The Nature of Cultural Geography

Chapter 1 The Human Matrix

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?

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

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

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 Europe’s Dark Ages

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

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.

Cultural geography

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

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

No easy explanations for cultural phenomena

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

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

Formal culture region

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.

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.

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.

Complex multiculture regions

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

Formal culture regions

• Many different formal regions can be created • Depends on traits • Geographer’s intuition

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

Functional culture region

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.

Functional culture region

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

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

Farm as a formal culture region

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

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

Vernacular culture regions

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

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 people’s sense of belonging and regional self consciousness

Vernacular culture region

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

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

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

Cultural diffusion

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

Relocation diffusion

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

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.

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.

Diffusion

Guangzhou (Canton), China

• PRC recently opened it’s 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.

Diffusion

• Proctor and Gamble has designed soaps and detergents for China’s specific water conditions.

• Just as P&G diffused from North America to China, other manufacturers will diffuse into other parts of China.

Diffusion

• As more cities are opened China’s 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?

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

Neighborhood effect

Hägerstrand

Hägerstrand

• Hägerstrand’s 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

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

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.

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

Cultural ecology

• The physical environment plays a powerful role in the cultural landscape of this remote region of Pakistan’s northern frontier.

• The Muslim, Pathan have an adaptive strategy of harnessing local resources for their needs.

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

Cultural ecology

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

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

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

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

Possibilism

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

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.

Environmental perception

• Each person’s or cultural group’s 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 land’s character than its actual character • People make decisions based on distortion of reality with regard to their surrounding physical environment

Environmental perception

• Geomancy—a 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)

Natural hazards

• Human’s 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 people’s 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

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

Monserrat - 1996

Missouri River

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?

Natural hazards

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

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

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

Environmental modification

Queensland, Australia

• Rainforest north of Cairns, signs demonstrate conflicting perceptions of a particular resource.

• Thousands of acres of Australian rainforest destroyed yearly.

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

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

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

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

Models

Model of Latin American city

Humanistic geography

• Celebrates the uniqueness of each region and place –

Place

is the key word connoting the humanistic view –

Topophilia —word

coined by Yi-Fu Tuan, literally meaning “love of place” • Has witnessed a resurgence in recent decades • Social-science approach has declined in popularity

Humanistic geography

• Anne Buttimer • Seek to explain unique phenomena—place 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 mathematics—feel human beliefs and values cannot be measured

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

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

Cultural landscape

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

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

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

Cultural landscape

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.

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.

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

Cultural landscape

• Most geographical studies have focused on three principal aspects of landscape – Settlement forms—Describe the spatial arrangement of buildings, roads, and other features people construct while inhabiting an area – Land-division patterns—reveal 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

Cultural landscape

• Architecture – North America’s different building styles – Regional and cultural differences

Conclusion

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

Folk and popular architecture reflect culture