Themes in Cultural Geography Different lenses on the world “There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.”  Michel de Montaigne Five Themes      Culture Region Cultural Diffusion Cultural Interaction Cultural Ecology Landscape Studies KEY GEOGRAPHICAL CONCEPTS and TERMS    Culture Culture trait Culture region     Formal Functional Vernacular Cultural diffusion  Expansion diffusion    contagious expansion diffusion hierarchical expansion diffusion Relocation diffusion What is culture?  Pervasive   Learned   Transmitted through socialization Shared   Difficult to perceive from “inside” What makes “us” different from “them” Contested   Culture includes forms of social control and oppression that are resisted and negotiated by those in the subordinate position Contestation may lead to occasional shifts in cultural norms What is Culture?    Culture is the set of learned behaviors and symbolic systems transmitted through socialization, as well as the set of material artifacts and systems used by a social group. You are to your culture as a fish is to water: normally it is so thoroughly ubiquitous that you have no way of recognizing it; you can only know of its existence by temporarily leaping out (through thought or intercultural encounters) “It's frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself. It seems unfair. You can't assume the responsibility for everything you do -or don't do.”  Simone De Beauvoir CULTURE TRAITS Three types of culture traits  Traits are the essential elements of culture      artifacts (material) mentifacts (symbolic) sociofacts (organizational) These three types of culture traits are interrelated: a trait like the can opener implies the can (artifact), which implies a market-based economy (sociofact), which implies the idea of money (mentifact), etc… Remember “hidden geographies” ?   ARTIFACTS What sociofacts and mentifacts might go along with them?  Feet like this were considered pretty for over 1000 years in China Part of Culture Complex  Sociofacts:  Confucianism    Children are expected to be subservient to adults Women are expected to be subservient to men  Mentifacts:   Status   Human presence in a place is always embodied Embodied performance in place always reflects power relations Tolerance for odd-smelling feet Physical impairment understood collectively as a sign of a family’s prestige   In the “best” families women are obviously dependent and helpless In other words, a family shows that it is “good” (powerful) by displaying the “prettiness” (powerlessness) of its women New Chinese Fad   Leg stretching (leg-lengthening.jpg) Why?       For economic success “Short people cannot succeed” The body’s size conveys its power to succeed in business, law, etc. Capitalism is diffusing into China so this new value system guides a reworking of the body What ethical and moral values prevent this bodily deformation from diffusing into the US? What body-deforming practices do our values permit, and why? Does Western culture include deformation of the body?     A body-deforming artifact found as early as 3000 BC (Crete) Later used by aristocratic and aspiring American & European women Popularized in 19th c. Narrowed waist to 15 inches or less causing health problems     Shortness of breath Fainting Back problems Inability to participate in strenuous activities (including work, but also play) Sociofacts linked to the use of the corset      Endured in modified form into the 1950s Women of the upper classes “needed help” (out of seats, up stairs, etc.) Families showed their class by preventing girls from engaging in strenuous activities like sports and manual labor “Good” women were “delicate” and dependent Girls from working-class families were not embodied in this way From an 1883 diary  While we were waiting for mother we witnessed [another teen] being most harshly laced by two other corseteriers, while she grasped an overhead bar they leveraged her laces almost brutally despite her painful groans... after brief pauses this process was repeated three times until her mother granted approval.. although her waist was wonderfully narrowed she clearly was in pain having to be assisted to a seat... http://corsethome.eu.org/diary2.html Yes, but we don’t deform the body to make it look thin any more! Actually we do, but the technology is chemical rather than physical     63% of American girls in their teens have dieted Only 14% are happy with their body size and shape In other words, these are the body-deforming artifacts that match our sociofacts and mentifacts Is feminine “fragility” still a sign of social status, or is some other mentifact involved in today’s social pressure for women to be thin? What other body-deforming artifacts in American culture can you identify? A “rite of passage”?  "Many kids will get them on when they're 10 or 11, and they'll be getting them off when they're starting to hit 13," Dr. Baarsvik said. "It's a real rite of passage. It kind of prepares them for the teen years." http://www.s-t.com/daily/10-99/10-1299/c01he206.htm#cut What are the social benefits of a “perfect” smile? CULTURE REGION Types of Culture Regions  Formal Region    Functional Region   Area where one or more traits can be found (region where people employ leg-lengthening surgery) Area where one or more traits are dominant (Anglophone region of North America) Area tied together by a coordinating system (law, monetary system, roads, etc.) Vernacular Region  Area that ordinary people (non-geographers) recognize as a region (e.g. New England) What level of occurrence constitutes “presence” of a trait in a particular formal culture region?   People in the region engage in certain activities   belong to a particular group   all of them? most of them? some of them? Is New Braunfels part of Texas’ Hispanic culture region? possess certain artifacts  If we call this a region where people have access to state-of-theart health care, are we leaving part of the population out? From the New Braunfels c.o.c. website … Culture complexes   a culture complex is a closely related set of culture traits Some links are historical    Germanic language  Protestant religion Romance language  Catholic religion Some links are causal  urban culture  tolerance of lifestyle diversity Multiple traits define overlapping culture regions (formal) Edges of culture regions     exceptions to general pattern of culture complexes transition zones areas of conflict areas of diffusion CULTURAL DIFFUSION  “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”  Victor Hugo, 'Histoire d'un crime,' 1852 Cultural Diffusion Defined  An increase in the spatial extent of a particular culture trait or culture complex either through movement of people through space (migration) or through the adoption of a culture trait by other groups. PIZZA  What was required before frozen pizza could become popular in the US?    saturation of market with electrical refrigeration dependence on the car for shopping trips demand for fast food  women in the workforce    changing attitudes about gender roles small families etc. Map example: diffusion of religion Types of Diffusion Factors affecting diffusion  barriers to diffusion  different culture different language  different religion  etc.   lack of necessary infrastructure where are computers least likely to diffuse?  where are large grocery stores least likely to diffuse?  Factors affecting diffusion  cultural receptivity to diffusion  Factors that cause diffusion to occur or accelerate diffusion  same culture    same language same religion etc. necessary infrastructure  affluence  what else?  Cultural Ecology    Human-environment relationships To what extent does the environment affect culture? environment culture To what extent does culture rework the environment? culture environment General Trend    Environmental determinism has been rejected Current approaches are based on ecology and possibilism Much greater focus on human impacts on the environment than on the environment’s culture-shaping force Antiquated language of Environmental Determinism mixed with Racism   “None of these tropical peoples … has a native civilisation, or is fitted to play any part in history, either as a conquering or as a thinking force, or in any way, save as producers by physical labour of material wealth. None is likely to develop towards any higher condition than that in which it now stands, save under the tutelage, and by adopting so much as it can of the culture, of the five or six European peoples which have practically appropriated the torrid zone, and are dividing its resources among them. Yet the vast numbers to which, under the conjoint stimuli of science and peace, these inferior black and yellow races may grow, coupled with the capacity some of them evince for assimilating the material side of European civilisation, may enable them to play a larger part in the future of the world than they have played in the past.” James Bryce, British Ambassador to the US, 1892 Cultural Ecology     Organism-environment relationship is reciprocal and mutually constitutive, that is, it is a two-way street. The same is true of human-environment relations. Animals adapt to their environments over eons, genetically People adapt through culture Culture is an adaptive strategy mainly (but not entirely) limited to humans, involving learned, cooperative behavior and major environmental modifications Possibilism   Scientific philosophy that the environment does not determine elements of culture, but it does set bounds on the possible or probable forms that culture will take Natural environments offer opportunities and constraints from which culture groups must choose, based on their knowledge and internal power relations Cultural Landscape Studies start with what you see Case Study – Orrtana PA Houses    How old do they appear to be? Are there particular styles from a certain period? Do the styles change over time? Other Buildings   What are they for? What do they tell you about the way people lived in the past and present? “Pennsylvania Barn” Why do you think it has a “forebay”? Springhouse What is it for? Why here? Vegetation     What appears to be the natural vegetation of this area? What kinds of plants are people cultivating here? How has the possibility of growing these cultivars shaped life in this place? How have people reworked their natural environment to favor their cultivars? Commerce    What is being sold? Who is selling to whom? How is this activity reflected in the visible landscape? Good landscape-based geography     Get a feel for the place Try to partially escape the outsider’s perspective Discover elements of an insider’s sense of place Rather than analyzing the place in abstract terms or simply describing features, try to understand how it feels to live here  Ask: “What are the meanings people attach to places and things in this landscape?” Family ties of landscape geography    Travel writing evolved out of the early landscape geography (see Reclus quote), and it continues the tradition of evocative language and appeal to the emotions 20th c. Geography reacted against the impressionist, poetic nature of early geographical writings by adopting a more analytical approach and more prosaic language National Geographic is somewhere in between Review  Culture      Difficulty perceiving from inside Complicated Cultural diffusion  The expansion of a culture trait through space due to:   Culture trait Culture region   Can be defined by:        A culture trait (formal region) A combination (complex) of culture traits (formal region) An organizing structure or system (functional region) Popular culture (vernacular region) Formal Functional Vernacular Expansion diffusion     contagious expansion diffusion  The neighborhood effect hierarchical expansion diffusion  Communications and commerce Relocation diffusion  Immigration Adaptation and significant reinterpretation (stimulus diffusion) Barriers and Receptivity to Diffusion Cultural interaction   Cultures are integrated systems in which each part (trait) is linked to all of the others This situation makes it most appropriate to identify culture regions defined not by single traits but by complexes of traits