1. The Human Mosaic CHAPTER ONE
Human Geography: A Cultural Approach

2. Aboriginal Painting, Australia. What do you think it depicts?

3. Catholic Church in Honduras

4. Buddhist temple in Laos

5. I. Introduction: What is geography? What is culture?
What is cultural geography?
Power, ideology & postmodernism
Five themes in cultural geography:
Culture Region
Cultural Diffusion
Cultural Ecology
Cultural Interaction
Cultural Landscapes

6. What determines the production of wheat worldwide?

7. Generalized model of a Latin American city
Explaining the processes at work shaping Latin American cities.

8. Culture Region formal culture regions functional culture regions
vernacular culture regions
terminology: cultural traits, cultural borders, border zones, nodes, core-periphery patterns, perception and identity
Vernacular often refers to the language or dialect spoken by ordinary
(“folkish”) people in a particular region. Vernacular regions refer to
perceived regions (and their mental maps) like the “Midwest”, “Dixie”,
the “Outback”, themselves expressions of their ordinary people’s culture.

9. Inuit hunter with his dogsled team

10. Formal Regions of Europe
based on language and religion

11. East vs. west and north vs. south in Germany

12. Traditional rural formal culture regions of North America

13. Culture regions, traits and boundary (or border) zones

14. Aerial view of Denver. Can you see any boundary zones?

15. A valley filled with farms

16. “Dixie”: a vernacular culture region.

17. San Fernando Valley (“the valley”, “valspeak”, “valley girl”)

18. Cultural Diffusion (after Torsten Hägerstrand)
expansion diffusion
contagious, hierarchical, stimulus
relocation diffusion
terminology: independent innovation, time-distance decay, absorbing barriers, permeable barriers, neighborhood effect, migration, transnational migrants & globalization

19. Types of Cultural Diffusion

20. Early diffusion of the printing press in Europe

21. Diffusion of HIV/AIDS in Ohio

22. According to your textbook, a demonstration against the deportation of immigrants in Germany. The banner, however, seems to address the issue of wars, possibly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

23. Cultural Ecology Relationship between people & environment
Importance of adaptive strategies
Different schools of thought:
a) environmental determinism
(humans as clay to be molded by a dominant nature)
b) environmental possibilism
(local cultures develop within the possibilities offered by the environment)
c) environmental perception
(choices people make depend on their perception of the environment rather than the actual character)
Organic vs. mechanistic view of nature
d) humans as modifiers of the earth
(humans mold nature)
Ecofeminism? Are women better ecologists and environmentalists?

24. Environmental determinism, possibilism, & the role of culture

25. Environmental determinism, possibilism, & the role of culture

26. Post-Katrina New Orleans

27. Soil erosion and deforestation in the Amazon Basin, Brazil

28. Landslide in El Salvador, Central America, killed more than 1,200 people in 2001.

29. Cultural Interaction Intertwined facets of global cultures
Interdependencies and uneven development throughout the world
The Human Development Index
Life expectancy, adult literacy, gross domestic product (see images below)

32. Global culture on the street of Moscow

33. Cultural Geography: Science or Art? Both?
social scientists develop models to better understand, say, Latin American cities
humanistic geographers try to understand “place” (topophilia) not seeking “laws”

34. Cultural Landscapes visible expressions of culture
humanized landscapes bear cultural meaning
the art of reading cultural landscapes
landscapes of folk vs. popular culture
settlement landforms, land division patterns, architectural styles, grave yards, symbolic landscapes, and the power of globalization

35. Terraced cultural landscapes in China

36. Yokohama, Japan, at dusk

37. American ranch house

38. Market Square in Warsaw

39. Westmoreland, Imperial Valley, CA
Land Ordinance of 1785

40. Loghouse, Ottawa, Canada

41. Toronto landscape, Canada

42. Aboriginal painting / map of Arnhem Land in Australia