| Term | Definition |
| islam | the religion of the Muslims, a monotheistic faith regarded as revealed through Muhammad as the Prophet of Allah. |
| ethnic religion | A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location |
| colonialism | when a more powerful country attempts to assert its power and influence over a weaker country. |
| multiculturalism | Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics. |
| centrifugal force | forces or attitudes that tend to divide a state. |
| traditional architecture | traditional building styles of different cultures, religions, and places. |
| ethnic neighborhood | an area within a city containing members of the same ethnic background / a neighborhood that may be in one location but serves predominantly one ethnicity |
| imperialism | Forced control of a territory already occupied. |
| language family | collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor long before recorded history. |
| Creolization | The process in which two or more languages converge and form a new language |
| cultural hearth | any place where certain related changes in land-use appeared due to human domestication. |
| small-scale process | A relatively small ratio between map units and ground units. |
| Stimulus diffusion | Occurs when the innovative idea diffuses from its hearth outward, but the original idea is changed by the new adopters. |
| centripetal force | an attitude that unifies people and enhances support for a state. |
| indigenous community | communities that live within, or are attached to, geographically distinct traditional habitats or ancestral territories, and who identify themselves as being part of a distinct cultural group |
| assimilation | the process through which people lose originally differentiating traits, such as dress, speech particularities or mannerisms, when they come into contact with another society or culture |
| postmodern architecture | A reaction in architectural design to the feeling of sterile alienation that many people get from modern architecture. before modern |
| Sequent occupance | notion that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place, each contributing to the cumulative cultural landscape |
| cultural relativism | practice of assessing a culture by it's own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one's own culture . |
| trade | a concept used in developing countries to help create sustainability. Producers, farmers, and craftspeople are paid fair prices for their products, and workers get fair wages. |
| acculturation | the term used to describe the adoption of certain cultural and social characteristics of one society by another society. It usually occurs when one society is controlled, either politically, economically, socially, or all of these, by another society. |
| universalizing religion | A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location. |
| hinduism | ove of the oldest religions in the modern world, dating back over 4000 years, and origination in the Indus River Valley |
| relocation diffusion | spread of an idea through physical movement from one place to another. |
| language dialect | regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. |
| cultural landscape | the combination of culture, economic, and natural elements that make up any landscape. |
| large-scale process | usually have higher resolution and cover much smaller regions than small-scale maps. |
| culture trait | is a characteristic of human action that's acquired by people socially and transmitted via various modes of communication. |
| Linguistic | relating to language or linguistics |
| culture | shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors transmitted by a society |
| Globalization | The expansion of economic, political, and cultural processes to the point that they become global in scale and impact. |
| Christianity | a monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as embodied in the New Testament, emphasizing the role of Jesus as savior. |
| architecture | the art or science of building |
| Time-Space convergence | the idea that distance between places is, in effect, shrinking due to certain transportation and communities technologies |
| Indo-European language family | family (or phylum) of several hundred related languages and dialects |
| toponym | the name by which a geographical place is known. |
| judaism | A religion with a belief in one god. It originated with Abraham and the Hebrew people. Yahweh was responsible for the world and everything within it. |
| cultural divergence | the restriction of a culture from outside cultural influences. |
| expansion diffusion | when innovations spread to new places while staying strong in their original locations |
| placemaking | a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value |
| gender | social differences between men and women, rather than the anatomical, biological differences between the sexes |
| buddhism | teaching of Buddha that life is permeated with suffering caused by desire, that suffering ceases when desire ceases |
| cultural convergence | The contact and interaction of one culture with another. |
| ethnocentrist(ism) | evaluating and judging another culture based on how it compares to one's own cultural norms |
| Lingua Franca | a language that combines simple words from multiple languages so that people who need to understand one another |
| sikhism | the doctrines of a monotheistic religion founded in northern India in the 16th century by Guru Nanak and combining elements of Hinduism and Islam. |
| hierarchical diffusion | Occurs when the diffusion innovation or concept spreads from a place or person of power or high susceptibility to another in a leveled pattern. |
| syncretism | The blending traits from two different cultures to form a new trait. |
| contagious diffusion | Occurs when numerous places or people near the point of origin become adopters |
| Urbanization | The movement of people to, and the clustering of people in, towns and cities- a major force in every geographic realm today. |
| ethnicity | identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth. |
| sense of making | state of mind derived through the infusion of a place with meaning and emotion by remembering important events that occurred in that place or by labeling a place with a certain character. |
