Cultural Regions
In thinking about why each region on Earth is distinctive, geographers refer to culture, which is the body of customary beliefs, material traits, and social forms that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group of people. Geographers distinguish groups of people according to important cultural characteristics, describe where particular cultural groups are distributed, and offer reasons to explain the observed distribution. In everyday language we think of culture as the collection of novels, paintings, symphonies, and other works produced by talented individuals. A person with a taste for these intellectual outputs is said to be “cultured.” Intellectually challenging culture is often distinguished from popular culture, such as television programs. Culture also refers to small living organisms, such as those found under a microscope or in yogurt. Agriculture is a term for the growing of living material at a much larger scale than in a test tube. The origin of the word culture is the Latin cultus, which means “to care for.”Culture is a complex concept because “to care for” something has two very different meanings:
To care about—to adore or worship something, as in the modern word cult.
To take care of—to nurse or look after something, as in the modern word cultivate.
WHAT PEOPLE CARE ABOUT. Geographers study why the customary ideas, beliefs, and values of a people produce a distinctive culture in a particular place. Especially important cultural values derive from a group’s language, religion, and ethnicity. These three cultural traits are both an excellent way of identifying the location of a culture and the principal means by which cultural values become distributed around the world. Language is a system of signs, sounds, gestures, and marks that have meanings understood within a cultural group. People communicate the cultural values they care about through language, and the words themselves tell something about where different cultural groups are located. The distribution of speakers of different languages and reasons for the distinctive distribution are discussed later in the course. Religion is an important cultural value because it is the principal system of attitudes, beliefs, and practices through which people worship in a formal, organized way. Geographers look at the distribution of religious groups around the world and the different ways that the various groups interact with their environment. Ethnicity encompasses a group’s language, religion, and other cultural values, as well as its physical traits. A group possesses these cultural and physical characteristics as a product of its common traditions and heredity. Geographers find that problems of conflict and inequality tend to occur in places where more than one ethnic group inhabits and seeks to organize the same territory.
WHAT PEOPLE TAKE CARE OF. The second element of culture of interest to geographers is production of material wealth—the food, clothing, and shelter that humans need in order to survive and thrive. All people consume food, wear clothing, build shelter, and create art, but different cultural groups obtain their wealth in different ways. Geographers divide the world into regions of more (or relatively) developed countries (abbreviated MDCs), and regions of less developed (or developing) countries (abbreviated LDCs). Regions of MDCs include North America, Europe, and Japan, and regions of LDCs include sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Various shared characteristics— such as per capita income, literacy rates, televisions per capita, and hospital beds per capita—distinguish regions of MDCs and regions of LDCs. These differences are reviewed in later in the semester. Possession of wealth and material goods is higher in MDCs because of different types of economic activities than those in LDCs. Most people in LDCs are engaged in agriculture, whereas most people in MDCs earn their living through manufacturing products or performing services in exchange for wages. This fundamental economic difference between MDCs and LDCs is discussed in more detail later in the semester. Geographers are also interested in the political institutions that protect material artifacts, as well as cultural values. The world is organized into a collection of countries, or states, controlled by governments put in place through various representative and unrepresentative means. A major element of a group’s cultural identity is its citizenship, the country or countries that it inhabits and in which it pays taxes, votes, and otherwise participates in the administration of space.
Thinking Geographically: Cultural Regions of North America
Using the map below as your starting point, identify the various cultural regions of the United States. Then, do some quick outside research and identify three defining characteristics of each region. Finally, create a chart that compares the cultural differences between the regions.
|
No comments:
Post a Comment