GEOG 101b Introduction to Human Geography

Lecture 19 Week 12

CULTURAL LANDSCAPESCULTURAL LANDSCAPESCultural systems and identitiesCultural systems and identities

Contents:

1. Cultural Geography

2. The construction of cultural landscapes

3. Culture and diffusion

4. Geography and language

1. Cultural GeographyWhat is culture?

• …human-made part of the environment (Melville Jean Herskovitz)

• …the learned patterns of thought and behaviour characteristic of a population or society (D.R. Harris)

• Cultural trait

• Cultural region

• Cultural system– collective identity– ethnicity

Culture and the environment

Environmental determinism:

• Social Darwinism- “Man is a product of earths surface” (Ellen Semple 1863-1932)

Challenge of Darwin's concept of 'natural selection– Nature as a dynamic whole that includes humans and that is always

changing (Peter Kropotkin 1842-1921)

Main schools in Cultural Geography

• The Berkeley School (Landscape Geography)– (Carl Sauer, 1889-1975)

• The ‘New’ Cultural Geography – (after the 1970s)

The Berkeley School

• Culture is the agent.

• Culture uses nature to make meaning.

• Cultural Landscape is the local outcome.

• Cultural Region is the larger result.

‘New’ Cultural Geography

• Studies the inequality of groups and landscapes.

• Studies symbolic (imaginary) and material landscapes.

??????

• Do Canadians and Americans share the same culture?

• Is there a North American culture or are there two cultures: Canadian and American?

2. The construction of cultural landscapes

… "the cultural landscape constitutes 'the forms superimposed on the physical landscape by the activities of men”

(Carl Sauer).

- Imprints on:- rural landscapes- recreational natural landscapes- urban landscapes

3. Culture and diffusion

• Cultural hearths– Focal points for innovation and invention

– Region from which innovations originate and diffuse

• Cultural diffusion (Hagerstrand 1953)– Expansion diffusion

• Hierarchical diffusion

• Contagious diffusion

• Stimulus diffusion

– Relocation diffusion

Folk and popular culture

• Folk culture– emphasizes

tradition, oral transmission of songs, local history;

– integration of nature and culture;

– often expressed through ritual.

Norton, W. 2000

Popular culture

– The way of life of ‘the people’ and the cultural products they consume.

– Form of culture, which is adopted by a large mass of people (mass consumption).

– Ordinary peoples’ culture (not the elite).

Stuart Hall 1981

4. Geography and language

• Language: place-marking and place-making

• Origin of our languages: proto-Indo-European (?)

• Language classification– Language family = a group of languages

descendent from a single, earlier tongue– Sub-families, branches, groups

Language classification

• Indo-European language families– Germanic group– Romance group– Indo-Iranian– Baltic-Slavic

• Uralic-Altaic language family– Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, etc.– Turkish group

• Dravidian (Tamil etc.)• Afro-Asiatic• Japanese • Korean• Austro-Asiatic and Austronesian

• Other languages– e.g. Euskara (Basque)

• pre-Neolithic ?

Language diffusion

• Tracing back language diffusion– Sound shifts:– E.g.: vater - vader - father = represents a long

period of westward divergence

• Diffusion through:- colonisation- conquest- religious conversion

• Physical barriers

• Language divergence: language differentiation over time and space

• Language replacement: loss of traditional and native languages

Diffusion of Indo-European into the Americas

• Greenbergs (1987) theory of 3 language families before European contact:– Amerindian– Na-Dene– Eskimo-Aleut

Modern languages

• Language and regional identity (dialects)• Language as political instrument (e.g. the

media shaping our vocabulary)• Multilingual states

– Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, etc.

• Minority languages• Toponomy: systematic study of place names

The Top Twelve Languages (> 100 million)

• If you knew all 12 of these, you could probably communicate with more than 2/3 of the world!

• 1st/2nd:◦Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) -- 1 billion◦English -- 1 billion (the world's most popular second language)

• 3rd:  Hindu-Urdu (two dialects, each with a different alphabet) -- 900 million.

• 4th:  Spanish -- 450 million.

• 5th:  Russian -- 320 million.

• 6th/7th (tie):Arabic -- 250 million.◦Bengali -- 250 million.

• 8th:  Portuguese -- 200 million.

• 9th:  Malay-Indonesian (two dialects) -- 160 million.• 10th:  Japanese -- 130 million.

• 11th/12th (tie):◦French -- 125 million◦German -- 125 million

Source:http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/genpsyintrolang.html