The endless variety of cultures is what makes our lives exciting and worth living. Imagine how we would be without music, art dance, language, storytelling, religion, food, and films. What kind of communication would we have? What are the things we would believe? What is the best way to have authentic identities?
Culture is inextricably linked with geography. Everywhere people go, their culture comes along. Folks leave cultural objects in the areas they establish, creating a unique cultural landscape. Learn more about the ways that culture geography affects not only us but the entire world.
Culture in Human Geography
Cultural artifacts include religion and language, as well as artifacts such as movies and books, and socio-facts like gender identity. Cultural influences in the creation of identity, meaning, and a sense of continuity within the human community.
In the human geographic system, cultural diversity isn’t only restricted to Cultural Geography. Economic geography acknowledges as one of the main reasons that economic activity varies from one location to another is the cultural differences. Political geography draws much of its knowledge from the study of World Cultural Geography, considering that a lot of questions of politics that concern borders, ethnicity, and territories are the result of cultural distinctions. Agriculture geography also has its roots in the culture of the region, and in the case of population geography, the origins of migration tend to be cultural.
So, Cultural Geography could be considered to be an essential aspect of human geography. This is because to fully comprehend the structure of a society it is essential to consider what ethnicity they belong to, what languages are spoken as well as what religious beliefs are practiced. Without World Cultural Geography, it’s almost impossible to comprehend even simple information like income or population. Therefore, you’ll see that in virtually every geographic study the importance of culture is crucial in understanding.
Introduction to Cultural Geography
Let’s examine the fundamentals of this crucial area.
History of Cultural Geography
US Cultural Geography developed from Carl Sauer’s denial of Environmental Determinism (more on this below). Sauer (1889-1975) was an anthropologist at the University of California Berkeley and was known as considered the “godfather” of the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography. His students, as well as their students, spread all the geographies departments in the US dispersing “Sauerian” World Cultural Geography far and wide.
Sauer was a proponent of studying the changing landscapes of cultural significance to better understand the impact that society leaves on the natural landscape. His most famous work on this subject was “The Morphology of Landscape’ (1925).
In the past few decades, geographers of culture who practice what is now known as “new Cultural Geography” have looked all over the world for ideas to understand the landscape of culture in ever more complicated and diverse ways. Marxism and feminist theories and cultural studies, poststructural philosophy, and a myriad of other theories have been utilized to transform the field of World Cultural Geography into a theoretical discipline that is as diversified as the culture itself. Within this array of subjects and methods, certain similarities stand out.
Basic Concepts in Cultural Geography
Below are a few commonly-used geographical terms that geographers of cultural origin employ.
Place
In the field of Cultural Geography, locations are places that humans give meaning to. The meaning of these places is commonly referred to as”the sense of place.” Sense of Place.
Cultural Identity
Each subculture or culture has distinct characteristics that make distinct identities. People can be a part of different identities. The cultural identities change over time and are passed on through generations.
Cultural Landscape
It is influenced by the human cultural heritage. It is characterized by the imprints of artifacts, artifacts, and other socio-facts left by the different people who have lived in every single place that makes up it. The most popular type of analysis used in culture includes the landscape of culture.
The cultural landscape was created from natural landscapes by a group of people. The agent is culture and the natural landscape acts as the media. It is a result.1
Patterns and Processes
World Cultural Geography is the study of ways in which cultures are organized within space. One example of a cultural structure is the spatial arrangements of people who speak a particular language. One example of a culture-related pattern is the process of diffusion.
Diffusion
A fundamental concept in the field of Cultural Geography, diffusion is a reference to the various ways cultural artifacts and artifacts, and socio-facts are moved from one place to the next.
The relationship between geography and culture
Carl Sauer became the most significant US geographer due to his rebellion against the dominant model which was based on the Environmental Determinism of luminaries like Ellen Churchill Semple (1863-1932) which held The physical environment defines the culture of humans. Instead, he, along with his students, believed that humans are the most powerful force that shapes our physical environment. Sauer believed in possibilism, that is.
There are limitations placed on human activity by the Earth as well as its climate, geology, and other species. However, human culture according to Sauer has had a more profound impact on Earth than people think. Sauer and his students delved into Latin America and other regions in depth to determine and understand the extent of human impact has had in the past and will continue to.
Importance of Cultural Geography
The significance of World Cultural Geography in changing concepts of environmental determinism should not be lost, as it’s still important. Cultural Geography is often concerned with the harmony between human activities with nature and has had a significant impact on fields like urban geography and urban planning.
Many studies of World Cultural Geography examine the ways that people can create resilient rural landscapes over time by shaping the physical landscape while adjusting to natural changes. The view of Cultural Geography is that people aren’t isolated from nature, and are in fact, intertwined with nature, especially in the traditional setting where people take care of the environment, rather than trying to manage or destroy the environment for the sake of profit. Through its Sauerian origins, the concept of World Cultural Geography has had an impact on environmentalism and studies of the environment.
