Exploring Culture and Diffusion in Geography

All right, time to review everything you need to know about Unit 3 of AP Human Geography. And that exam you've got coming up is already breathing its hot, nasty, meatball breath down your neck. And it wants to destroy you. It wants to make you fail. But that is not going to happen. If you get everything I'm about to say in this video, then you will show up to that exam, punch it in the throat, and then wait till it's gasping for air on the floor, and then deliberately hurt its feelings. So if that's what you want, I'm Steve Heimler, and I am here to help you. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Now, this unit is all about culture. what it is, how it affects human environments, and how it spreads. So let's begin in the beginning. What is... culture. Now by definition, culture refers to the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors passed down by a society. Now some of these things are more obvious, like language. Like here I am flapping my mouth hole in English because it's part of my culture. But then other parts of culture are less obvious. So think of culture kind of like an iceberg. Above the water, the cultural iceberg includes everything you can easily observe about a society, you know, their language, their clothing, their behavior, the way they use their land, their built environment, etc. But then below the water is everything about a culture that is more difficult to understand. to observe, like a group's thought patterns and their cultural rules. And speaking of icebergs, I know you want to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface is hard work, studying, practicing the skills of the course, crying yourself to sleep at night, etc. If you have no idea how to get that A and earn that 5, then you should absolutely click the link in the description and grab my AP Human Geography Heimler Review Guide. It is the fastest way to study, and it's got exclusive videos for all units, practice questions, a practice exam, and a Heimler AI bot that can help you with any question. question that you have. It is oh so tasty, so check it out and just maybe you won't have to go to bed weeping into your pillow. And now back to the cultural iceberg. Okay, so look at these two women. This one American and this one Saudi Arabian. Now to be clear, not all American women dress like this and not all Saudi Arabian women dress like this. There are regional and cultural variations, but this is just one example. The tip of the iceberg tells us what's obvious, that these two women dress differently. But to understand why they're dressed differently, you've got to look at the giant honking hind parts of that iceberg below the water, which tells us about the difference. different values of their culture. So she might dress like this because she lives in a patriarchal culture, which just means that men call all the shots, and which religious beliefs teach that women must present themselves modestly. And then she might dress like that because she lives in a culture that values liberty and individual choice. So basically, everything that lives up here on the tip of the iceberg we call cultural traits. And a trait is something that is obvious to your eyeballs. For example, I am bald, bearded, and gap-toothed. And devastatingly handsome. All very obvious things. But on a broader level, cultural traits fall into three big categories. First, First, food preferences tell us a lot about a society's culture. For example, much of the food in Singapore is heavily influenced by Southern Chinese food and that's because a huge portion of their population is of Southern Chinese heritage. So by understanding their food, we can understand that society's history. Second, architecture can reveal a society's culture. For example, many suburbs across America look relatively the same, which is an indication of a shared national aspect of American culture. But the architecture in some regions is a reflection of more local tastes, like adobe homes in the American Southwest in which they make use of local clay and other materials. building materials. And third, land use shows the society's culture as well. For example, people in Nevada build houses with grass in their front and backyard, which to use the technical term is, you know, weird. I mean, Nevada is a stinking desert. So why did they do it? Well, because many of the Americans who originally populated the Southwest came from the East Coast where grass was abundant and they wanted to keep it out there in their new home. So, you know, you do you, boo. So the point is each culture around the world has unique cultural traits that are rooted in unique cultural values. There are two basic attitudes. toward those cultural differences that you need to know. First is cultural relativism, which is the evaluation of another culture by that culture's own standards. So cultural relativists look at cultures different from theirs and embrace them because they understand that cultures arise from distinct beliefs, just as their own culture does. So no judgy here, just a warm cultural hug. But the second attitude is less like a hug and more like a punch in the cultural c— kidneys, and we call it ethnocentrism. This is the evaluation of another culture by a group's own cultural standards. In other words, my own culture is awesome, yours is different from my awesomeness, so your culture is therefore stupid and weird. And often accompanying ethnocentrism is xenophobia, which is a fear or a dislike of foreigners who possess different cultural traits. Okay, so we've established that every people group on earth has their own distinct culture. And now we need to consider how a people's culture shapes the land on which they live. And for that, let me introduce you to what's known as a cultural landscape, which describes... how people modify a physical landscape in a way that reflects their culture. And there are five big categories that describe how people do that. First, cultural landscapes are shaped through agricultural and industrial practices. Agricultural practices refer to farming. So cornfields in the Midwestern United States or terraced rice paddies in Southeast Asia are distinctive agricultural practices in those areas. And when you see pictures of each of these ways of modifying the land, there's a distinct cultural feel to them. Industrial practices, on the other hand, include all the ways people engage in economic activity, which also leaves a mark on their physical environment. Now in some cases that mark is pretty generic and leads to a sense of placelessness. For example, if you're standing on a corner with a gas station and a McDonald's, that is an indication of human economic activity, but you could be anywhere. Those two kinds of establishments exist in like a gajillion other places throughout the world, so there's not anything really, you know, distinct about it. In other cases, the economic mark is more reflective of the regional culture. For example, here are a bunch of row houses in Baltimore, which are distinct to that. region because Baltimore was an industrial center in the 19th century and these row houses were constructed for all the rural people flooding into the city to find work in the industrial sector. As part of their history and their identity, which is why they continue to build them today. Okay, now the second category of influence on cultural landscapes is religion. People in many religions construct buildings which reflect their faith. So Christians build churches, Muslims build mosques, Hindus build temples, and Jews build synagogues, all of which create sacred spaces and a landscape. In other words, believers build these structures to communicate that this place is different, or, you know, other than any other place, and that's a huge marker of cultural values. Now the third category of influence on cultural landscapes include linguistic characteristics, which have to do with language. Here you can think about the signs you've seen in various places. For example, here in New York City's Chinatown, restaurants and stores have signs written both in English and in Chinese, which tells you a lot about the people who live there. Now the fourth category of influence on cultural landscapes is evidence of sequent occupants. And those are two words that make absolutely no sense to you, so let me explain. Sequent is related to sequence, which is, you know, one thing after another. And then occupants is related to occupy. So, sequent occupants refers to the cultural marks left on the landscape by each group of people that have occupied a place over the course of history. For example, look at this. It's a structure known as the Dome of the Rock, which is a holy site for Muslims. But then zoom out a little and look at its foundation. This is the Jewish Temple Mount, which is the remaining foundation of the first century Jewish Temple, which is the holy place for Jews. But the Dome of the Rock was built in the 11th century. So each of these groups of people have left a cultural imprint on this site over time. That is sequent occupants. Now the. The fifth category of influence on cultural landscapes is the presence of traditional and postmodern architecture. Traditional architecture means that the buildings in a place are constructed with the local materials available to build and reflect the needs of the local people. For example, the Nipah hut in rural Philippines is framed mainly of bamboo, and its roof is made of nipa leaves which grow natively in that area. Many Filipinos consider this hut to be like a symbol of their national identity, and so this traditional architecture tells us a lot about who they are and what they value. But then there's postmodern architecture which arose in the 1960s as a form of cultural a reaction against the modernist style. And in a nutshell, modernist architecture emphasized function over form, which just means that what gets done in that building is more important than how it looks. And how it looks is about as bland as a khaki jumpsuit. But then postmodern architecture emphasized form over function, which means that how the building looks is just as important as what gets done inside. In other words, postmodern architecture is more culturally expressive. For example, here's the Guggenheim Museum in Balboa, Spain. Its function is to display art, but the building itself is also a work of art. Okay, now we've looked at the features of cultural landscapes and how they reflect the values of the people who live in them, but now let's consider it from the other side. How do people's values and society's values affect the way they occupy a space? Let's consider three ways to look at this. First, a culture's attitude towards ethnicity is a big factor in how people shape their space. And ethnicity refers to the cultural traits that they share that distinguish them from other groups. And in many cases, the distinct markers of ethnicity can't be seen with the eye, but they can be smelled and heard and tasted. For example, the pass by an urban street with a significant Indian ethnic enclave, which is just a cluster of ethnically similar people living in the same place, is to smell the food of their native culture, specifically their lovely and oh-so-tasty curry. And in that way, that place is marked by their culture. Second, attitudes about gender affect cultural landscapes. For example, in Kenya, which is a more traditional society, women lack property rights, and so the land is owned by the men and then passed down to sons, even though women basically run the farms. Or go to India, and you'll find that in some places, public parks are segregated by gender. You've got You've got men only and women only. Additionally, cultural landscapes are affected by a society's attitude towards women in the workplace. For example, in societies where women are more encouraged to work, like Europe and the United States, you can see a growing number of childcare facilities being built both within office buildings and around them. Okay, the third way a culture's identity affects the way they occupy space is with the presence of ethnic neighborhoods. Often when migrants reach their receiving society, they find each other and they live together in a concentrated area. And over time, they shape the landscape according to their cultural values, as you can see here in New York City. cities Chinatown. But also, ethnic neighborhoods can be a result of historic discrimination. Like throughout the 20th century, local laws and cultural norms of white society dictated where black Americans could and could not live. And though these laws have been struck down, many of those settlement patterns still exist today. And then the fourth way a culture's identity shapes their space can be seen in the presence of indigenous communities. For example, throughout the United States, there are several Indian reservations in which Native American communities live, for the most part, under their own governments. Okay, now when people modify the landscape to live in a place they are engaging in what we call called placemaking. But when people think about that place and fill it with meaning, geographers call this their sense of place. So for example, to build a house out of wood and concrete is to engage in placemaking. But to think about that house as the place where you grew up, and the backyard, and the camping, and the macaroni and cheese, and all that came with it, that is your sense of place. And that sense of place is true for whole cultures when they think about the places where they live. So let's consider three factors that contribute to a people's sense of place, and the first is language. The French, for example, love their language. Speaking French is a big part of what makes France, France. And the only thing worse than an American tourist walking through Paris speaking stupid English is for an American tourist to try to speak French, but speak it badly. Excusez-moi. Où est la tour Eiffel? S'il vous plait. Now on a more regional scale, different dialects of the same language can shape a people's sense of place. Now a dialect is simply a unique way of speaking a particular language. So here in America, the Southern dialect differs from the Northern dialect. Here in the South, we park the car. In the north, they park the car, and in Boston, they park the car. And formal apologies to everyone I just offended with my cartoonish accents. But anyway, those dialects contribute to a people's sense of their place. Second, religion is a significant factor in people's sense of place also. For example, white evangelical Protestants live overwhelmingly in the south and midwest of the United States. And you can tell because those regions have many Baptist and Presbyterian churches which have their own distinct architecture. But Catholics, on the other hand, live overwhelmingly in the northeast, and that landscape is dominated by cathedrals. And then third, ethnicity contributes. to a people's sense of place. For example, the massive Somali immigrant population in Minnesota established a mosque long ago that has become part of their neighborhood's cultural landscape. There they worship, they have a school, they host community events, all of which contribute to their sense of identity as Somalis. So those are the three main factors that contribute to a people's sense of place. And I know that sounds all warm and fuzzy like a nostalgic rainbow and cheese sandwich. But these three factors, language, ethnicity, and religion, while they can bring people together and create a sense of place. place, they can also drive people apart. So if those factors are bringing people together, they're known as centripetal forces. And you can see a good example of religion as a centripetal force in India. Hinduism is a strong force. binding South Asians together, especially after the end of the British colonial period. Or in the case of language, the fact that Spanish is spoken throughout Central America has a binding effect on people from different regions. Or in China, ethnicity acts as a centripetal force because over 90% of the Chinese population is ethnically Han, which binds them together as a people. However, when these three factors drive people apart, they are known as centrifugal forces. So in terms of religion, in some Islamic countries there can often be tension and sometimes violence between two different sects of Islam, the Shiite and the Sunni. Now they're both Muslim, but the differences between these two versions of Islam can sometimes drive them apart. In terms of language as a centrifugal force, you can see this debate here in the United States. Various bills have been introduced into Congress to make English the official language of the United States, and usually this is done because English-speaking Americans fear that their culture is being threatened by the various languages of dominant ethnic minorities. And then ethnicity can also act as a centrifugal force, which can lead to violence as it did in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. There, European colonial powers had long aggravated the tension between the Tutsi and the Hutu ethnic groups in Rwanda. and after the Rwandans had established their independence, the Hutus systematically killed about half a million Tutsis. Okay, we've talked a lot about culture and place and all that, but now let's turn the corner and talk about cultural diffusion. What's that? You want a definition? I got you. Cultural diffusion is the process by which a cultural trait spreads from one place to another. Now, a cultural trait is a characteristic of a cultural hearth, which is the place where people of particular ethnic and cultural identities originate. And so these cultural traits can then diffuse or spread from the cultural hearth to places beyond the cultural hearth. the heart. You feel me? Okay, so two kinds of diffusion you need to know. First is relocation diffusion, which is the spread of cultural traits as people migrate or you know… Relocate. And just for poops and giggles, let's consider the diffusion of religion. Many Latin American and South American countries practice forms of Catholicism, but that's not the religion of their ancient ancestors. So why did it change? Well, relocation diffusion. Like during the age of European imperialism, the Spanish and the Portuguese, for example, came plowing into these lands not only with their swords and guns and nasty germs, but also with their Catholicism. And through large-scale efforts at forcible conversion, many of the indigenous peoples became Catholic and remain so today. Okay, now the second type of cultural diffusion is known as expansion diffusion. and buckle up because this one gets a little more complex. In relocation diffusion, people move away from their cultural hearth and carry their cultural traits with them to a new location. In expansion diffusion, it's the cultural trait itself that spreads while the people to whom it belongs remain in their cultural hearth. Okay, so that's easy enough to understand, but there are three subtypes of expansion diffusion which can be distinguished by their spatial patterns. First is contagious diffusion, which describes a cultural trait spreading rapidly to adjacent populations without regard for class, race, or any other cultural category. It's like the spread of contagious diseases. It's like when that kid named Carl who sits next to you at lunch and has been coughing into his hand and wiping his runny nose hands you a Pringle and asks if you want it. But no Carl, nobody wants your nasty Pringle. But the thing is, Carl's nasties don't care who you are. Whether you're rich or poor, male or female, they'll get in you if you eat that Pringle. So in contagious diffusion, cultural traits spread to other people rapidly, no matter who they are. And a good example would be slang words. Like I still remember the first time a student in my class used the word sus. But then all of a sudden everyone was saying it, like athletes, RTKs, kids, popular folk, all without distinction. Okay, now the second type of expansion diffusion is known as hierarchical diffusion, which describes a top-down spread of a cultural trait. It originates in a person or group or place of power and then spreads downward to those with less power and influence. For example, in the 80s and 90s, hip-hop and rap were purely urban forms of music that originated in New York City and Los Angeles. But now they've spread to suburban and rural areas of the United States and all throughout the world. And then the third type of expansion diffusion is known as stimulus diffusion. This describes what happens when an original cultural trait does not itself spread, but inspires or stimulates the creation or innovation of a new but related cultural trait. For example, over the course of the 20th century, McDonald's restaurants spread throughout the world, which is great because why would you want to go anywhere in the world without experiencing the sinking disappointment of the ubiquitous broken ice cream machine? Anyway, McDonald's signature sandwich is the Big Mac. Two all-beef patties, special sauce, and an evening with diarrhea to evaluate your life choices. But anyway, when McDonald's came to South Asia, Indians were not fans of the two beef patties, since, you know, cows are sacred to them. So McDonald's innovated and introduced the Maharaja Mac, which is chicken-based. Boom! New cultural traits. Okay, now we've seen the various ways that cultural trait spreads, so now let's consider why those traits spread. And for this section we're going to crack open the history books because cultural diffusion always has its roots in historical processes. So first let's begin with diffusion through the processes of colonialism and imperialism, and I reckon we need some definitions first. Imperialism is when a powerful state enacts policies to extend power over another place. Colonialism is when one powerful state establishes settlements in another place for the purpose of economic or political gain. So colonialism is one kind of imperialism, but imperialism includes… includes all sorts of different ways that one state can attempt to dominate another. You mowing what I'm growing? Good, then let's talk about the two waves of European imperialism and how it led to the diffusion of cultural traits. So starting in the late 15th century, which means the 1400s, Europeans began colonizing enormous portions of the Americas. I'll take that and that and that. And one of the most significant results of these massive projects of empire building was the diffusion of cultural traits. For example, the fact that English is largely spoken in North America is evidence of British imperialism. The fact that Portuguese is spoken in Brazil is evidence of Portuguese. imperialism. And the same goes with Spanish and Central America. You get the idea. Now, part and partial to the European imperial venture in the Americas was the metric buttloads of economic gain that could be made on agriculture, specifically crops like tobacco and sugar. And that reality led to an increased demand for enslaved laborers from Africa, resulting in the transatlantic African slave trade in which Africans were the subject of forced migration to the New World. Despite being the subjects of forcible migration, enslaved Africans also brought their cultural traits with them to the Americas, including new foods like okra and religious beliefs and musical instruments native to the Americas. to their homes. Okay, now during the second wave of European imperialism, which occurred in the second half of the 19th century, Europeans turned their attention to dominating Africa. This became known as the Scramble for Africa, and again, in this wave of imperialism, cultural traits were diffused. For example, today in Algeria, the official languages established by their constitution are Arabic and Berber. But some media channels and much of their children's education is carried out in French, which is a testament to the colonial history in that country. Okay, now the second historical cause of diffusion is trade. For example, starting from ancient times, merchants traveled across Afro-Eurasia. along a network of routes known as the Silk Road. And when they traveled, they exchanged ideas. ideas or cultural traits as well as goods. For example, Buddhism was carried by merchants westward and Christianity was carried by merchants eastward. Now with all this mingling of cultures via imperialism and trade, sometimes these encounters led to the emergence of new cultural traits. And I'll give you two examples relating to language. First is the emergence of a lingua franca. Lingua whatca? Lingua franca. It's a single language adopted by many people of different languages that facilitates communication. For example, today English is the global lingua franca, and a big part of this has to do with the export of American movies and television shows and other forms of communication. forms of entertainment, and so the world has adopted English as the main language of commerce and transcultural interaction. Now, a second effect of the diffusion of cultural traits can be the creolization of language. This occurs when two languages are combined to form a new, distinct language, for example, the Afrikaans language spoken in South Africa. Now, South Africa was a Dutch colony starting in the 17th century, and they brought their Dutch language with them. But over time, a new language developed called Afrikaans, which combined elements of Dutch with other European languages and African languages. Okay, now you didn't think the diffusion of cultural traits only occurred in the 18th in the dusty pages of history, did you? You're so crazy. No, diffusion continues to occur today, and we need to consider the contemporary causes of that diffusion. Now, it's important to understand that cultural ideas and practices are socially constructed, which means that they are created by a group of people. And those ideas and practices can change through both small-scale and large-scale processes. On a small scale, the changing of cultural practices is pretty easy to understand. For example, because of the increasing ease of international travel, many people visit other cultures and then bring those experiences home with them. And then in some cases, those experiences experiences alter the traveler's own cultural ideas. But then on a large scale, changes occur because of more complex processes, which we shall consider present. The first process leading to cultural interaction and change is globalization, which is the increasing interweaving and growing dependence of peoples throughout the world on each other, economically, politically, and socially. In other words, because of the process of globalization, we're no longer just citizens of one country or one region. We are global citizens connected to many other places and peoples, which, if you remember from Unit 1, is the result of time-space compression. Now in the twen- 21st century, the speed of globalization has increased quick, fast, and in a hurry thanks to the arrival of digital technologies. And take the rise of the internet, for example. It's given everyone who has access the ability to interact instantly with cultural ideas from all over the dang world. And a good example here is the rise of K-pop. It began as a distinct musical style in South Korea in the early 2000s, but a decade later, viral internet videos of K-pop groups like BTS spread across the world, and now K-pop is a global phenomenon. And now we're All sidestepping right, left to their beat. I'm so hip. Anyway, the second contemporary process leading to cultural interaction and change is increasing... urbanization, which describes the movement of people from rural areas into cities. And at this point, more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities. And that's important for diffusion because people from all different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds live in cities packed tighter than the tattoo ink between Dwayne Johnson's pectorals. And you know, in that situation, that exposes them to cultural ideas different from their own. And so that cultural change occurs in urban areas on both small and large scales. On a small scale, a person might encounter a new cultural trait by moving to a city and hearing a new genre of music or tasting an ethnic food which he or she has never experienced before. But then on a large scale, cities can create various cultural traits that then spread outward. For example, new fashions often originate in New York and Paris, like this lovely piece from a recent New York fashion show. And I'm telling you, it's only a matter of months before this spreads to the rural areas and farmers are harvesting their crops in. But now the question becomes, how do people in the areas outside the city become exposed to these new urban ideas? And I got four ways that my uncle Cletus in rural Georgia is going to hear about cultural ideas coming out of these big cities. First is through the media. For example, Hollywood films are released. The two highest grossing films of all time as of this recording are Avatar and Avengers Endgame. Both of them were conceived and created in Hollywood, and all the ideas contained in those stories spread from there throughout the world. You know Uncle Cletus loves it when Captain America is found worthy to wield Mjolnir. I feel you, Uncle Cletus. Anyway, the second way people outside cities are exposed to urban ideas is through technological change. With the ubiquity of smartphones and social media, people from all over the world are watching the same videos on the same platforms. And then the third way people outside cities are exposed to urban ideas is through politics. For example, For example, the United Nations, which is an international council made up of 193 different nations, condemned Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In essence, the UN is a collective of global cultural ideas and is saying to Russia, this is not how we act in the global community. And then the fourth way people outside cities are exposed to urban ideas is through economics. For example, with the rise of global online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba, people can have access to goods from all over the world just by clicking a button. There are two major effects or results of these various processes of diffusion. You've got cultural conversion. The idea of cultural convergence is that as two or more cultures interact, they adopt one another's cultural traits and ideas, and the outcome is that the two cultures become more similar than different. And a major factor in this process is time-space convergence. Essentially, as transportation technologies advance, the time and space between places shrink. Now that sounds confusing, but it's not really, so think about it this way. Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 36 days, but today we can fly across the Atlantic in 7 hours. So although Europe and North America haven't changed geographical positions, the time it takes to travel between them has significantly shortened. Time, space, Convergence. And the point you need to remember here is that in general, this time-space convergence makes various cultures less distinct as their interaction with one another increases. For example, as English becomes more and more the lingua franca of the world, some cultural leaders worry that indigenous languages are falling out of use and will eventually disappear. The second effect of global diffusion of culture is the opposite, namely cultural divergence. Here, the exact same process that brings cultures together and makes them more alike can also make them more distinct. For example, the large Amish population of the American Northeast has been exposed to all the new cultures. new technologies we've already mentioned. But instead of adopting them and surrendering the cultural traits that make them unique, they have rejected those technologies in order to uphold their own cultural traditions. Like you see Amish families going down the road on their horse and buggy and you're like, Have they heard of cars? Like, they've heard of cars, right? Yeah, they have, but in order to uphold their distinct cultural traditions, they're sticking with their horses and buggies. Okay, now we've been talking about the diffusion of cultural traits in general, but now we need to look at the diffusion of two cultural traits at the heart of a people's sense of themselves, namely language and religion. And just for poops and giggles, let's start with the diffusion of language. Now to understand this, you need to know how languages are categorized, and we'll go from biggest to smallest categories. First is the language family, which is the largest categorization of related languages. All the languages in the family share a common ancestral language, which no longer exists. For example, the most well-known language family is the Indo-European language. It includes most of the languages of Europe and South and Southwest Asia. So, languages as different sounding as German and Hindi after close inspection have many similarities and thus belong to the same language family. And what you're seeing here is a language family chart that visually represents how these languages have diffused over time. Then the second smaller category of languages is the language branch. As languages develop from the same family, they branch out and separate. And each branch has similarities in grammar and syntax, but But the speakers cannot understand languages from other branches. Hello. Bonjour. Say what now? So what you're looking at here is the Romantic language branch, whose origin language was Latin. And then from Latin, you get French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. Within this branch, speakers of these languages can understand a good deal of what the others are saying. For example, if you speak Spanish and you're lost in Lisbon, Portugal, you're probably going to be okay because there's a lot of overlap between Spanish and Portuguese. But then you've got the Germanic branch, which includes German, English, Dutch, etc. Again, speakers within this branch can understand some of what the others are saying. But the thing to remember is... is that there's very little understanding between the branches. What I mean is that the... Both of these branches have a common Indo-European source. German speakers cannot understand Spanish speakers naturally and vice versa. And then the smallest category here includes individual languages and dialects. For example, both citizens of Spain and Mexico speak Spanish, but they have different dialects. In Spain, Z's and S's are mostly pronounced as TH, whereas in Mexican Spanish they are pronounced with an S sound. So this is the word for hug in Spanish. If you're in Mexico, you'll ask for an abrazo. But if you're in Spain, you'll ask for an abratho. And look, I don't care how you say it. I'll take the hug regardless. Okay, that's language, and now let's turn the corner and consider how religion diffuses from cultural hearts. So all major religions have distinct places of origin, and if they diffuse, they will spread from that place. For example, Christianity originated in Israel 2,000 years ago, and from there spread across most of the world. Or take Islam. It began on the Arabian Peninsula and now has become the world's second largest religion after Christianity. But not all religions spread so easily. Ultimately, a key factor in determining how widely a religion will spread is impacted by the religion's practices and belief systems, and there are two key factors that affect categories of religions you need to know. First, universalizing religions. These are religions that appeal to people of a wide variety of cultures. And here you've got Christianity and Islam and Buddhism and Sikhism and others. And these are considered universalizing religions because each of those belief systems can be planted and grow in any culture in the world. So Christianity in Kenya will retain the essentials of Christian doctrine, but the Church will take on the characteristics of Kenyan culture. And the same with Islam or Buddhism. And so by nature, universalizing religions lend themselves to diffusion, typically by relocation and expansion diffusion. So if missionaries go to far-off places seeking new converts, that's relocation. But something like the Great Awakening in the 18th century swept many Americans into Christianity through expansion diffusion, in that case, contagious diffusion. But the other category of religion, namely ethnic religions, they don't spread as well. And that's because these religions are tied very closely to particular ethnic groups in particular regions, for example Hinduism or Judaism or Shinto. Now let's just look at Hinduism. Like one of the core Hindu doctrines organizes society into various levels called castes. So it would be impossible to plant Hinduism in a culture that would would reject the caste system. Therefore, ethnic religions tend to remain close to the cultural hearth, and whatever diffusion does occur typically is through relocation diffusion. Okay, now the last thing on this topic. Both diffusion of languages and religions can be visually represented on maps, charts, or toponyms, which is just a fancy word that means the name of a place. We've already seen this in maps and charts, but how do toponyms indicate religious diffusion? Well, one of the main ways is by noticing how toponyms change. For example, Constantinople was the center of Eastern Christianity and named for the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine. But in 14- In 1953, Muslims in the Ottoman Empire went ahead and sacked it and renamed it Istanbul. So, changing toponyms, evidence of religious diffusion. Okay, now this is the last section of the unit, stick with me here. All of these meetings of different cultures and diffusion of languages and religions can have four basic outcomes or effects. The first effect is called acculturation. This is when a people in a culture adopt some traits of another culture while they simultaneously maintain their own cultural traits. For example, immigrants may learn the language of the receiving country while speaking their native language at home among their family. The second effect is assimilation. assume almost all of the characteristics of the culture around them, and there are two flavors of assimilation you need to know. First is forced assimilation. For example, policies in 19th century America gave Native Americans the choice to either leave their lands or assimilate to American culture. This meant that they had to speak English, dress in American attire, be educated in the American tradition, etc. But the other flavor is voluntary assimilation. For example, Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19th century endured harsh anti-immigrant sentiment among native-born Americans. So many of them assimilated to American culture in order to be more accepted and be more eligible Now the third effect is called syncretism, which is when two or more cultural traits blend together to create a new cultural trait. For example, in the 16th century, Africans melded their traditional indigenous religions with the Christianity of the Europeans. And in doing so, they combined Christianity's major doctrines with beliefs about the African spirit world and the importance of dance and movement. And then finally, the fourth effect of the diffusion of culture is multiculturalism. And this is when members of a cultural group don't fully assimilate but still maintain their own cultural identities while other groups around them do the same. And this reality is especially prevalent in the Middle East. prevalent in urban areas. And that's it. If you want to keep reviewing in more detail, go ahead and click this playlist and check out all my videos for Unit 3. Also, click here to get my AP Hug Heimler Review Guide, which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May. And I'll catch you on the flip-flop. Heimler out.

It wants to make you fail. But that is not going to happen. If you get everything I'm about to say in this video, then you will show up to that exam, punch it in the throat, and then wait till it's gasping for air on the floor, and then deliberately hurt its feelings.

So if that's what you want, I'm Steve Heimler, and I am here to help you. So if you're ready to get them brain cows milked, let's get to it. Now, this unit is all about culture.

what it is, how it affects human environments, and how it spreads. So let's begin in the beginning. What is... culture. Now by definition, culture refers to the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors passed down by a society.

Now some of these things are more obvious, like language. Like here I am flapping my mouth hole in English because it's part of my culture. But then other parts of culture are less obvious. So think of culture kind of like an iceberg.

Above the water, the cultural iceberg includes everything you can easily observe about a society, you know, their language, their clothing, their behavior, the way they use their land, their built environment, etc. But then below the water is everything about a culture that is more difficult to understand. to observe, like a group's thought patterns and their cultural rules. And speaking of icebergs, I know you want to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface is hard work, studying, practicing the skills of the course, crying yourself to sleep at night, etc.

If you have no idea how to get that A and earn that 5, then you should absolutely click the link in the description and grab my AP Human Geography Heimler Review Guide. It is the fastest way to study, and it's got exclusive videos for all units, practice questions, a practice exam, and a Heimler AI bot that can help you with any question. question that you have.

It is oh so tasty, so check it out and just maybe you won't have to go to bed weeping into your pillow. And now back to the cultural iceberg. Okay, so look at these two women.

This one American and this one Saudi Arabian. Now to be clear, not all American women dress like this and not all Saudi Arabian women dress like this. There are regional and cultural variations, but this is just one example. The tip of the iceberg tells us what's obvious, that these two women dress differently. But to understand why they're dressed differently, you've got to look at the giant honking hind parts of that iceberg below the water, which tells us about the difference.

different values of their culture. So she might dress like this because she lives in a patriarchal culture, which just means that men call all the shots, and which religious beliefs teach that women must present themselves modestly. And then she might dress like that because she lives in a culture that values liberty and individual choice.

So basically, everything that lives up here on the tip of the iceberg we call cultural traits. And a trait is something that is obvious to your eyeballs. For example, I am bald, bearded, and gap-toothed.

And devastatingly handsome. All very obvious things. But on a broader level, cultural traits fall into three big categories.

First, First, food preferences tell us a lot about a society's culture. For example, much of the food in Singapore is heavily influenced by Southern Chinese food and that's because a huge portion of their population is of Southern Chinese heritage. So by understanding their food, we can understand that society's history. Second, architecture can reveal a society's culture.

For example, many suburbs across America look relatively the same, which is an indication of a shared national aspect of American culture. But the architecture in some regions is a reflection of more local tastes, like adobe homes in the American Southwest in which they make use of local clay and other materials. building materials. And third, land use shows the society's culture as well.

For example, people in Nevada build houses with grass in their front and backyard, which to use the technical term is, you know, weird. I mean, Nevada is a stinking desert. So why did they do it?

Well, because many of the Americans who originally populated the Southwest came from the East Coast where grass was abundant and they wanted to keep it out there in their new home. So, you know, you do you, boo. So the point is each culture around the world has unique cultural traits that are rooted in unique cultural values.

There are two basic attitudes. toward those cultural differences that you need to know. First is cultural relativism, which is the evaluation of another culture by that culture's own standards. So cultural relativists look at cultures different from theirs and embrace them because they understand that cultures arise from distinct beliefs, just as their own culture does.

So no judgy here, just a warm cultural hug. But the second attitude is less like a hug and more like a punch in the cultural c— kidneys, and we call it ethnocentrism. This is the evaluation of another culture by a group's own cultural standards. In other words, my own culture is awesome, yours is different from my awesomeness, so your culture is therefore stupid and weird. And often accompanying ethnocentrism is xenophobia, which is a fear or a dislike of foreigners who possess different cultural traits.

Okay, so we've established that every people group on earth has their own distinct culture. And now we need to consider how a people's culture shapes the land on which they live. And for that, let me introduce you to what's known as a cultural landscape, which describes...

how people modify a physical landscape in a way that reflects their culture. And there are five big categories that describe how people do that. First, cultural landscapes are shaped through agricultural and industrial practices. Agricultural practices refer to farming.

So cornfields in the Midwestern United States or terraced rice paddies in Southeast Asia are distinctive agricultural practices in those areas. And when you see pictures of each of these ways of modifying the land, there's a distinct cultural feel to them. Industrial practices, on the other hand, include all the ways people engage in economic activity, which also leaves a mark on their physical environment.

Now in some cases that mark is pretty generic and leads to a sense of placelessness. For example, if you're standing on a corner with a gas station and a McDonald's, that is an indication of human economic activity, but you could be anywhere. Those two kinds of establishments exist in like a gajillion other places throughout the world, so there's not anything really, you know, distinct about it.

In other cases, the economic mark is more reflective of the regional culture. For example, here are a bunch of row houses in Baltimore, which are distinct to that. region because Baltimore was an industrial center in the 19th century and these row houses were constructed for all the rural people flooding into the city to find work in the industrial sector.

As part of their history and their identity, which is why they continue to build them today. Okay, now the second category of influence on cultural landscapes is religion. People in many religions construct buildings which reflect their faith.

So Christians build churches, Muslims build mosques, Hindus build temples, and Jews build synagogues, all of which create sacred spaces and a landscape. In other words, believers build these structures to communicate that this place is different, or, you know, other than any other place, and that's a huge marker of cultural values. Now the third category of influence on cultural landscapes include linguistic characteristics, which have to do with language. Here you can think about the signs you've seen in various places.

For example, here in New York City's Chinatown, restaurants and stores have signs written both in English and in Chinese, which tells you a lot about the people who live there. Now the fourth category of influence on cultural landscapes is evidence of sequent occupants. And those are two words that make absolutely no sense to you, so let me explain.

Sequent is related to sequence, which is, you know, one thing after another. And then occupants is related to occupy. So, sequent occupants refers to the cultural marks left on the landscape by each group of people that have occupied a place over the course of history.

For example, look at this. It's a structure known as the Dome of the Rock, which is a holy site for Muslims. But then zoom out a little and look at its foundation. This is the Jewish Temple Mount, which is the remaining foundation of the first century Jewish Temple, which is the holy place for Jews.

But the Dome of the Rock was built in the 11th century. So each of these groups of people have left a cultural imprint on this site over time. That is sequent occupants. Now the.

The fifth category of influence on cultural landscapes is the presence of traditional and postmodern architecture. Traditional architecture means that the buildings in a place are constructed with the local materials available to build and reflect the needs of the local people. For example, the Nipah hut in rural Philippines is framed mainly of bamboo, and its roof is made of nipa leaves which grow natively in that area.

Many Filipinos consider this hut to be like a symbol of their national identity, and so this traditional architecture tells us a lot about who they are and what they value. But then there's postmodern architecture which arose in the 1960s as a form of cultural a reaction against the modernist style. And in a nutshell, modernist architecture emphasized function over form, which just means that what gets done in that building is more important than how it looks. And how it looks is about as bland as a khaki jumpsuit. But then postmodern architecture emphasized form over function, which means that how the building looks is just as important as what gets done inside.

In other words, postmodern architecture is more culturally expressive. For example, here's the Guggenheim Museum in Balboa, Spain. Its function is to display art, but the building itself is also a work of art. Okay, now we've looked at the features of cultural landscapes and how they reflect the values of the people who live in them, but now let's consider it from the other side. How do people's values and society's values affect the way they occupy a space?

Let's consider three ways to look at this. First, a culture's attitude towards ethnicity is a big factor in how people shape their space. And ethnicity refers to the cultural traits that they share that distinguish them from other groups.

And in many cases, the distinct markers of ethnicity can't be seen with the eye, but they can be smelled and heard and tasted. For example, the pass by an urban street with a significant Indian ethnic enclave, which is just a cluster of ethnically similar people living in the same place, is to smell the food of their native culture, specifically their lovely and oh-so-tasty curry. And in that way, that place is marked by their culture.

Second, attitudes about gender affect cultural landscapes. For example, in Kenya, which is a more traditional society, women lack property rights, and so the land is owned by the men and then passed down to sons, even though women basically run the farms. Or go to India, and you'll find that in some places, public parks are segregated by gender. You've got You've got men only and women only. Additionally, cultural landscapes are affected by a society's attitude towards women in the workplace.

For example, in societies where women are more encouraged to work, like Europe and the United States, you can see a growing number of childcare facilities being built both within office buildings and around them. Okay, the third way a culture's identity affects the way they occupy space is with the presence of ethnic neighborhoods. Often when migrants reach their receiving society, they find each other and they live together in a concentrated area.

And over time, they shape the landscape according to their cultural values, as you can see here in New York City. cities Chinatown. But also, ethnic neighborhoods can be a result of historic discrimination.

Like throughout the 20th century, local laws and cultural norms of white society dictated where black Americans could and could not live. And though these laws have been struck down, many of those settlement patterns still exist today. And then the fourth way a culture's identity shapes their space can be seen in the presence of indigenous communities.

For example, throughout the United States, there are several Indian reservations in which Native American communities live, for the most part, under their own governments. Okay, now when people modify the landscape to live in a place they are engaging in what we call called placemaking. But when people think about that place and fill it with meaning, geographers call this their sense of place.

So for example, to build a house out of wood and concrete is to engage in placemaking. But to think about that house as the place where you grew up, and the backyard, and the camping, and the macaroni and cheese, and all that came with it, that is your sense of place. And that sense of place is true for whole cultures when they think about the places where they live.

So let's consider three factors that contribute to a people's sense of place, and the first is language. The French, for example, love their language. Speaking French is a big part of what makes France, France. And the only thing worse than an American tourist walking through Paris speaking stupid English is for an American tourist to try to speak French, but speak it badly. Excusez-moi.

Où est la tour Eiffel? S'il vous plait. Now on a more regional scale, different dialects of the same language can shape a people's sense of place.

Now a dialect is simply a unique way of speaking a particular language. So here in America, the Southern dialect differs from the Northern dialect. Here in the South, we park the car. In the north, they park the car, and in Boston, they park the car. And formal apologies to everyone I just offended with my cartoonish accents.

But anyway, those dialects contribute to a people's sense of their place. Second, religion is a significant factor in people's sense of place also. For example, white evangelical Protestants live overwhelmingly in the south and midwest of the United States. And you can tell because those regions have many Baptist and Presbyterian churches which have their own distinct architecture. But Catholics, on the other hand, live overwhelmingly in the northeast, and that landscape is dominated by cathedrals.

And then third, ethnicity contributes. to a people's sense of place. For example, the massive Somali immigrant population in Minnesota established a mosque long ago that has become part of their neighborhood's cultural landscape.

There they worship, they have a school, they host community events, all of which contribute to their sense of identity as Somalis. So those are the three main factors that contribute to a people's sense of place. And I know that sounds all warm and fuzzy like a nostalgic rainbow and cheese sandwich.

But these three factors, language, ethnicity, and religion, while they can bring people together and create a sense of place. place, they can also drive people apart. So if those factors are bringing people together, they're known as centripetal forces.

And you can see a good example of religion as a centripetal force in India. Hinduism is a strong force. binding South Asians together, especially after the end of the British colonial period.

Or in the case of language, the fact that Spanish is spoken throughout Central America has a binding effect on people from different regions. Or in China, ethnicity acts as a centripetal force because over 90% of the Chinese population is ethnically Han, which binds them together as a people. However, when these three factors drive people apart, they are known as centrifugal forces. So in terms of religion, in some Islamic countries there can often be tension and sometimes violence between two different sects of Islam, the Shiite and the Sunni. Now they're both Muslim, but the differences between these two versions of Islam can sometimes drive them apart.

In terms of language as a centrifugal force, you can see this debate here in the United States. Various bills have been introduced into Congress to make English the official language of the United States, and usually this is done because English-speaking Americans fear that their culture is being threatened by the various languages of dominant ethnic minorities. And then ethnicity can also act as a centrifugal force, which can lead to violence as it did in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. There, European colonial powers had long aggravated the tension between the Tutsi and the Hutu ethnic groups in Rwanda. and after the Rwandans had established their independence, the Hutus systematically killed about half a million Tutsis. Okay, we've talked a lot about culture and place and all that, but now let's turn the corner and talk about cultural diffusion.

What's that? You want a definition? I got you.

Cultural diffusion is the process by which a cultural trait spreads from one place to another. Now, a cultural trait is a characteristic of a cultural hearth, which is the place where people of particular ethnic and cultural identities originate. And so these cultural traits can then diffuse or spread from the cultural hearth to places beyond the cultural hearth.

the heart. You feel me? Okay, so two kinds of diffusion you need to know.

First is relocation diffusion, which is the spread of cultural traits as people migrate or you know… Relocate. And just for poops and giggles, let's consider the diffusion of religion. Many Latin American and South American countries practice forms of Catholicism, but that's not the religion of their ancient ancestors.

So why did it change? Well, relocation diffusion. Like during the age of European imperialism, the Spanish and the Portuguese, for example, came plowing into these lands not only with their swords and guns and nasty germs, but also with their Catholicism.

And through large-scale efforts at forcible conversion, many of the indigenous peoples became Catholic and remain so today. Okay, now the second type of cultural diffusion is known as expansion diffusion. and buckle up because this one gets a little more complex. In relocation diffusion, people move away from their cultural hearth and carry their cultural traits with them to a new location. In expansion diffusion, it's the cultural trait itself that spreads while the people to whom it belongs remain in their cultural hearth.

Okay, so that's easy enough to understand, but there are three subtypes of expansion diffusion which can be distinguished by their spatial patterns. First is contagious diffusion, which describes a cultural trait spreading rapidly to adjacent populations without regard for class, race, or any other cultural category. It's like the spread of contagious diseases. It's like when that kid named Carl who sits next to you at lunch and has been coughing into his hand and wiping his runny nose hands you a Pringle and asks if you want it.

But no Carl, nobody wants your nasty Pringle. But the thing is, Carl's nasties don't care who you are. Whether you're rich or poor, male or female, they'll get in you if you eat that Pringle. So in contagious diffusion, cultural traits spread to other people rapidly, no matter who they are.

And a good example would be slang words. Like I still remember the first time a student in my class used the word sus. But then all of a sudden everyone was saying it, like athletes, RTKs, kids, popular folk, all without distinction. Okay, now the second type of expansion diffusion is known as hierarchical diffusion, which describes a top-down spread of a cultural trait.

It originates in a person or group or place of power and then spreads downward to those with less power and influence. For example, in the 80s and 90s, hip-hop and rap were purely urban forms of music that originated in New York City and Los Angeles. But now they've spread to suburban and rural areas of the United States and all throughout the world. And then the third type of expansion diffusion is known as stimulus diffusion.

This describes what happens when an original cultural trait does not itself spread, but inspires or stimulates the creation or innovation of a new but related cultural trait. For example, over the course of the 20th century, McDonald's restaurants spread throughout the world, which is great because why would you want to go anywhere in the world without experiencing the sinking disappointment of the ubiquitous broken ice cream machine? Anyway, McDonald's signature sandwich is the Big Mac.

Two all-beef patties, special sauce, and an evening with diarrhea to evaluate your life choices. But anyway, when McDonald's came to South Asia, Indians were not fans of the two beef patties, since, you know, cows are sacred to them. So McDonald's innovated and introduced the Maharaja Mac, which is chicken-based.

Boom! New cultural traits. Okay, now we've seen the various ways that cultural trait spreads, so now let's consider why those traits spread. And for this section we're going to crack open the history books because cultural diffusion always has its roots in historical processes.

So first let's begin with diffusion through the processes of colonialism and imperialism, and I reckon we need some definitions first. Imperialism is when a powerful state enacts policies to extend power over another place. Colonialism is when one powerful state establishes settlements in another place for the purpose of economic or political gain.

So colonialism is one kind of imperialism, but imperialism includes… includes all sorts of different ways that one state can attempt to dominate another. You mowing what I'm growing? Good, then let's talk about the two waves of European imperialism and how it led to the diffusion of cultural traits.

So starting in the late 15th century, which means the 1400s, Europeans began colonizing enormous portions of the Americas. I'll take that and that and that. And one of the most significant results of these massive projects of empire building was the diffusion of cultural traits. For example, the fact that English is largely spoken in North America is evidence of British imperialism.

The fact that Portuguese is spoken in Brazil is evidence of Portuguese. imperialism. And the same goes with Spanish and Central America. You get the idea. Now, part and partial to the European imperial venture in the Americas was the metric buttloads of economic gain that could be made on agriculture, specifically crops like tobacco and sugar.

And that reality led to an increased demand for enslaved laborers from Africa, resulting in the transatlantic African slave trade in which Africans were the subject of forced migration to the New World. Despite being the subjects of forcible migration, enslaved Africans also brought their cultural traits with them to the Americas, including new foods like okra and religious beliefs and musical instruments native to the Americas. to their homes.

Okay, now during the second wave of European imperialism, which occurred in the second half of the 19th century, Europeans turned their attention to dominating Africa. This became known as the Scramble for Africa, and again, in this wave of imperialism, cultural traits were diffused. For example, today in Algeria, the official languages established by their constitution are Arabic and Berber. But some media channels and much of their children's education is carried out in French, which is a testament to the colonial history in that country. Okay, now the second historical cause of diffusion is trade.

For example, starting from ancient times, merchants traveled across Afro-Eurasia. along a network of routes known as the Silk Road. And when they traveled, they exchanged ideas. ideas or cultural traits as well as goods. For example, Buddhism was carried by merchants westward and Christianity was carried by merchants eastward.

Now with all this mingling of cultures via imperialism and trade, sometimes these encounters led to the emergence of new cultural traits. And I'll give you two examples relating to language. First is the emergence of a lingua franca.

Lingua whatca? Lingua franca. It's a single language adopted by many people of different languages that facilitates communication. For example, today English is the global lingua franca, and a big part of this has to do with the export of American movies and television shows and other forms of communication. forms of entertainment, and so the world has adopted English as the main language of commerce and transcultural interaction.

Now, a second effect of the diffusion of cultural traits can be the creolization of language. This occurs when two languages are combined to form a new, distinct language, for example, the Afrikaans language spoken in South Africa. Now, South Africa was a Dutch colony starting in the 17th century, and they brought their Dutch language with them.

But over time, a new language developed called Afrikaans, which combined elements of Dutch with other European languages and African languages. Okay, now you didn't think the diffusion of cultural traits only occurred in the 18th in the dusty pages of history, did you? You're so crazy. No, diffusion continues to occur today, and we need to consider the contemporary causes of that diffusion.

Now, it's important to understand that cultural ideas and practices are socially constructed, which means that they are created by a group of people. And those ideas and practices can change through both small-scale and large-scale processes. On a small scale, the changing of cultural practices is pretty easy to understand.

For example, because of the increasing ease of international travel, many people visit other cultures and then bring those experiences home with them. And then in some cases, those experiences experiences alter the traveler's own cultural ideas. But then on a large scale, changes occur because of more complex processes, which we shall consider present.

The first process leading to cultural interaction and change is globalization, which is the increasing interweaving and growing dependence of peoples throughout the world on each other, economically, politically, and socially. In other words, because of the process of globalization, we're no longer just citizens of one country or one region. We are global citizens connected to many other places and peoples, which, if you remember from Unit 1, is the result of time-space compression. Now in the twen- 21st century, the speed of globalization has increased quick, fast, and in a hurry thanks to the arrival of digital technologies.

And take the rise of the internet, for example. It's given everyone who has access the ability to interact instantly with cultural ideas from all over the dang world. And a good example here is the rise of K-pop.

It began as a distinct musical style in South Korea in the early 2000s, but a decade later, viral internet videos of K-pop groups like BTS spread across the world, and now K-pop is a global phenomenon. And now we're All sidestepping right, left to their beat. I'm so hip.

Anyway, the second contemporary process leading to cultural interaction and change is increasing... urbanization, which describes the movement of people from rural areas into cities. And at this point, more than 50% of the world's population lives in cities. And that's important for diffusion because people from all different cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds live in cities packed tighter than the tattoo ink between Dwayne Johnson's pectorals. And you know, in that situation, that exposes them to cultural ideas different from their own.

And so that cultural change occurs in urban areas on both small and large scales. On a small scale, a person might encounter a new cultural trait by moving to a city and hearing a new genre of music or tasting an ethnic food which he or she has never experienced before. But then on a large scale, cities can create various cultural traits that then spread outward.

For example, new fashions often originate in New York and Paris, like this lovely piece from a recent New York fashion show. And I'm telling you, it's only a matter of months before this spreads to the rural areas and farmers are harvesting their crops in. But now the question becomes, how do people in the areas outside the city become exposed to these new urban ideas? And I got four ways that my uncle Cletus in rural Georgia is going to hear about cultural ideas coming out of these big cities.

First is through the media. For example, Hollywood films are released. The two highest grossing films of all time as of this recording are Avatar and Avengers Endgame.

Both of them were conceived and created in Hollywood, and all the ideas contained in those stories spread from there throughout the world. You know Uncle Cletus loves it when Captain America is found worthy to wield Mjolnir. I feel you, Uncle Cletus.

Anyway, the second way people outside cities are exposed to urban ideas is through technological change. With the ubiquity of smartphones and social media, people from all over the world are watching the same videos on the same platforms. And then the third way people outside cities are exposed to urban ideas is through politics. For example, For example, the United Nations, which is an international council made up of 193 different nations, condemned Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

In essence, the UN is a collective of global cultural ideas and is saying to Russia, this is not how we act in the global community. And then the fourth way people outside cities are exposed to urban ideas is through economics. For example, with the rise of global online retailers like Amazon and Alibaba, people can have access to goods from all over the world just by clicking a button. There are two major effects or results of these various processes of diffusion.

You've got cultural conversion. The idea of cultural convergence is that as two or more cultures interact, they adopt one another's cultural traits and ideas, and the outcome is that the two cultures become more similar than different. And a major factor in this process is time-space convergence. Essentially, as transportation technologies advance, the time and space between places shrink.

Now that sounds confusing, but it's not really, so think about it this way. Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic in 36 days, but today we can fly across the Atlantic in 7 hours. So although Europe and North America haven't changed geographical positions, the time it takes to travel between them has significantly shortened.

Time, space, Convergence. And the point you need to remember here is that in general, this time-space convergence makes various cultures less distinct as their interaction with one another increases. For example, as English becomes more and more the lingua franca of the world, some cultural leaders worry that indigenous languages are falling out of use and will eventually disappear. The second effect of global diffusion of culture is the opposite, namely cultural divergence.

Here, the exact same process that brings cultures together and makes them more alike can also make them more distinct. For example, the large Amish population of the American Northeast has been exposed to all the new cultures. new technologies we've already mentioned.

But instead of adopting them and surrendering the cultural traits that make them unique, they have rejected those technologies in order to uphold their own cultural traditions. Like you see Amish families going down the road on their horse and buggy and you're like, Have they heard of cars? Like, they've heard of cars, right?

Yeah, they have, but in order to uphold their distinct cultural traditions, they're sticking with their horses and buggies. Okay, now we've been talking about the diffusion of cultural traits in general, but now we need to look at the diffusion of two cultural traits at the heart of a people's sense of themselves, namely language and religion. And just for poops and giggles, let's start with the diffusion of language. Now to understand this, you need to know how languages are categorized, and we'll go from biggest to smallest categories. First is the language family, which is the largest categorization of related languages.

All the languages in the family share a common ancestral language, which no longer exists. For example, the most well-known language family is the Indo-European language. It includes most of the languages of Europe and South and Southwest Asia.

So, languages as different sounding as German and Hindi after close inspection have many similarities and thus belong to the same language family. And what you're seeing here is a language family chart that visually represents how these languages have diffused over time. Then the second smaller category of languages is the language branch.

As languages develop from the same family, they branch out and separate. And each branch has similarities in grammar and syntax, but But the speakers cannot understand languages from other branches. Hello. Bonjour.

Say what now? So what you're looking at here is the Romantic language branch, whose origin language was Latin. And then from Latin, you get French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.

Within this branch, speakers of these languages can understand a good deal of what the others are saying. For example, if you speak Spanish and you're lost in Lisbon, Portugal, you're probably going to be okay because there's a lot of overlap between Spanish and Portuguese. But then you've got the Germanic branch, which includes German, English, Dutch, etc.

Again, speakers within this branch can understand some of what the others are saying. But the thing to remember is... is that there's very little understanding between the branches.

What I mean is that the... Both of these branches have a common Indo-European source. German speakers cannot understand Spanish speakers naturally and vice versa. And then the smallest category here includes individual languages and dialects. For example, both citizens of Spain and Mexico speak Spanish, but they have different dialects.

In Spain, Z's and S's are mostly pronounced as TH, whereas in Mexican Spanish they are pronounced with an S sound. So this is the word for hug in Spanish. If you're in Mexico, you'll ask for an abrazo. But if you're in Spain, you'll ask for an abratho. And look, I don't care how you say it.

I'll take the hug regardless. Okay, that's language, and now let's turn the corner and consider how religion diffuses from cultural hearts. So all major religions have distinct places of origin, and if they diffuse, they will spread from that place.

For example, Christianity originated in Israel 2,000 years ago, and from there spread across most of the world. Or take Islam. It began on the Arabian Peninsula and now has become the world's second largest religion after Christianity.

But not all religions spread so easily. Ultimately, a key factor in determining how widely a religion will spread is impacted by the religion's practices and belief systems, and there are two key factors that affect categories of religions you need to know. First, universalizing religions. These are religions that appeal to people of a wide variety of cultures.

And here you've got Christianity and Islam and Buddhism and Sikhism and others. And these are considered universalizing religions because each of those belief systems can be planted and grow in any culture in the world. So Christianity in Kenya will retain the essentials of Christian doctrine, but the Church will take on the characteristics of Kenyan culture.

And the same with Islam or Buddhism. And so by nature, universalizing religions lend themselves to diffusion, typically by relocation and expansion diffusion. So if missionaries go to far-off places seeking new converts, that's relocation. But something like the Great Awakening in the 18th century swept many Americans into Christianity through expansion diffusion, in that case, contagious diffusion.

But the other category of religion, namely ethnic religions, they don't spread as well. And that's because these religions are tied very closely to particular ethnic groups in particular regions, for example Hinduism or Judaism or Shinto. Now let's just look at Hinduism. Like one of the core Hindu doctrines organizes society into various levels called castes. So it would be impossible to plant Hinduism in a culture that would would reject the caste system.

Therefore, ethnic religions tend to remain close to the cultural hearth, and whatever diffusion does occur typically is through relocation diffusion. Okay, now the last thing on this topic. Both diffusion of languages and religions can be visually represented on maps, charts, or toponyms, which is just a fancy word that means the name of a place.

We've already seen this in maps and charts, but how do toponyms indicate religious diffusion? Well, one of the main ways is by noticing how toponyms change. For example, Constantinople was the center of Eastern Christianity and named for the first Christian emperor of Rome, Constantine. But in 14- In 1953, Muslims in the Ottoman Empire went ahead and sacked it and renamed it Istanbul. So, changing toponyms, evidence of religious diffusion.

Okay, now this is the last section of the unit, stick with me here. All of these meetings of different cultures and diffusion of languages and religions can have four basic outcomes or effects. The first effect is called acculturation.

This is when a people in a culture adopt some traits of another culture while they simultaneously maintain their own cultural traits. For example, immigrants may learn the language of the receiving country while speaking their native language at home among their family. The second effect is assimilation. assume almost all of the characteristics of the culture around them, and there are two flavors of assimilation you need to know. First is forced assimilation.

For example, policies in 19th century America gave Native Americans the choice to either leave their lands or assimilate to American culture. This meant that they had to speak English, dress in American attire, be educated in the American tradition, etc. But the other flavor is voluntary assimilation.

For example, Irish immigrants to the United States in the 19th century endured harsh anti-immigrant sentiment among native-born Americans. So many of them assimilated to American culture in order to be more accepted and be more eligible Now the third effect is called syncretism, which is when two or more cultural traits blend together to create a new cultural trait. For example, in the 16th century, Africans melded their traditional indigenous religions with the Christianity of the Europeans. And in doing so, they combined Christianity's major doctrines with beliefs about the African spirit world and the importance of dance and movement. And then finally, the fourth effect of the diffusion of culture is multiculturalism.

And this is when members of a cultural group don't fully assimilate but still maintain their own cultural identities while other groups around them do the same. And this reality is especially prevalent in the Middle East. prevalent in urban areas.

And that's it. If you want to keep reviewing in more detail, go ahead and click this playlist and check out all my videos for Unit 3. Also, click here to get my AP Hug Heimler Review Guide, which has everything you need to get an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May. And I'll catch you on the flip-flop.

Heimler out.

Transcript for:Exploring Culture and Diffusion in Geography

Transcript for:
Exploring Culture and Diffusion in Geography