Part 2
Culture region: area within a particular system
Culture trait : single attribute of a culture
Culture Complex: all the cultural traits that exist with a
cultural region
Culture realm: multiple culture regions grouped
together
Cultural hearth: sources or birthplaces of a civilization
 The process of dissemination, the spread of an idea or
innovation from its source area to other areas
 2 Types of Diffusion
 Expansion diffusion
 Relocation diffusion
 In expansion diffusion, an innovation or idea develops in a
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hearth and remains strong there while spreading outward
Types of Expansion Diffusion
1) Contagious diffusion- nearly all adjacent individuals are
affected
2) Hierarchical diffusion- idea or innovation spreads by
passing first among the most connected people or places
3) Stimulus diffusion- cultural adaptation is created as a
result of the introduction of a cultural trait from another
place
 Involves the actual movement of individuals who have
already adopted the idea or innovation, and who carry
it to a new, perhaps distant, locale, where it proceeds
to remain strong
Which one is
Contagious?
Relocation?
Hierarchical?
 Environmental determinism- holds that human
behavior, individually and collectively, is strongly
affected by (even controlled or determined by) the
physical environment….suggest that the climate is the
critical factor in how humans behave
 Possibilism- argues that the environment merely
serves to limit the range of choices available to a
culture
 Sometimes called a uniform region
 A region that has striking similarities in terms of one
or a few physical or cultural features
 Ex. Linguistic region- everyone speaks the same
language
 Regional boundaries can be very simple or very
complex
 Ex. Political boundaries are finite and well defined,
cultural boundaries are fuzzy
 Also called nodal regions
 Areas that have a central place or a node that is a focus or
point of origin that expresses some practical purpose
 Ex. Market areas
 The influence of this point is strongest in the areas close to
the center, and the strength diminishes as distance
increases from that point
(distance decay)
Tobler’s Law- states that all places are interrelated, but
closer places are more related than further ones
 When the length of distance becomes a factor that
inhibits the interaction of two places, its known as
friction of distance
 Also called Vernacular region
 its based upon the perception or collective mental map of
the region’s residents
 Ex. Dixie (America’s south)
 What is America’s south?
-some define it as states of the Civil war, some as the number
of country music bands, some as NASCAR races
*No matter what is used to spatially define the regional
concept, the reason tends to be a point of pride for
residents ***Be careful with your vernacular definitions
(there’s country music and NASCAR everywhere)
 Scale – the relationship of an object or place to the
earth as a whole
 Scale can be thought of in 2 ways
 1) map scale- describes the ratio of distance on a map
and distance in the real world in absolute terms
 2) relative scale- also known as scale of analysis;
this describes the level of aggregation, which is the
level at which you group things together for
examination
Large Scale
Small Scale
 Local
City
County
State
Regional
National
Continental
International