AP Human Geography Folk and Pop Culture vocab

Syncretism

A near-equal exchange between two cultures in which each adopts cultural practices of the other.

Vernacular Cultural Region

A region determined by people's mental images, or perceptions, of places

Habit

A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.

Taboo

A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Indigenous architecture

Architecture that is native to a certain place, region, or area.

Cultural Transition Zones

Areas where two cultures come together.

Sociofacts

Cultural elements that are related to social behavior, unity, and control.

Popular culture

Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.

Folk culture

Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.

Maladaptive Diffusion

Diffusion in which image takes precedence over practicality; whatever trait diffuses doesn't suit it's new context.

Folk food

Food that is traditionally made by the common people of a region and forms part of their culture.

Culture hearth

Locations on earth's surface where specific cultures first arose.

Cultural landscape

Modifications to the environment by humans, including the built environment and agricultural systems, that reflect aspects if their culture

Survey Systems

Pattern of land division used in an area. The prevailing survey system in the United States, one that appears as checkerboards across agricultural fields: Township-and-range system. Metes and bounds survey: used along the eastern seaboard, in which natural features were used to demarcate irregular parcels of land Long lot survey system: divided land into narrow parcels stretching back from rivers, roads, or canals. It reflects a particular approach to surveying that was common in French America.

Nonmaterial culture

The abstract human creations of society (such as attitudes, beliefs, and values) that help define a culture.

Infanticide

The act of killing an infant

Domain

The area outside of the core of a culture region in which the culture is still dominant but less intense.

Environmental perception

The concept that people of different cultures will differently observe and interpret their environment and make different decisions about its nature, potentialities and use.

Mentifacts

The concepts, ideas, beliefs, or meanings that guide cultures.

Terroir

The contribution of a location's distinctive physical features to the way food tastes.

Cultural Identity

The cultural tradition a group of people recognize as their own; the shared customs and beliefs that define how a group sees itself as distinctive.

Custom

The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.

Built environment

The man-made surroundings that provide the setting for human activity, ranging in scale from personal shelter to neighborhoods to the large-scale civic surroundings.

Material culture

The physical objects that a culture creates, such as buildings, tools, and goods .

Cultural Appropriation

The process by which cultures adopt customs and knowledge from other cultures and use them for their own benefit .

Hearth

The region/ area/ place from which innovative ideas or cultural traits originate. Center of innovation.

Neolocalism

The seeking out of the regional culture and reinvigoration of it in response to the uncertainty of the modern world.

Hierarchical diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or palces.

Relocation diffusion

The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.

Stimulus diffusion

The spread of underlying principle, even though a specific charateristic is rejected.

Cultural convergence

The tendency for cultures to become more alike as they increasingly share technology and organizational structures in a modern world united by improved transportation and communication; occurs when the skills, arts, ideas, habits, and institutions of one culture come in contact with those of another culture.

Cultural perception

The varying attitudes and ideas that culture groups have regarding how space, place, and territory are identified and used.

Characteristics

a distinguishing quality.

Cultural Regions

a geographic representation of a cultural complex or system.

Culture complex

a group of people sharing a unique combination of cultural traits.

Gender gap

a measurable difference between the behaviors of men and women.

Ethnic neighborhood

a neighborhood, typically situated in a larger metropolitan city and constructed by or comprised of a local culture, in which a local culture can practice its customs.

Formal Cultural Region

a region that is linked by a particular activity or function, such as transportation system or an economic activity, and organized around a central point, or node, which is connected to places within the region.

Cultural adaptation

adjusting to a translation based on the cultural environment of the target language.

Folklore

an area whose defining characteristic, such as climate or the nationality of people who live there is found throughout the region.

Cultural traits

behaviors passed from one generation to another including customs, language, religion, and skills.

Folk songs

composed anonymously and transmitted orally. A song that is derived from events in daily life that are familiar to the majority of the people; songs that tell a story or convey information about daily activities such as farming, life cycle events, or mysterious events such as storms and earthquakes.

Folk house

houses that reflect cultural heritage, current fashion, functional needs, and the impact of environment. The form of each house is related in part to environmental as well as social conditions.

Transculturation

occurs when two cultures of just about equal power or influence meet and exchange ideas or traits without the domination seen in acculturation and assimilation.

Cultural imperialism

spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others or imposition on other cultures which it modifies, replaces, or destroys.

Acculturation

the adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another.

Culture

the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition.

Cultural realm

the combination of several cultural regions

Functional Cultural Region

the cultural practices and customs of a traditional, homogenous society that lives in a single geographic area .

Assimilation

the final completion of the cultural acculturation process, when a culture group loses all its original traits and becomes fully a part of a different , dominating culture.

Contagious diffusion

the rapid, widespread diffusion of a feature or trend throughout a population.

Expansion diffusion

the spread of a feature or trend among people from one aea to another in a snowballing process.

Cultural diffusion

the spread of culture

Cultural ecology

the study of the relationship between a culture group and the natural environmental it occupies.

Sequent occupance

theory that a place is occupied by different groups of people, each group leaving an imprint on the place from which the next group learns.

Traditional architecture

traditional building styles of different cultures, religions, and places.