The Nature of Cultural Geography

1
The Nature of Cultural Geography

• Chapter 1
• The Human Matrix

2
Discussion

• Pair up into dyads
• Discuss these two questions for 10 minutes, five
  minutes each
• What does culture mean to you?
• Would you identify yourself as belonging to a
  cultural group? Why or why not?

3
Introduction

• Humans are by nature geographers
• Possess awareness of and curiosity about the
  distinctive character of places
• Can think territorially or spatially
• Each place on Earth is unique
• Places possess an emotional quality and
  significance that contribute to our identity as
  unique human beings
• Geographers, over the centuries, generated a
  number of concepts and ideas that literally
  changed the world

4
Seven Cultural Geographical Idea That Changed the
World

• Maps
• Human adaptation to habitat
• Human transformation of the earth
• Sense of place
• Spatial organization and interdependence
• Central place theory
• Megalopolis

5
Geography as an academic discipline

• Natural human geographical curiosity and need for
  identity
• First arose among the ancient Greeks, Romans,
  Mesopotamians, and Phoenicians
• Arab empire expanded geography during Europes
  Dark Ages

6
Geography as an academic discipline

• Center of learning shifted to Europe during the
  Renaissance period
• Modern scientific study of geography arose in
  Germany
• Analytical geography began in the 1800s asking
  what, where, and why
• Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter

7
What is cultural geography?

• The meaning of culture
• For this course defined as learned collective
  human behavior, as opposed to instinctive, or
  inborn behavior
• Learned traits
• Cultural geography the study of spatial
  variations among cultural groups and the spatial
  functioning of society.

8
Cultural geography

• Focuses on cultural phenomena that may vary or
  remain constant from place to place
• Explains how humans function spatially

9
(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
11
(No Transcript)
12
What is cultural geography?

• Physical geography brings spatial and ecological
  perspectives
• Bridges the social and earth sciences
• Seeks a integrative view of humankind in its
  physical environment
• Appears less focused than most other disciplines
  making it difficult to define

13
No easy explanations for cultural phenomena

• Many complex causal forces
• Wheat cultivations (next slide)
• Cultural geography seeks explanations of diverse
  casual factors

14
(No Transcript)
15
Themes in cultural geography

• Culture region a geographical unit based on
  human traits
• Maps are an essential tool for describing and
  revealing regions
• Major types of culture regions
• Formal
• Functional
• Vernacular

16
Formal culture region
17
Kerala, India

• A formal culture region can be defined in this
  picture by ethnicity, dress and social custom.
• While people do not generally reveal their bodies
  in public, at the end of the day they dress up to
  go to the beach and watch the sunset.

18
Kerala, India

• Boys and girls do not mingle but observe each
  other from a distance.
• Unchaperoned dating is rare and marriages are
  typically arranged.
• These are learned, collective human behaviors.

19
Formal culture region

• An area inhabited by people who have one or more
  cultural traits in common.
• More commonly multiple related traits
• No two cultural traits have the same
  distribution.

20
Complex multiculture regions
21

• Territorial extents of a culture region depend on
  what defining traits are used.

22
Formal culture regions

• Many different formal regions can be created
• Depends on traits
• Geographers intuition

23
Boundaries

• Formal culture regions must have boundaries
• rarely sharp because cultures overlap and mix
• Culture regions reveal a core where all defining
  traits are present
• Farther from core regional characteristics weaken
  and disappear
• Formal regions display core/periphery pattern
• Human world is chaotic

24
Functional culture region
25
Minneapolis, Minnesota

• This mobile post-office is the node of a
  functional region.
• People come to the node at specific times during
  the week to deposit their mail.
• This vehicle is one of several linked to a
  particular post office which is part of of a
  larger network of post offices.
• Each post office is a node in its own mail
  delivery region.

26
Functional culture region

• The scene is in the citys CBD where individual
  buildings are nodes of activities linked to other
  buildings and places.
• Note the skywalk which facilitates interaction
  between structures.

27
Functional culture regions

• An area organized to function politically,
  socially, or economically
• Examples city, independent state, church
  diocese, a trade area
• Have nodes or central points from which functions
  are coordinated and directed.
• Many functional regions have clearly defined
  borders

28
Farm as a formal culture region

• all land owned and leased, farmstead is node,
  borders marked by fences, hedges

29
Functional culture region

• States in the United States and Canadian
  provinces
• Not all functional areas have clearly defined
  borders newspapers, sales area
• Fans of UT vs TAMU
• Generally functional culture regions do not
  coincide spatially with formal culture regions

30
(No Transcript)
31
Vernacular culture regions

• A region perceived to exist by its inhabitants,
  has widespread acceptance and uses a special
  regional name.

32
Vernacular culture region

• Generally lack sharp borders
• Can be based on many different things
• physical environment
• economic, political, historical aspects
• often created by publicity campaigns
• Grows out of a peoples sense of belonging and
  regional self -consciousness

33
Vernacular culture region
34
Vernacular culture region

• Not unique to North America
• Northern Territory Outback Australia
• Transcends state lines
• Japanese ties
• Heavy duty bumper and roo bars to deflect
  wildlife

35
Differences

• How do vernacular culture regions differ from
  formal and functional regions
• Often lack the organization necessary for
  funtional regions
• Unlike formal regions, they frequently do not
  display cultural homogeneity
• Many are rooted in the popular or folk culture

36
Cultural diffusion

• Spatial spread of learned ideas, innovations, and
  attitudes.
• Each cultural element originates in one or more
  places and then spreads.
• Some spread widely, others remain confined to an
  area of origin.
• 100 Percent American
• Torsten Hägerstrand

37
Cultural diffusion
38
Expansion diffusion

• Ideas spread throughout a population from area to
  area.
• Creates a snowballing effect
• Subtypes
• Hierarchical diffusion ideas leapfrog from one
  node to another temporarily bypassing some
• Contagious diffusion wavelike, like disease
• Stimulus diffusion specific trait rejected, but
  idea accepted

39
Relocation diffusion

• Relocation diffusion occurs when individuals
  migrate to a new location carrying new ideas or
  practices with them
• Religion is prime example

40
Time-distance decay factor

• Ripples on a pond.
• Acceptance of an innovation is strongest where it
  originated.
• Acceptance weakens as it is diffused farther
  away.
• Acceptance also weakens over time.

41
Barriers to diffusion

• Absorbing barriers completely halt diffusion
  Afghanistan.
• More commonly barriers are permeable, allowing
  part of the innovation wave to diffuse, but
  acting to weaken and retard the continued spread.

42
Diffusion
43
Guangzhou (Canton), China

• PRC recently opened its doors to foreign
  investment and a number of cities have been
  designated as Special Economic Zones.
• An absorbing barrier has become permeable.
• Sincle coastal cities were the first to allow
  foreign instrusions, these have highest influx of
  joint-venture projects.

44
Diffusion

• Proctor and Gamble has designed soaps and
  detergents for Chinas specific water conditions.
• Just as PG diffused from North America to China,
  other manufacturers will diffuse into other parts
  of China.

45
Diffusion

• As more cities are opened Chinas urban economies
  will become increasingly internationalized and
  each city will function as a key center of
  diffusion to places lower on the social-economic
  hierarchy.
• How does time-distance decay play a role here?

46
Stages of innovation acceptance

• First acceptance takes place at a slow steady
  rate.
• Second raid growth in acceptance and the trait
  spreads rapidly
• fashion or dance fad
• neighborhood effect
• Third slower growth and acceptance of innovation

47
Neighborhood effect
48
Hägerstrand
49
Hägerstrand

• Hägerstrands explanation of the core/periphery
  spatial arrangement of diffusion resembles
  pattern in culture regions
• others say too narrow and mechanical
• assumes all innovations are beneficial throughout
  geographical space
• nondiffusion more prevalent than diffusion, but
  not accounted for

50
Susceptibility to an innovation

• More crucial when world communications are rapid
  and pervasive
• Friction of distance is almost meaningless
• Must evaluate and explain on a region-by-region
  basis
• Inhabitants of two regions will not respond
  identically to an innovation
• Geographers seek to understand spatial variation
  in receptiveness

51
Cultural ecology

• Ecology is two-way relationship between an
  organism and its physical environment
• Cultural ecology is the study of the
  cause-and-effect interplay between cultures and
  the physical environment
• Ecosystem entails a functioning ecological system
  where biological and cultural Homo sapiens live
  and interact with the physical environment.

52
Cultural ecology

• Culture is the human method of meeting physical
  environmental challenges.
• adaptive system
• assumes plant and animal adaptations are relevant
• facilitates long-term, successful, nongenetic
  human adaptation to nature and environmental
  change
• adaptive strategy that provides necessities of
  life food, clothing, shelter, defense
• No two cultures employ the same strategy, evenin
  within the same physical environment

53
Cultural ecology

• The physical environment plays a powerful role in
  the cultural landscape of this remote region of
  Pakistans northern frontier.
• The Muslim, Pathan have an adaptive strategy of
  harnessing local resources for their needs.

54
Bahrain, Pakistan

• The settlement hugs the valley walls and the
  river is harnessed to provide water power for
  turning grinding stones (primarily corn) in the
  foreground structure.
• Since limited wood supply precludes its
  widespread use, houses are constructed of
  dry-mortared stones and many have sod roofs

55
Cultural ecology

• Four schools of thought developed by geographers
  on cultural ecology
• Environmental determinism
• Possibilism
• Environmental perception
• Humans as modifiers of the earth

56
Environmental determinism

• Developed during the first quarter of the 20th
  century.
• Physical environment provided a dominant force in
  shaping cultures
• Humans were clay to be molded by nature
• Believed mountain people, because they lived in
  rugged terrain were
• Backward
• Conservative
• Unimaginative
• Freedom loving

57
Environmental determinism

• Believed desert dwellers were
• Likely to believe in one god
• Lived under the rule of tyrants
• Temperate climates produced
• Inventiveness
• Industriousness
• Democracy
• Coastlands with fjords produced navigators and
  fishers
• Overestimated the role of environment

58
Possibilism

• Took the place of determinism in the 1920s
• Cultural heritage at least as important as
  physical environment in affecting human behavior
• Believe people are the primary architects of
  culture

59
Possibilism

• Chongqing and San Francisco
• Similar environment
• Street patterns
• SF has smaller population but larger area
• Culture

60
Possibilism

• Physical environment offers numerous ways for a
  culture to develop.
• People make culture trait choices from the
  possibilities offered by their environment to
  satisfy their needs.
• High technology societies are less influenced by
  physical environment.
• Geographer Jim Norwin warns control over
  environment may be an illusion because of
  possible future climatic changes.

61
Environmental perception

• Each persons or cultural groups mental images
  of the physical environment are shaped by
  knowledge, ignorance, experience, values, and
  emotions
• Environmental perceptionists declare-choices
  people make will depend more on how they perceive
  the lands character than its actual character
• People make decisions based on distortion of
  reality with regard to their surrounding physical
  environment

62
Environmental perception

• Geomancya traditional system of land-use
  planning dictating that certain environmental
  settings, perceived by the sages as auspicious,
  should be chosen as the sites for houses,
  villages, temples, and graves (feng-shui)
• an East Asian world view and art
• affected the location and morphology of urban
  places in countries such as China and Korea
• diffused (look up feng-shui on internet)

63
Natural hazards

• Humans perceptions of natural hazards
• Flooding, hurricanes, volcanic eruption,
  earthquakes, insect infestations, and droughts
• Some cultures consider them as unavoidable acts
  of the gods sent down as punishments because of
  the peoples shortcomings
• During times of natural disasters, some cultures
  feel the government should take care of them
• Western cultures feel technology should be able
  to solve the problems created by natural hazards

64
Natural hazards

• In virtually all cultures, people knowingly
  inhabit hazard zones
• Especially floodplains, exposed coastal sites,
  drought-prone regions, and active volcanic areas
  
• More Americans than ever live in hurricane- and
  earthquake-prone areas of the United States

65
Monserrat - 1996
66
Missouri River
67
Hazard Perception

• Levees failed to prevent the Mississippi and
  Missouri rivers from flooding.
• Floods are natural occurrences and contrary to
  the perception of some, human made devices are
  directed toward control rather than prevention.
• When the water recedes and tons of muck and
  debris are removed, will the farmer move back and
  start over?

68
Natural hazards

• Migrants tend to imagine new homelands as being
  more similar to their old homelands than is
  actually the case
• Humans perceptions of natural resources
• Hunting and gathering cultures
• Agricultural groups
• Industrial societies

69
Humans as modifiers of the earth

• Another facet of cultural ecology
• In a sense, the opposite of environmental
  determinism
• George Perkins Marsh
• Example of soil erosion around Athens in ancient
  times

70
Humans as modifiers of the earth

• Human modification varies from one culture to
  another
• Geographers seek alternative, less destructive
  modes of environmental modification
• Humans of the Judeo-Christian tradition tend to
  regard environmental modification as divinely
  approved
• Other more cautious groups take care not to
  offend the forces of nature

71
Environmental modification
72
Queensland, Australia

• Rainforest north of Cairns, signs demonstrate
  conflicting perceptions of a particular resource.
• Thousands of acres of Australian rainforest
  destroyed yearly.

73
Cultural integration

• Cultures are complex wholes rather than series of
  unrelated traits
• Cultures form integrated systems in which parts
  fit together causally
• All cultural aspects are functionally
  interdependent on one another
• Changing one element requires accommodating
  change in others
• To understand one facet of culture, geographers
  must study the variations in other facets and how
  they are causally interrelated and integrated

74
Cultural integration

• The influence of religious beliefs
• Voting behavior
• Diet and shopping patterns
• Type of employment and social standing
• Hinduism segregates people into social classes
  (castes), and specifies what forms of livelihood
  are appropriate for each
• Mormon faith forbids consumption of alcoholic
  beverages, tobacco, and other products, thereby
  influencing both diet and shopping patterns

75
Cultural integration

• If improperly used can lead the geographer to
  cultural determinism such as
• physical environment is inconsequential as an
  influence on culture
• culture offers all the answers for spatial
  variations
• nature is passive while people and culture are
  the active forces

76
Cultural integration

• Social science
• Those who view cultural geography as a social
  science apply the scientific method to the study
  of people
• Devise theories that cut across cultural lines to
  govern all of humankind
• Believe economic causal forces more powerful in
  explaining human spatial behavior than any others

77
Models
78
Model of Latin American city
79
Humanistic geography

• Celebrates the uniqueness of each region and
  place
• Place is the key word connoting the humanistic
  view
• Topophiliaword coined by Yi-Fu Tuan, literally
  meaning love of place
• Has witnessed a resurgence in recent decades
• Social-science approach has declined in popularity

80
Humanistic geography

• Anne Buttimer
• Seek to explain unique phenomenaplace and
  region-rather than universal spatial laws
• Most doubt that laws of spatial behavior even
  exist
• Believe in a far more chaotic world than
  scientists could tolerate
• Reject the use of mathematicsfeel human beliefs
  and values cannot be measured

81
Who is right?

• Debate between scientists and humanists in
  cultural geography
• Necessary and healthy
• Both ask different questions about place and
  space
• Geography is the bridging discipline, joining the
  sciences and humanities
• Postmodernism

82
Cultural landscape

• The visible, material landscape that cultural
  groups create in inhabiting the Earth
• Cultures shape landscapes out of the raw
  materials provided by the Earth
• Each landscape uniquely reflects the culture that
  created it
• Much can be learned about a culture by carefully
  observing its created landscape

83
Cultural landscape

• Some geographers regard landscape study as
  geographys central interest
• Reflects the most basic strivings of humankind
• Shelter
• Food
• Clothing
• Contains evidence about the origin, spread, and
  development of cultures

84
Cultural landscape

• Accumulation of human artifacts, old and new
• Can reveal much about a past forgotten by present
  inhabitants
• Landscapes also reveal messages about present-day
  inhabitants and cultures
• Reflect tastes, values, aspirations, and fears in
  tangible form
• Spatial organization of settlements and
  architectural form of structures can be
  interpreted as expression of values and beliefs
  of the people
• Can serve as a means to study nonmaterial aspects
  of culture

85
Cultural landscape

• How architecture reflects past and present values
  of landscape
• Example of centrally located, tall structures
  built of steel, brick, or stone
• Example of medieval European cathedrals and
  churches that dominated the landscape

86
Cultural landscape
87
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• Now capital prior to 1997 administrative center
  for British colony of Malaya.
• During 20s an 30s Art Deco architecture popular.
• Built in 1928, originally wet market for mean,
  poultry and fish were rendered and sold.

88
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

• Renewed, it now contains a shopping bazaar
  selling local handicraft products, souveniers and
  food.
• Heritage revealed through architecture and sign.
• Only traditional cart suggests truth.

89
Cultural landscape

• Humanistic view of cultural landscape
• Content to study the cultural landscape for its
  aesthetic value
• Obtain subjective messages that help describe the
  essence of place
• Geographer Tarja Keisteri distinguishes the
  factual, concrete, physical, functioning
  landscape from the experimental, perceived,
  symbolic, aesthetic landscape
• Distinction between scholarly analysis and
  subjective artistic interpretation are often
  blurred
• Provides people with landmarks and reassures
  people they are not rootless without identity or
  place

90
Cultural landscape

• Most geographical studies have focused on three
  principal aspects of landscape
• Settlement formsDescribe the spatial arrangement
  of buildings, roads, and other features people
  construct while inhabiting an area
• Land-division patternsreveal the way people
  divide the land for economic and social uses
• Example of land division of small and large farms
• Example of urban housing and street patterns

91
Cultural landscape

• Architecture
• North Americas different building styles
• Regional and cultural differences

92
Conclusion

• Five themes of geography are interwoven
• Culture region
• Cultural diffusion
• Cultural ecology
• Cultural integration
• Cultural landscape

93
Folk and popular architecture reflect culture
Toronto
near Ottawa