Religion
Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life.
Animism
A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location.
universalizing religion
An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state
centripetal force
Identity with a group of people descended from a common ancestor.
race
The process through which people lose originality differentiating traits, such as dress, speech, particularities, or mannerisms, when they come into contact with another society or culture.
assimilation
The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned according to religious law.
Caste
a state whose government is under the control of a ruler who is deemed to be divinely guided or under the control of a group of religious leaders.
theocracy
A force that divides people and countries
centrifugal force
Concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves.
self determination
Fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group
cultural landscape
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.
Ethnic Religion
An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion.
missionary
Loyalty and devotion to a particular nationality.
nationalism
State that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities
multi-national state
The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another.
acculturation
journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes
Pilgrimage
a belief system that rejects religion, or the belief that religion should not be part of the affairs of the state or part of public education.
secularism
A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality.
nation-state
During the middle Ages, a neighborhood in a city set up by law to be inhabited only by Jews; now used to denote a section of a city in which members of any minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure.
ghetto
The systems of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound as is the case with letters in English.
ideograms
The basic unit of geographic organization in the Roman Catholic Church.
Diocese
Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination, or sect).
fundamentalism
A practice, primarily during the eighteenth century, in which European ships transported slaves from Africa to Caribbean islands, molasses from the Caribbean to Europe, and trade goods from Europe to Africa.
triangular slave trade
A suburban area with a cluster of a particular ethnic group.
ethnoburb
A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated.
creole or creolized language