Cultural Practices (College Board AP® Human Geography)

Summary

Unit Three focuses on the cultural characteristics of human societies, including language, religion, ethnicity, and material expression. It further examines how those characteristics spread, diffuse, synthesize, and change. Lastly, it analyses how local cultures and globalization interact to produce new trends.

What is Culture?

• Culture refers to the collection of materials, beliefs, and social norms that make up the distinct characteristics of a group of people

• These shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors are transmitted by society

• All societies share certain cultural practices, such as:

  • birth rituals

  • death rituals and burial practices

  • weddings

  • education

• Societies differ, however, in how they approach these practices

• Culture includes both material and nonmaterial culture:

  • Material culture includes physical aspects of culture 

  • Material culture consists of tangible artifacts 

    • For example, material culture would include tools, housing, systems of land use, and clothing

  • Nonmaterial culture includes the beliefs, traditions, celebrations, thoughts, values, and ideas of a group 

    • For example, nonmaterial culture includes religion, morals, and attitudes toward marriage and gender

• A cultural hearth refers to the location where a particular culture or trait originally developed

  • For example, the ancient river valley society of Mesopotamia was a cultural hearth due to the writing and religious systems that developed there

• Folk culture and pop culture are two distinct types of culture

  • Folk culture tends to be localized and homogenous

    • Turkic oud music or Kentucky bluegrass music would be an example of folk culture

    • Folk cultures tend to emerge in multiple hearths because of their isolation

    • Folk culture diffuses slowly and on a small scale, usually through relocation diffusion

  • Pop (or popular) culture spreads across regions and is heterogeneous 

    • Jeans or Taylor Swift would be an example of pop culture

    • Pop culture results in a relatively uniform landscape

    • Pop culture is easily diffused all around the globe, usually through hierarchical diffusion 

• A cultural taboo is something that is forbidden by a culture or a religion

  • For example, eating cow meat is considered taboo in India, while eating horse meat is widely considered taboo in the United States

Cultural Traits

• Cultural traits include material objects and ideas developed through social interaction. Therefore, cultural traits are learned 

• Examples of cultural traits include: 

  • attitudes and behaviors, such as proper gender roles

  • appropriate systems of government

  • food preferences

  • birth and death rituals

  • language

  • clothing and fashion

  • art

  • architecture

  • land use

Cultural Relativism and Ethnocentrism

• Cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are opposite ways of viewing other cultures

• Cultural relativism evaluates a culture by its own standards, is empathetic, and seeks to understand the other culture

• Ethnocentrism critically views another culture through the lens of one’s own culture and passes judgment on the other culture based on the rules of one’s own culture

  • Ethnocentrism often results in bias