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.