialization | The transformation of an area of a city into an area attractive to residents and tourists alike in terms of economic activity |
| gentrification | The rehabilitation of deteriorated, often abandoned, housing of low-income inner-city residents. |
| tear-downs | Homes bought in many American suburbs which are torn down and replaced with much larger homes |
| McMansions | Homes referred to as such because of their "super size" and similarity in appearance to other homes |
| urban sprawl | unrestricted growth of urban areas of housing, commercial development, and and roads with little expense in urban planning |
| Gated communities | Restricted neighborhoods or subdivisions, often literally fenced in, where entry is limited to residents and their guests. |
| informal economy | Economic activity that is neither taxed nor monitored by the government, not included in the GNP |
| world cities | Dominant city in terms of its role in the global political economy. Not the biggest in terms of population or industrial output, but in strategic control of the world economy |
| primate city | A country's largest city-ranking atop the urban hierarchy, most expressive of the national culture and usually the capital city as well |
| spaces of consumption | Areas of a city, the main pupose of which is to encourage people to consume goods and services, driven primarily by the global media industry. |
| fieldwork | The study of geographic phenomena by visiting places and observing how people interact with and thereby change those places |
| accessibility | The degree of ease with which it is possible to reach a certain location from other locations |
| perceptual region | "How you see" a region, exists as a conceptualization or an idea |
| human geography | The spatial analysis of human population, its cultures, activities, and landscapes |
| connectivity | The degree of direct linkage between one particular location and other locations in a transport network |
| culture | attitudes, and habitual behavior patterns shared and transmitted by the members of a society. |
| globalization | The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they become global in scale and impact. |
| landscape | The overall appearance of an area. |
| culture trait | A single element of normal practice in a culture, such as the wearing of a turban. |
| physical geography | The spatial analysis of the structure, processes, and location of the Earth's natural phenomena such as climate, soil , plants, and animals |
| cultural landscape | The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape |
| culture complex | A related set of cultural traits. |
| spatial | Pertaining to space on the Earth's surface' sometimes used as a synonym for geographic |
| sequent occupance | The notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape |
| cultural hearth | Heartland, source area, innovation center; place of origin of a major culture |
| spatial distribution | Physical location of geographic phenomena across space |
| cartography | the art and science of making maps, including data compilation, layout, and design |
| independent invention | The term for a trait with many cultural hearths that developed independent of each other |
| pattern | the design of a spatial distribution |
| reference maps | Maps that show the absolute location of places and geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically latitude and longitude |
| cultural diffusion | The expansion and adoption of a cultural element, from its place of origin to a wider area |
| medical geography | The study of health and disease within a geographic context and from a geographical perspective. |
| thematic maps | Maps that tell stories, typically showing the degree of some attribute or the movement of a geographic phenomenon. |
| time-distance decay | The declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin or source. |
| pandemic | An outbreak of a disease that spreads worldwide. |
| absolute location | the position or place of a certain item on the surface of the Earth as expressed in degrees, minutes, and seconds. |
| cultural barrier | Prevailing cultural attitude rendering certain innovations, ideas or practices unacceptable or unadoptable in that particular culture. |
| epidemic | Regional outbreak of a disease. |
| global positioning system | satellite-based system for determining the absolute location of places or geographic features. |
| expansion diffusion | The spread of an innovation or an idea through a population in an area in such a way that the number of those infulenced grows continuously larger, resulting in an expanding area of dissemination. |
| spatial perspective | Observing variations in geographic phenomena across space. |
| geocaching | A hunt for a cache, the GPS coordinates which are placed on the Internet |
| 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 |
| five themes | Location, human-environment, region, place, and movement |
| relative location | The regional position or situation of a place relative to the position of other places |
| hierarchical diffusion | A form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by passing first among most connected places or peoples |
| location | The first theme of geography, the geographical situation of people and things |
| mental map | Image or picture of the way space is organized as determined by an individual's perception, impression, and knowledge of that space |
| stimulus diffusion | A form of diffusion in which a cultural adaptation is created as a result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another place |
| location theory | a logical attempt to explain the locational pattern of an economic activity and the manner in which its producing areas are interrelated. |
| activity space | The space within which daily activity occurs |
| 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 |
| human-environment | the second theme of human geography, reciprocal relationship between humans and environment |
| generalized map | A simplified map used in order to show information more clearly |
| geographic concept | ways of seeing the world spatially that are used by geographers in answering research questions |
| region | The third theme of human geography, an area on the Earth's surface marked by a degree of formal, functional, or perceptual homogeneity of some phenomenon |
| remote sensing | A method of collecting data or information through the use of instruments that are physically distant form the area or object of sudy |
| environmental determinism | the view that the natural environment has a controlling influence over various aspects of human life, including cultural development |
| place | The fourth theme of geography, uniqueness of a location |
| geographic information systems | A collection of compeuter hardware and software that permits spatial data to be collected, recorded, stored, retrieved, manipulated, analyzed, and displayed to the user |
| isotherm | Line on a map connecting points of equal temperature values |
| perception of place | Belief about a place developed through books, movies, stories, or pictures |
| rescale | Involvement of players at other scales to generate support for a position or an initiative |
| possibilism | Geographic viewpoint that holds that human decision making, not the environment, is the crucial factor in cultural development. |
| movement | The fifth theme of geogrpahy, the mobility of people, goods, and ideas across the surface of the planet |
| formal region | A type of region marked by a certain degree of homogeneity in one or more phenomena |
| cultural ecology | the multiple interactions and relationships between a culture and the natural environment |
| functional region | A region defined by the particular set of activities or actions that occur within it. |
| political ecology | an approach to studying nature-scoiety 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. |
| distance | Measurement of the physical space between two places. |
| Territoriality | The attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships, by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area. |
| Sovereignty | The concept that each state's government has the final say within its border. |
| Territorial Integrity | Right for a state to defend its sovereignty against others. |
| Peace of Westphalia | Negotiated in 1648 at the end of the Thirty Years War organizing the beginning of modern states in Europe. |
| Mercantilism | Economic system in Europe that encouraged commercialization and trade through increase of gold and silver. |
| Nation | Culturally defined group of people with a shared past and common future who relate to a territory and have political goals. |
| Nation-State | Area where a single nation and a state overlap, giving sovereignty to the nation. |
| Democracy | Belief People are the ultimate sovereign and should make their own rules within the state's boundaries. |
| G8 (now G20) | Group of powerful states that meet to discuss world issues and solutions. |
| World Economic Forum | Globalists that meet yearly in Davos, Switzerland. |
| Organic agriculture | approach to farming and ranching that avoids the use of herbicieds, pesticides, growth hormones, and other similar synthetic inputs |
| agriculture | the purposeful tending of crops and livestock in order to produce food and fiber |
| primary economic activity | economic activity concerned with the direct extraction of natural resources from the environment-- such as mining, fishing, lumbering, and especially agriculture |
| secondary economic activity | economic activity involving the processing of raw materials and their transformation into finished industrial products; the manufacturing sector |
| tertiary economic activity | economic activity associated with the provision fo services (transportation, banking, retailing, education, routine, office-based jobs) |
| quaternary economic activity | service sector industires concerned with the collection, processing, and manipuation of information and capital (finance, administration, insurance, legal services) |
| quinary economic activity | service sector industries that require a high level of specialized knowledge skill (scientific research, high-level management) |
| plant domestication | genetic modification of a plant such that its reproductive success depends on human intervention |
| root crops | crops that are reproduced by cultivation either the roots or cuttings from the plants |
| seed crops | crop that is reproduced by cultivating the seeds of the plants. |
| First agricultural revolution | Dating back 10,000 years, the First Agricultural Revolution achieved plant domestication and animal domestication |
| animal domestication | genetic modification of an animal such that it is rendered more amenable to human control |
| subsistence agriculture | self sufficient agriculture that is small scale and low technology & emphasizes food production for local consumption, not trade |
| shifting cultivation | Cultivation of crops in tropical forest clearings in which the forest vegetation has been removed by cutting and burning. These clearings are usually abandoned after a few years in favor of newly cleared forestland. Also known as slash-and-burn agriculture. |
| slash-and-burn agriculture | see shifting cultivation above |
| Second agricultural revolution | dovetailing with and benefiting from the Industrial Revolution; the second agricultural revolution witnessed improvements in the methods of cultivating, harvesting, and storage of farm produce. |
| von Thunen model | A model that explains the location of agricultureal activities in a commercial, profit-making economy. A process of spatial competition allocates various farming activities into rings around a central market city, with profit-earning capability the determining force in how far a crop locates from the market |
| Third agricultural revolution | Currently in progress, the Third Agricultural Revolution has as its principal orientation the development of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO's) |
| Green Revolution | the recently successful development of higher yield, fast-growing varieties of rice and other cereals in certain developing countries, which led to increased production per unit area and a dramatic narrowing of the gap between population growth and food needs |
| genetically modified organisms | crops that carry new traits that have been inserted through advanced genetic engineering |
| rectangular survey system | Also called the Public Land Survey, the system was used by the US Land Office Survey to parcel land west of the Appalachian Mountains. The system divides land into a series of rectangular parcels. |
| township and range system | a rectangular land division scheme designed by Thomas Jefferson to disperse settlers evenly across farmlands of the US interior |
| metes and bounds system | A system of land surveying east of the Appalachian Mountains. It is a system that relies on descriptions of land ownership and natural features such as streams or trees. Because of the imprecise nature of metes and bounds surveying, the U.S. Land Office Survey abandoned the technique in favor of the rectangular survey system. |
| longlot survey system | distinct regional approach to land surveying found in the Canadian Maritimes, parts of Quebec, Louisiana, and Texas whereby land is divided into narrow parcels stretching back from rivers, roads, or canals |
| primogeniture | system where the eldest son in a family, or in exceptional cases, a daughter inherits all of the parent's land |
| commercial agricultural | the term used to describe large scale farming and ranching operations that employ vast land bases, large mechanized equipment, factory-type labor forces, and the latest technology |
| monoculture | dependence on a single agricultural commodity |
| Koppen climate classification system | developed bye Wladimir Koppen, a system for classifying the world's climates on the basis of temperature and precipitation |
| climatic regions | Areas of the world with similar climatic characteristics |
| plantation agriculture | Production system based on a large estate owned by an individual, family, or corporation and organized to produce a cash crop. Almost all plantations were established within the tropics; in recent decades, many have been divided into smaller holdings or reorganized as cooperatives |
| luxury crops | Non-subsistence crops such as tea, cacao, coffee, and tobacco |
| livestock ranching | the raising of domesticated animals for the produciton of meat and byproducts (leather, wool) |
| Mediterranean agriculture | Specialized farming that occurs only in areas where the dry-summer Mediterranean climate prevails |
| agribusiness | General term for the businesses that provide the vast array of goods and services that support the agriculture industry |
| Multinational State | State that contains two or more distinct cultural groups within its borders. |
| Multistate Nation | A cultural group spread across the boundaries of 2 or more states, |
| Stateless Nation | A cultural group that doesn't claim sovereignty over any territory. |
| Colonialism | Claimed and settling of new land into regions dependent on the mother country |
| Scale | Different levels of size or connections used in geography. |
| Capitalism | Economic system in which goods are produced and sold with the goal of making profit. |
| Commodification | The process of pricing a good and then trading it. |
| Core | Either High level countries or processes encouraging education, higher pay and more technology |
| Periphery | Poorer states or processes with lower levels of education, pay and technology. |
| Semi-periphery | Buffer between the core and periphery containing both types of processes. |
| Centripetal | Forces that unify the population of a state. |
| Centrifugal | Forces that divide people in a state. |
| Unitary | Centralized government system, generally has a central capital as the focus of power. |
| Federal | Government divided in to regional sections that have more power than the central government. |
| Devolution | Movement of power from the central government to regional governments. |
| Territorial Representation | Each region elects a representative to speak on behalf of them in the central government. |
| Reapportionment | Moving districts according to population shifts. |
| Majority-minority Districts | Districts where most people are from the minority. |
| Gerrymandering | Redistricting for political advantages. Also known as salamandering. |
| Boundary | Vertical plane that cuts through rocks and soil at a state's borders |
| Geometric Boundary | Borders drawn using grid systems like longitude and latitude. |
| Physical-political Boundary | Border drawn using preexisting natural features such as mountains and rivers. |
| Heartland Theory | Theory that Controlling East Europe would lead to control of the World Island and thus the world. |
| Critical Geopolitics | Study of "intellectuals of statecraft" and their influences. |
| Unilateralism | Order in which one leading power makes decision and others follow after it. |
| Supranational Organization | Alliance of three or more states for the mutual benefits of all involved. |
Combine with other sets
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