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Chapter 3 Vocabulary
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Unity of Place | The great German natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt’s notion that in a particular locale or region intricate connections exist among climate, geology, biology, and human cultures. |
Indigenous People | Aboriginal or native; an example would be the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas. |
Altiplano | High-elevation plateau, basin, or valley between even higher mountain ranges, especially in the Andes of South America. |
Land alienation | One society or culture group taking land from another. |
Liberation Theology | A powerful religious movement that arose in South America during the 1950s, and subsequently gained followers throughout the global periphery. |
Cultural Pluralism | A society in which two or more population groups, each practicing its own culture, live adjacent to one another without mixing inside a single state. |
Commercial Agriculture | For-profit agriculture. |
Subsistence Agriculture | Farmers who eke out a living on a small plot of land on which they are only able to grow enough food to support their families or at best a small community. |
Remote Sensing | The indirect capture of images by specially equipped, Earth-orbiting satellites. |
Uneven Development | The notion that economic development varies spatially, a central tenet of core-periphery relationships in realms, regions, and lesser geographic entities. |
Supranationalism | A venture involving three or more states—political, economic, and/or cultural cooperation to promote shared objectives. |
Rural-to-urban migration | The dominant migration flow from countryside to city that continues to transform the world’s population, most notably in the less advantaged geographic realms. |
Informal Sector | Dominated by unlicensed sellers of homemade goods and services, the primitive form of capitalism found in many developing countries that takes place beyond the control of government. The complement to a country’s formal sector. |
Barrio | Term meaning “neighborhood” in Spanish. Usually refers to an urban community in a Middle or South American city. |
Favela | Shantytown on the outskirts or even well within an urban area in Brazil. |
Megacity | Informal term referring to the world’s most heavily populated cities; in this book, the term refers to a metropolis containing a population of greater than 10 million. |
Central Business District | The downtown heart of a central city; marked by high land values, a concentration of business and commerce, and the clustering of the tallest buildings. |
Gini Index | A measure of inequality within a given area, ranging from 0 to 100. A value of 0 indicates that income is equally distributed across an area’s population; a value of 100 indicates that all income is concentrated in the hands of a single recipient. |
Dependencia Theory | theory Originating in South America during the 1960s, a new way of thinking about economic development and underdevelopment that explained the persistent poverty of certain countries in terms of their unequal relations with other (i.e., rich) countries. |
Insurgent State | Territorial embodiment of a successful guerrilla movement. The establishment by antigovernment insurgents of a territorial base in which they exercise full control; thus a state within a state. |
Failed State | A country whose institutions have collapsed and in which anarchy prevails. |
Neoliberal Policies | Policies adhering to an ideology or development strategy that advocates the privatization of state-run companies, lowering of international trade tariffs, reduction of government subsidies, cutting of corporate taxes and deregulation of business activity. |
Landlocked Country | An interior state wholly surrounded by land. |
Human Development Index | A UN index that is a composite measure of life expectancy, education, and income per capita. It is used to rank countries within a four-level classification under this name. |
Triple Frontier | The turbulent and chaotic area in southern South America that surrounds the convergence of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. |
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. |
Viticulture | The growing of grapes for the production of wine. |
Elongation | In political geography, refers to the territorial configuration of a state that is at least six times longer than its average width. Chile is the most prominent example of this shape on the world map. |
Buffer State | A country or set of countries separating ideological or political adversaries. |
Entrepôt | A place, usually a port city, where goods are imported, stored, and transshipped; a break-of-bulk point. |
Forward Capital | Capital city positioned in actually or potentially contested territory, usually near an international border; it confirms the state’s determination to maintain its presence in the area of contention. |
Cerrado | Regional term referring to the fertile savannas of Brazil’s interior Central-West that make it one of the world’s most promising agricultural frontiers. |
Negative externalities | Undesirable side-effects and/or byproducts of an action. |
Growth-pole Concept | An urban center with a number of attributes that, if augmented by investment support, will stimulate regional economic development in its hinterland. |