CULTURE BASICS
THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
LANGUAGE
RELIGION
CULTURAL CHANGE
100
A single attribute of a culture — a food, a gesture, a style of dress.
What is a cultural trait? MC TIP — Trait is the smallest unit. A group of interlocking traits is a cultural complex; the area where it dominates is a culture region.
100
The visible human imprint on the physical environment — buildings, fields, signs, and roads.
What is the cultural landscape? MC TIP — Sauer's definition: culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape is the result. Read the landscape as evidence of values.
100
A collection of languages related through a common but distant ancestor.
What is a language family? MC TIP — The hierarchy runs family to branch to group to individual language. Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan are the two largest families.
100
A religion that actively seeks converts and spreads through expansion diffusion.
What is a universalizing religion? MC TIP — The big three: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism. Ethnic religions — Hinduism, Judaism, Shinto — spread by relocation and do not seek converts.
100
The process by which cultures become more alike through sustained contact.
What is cultural convergence? MC TIP — Its opposite is cultural divergence — cultures becoming more distinct, often as deliberate resistance to outside influence.
200
Traits practiced widely across many societies and diffused rapidly by media and technology.
What is popular culture? MC TIP — Popular culture spreads fast, changes fast, and homogenizes the landscape. Folk culture spreads slowly by relocation and stays local.
200
Shared language, food, architecture, and public signage in a neighborhood settled by one migrant group.
What is an ethnic enclave (or ethnic neighborhood)? MC TIP — Enclaves are built by chain migration. The landscape evidence — signage, places of worship, food markets — is what AP asks you to name.
200
The largest language family in the world by number of speakers, including English, Spanish, Hindi, and Russian.
What is Indo-European? MC TIP — Two competing origin theories: the Kurgan (nomadic warrior) hypothesis and the Anatolian (agricultural) hypothesis. Both are named in the CED.
200
A religion tied to a particular ethnic group and place, spreading mainly by relocation diffusion.
What is an ethnic religion? MC TIP — Hinduism and Judaism are the standard examples. Their landscape marker is concentration in a hearth region plus a global diaspora.
200
A minority group adopting enough of the dominant culture to function in it, while retaining its own identity.
What is acculturation? MC TIP — Acculturation KEEPS the original identity. Assimilation LOSES it. Syncretism BLENDS two into something new.
300
Traits practiced by a small, homogeneous group in a relatively isolated, rural area.
What is folk culture? MC TIP — Folk culture uses LOCAL materials and has anonymous or unknown origins. Amish barns and Appalachian music are the standard examples.
300
Strip malls, chain restaurants, and identical big-box stores that make one American suburb indistinguishable from another.
What is placelessness (a landscape of uniformity)? MC TIP — Placelessness is the visible product of popular culture and globalization. It is the direct opposite of a distinctive sense of place.
300
A regional variation in vocabulary, pronunciation, and pace within the same language.
What is a dialect? MC TIP — An isogloss is the boundary line between dialect areas. Soda versus pop versus coke is the classic American isogloss map.
300
The forced or voluntary scattering of a people from their homeland.
What is a diaspora? MC TIP — Diaspora explains why ethnic religions show up far from their hearth — relocation diffusion, not conversion.
300
A minority group fully adopting the dominant culture and losing its distinct traits.
What is assimilation? MC TIP — Assimilation can be voluntary or forced. Forced assimilation — boarding schools, language bans — is the version tied to Unit 4 questions.
400
The area where a cultural trait originates before it diffuses outward.
What is a hearth? MC TIP — Know the hearths cold: the Fertile Crescent for agriculture, the Indus Valley for Hinduism, Mecca for Islam, the Bronx for hip-hop.
400
The emotional meaning and attachment people give to a location.
What is sense of place? MC TIP — Placemaking is the deliberate act of building it — murals, festivals, plazas. Both terms appear in Unit 3 and again in Unit 6 urban questions.
400
A simplified blended language created for trade between groups with no common tongue.
What is a pidgin? MC TIP — When a pidgin becomes a community's first language, it is a CREOLE. Pidgin has no native speakers; creole does.
400
Mecca, Jerusalem, Varanasi, and Bodh Gaya are all examples of these destinations.
What are pilgrimage sites (sacred sites)? MC TIP — Pilgrimage produces measurable seasonal migration and economic activity — a cultural pattern with demographic consequences.
400
Vodou, Day of the Dead, and Tex-Mex cuisine are products of this blending process.
What is syncretism? MC TIP — Syncretism is the cultural cousin of stimulus diffusion — the outside idea arrives and fuses with what was already there.
500
Judging another culture by the standards of your own.
What is ethnocentrism? MC TIP — Its opposite is cultural relativism — understanding a culture on its own terms. Both words show up in stems about colonialism and immigration policy.
500
Preserving historic buildings, protecting Indigenous languages, and designating heritage sites are all forms of this.
What is cultural preservation? MC TIP — Preservation is the counterforce to globalization and homogenization. Expect it paired with tourism revenue as a benefit and gentrification as a cost.
500
A language of international communication used by speakers of different native languages — English in aviation and global business.
What is a lingua franca? MC TIP — Lingua francas diffuse hierarchically through cities and institutions. They also drive language extinction, another CED effect.
500
Religion-based territorial conflict in Northern Ireland, Kashmir, and Israel-Palestine is often described by this term.
What is religious (sectarian) conflict? MC TIP — AP frames these as conflicts over TERRITORY and IDENTITY together, not theology alone. That framing is the credited answer.
500
The dominance of one culture's products and values over others, often cited in critiques of global media.
What is cultural imperialism? MC TIP — The counterforce is cultural nationalism — France's language quotas, Canada's content rules. Expect the pair together.
M
e
n
u