Into to Culture
The material and immaterial ways of life of a particular group of people.
What is culture?
Human-made structures and features within the physical landscape
What is the cultural landscape?
The process by which an innovation or idea spreads from one place to another over time.
What is diffusion?
Cultural traits that pull people apart and threaten the cohesion of communities, etc.
What are centrifugal forces?
Trade, Colonialism, and War
What were the three main historical causes of cultural diffusion?
Group of people with a common identity based on a distinct and shared culture
What is ethnicity?
Small ethnically homogenous group within a larger culture
What is an ethnic enclave?
Cultural traits that bring people together and unify communities, societies, or countries.
What are centripetal forces?
Spread of cultural traits from the hearth to other areas without migration
What is expansion diffusion?
The forceful control of one territory by another country.
What is colonialism?
The visible and invisible attributes that make up a group’s culture.
What are cultural traits?
Natural or human-made sites with religious or spiritual meaning.
What are sacred spaces?
Spreads continuously outwards away from the hearth through person-to-person contact
What is contagious diffusion?
When cultural traits spread, but are changed by the people who adapt them
What is stimulus diffusion?
Led to the diffusion of cultural traits through the exchange of goods between previously disconnected societies.
What are trade networks (Silk Road, Indian Ocean Trade, etc.)
Area where a specific culture or cultural trait develops.
What is a cultural hearth?
Sacred spaces that have non-religious significance.
What are secular sites?
What are the three types of Expansion diffusion?
Spreading of a cultural trait outwards from the most influential people/places to others
What is hierarchical diffusion?
The increasing interconnectedness between places and people.
What is globalization?
The ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge of a culture.
What are mentifacts?
Human-made features that reflect the religion, language, and other traits of a specific cultural group.
What are ethnic landscapes?
The spread of an idea/innovation through the physical movement of people
What is relocation diffusion?
Barriers that completely stop the diffusion of a cultural trait
What are absorbing barriers?
Greater interconnection between places that results from improvements in technology.
What is time-space convergence?
A phenomena made up of a series of interrelated cultural traits.
What is a cultural complex?
The idea that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape.
What is sequent occupancy?
Spreading of a cultural trait from a group of lower social status to high-status groups
What is reverse hierarchical diffusion?
Barriers that slow diffusion but allow it to continue in a limited way
What are permeable barriers?
The idea that cultures are becoming increasingly similar, sharing more common traits
What is cultural convergence?