CHAPTER 2: ROOTS AND MEANING OF CULTURE
Objectives for Chapter 2
After reading and studying this chapter, you should be able to:
1. Define culture, culture trait, culture complex, culture region, and culture realm and give examples
of each.
2. Identify the three subsystems of a culture and classify culture traits as being technological,
sociological, or ideological.
3. Compare and contrast environmental determinism and possibilism.
4. Explain what is meant by the "cultural landscape."
5. Describe the significant changes in human culture that occurred during the Paleolithic, Mesolithic,
and Neolithic periods of history.
6. Identify major world culture hearths and the chief centers of plant and animal domestications.
7. Differentiate between expansion and relocation diffusion and provide examples of each.
8. Outline factors that can promote, slow, or completely halt the diffusion of cultural traits.
9. Explain what is meant by "acculturation."
OVERVIEW
1. As used in geography, culture means the specialized behavioral patterns and social systems that
summarize the learned way of life of a group of people. It includes both tangible and intangible
characteristics that differentiate people and their occupied landscapes.
2. Recognition of culture traits, culture complexes, and culture regions helps summarize conceptually
and spatially the infinite complexity of human societies. Culture realms are broad segments of the earth's
surface that have presumed fundamental similarity in a number of salient cultural complexes and
characteristics. The presumed homogenization of world culture as an expression of the globalization of
social, political, and economic traits across earth space has cast doubt on the enduring validity of culture
realm distinctions.
3. The physical environment does not shape human thought or actions; environmental determinism is a
now-rejected concept. Possibilism is the viewpoint that humans are the active agents in shaping culture,
selecting from the environment the opportunities their cultural needs and technological levels make
evident and attractive.
4. Humans, in their utilization of the natural environment, create cultural landscapes, altering—perhaps
destroying—the natural landscape and erecting upon it a built environment that, in modern societies,
dominates everyday life and activity patterns.
5. Earlier cultural stages were in closer contact with the physical landscape. Paleolithic populations were
hunter–gatherers, gradually improving their tools, extending their areas of occupancy, and engaging in
inter-group contact and trade. The Mesolithic period was marked by increasing cultural divergence as
populations passed from food gathering to food production and developed differing ways of life and
economy. The Neolithic era designates a stage of cultural development in which new tools, technologies,
and social structures were developed among sedentary populations.
6. Culture hearths were centers of innovation and invention, showing many traits in common as a result
of multilinear evolution and independent invention. Diffusions of cultural traits and complexes from hearth
regions dispersed local innovations over wider areas. Common cultural characteristics that are
independently developed or spread through diffusion encourage cultural convergence, particularly as
transportation, communication, and human mobility improve or increase.
7. For analytical purposes it is convenient to recognize subsystems of culture and their identifying
components: the ideological, technological, and sociological subsystems are associated with respective
sets of mentifacts, artifacts, and sociofacts. The subsystems do not stand alone; they are united into
coherent integrated cultural wholes. Cultural integration implies the interlocking nature of all aspects of a
culture.
8. Innovation is cultural change initiated within the social group itself. Resistance to useful innovation is
termed cultural lag. Spatial diffusion is the process by which ideas or innovations are transmitted between
groups across space. Such spread may take the form of relocation or expansion diffusion. The latter type
may further be subdivided into distinctive forms of contagious and hierarchical diffusion. Stimulus
diffusion implies imitative response to a new idea by a receptive population not able to fully adopt the
specific trait itself. Acculturation is exhibited when a culture group adopts characteristics of another,
dominant group.
Diffusion can be accelerated and facilitated by improvements in transportation and communication and by
the intermixing of peoples and cultures. It can be limited and inhibited by diffusion barriers that may be
physical or cultural in nature. The existence of similar behaviors and ideas in numerous societies despite
diffusion barriers creates the possibility of multilinear evolution.
EXPANDED KEY WORDS LIST
absorbing barrier
acculturation
artifact
Carl Sauer
carrying capacity
civilization
contagious diffusion
cultural convergence
cultural divergence
cultural ecology
cultural integration
cultural lag
cultural landscape
culture
culture complex
culture hearth
culture realm
culture region
culture trait
diffusion
diffusion barrier
diffusionism
distance decay
domestication
environmental
determinism
environmental stress
expansion diffusion
friction of distance
glaciation
globalization
hierarchical diffusion
hunter-gatherer
ideological subsystem
independent invention
Industrial Revolution
innovation
interrupting barrier
invention
Jared Diamond
mentifact
Mesolithic
multilinear evolution
Neolithic
Paleolithic
parallel invention
permeable barrier
Pleistocene overkill
possibilism
radio carbon dating
relocation diffusion
reverse hierarchal diffusion
savanna
sociofact
sociological subsystem
space time compression
steppe
stimulus diffusion
syncretism
technological subsystem
transculturation
tundra
LECTURE AND DISCUSSION TOPICS
1. Review and illustrate the definition, content, and means of transmittal of culture. Develop a
chalkboard table detailing the subsystems of culture and their respective interconnected traits.
2. Using the ideas developed with the class in Topic #1, direct attention to the map of culture realms in
the text, select two or three widely contrasting “cultures,” and develop a chalkboard table of similarities
and differences. Discuss the interlocking nature of the separate cultural composites revealed by the table.
3. Extract through class discussion and expand on the assemblage of cultural elements and
developments characteristic of “civilization.” Link the characteristics of civilization with the changes
brought about by the domestication of agriculture (i.e. surpluses require distribution networks, trade,
protection, irrigation, and allow people to do things other than farming). Draw lecture examples from such
culture hearths as Egypt, Mesopotamia, North China, Central America, or others of particular interest to
the instructor or class.
4. Examine with the class in greater detail the concepts of culture hearth, multilinear evolution,
independent invention, and cultural convergence. Develop with the group examples of the way those
concepts apply to contemporary cultural differentiation on the world scene and how, in the opinion of the
class, the concept and evidence of cultural globalization impinges on their views of “contemporary cultural
differentiation.” Use current trade or travel patterns to discuss possible/projected diffusion in the future
from these interacting cultures.
5. Through class discussion and chalkboard notation, develop an awareness of the extent to which
students’ everyday lives are affected by diffusions of innovation and by syncretism. Ethnic fast foods,
calypso music, British musical groups, architectural styles, and oriental religions are likely suggestions.
6. Many students will not fully understand the differences among artifacts, sociofacts, and mentifacts. To
help them, use examples from their culture. Walk through and list items from each of the three culture
subsystems in detail. Do not use only examples from far-away cultures, because most students will have
had almost no exposure to distant cultures.