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Chapter 8
Human Geography Vocab
Term | Definition |
---|---|
State | A sovereign territory, recognized as a country by other states under international law. It has a defined territory, a permanent population, a government, and is recognized by other states |
Territoriality | Sense of ownership and attachment to a specific territory |
Peace of Westphalia | Treaties negotiated in 1648 that formally recognized the sovereignty of states |
Sovereignty | The legal authority to have the last say over a territory. Under international law, states are sovereign |
Territorial integrity | Right of a state to defend sovereign territory against incursion from other states |
Colonialism | Physically taking over a territory and people and controlling the economy and government |
Mercantilism | An early form of capitalism based on trading large quantities of goods, using gold and silver as currencies |
Nation | A group of people with a shared past and common future who relate to each other and share a common political goal |
Imagined community | A socially constructed identity that is imagined because the people in the group will never meet each other and simply believe they have a similarity and shared connection |
Nation-state | A nation (people) and a state (country) who share the same borders |
Multinational state | State (country) with more than one nation (people) |
Multistate nation | Nation (people) that stretches across states (countries) |
Stateless nation | A nation that does not have a state |
First wave of colonialism | From the late 1400s to 1850s, when Europeans colonized the Americas and coastal Africa |
Second wave of colonialism | From the 1850s to 1960s, when Europeans colonized Africa and Asia in the context of the industrial revolution |
World-Systems Theory | Theory originated by Immanuel Wallerstein and illuminated by his three-tier structure, proposing that social change in and economic wealth in the periphery is inextricably linked to the core |
Capitalism | Economic system where people, corporations, and states produce goods and services and trade them on the world market with the goal of making a profit |
Commodification | Transformation of goods and services into products that can be bought, sold, or traded |
Core | Places in the world economy where core processes dominate |
Periphery | Places in the world economy where periphery processes dominate |
Semi-periphery | Places where core and periphery processes are both occurring; places that are exploited by the core but in turn exploit the periphery |
Centripetal forces | In nationalism, attributes of a nation that can be activated or manipulated to unite the nation, such as national iconography, patriotism, shared culture and history, or common religion or ideology |
Centrifugal forces | In nationalism, attributes of a nation that can be activated or manipulated to divide the nation, such as unequal distribution of wealth, or religious, linguistic, ethnic, and ideological differences |
Unitary states | A state that has a centralized government and administration that exercises power equally over all parts of the state |
Federal states | States that exercise significant control over their own affairs and have substantial authority over such matters as education, land use, and infrastructure planning |
Devolution | Transfer of power from central government to regional or local government within a state (country) |
Democracy | Government run by the people where the people are sovereign and have the final say over what happens within a state |
Reapportionment | Redistribution of representatives based on population change. For example, seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are reapportioned across states after each census before each state redistricts |
Splitting | A redistricting practice where a minority population is divided across districts to ensure the majority population controls each district (also called dilution) |
Majority-minority districts | Electoral districts where the majority of the people in the district are from a minority group |
Gerrymandering | Manipulating electoral districts to give one political party unfair advantage |
Boundary | A plane that stretches beneath the subsoil and into the airspace that legally divides two countries |
Geometric boundaries | Political boundaries defined and delimited (and occasionally demarcated) as a straight line or an arc |
Physical-political boundaries | Political boundary defined by a prominent physical feature in the physical landscape, such as a riverbank or the crest of a mountain range |
Heartland theory | British geographer Halford Mackinder's theory that a political power based in the heart of Eurasia could gain enough strength to eventually dominate the world |
Unilateralism | World order in which one state is in a position of global dominance |
Deterritorialization | Movement of economic, social, and cultural processes out of the hands of the states (countries) |
Reterritorialization | When a local culture shapes an aspect of popular culture as their own, adopting the popular culture to their local culture |
Supranational organizations | An organization of three or more states involving formal political, economic, and/or cultural cooperation to promote shared objectives. For examples, the European Union is one such organization |