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Chapter 2
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Primate city | A country’s largest city—ranking atop its urban hierarchy—most expressive of the national culture and usually (but not in every case) the capital city as well. |
| Indigenous | Aboriginal or native (ex: the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas). |
| NAFTA | The free-trade area launched in 1994 involving the United States, Canada, and Mexico. |
| Borderland | General term for a linear zone that parallels a political boundary. The most dynamic of these areas, such as those lining the U.S.-Mexico border, are marked by significant cultural and economic interaction across the boundary that separates them. |
| Maquiladoras | Modern industrial plants in Mexico’s U.S. border zone. These foreign-owned factories assemble imported components/raw materials and export finished products, mainly to the U.S. |
| Land bridge | A narrow isthmian link between two large landmasses. They are temporary features—at least when measured in geologic time—subject to appearance and disappearance as the land or sea level rises and falls. |
| Archipelago | A set of islands grouped closely together, usually elongated into a chain. |
| Hurricane Alley | The (westward) path hurricanes have taken for the past 150 years. Those affected are the Lesser Antilles between Antigua and the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, southernmost Florida, Mexico’s Yucatán, and the Gulf of Mexico. |
| Altitudinal zonation | Vertical regions defined by physical-environmental zones at various elevations, particularly in the highlands of South and Middle America. |
| Tropical deforestation | The clearing and destruction of tropical rainforests in order to make way for expanding settlement frontiers and the exploitation of new economic opportunities. |
| Culture hearth | Heartland, source area, or innovation center; place of origin of a major culture. |
| Mestizo | Derived from the Latin word for mixed, refers to a person of mixed European (white) and Amerindian ancestry. |
| Hacienda | Literally, a large estate in a Spanish-speaking country. Sometimes equated with the plantation, but there are important differences between these two types of agricultural enterprise. |
| Plantation | A large estate owned by an individual, family, or corporation and organized to produce a cash crop. Almost all plantations were established within the tropics; in recent decades, many have been divided into smaller holdings or reorganized as cooperatives. |
| Connectivity | The degree of direct linkage between a particular location and other locations within a regional, national, or global transportation network. |
| Small-island developing economies | Disadvantages that low-income island-states face. Limited resources require expensive importing of many goods and services; the cost of government operations per capita are higher; and local production is unable to benefit from economies of scale. |
| Economies of scale | The savings that accrue from large-scale production wherein the unit cost of manufacturing decreases as the level of operation enlarges. Supermarkets operate on this principle and are able to charge lower prices than small grocery stores. |
| Economic integration | The economic benefits of forging supranational partnerships among three or more countries. The European Union (EU) is the prototype; NAFTA and CARICOM are examples in the Middle American realm. |
| Acculturation | Cultural modification resulting from intercultural borrowing. In cultural geography, the term refers to the change that occurs in the culture of indigenous peoples when contact is made with a society that is technologically superior. |
| Transculturation | Cultural borrowing and two-way exchanges that occur when different cultures of approximately equal complexity and technological level come into close contact. |
| Ejidos | Mexican farmlands redistributed to peasant communities after the Revolution of 1910–1917. The government holds title to the land, but user rights are parceled out to village communities and then to individuals for cultivation. |
| Biodiversity hot spot | A much higher than usual, world-class geographic concentration of natural plant and/or animal species. Tropical rainforest environments have dominated, but their recent ravaging by deforestation has had catastrophic results. |
| Offshore banking | Term referring to financial havens for foreign companies and individuals, who channel their earnings to accounts in such a country (usually an “offshore” island-state) to avoid paying taxes in their home countries. |
| Remittances | Money earned by emigrants that is sent back to family and friends in their home country, mostly in cash; forms an important part of the economy in poorer countries. |
| Intermodal transport system | One that smoothly integrates different surface transportation modes. Cargo container shipping depends on fast and efficient transfers: they can be stacked on the decks and in the holds of ships as well as attaching to flatbed railcars and trailer trucks. |
| Social stratification | In a layered or stratified society, the population is divided into a hierarchy of social classes. In an industrialized society, the working class is at the lower end; elites that possess capital and control the means of production are at the upper level. |
| Mulatto | A person of mixed African (black) and European (white) ancestry. |
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