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Class 6b: Intro to Cultural Geography

Class 6b: Intro to Cultural Geography. What is culture?. Material objects (artifacts) Interpersonal relations (sociofacts) Ideas and beliefs (mentifacts) Each element has a spatial distribution. What does culture include?. Language Religion Architecture Clothing Food Gender relations.

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Class 6b: Intro to Cultural Geography

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  1. Class 6b: Intro to Cultural Geography

  2. What is culture? • Material objects (artifacts) • Interpersonal relations (sociofacts) • Ideas and beliefs (mentifacts) • Each element has a spatial distribution

  3. What does culture include? • Language • Religion • Architecture • Clothing • Food • Gender relations • Music • Agriculture • Art • Tolerance • Education • Technology

  4. Artifacts of culture • Survival vs. leisure activities • Housing, food, clothing • Arts, recreation • Folk vs. popular culture • Local, homogenous groups • Large, heterogeneous groups

  5. Environmental influence • Old: environmental determinism • Physical environment shapes everything • Prone to racist conclusions • New: possibilism • People are the driving force • But environment shapes cultural activity

  6. Architecture • Building materials based on environment • Wood in forested areas • Brick in hot, dry places • Grass or sod on prairies • Skins for nomads

  7. Nebraska Syria Dominican Republic Newfoundland

  8. Architecture • House shape may depend on environment • Interior courtyards for privacy • Open plan for letting in air • Tall, narrow to maximize land • Steep roofs in snowy areas

  9. China Amsterdam Massachusetts

  10. Architecture • House form and orientation as sociofacts • Front porches, front stoops • Sacred direction, sacred wall • Sleeping orientation

  11. Guyana Brooklyn

  12. Poland Korea Yemen

  13. Clothing • Based on climate • Warm or cold • Wet or dry • May reflect occupation/status • Also reflect values, traditions

  14. Netherlands Samoa Morocco Guatemala China

  15. Food • Strong part of group identity • Demonstrates innovation, diffusion, acculturation, and assimilation • Can be part of place identity • Back and forth between culture and place

  16. Food • Preferences may depend on environment • Staple foods: rice, sorghum, maize, wheat • Salted meats, fish • Fresh vegetables • Or genetics (lactose intolerance)

  17. Food hearths map

  18. American foodways • Colonial foods (Thanksgiving) • Foods diffused back to New World • Potatoes to Ireland • Tomatoes to Italy • Chocolate to Spain • Peanut and sweet potato to Africa • Mixing of foods (creole)

  19. American foodways • Acculturation (or not) • Southern cooking retains strong regional identity • African slaves cooked on plantations • Less urban influence • Anti-North attitudes discouraged

  20. American foodways • More immigrants mean more foods • Similar diffusion pattern to place names • Anti-immigrant attitudes through dieticians • Chili power bad for stomach • Common pot unsanitary • Pickles unhealthy

  21. American foodways • Towards “fusion cooking” • Depression, wars encouraged thriftiness • Soldiers ate same food, encountered diversity • Middle class: “exotic” foods • Melting pot  salad bowl

  22. Tomato Vinegar Mustard

  23. Food and place identity • Historical connections • Deliberate marketing • Tourism and place “consumption” • Pineapples and Hawaii • Lobster and Maine • Wine appellations and terroir

  24. Pineapples and Hawaii • Originally South American • Plantations since 1800s • Dole’s national ad campaign in 1907: Hawaiian pineapple • Cheaper to grow in Thailand, Philippines • Hawaii focuses on fresh fruit for tourists

  25. Lobsters and Maine • Originally food for poor, or fertilizer • Wealthy New Englanders in 1860s • Summering in Maine • Imitating the locals • Only for wealthy vacationers • Now negative symbol for locals

  26. Wine geography • Production based on environmental factors • Temperate climate (hot summer, wet winter) • Hillsides allow drainage, sunlight • Coarse, well-drained soil • And social factors that determine consumption

  27. Wine geography • Terroir: how environment shapes wine flavor • Soil, sunlight, slope, rainfall, etc. • Varies at the vineyard scale • Appellation: place-of-origin label • Champagne, Bordeaux, Burgundy, etc. • Parmigiana Romano, Stilton, Camembert

  28. Introduction to cultural geography • Material, social, ideological expressions • Spatial distribution of culture traits • Folk vs. popular, survival vs. recreation • Environmental influence on culture • Diffusion and acculturation • Food and place identity

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