Question | Answer |
Nature (As defined by R. Williams) | essential character and quality of a thing; material world itself, taken as including or not including human beings; Inherent forces which direct either the world or human beings or both |
Culture ( As defined by R. Williams)!!! | noun describing development since the 18th Century indicating a particular way of life, describing works and prefaces of activity; Latin- Cultura - to cultivate, the process of tending/agriculture; Culture as an artistic production; as a system of beliefs |
Scale | level of aggregation at which a thing exists or a process occurs; local, national, global, regional. ie our house as a home or earth as a home. |
Spatial Variation | difference between places. Key terms: society, nature, variation. 1. Why are places different from one another. 2. Why are social practices different from places to place 3. How are all of these places linked? |
The Sublime (As a 19th Century cultural concept) | sacred places because they communicated to us our insignificance to the force of nature; evoked emotions running toward fear/terror |
The Frontier (As a 19th century cultural concept) | meeting point between "savagery" and "civilization"; 19th century Romanticismmyth |
Romanticism (in relation to wilderness and landscape; as a 19th century cultural concept discussed by Cronon) | sort of a hybrid view of the sublime and frontier that emerged during the 19th century. It was an intellectual and cultural basis for ideas during this time period. |
Environmental Determinism (Ratzel) | physical environment determines human activity; argument for the dominance of Europe |
Social Darwinism (Ratzel) | "survival of the fittest". - evolutionary theory to socio-economic and political issues |
Lebensraum | "living space" - the geographic area or territory in which these political organism grow; used to justify Nazi expansion |
Genres de Vie (de la Blanche) | "Ways of life" of a group; justified French nationalism |
Possibilism (de la Blanche) | environment establishes the range of options within which culture develops |
Landscape | A. Cultural Landscapes B. Natural Landscapes C. Symbolic Landscapes |
A. Cultural Landscapes | Central concept of cultural geography--carl sauer, morphology of landscape--changes over time in relation to development. Derived from natural landscapes, but modified. |
B. Natural Landscapes | original landscape that is largely non-existent in the contemporary world. |
C. Symbolic Landscapes (Geertz and Cosgrove) | a critique of Sauer--how landscapes signify and communicate; 1. Landscapes of a Dominant Culture; 2. Alternative Landscapes |
1. Landscapes of a Dominant Culture (Cosgrove) | groups with social and symbolic power over others |
2. Alternative Landscapes ( Cosgrove) | relationally dominant but are subordinate within national culture; a. Emergent Landscapes; b. Residual Landscapes; c. Excluded Landscapes |
a. Emergent Landscapes | futuristic, utopian (i.e. Olympic sports, the New York Skyline) |
b. Residual Landscapes | where meanings have changed (i.e. medivial chruch building---from great gothic cathedral to village steeple) |
c. Excluded Landscapes | marginalized places (i.e women's impact on the public landscape--domestic landscape excluded) |
Nomothetic (in relation to science, versus interpretive social science) | used as an attack on environmental determinism---the selection of generic characteristics of landscape (structural quality of a landscape accurately belongs to a specific group in the general series of landscapes) |
Interpretive social science (Geertz)!!!!! | Asking not what something is, but rather what it signifies. This shifts the question from ontological ("What is culture?") to epistemological ("How do we know culture?"). This approach was a reaction to the trend in the 1960s of explaining any number |
Superorganicism (Zelinsky; and Critiqued by Geertz) | The U.S. can be described as a superorganic entity because it is shaped by processes, and changed through time.; A. Artifacts; B. Sociofacts; C. Mentifacts |
A. Artifacts | elements of a culture directly concerned with livelihood-entire technology of supplying wanted goods and services (e.g. tools, shelter, food production, clothing) |
B. Sociofacts | phases of the culture most directly concerned with interpersonal relations (e.g. kinship systems, etiquette, education) |
C. Mentifacts | cerebral, psychological or attitudinal in character--ideological baggage--basic value system and abstract concepts (e.g. religion/superstition, art, values) |
Humanism or Humanist Geography (in relation to Yi Fu Tuan) | main focus on human disposition, argued that before cultural geography differences there is a underlying unity in experiencing the meaning of landscapes |
Ideology (Cosgrove) !!!!! | 1. Landscapes are the outcomes of erasures, silences, and struggles for power. 2. recognize that is the starting point for geography 3. Any place or thing is the outcome of these processes; "Their power is sustained and reproduced to considerable extent b |
The "old" and the "new" cultural geography (introduction to Mitchell)!!!!! | Old cultural geography: (i.e. Sauer)--pursued a quasi-scientific descriptive approach to landscape analysis, held that the cultural landscape is primarily a collectionof its material elements that together displayed how human cultures had inscribed on th |