The Human Mosaic
CHAPTER ONE
Human Geography: A Cultural Approach
Aboriginal Painting, Australia. What do you think it depicts?
Catholic Church in Honduras
Buddhist temple in Laos
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Introduction:
What is geography?
What is culture?
What is cultural geography?
Power, ideology & postmodernism
Five themes in cultural geography:
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Culture Region
Cultural Diffusion
Cultural Ecology
Cultural Interaction
Cultural Landscapes
What determines the production of wheat worldwide?
Generalized model of a Latin American city
Explaining the processes at work shaping Latin American cities.
Culture Region
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formal culture regions
functional culture regions
vernacular culture regions
terminology: cultural traits, cultural borders,
border zones, nodes, core-periphery patterns,
perception and identity
Vernacular often refers to the language or dialect spoken by ordinary
(“folkish”) people in a particular region. Vernacular regions refer to
perceived regions (and their mental maps) like the “Midwest”, “Dixie”,
the “Outback”, themselves expressions of their ordinary people’s culture.
Inuit hunter with his dogsled team
Formal Regions of Europe
based on language and religion
East vs. west and north vs. south in Germany
Traditional rural formal culture regions of North America
Culture regions, traits and boundary (or border) zones
Aerial view of Denver. Can you see any boundary zones?
A valley filled with farms
“Dixie”: a vernacular culture region.
San Fernando Valley (“the valley”, “valspeak”, “valley girl”)
Cultural Diffusion
(after Torsten Hägerstrand)
► expansion
diffusion
contagious, hierarchical, stimulus
► relocation
diffusion
terminology: independent innovation, timedistance decay, absorbing barriers, permeable
barriers, neighborhood effect, migration,
transnational migrants & globalization
Types of Cultural Diffusion
Early diffusion of the printing press in Europe
Diffusion of HIV/AIDS in Ohio
According to your textbook, a demonstration
against the deportation of immigrants in
Germany. The banner, however, seems to
address the issue of wars, possibly in Iraq
and Afghanistan.
Cultural Ecology
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Relationship between people & environment
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Importance of adaptive strategies
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Different schools of thought:
 a) environmental determinism
(humans as clay to be molded by a dominant nature)
 b) environmental possibilism
(local cultures develop within the possibilities offered by
the environment)
 c) environmental perception
(choices people make depend on their perception of the
environment rather than the actual character)
 Organic vs. mechanistic view of nature
 d) humans as modifiers of the earth
(humans mold nature)
 Ecofeminism? Are women better ecologists and environmentalists?
Environmental determinism, possibilism, & the role of culture
Environmental determinism,
possibilism, & the role of culture
Post-Katrina New Orleans
Soil erosion and deforestation in the Amazon Basin, Brazil
Landslide in El Salvador, Central America, killed more than 1,200 people in 2001.
Cultural Interaction
► Intertwined
facets of global cultures
► Interdependencies and uneven
development throughout the world
► The Human Development Index
 Life expectancy, adult literacy, gross
domestic product (see images below)
Global culture on the street of
Moscow
Cultural Geography: Science or Art? Both?
-social scientists develop models to better understand, say, Latin American cities
-humanistic geographers try to understand “place” (topophilia) not seeking “laws”
Cultural Landscapes
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visible expressions of culture
 humanized landscapes bear cultural meaning
 the art of reading cultural landscapes
 landscapes of folk vs. popular culture
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settlement landforms, land division
patterns, architectural styles, grave
yards, symbolic landscapes, and the
power of globalization
Terraced cultural landscapes in China
Yokohama, Japan, at dusk
American ranch house
Market Square in Warsaw
- Westmoreland, Imperial Valley, CA
- Land Ordinance of 1785
Loghouse, Ottawa, Canada
Toronto landscape, Canada
Aboriginal painting / map of Arnhem Land in Australia