Cultural Patterns & Processes - AP Human Geography

The idea of “cultural landscapes” is most closely associated with the geographer Carl Sauer, who first defined them. Sauer argued that all regions of the Earth were impacted by human behavior and had been altered by human interaction, he also believed that cultural landscapes were the most important branch of geographic inquiry.

“Environmental determinism” is a theory of cultural geography that was wildly popular during the age of European imperialism. Its proponents argue that cultural traits and societal traditions are primarily informed by environmental differences between different regions.

The term “primogeniture” refers to a system of inheritance whereby the eldest (usually male) child receives all of the family inheritance and property. It was commonly practiced throughout Europe until very recently, and has long been common in many other parts of the world as well.

Environmental determinism is the notion that our physical environment has a massive and often controlling effect on us. In essence, this theory believes that physical environments dictate much of our lives.

Time distance decay is defined as the declining degree of acceptance of an idea or innovation with increasing time and distance from its point of origin. For example, a new law passed in California is more likely to be accepted in Oregon rather than Georgia. Additionally, this new law is more likely to be passed in other states soon after the initial passage in California, as opposed to years later.

African-Americans are most heavily concentrated in the Southeastern region of the United States. The dominance of African-Americans largely stems from the region's historical slavery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and the large amount of rural farm laborers into the twentieth century. After a large migration to Northern industrial cities in the mid-twentieth century, the South has seen an influx of young African-American professionals in the twenty-first century.

Many different things can help shape national identity, including history, sports, literature, and national holidays. Papal Bulls are edicts issued by the Pope. The Papal Bull of 1965 urged Catholics to esteem a life of virtue and biblical study. While religious Germany is roughly divided evenly among Catholics and Protestants, neither represents a majority, so we cannot make a claim that the Pope forms anything as widely ubiquitous as Germany's "national identity." Further, in 1965 Germany was divided into the separate nations of East Germany (DDR) and West Germany (FRG), and Catholicism held very little sway in East Germany, a fact that holds true in the eastern part of the country to this day.

“Ethnocentrism” is based on the belief that one’s own culture is inherently superior and that other nations are backwards or underdeveloped because their culture is different. It primarily involves judging a foreign culture by the standards of one’s own culture. It can involve the forced spread of one’s own culture, but it does not have to, it is enough simply to judge another culture by the standards of your own.

The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed shortly after Columbus' expedition to America. It was signed between the two major colonial powers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries- Spain and Portugal. It carved a swathe through the continent of South America, all territory that fell on one side came under Spanish control, and all territory on the other side came under Portuguese control. The modern nation of Brazil represents the vast bulk of the territory originally obtained by Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas and Portuguese remains the official and primarily language of Brazil to this day. The rest of South America (countries such as Colombia, Argentina, Peru, and Chile) all speak Spanish to this day. It is interesting to note then that a mostly arbitrary line, drawn by two colonial powers more than five hundred years ago, continues to have such a dramatic impact on the cultural and linguistic experiences of so many people.

The global population of Jewish people is estimated at around thirteen to fourteen million. This is far less than one-percent of the total population of the world. Around six million people belonging to the Jewish population live in Israel and slightly more than five million live in the United States. The rest of the global Jewish population lives in countries affiliated with the European Union (i.e. France, the United Kingdom, and Germany).

A symbolic landscape is a landscape that has significant meaning beyond what it simply looks like due to cultural associations. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is seen as the location of important religious moments for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, while also holding the remnants of the ancient Jewish temple and a medieval Islamic mosque. Due to these factors, the Temple Mount is more than just a part of an old city, which makes it a symbolic landscape.

“Toponymy” is the study of place names. Toponymy is useful to cultural geographers because it can help illuminate certain conclusions about an area - such as who its original inhabitants were and where they came from. For example “Los Angeles” is a Spanish name of an American city. This suggests that some of its earlier inhabitants might have been Spanish, or that Los Angeles was once in territory held by the Spanish Empire and so on.

The Gender Inequality Index measures the disparity between the experiences of men and women in different countries around the world. It was created in 2010 by the United Nations Development Program and continues to be overseen by the United Nations.

Generally men score higher than women in almost all areas of gender inequality around the world, although this is becoming less and less the case in the developed world. The only category in which women routinely score higher than men throughout the majority of the world is in life expectancy. Women, in almost all areas of the world, regardless of income levels and levels of education, outlive men.

Of these options South America scores by far the highest in relative gender empowerment. Europe, particularly Western Europe, tends to score the highest; closely followed by North America and Australasia. From there it is a rather precipitous drop off to South America and parts of East Asia. This is followed by another substantial drop to South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East where gender empowerment is at its lowest.

In the waning months of World War I and the immediate aftermath of the conflict women achieved notable cultural and economic liberation. This continued into the 1920s, but was disrupted by the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929. Unemployment rose dramatically in the early years of the depression and, in an attempt to ensure as much employment as possible for men, most states in America prohibited women from working outside the home.

In several of the world’s wealthiest countries in the world literacy rates are very close to one hundred percent for both men and women. But, this is the exception rather than the rule as far as the world is concerned. Most of the world suffers from a gender gap in literacy rates, this is generally most pronounced in countries that are extremely poor, although a few of the world’s poorest countries have less of a gender gap in literacy rates than some of the world’s wealthier countries. How can we explain this? Well, the answer is that some cultures have certain social standards and expectations for women. Or, more accurately, some cultures have more strict social standards and expectations for women. The Islamic world, particularly the Middle East and parts of North Africa, experiences some of the worst rates of female literacy in the world, particularly when compared to male literacy rates in the same region.

Due to its unique history of invasion, occupation, and population migration the Balkan region of Southern Europe contains a diverse mixture of ethnicities living in a relatively small piece of territory. For centuries the potentially violent tensions were contained by the powerful empires that occupied the region, but in the early 1990s, with the fall of Yugoslavia and the division of the Balkans into many smaller states, violence broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Sarajevo and Srebrenica neighbors of one ethnicity committed atrocities against neighbors of another ethnicity. The region is home to Serbs, Croats, Greeks, Albanians, Muslims, and Bosnians - many of whom have centuries long feelings of hatred and distrust towards one another. It is a volatile region of the world because of its ethnic diversity.

Although genocide can involve religious conflict, forced religious conversion, or spontaneous uprisings of ethnic violence, none of these answer choices is the best description of genocide. A “genocide” is a premeditated and deliberate attempt, usually sponsored by a government, to kill every individual from a particular ethnic group; to effectively eliminate that ethnic group’s presence from a region or from the planet. Famous examples of genocides include the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Armenian Genocide.

Shi’ite and Sunni are the two major denominations of Islam. They have existed almost as long as the religion itself and the initial discord (to make a complicated issue as simple as is possible) springs from disagreement over who inherited the right to guide the direction of the Islamic faith following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Most Middle Eastern countries have a majority that practices one denomination and a minority that practices the other. This had led to a great deal of conflict in the past century (and indeed for the past several centuries).