2.2: Geography of Culture

Chapter 2: Part 1: Geography of Culture

What is culture? When some people speak of culture, they are thinking of high culture (e.g. ballet or opera). Others may think of current, prominent topics (i.e. pop culture). Academic settings, though, are referring to something else. Culture is a learned behavior and a human construct. Culture exists to answer questions. Some of the questions that are answered are philosophical or ideological, for example, “Where did we come from?” or “What is acceptable behavior?” Other questions revolve around daily life. “How do we secure shelter, clothe ourselves, produce food, and transmit information?” Culture provides us with guidance for our lives. It both asks and answers questions. Children, from an early age, start asking “What is my place in the world?” Culture helps to answer that. The word culture itself comes from the Latin word cultura, meaning cultivation or growing. This is precisely what humans do with both their material and abstract cultural components. Humans, since early childhood, learn to shape, create, share, and change their culture. Culture is the very vehicle we use to navigate through our environments. Culture is a form of communication and it evolves. And as a type of compass, it leads.

Components of Culture

At the most simplistic levels, culture can be either concrete and tangible, or abstract. Either way, culture is used to express identity for both individuals and groups. And whether it is concrete or abstract, again it is a human construct used as a way to create a sense of belonging. People convey culture through various outlets such as festivals, food, and architecture. They are able to meet their worldwide fundamental needs while maintaining individual group qualities. Culture can be classified into three different categories: mentifacts (ideas or beliefs), artifacts (goods or technology), and sociofacts (forms of social organization). All cultures have underlying beliefs and thought processes. These beliefs include religion (Chapter 6) and language (Chapter 5) but go far beyond that. Other important beliefs include things like nationalism (see Chapter 8), customs or prejudices. These beliefs can be expressed through various avenues, using a variety of auditory, visual, and tactile means. For example, nationalism can be expressed through song, cuisine, dress, and public events. You can hear nationalism in the form of an anthem, see it in the form of a flag, taste it when you eat a dish that represents a group of people, and feel it in the form of a piece of jewelry. Technology is a human construct. From our earliest inventions (fire, weapons) to a supercomputer, the things that people build are products of their perceived needs, their technical abilities and their available resources. Technology includes clothing, foods and housing. Another name for technology is material culture. Think of material culture as the material that archaeologists study. The materials that we use are often left behind for later people to study, like the clay tablets the Sumerians used to record their writing or the remnants of an Iroquois longhouse used for shared living. Other components of culture (like ideas) leave fewer traces. We can find material culture related to burial practices that date back millennia but may not always have the material evidence to show how people grieve. Lifestyle is a component of culture that can be overlooked, but it is vitally important. In many cultures, a family is a very large unit and people can tell in great detail their exact relationship to everyone else in a place. In the modern context, a family could consist of a single parent and a child and it is possible to live in a neighborhood filled with unrelated people and not know the name of a single neighbor. Culture can be seen either through the lens of a microscope or through that of a telescope. Folk culture is local, small and tightly bound to the immediate landscape. Popular culture is large, dispersed, and globalizing. These two forms of culture are not totally separated. They are related and both currently exist in the world. Prior to about 2008, most people on Earth lived in rural communities, often practicing a folk culture. The world as a whole is moving toward popular culture.