AP HUMAN GEO Unit 3 Review (EVERYTHING You NEED to Know!)

Main Ideas

1. Culture and Cultural Traits

Culture is the shared practices, technologies, attitudes, and behaviors passed down within a society.

Culture can be understood as an iceberg:

• Visible aspects include language, clothing, behavior, and the built environment.
• Less visible aspects include values, beliefs, and patterns of thought that help explain visible practices.

Cultural traits are observable characteristics of a culture. The video highlights:

• Food, which can reflect a population’s history and heritage.
• Architecture, which can express national or regional identity and local building traditions.
• Land use, which may reflect people’s values and the practices they brought from elsewhere.

Two attitudes toward cultural differences are:

• Cultural relativism evaluates a culture according to its own standards.
• Ethnocentrism judges another culture by the standards of one’s own culture, often treating it as inferior.
• Xenophobia is fear or dislike of foreigners or people with different cultural traits.

2. Cultural Landscapes and Identity

A cultural landscape is the physical environment as modified in ways that reflect human culture. The video describes five influences:

1. Agriculture and industry

   • Farming practices, such as corn cultivation or rice terraces, shape landscapes.
   • Economic activity can create placelessness when similar businesses and environments appear in many locations.
   • Local history can also produce distinctive landscapes, such as Baltimore’s row houses.

2. Religion

   • Churches, mosques, temples, and synagogues create sacred spaces and mark religious values in the landscape.

3. Language

   • Signs and other language features can show which communities live in an area, such as bilingual signs in New York City’s Chinatown.

4. Sequent occupancy

   • Different groups leave cultural marks on the same place over time. The video uses the Dome of the Rock and the Temple Mount as an example of overlapping religious and historical significance.

5. Traditional and postmodern architecture

   • Traditional architecture uses local materials and reflects local needs, as in the Filipino nipa hut.
   • Modernist architecture prioritizes function over appearance.
   • Postmodern architecture, which arose partly in reaction to modernism, gives appearance and cultural expression greater importance alongside function.

The ways people occupy and shape space can also reflect:

• Ethnicity, including ethnic enclaves where people with shared backgrounds live near one another.
• Gender norms, such as differences in property rights, public spaces, and workplace support.
• Ethnic neighborhoods, which may form through migration or persist because of past discrimination.
• Indigenous communities, including reservation communities that may have their own forms of governance.

3. Placemaking and Sense of Place

• Placemaking is the act of modifying a landscape to live in or use it.
• Sense of place is the meaning and emotional or cultural significance people attach to a location.

The video identifies three influences on a group’s sense of place:

• Language, including regional dialects.
• Religion, which can be reflected in a region’s religious institutions and architecture.
• Ethnicity, which can shape community institutions and neighborhood identity.

These factors can either unite or divide people:

• Centripetal forces bring people together. Shared language, religion, or ethnicity can foster unity.
• Centrifugal forces pull people apart. Religious divisions, language disputes, or ethnic conflict can create tension and, in some cases, violence. The video cites the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda as an example of ethnic conflict.

4. Cultural Diffusion

Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural traits from one place to another. A cultural hearth is an area where a cultural group or trait originates.

The video describes two main types:

• Relocation diffusion occurs when people migrate and bring cultural traits with them. The spread of Catholicism to Latin America during Spanish and Portuguese colonial expansion is one example.
• Expansion diffusion occurs when a cultural trait spreads while its original population remains in its hearth. It has three forms:
  1. Contagious diffusion is rapid spread among nearby people, without regard to social status or other group boundaries. Slang is given as an example.
  2. Hierarchical diffusion spreads from influential people, places, or groups to those with less power or influence. The spread of hip-hop from major U.S. cities to other areas is an example.
  3. Stimulus diffusion occurs when an original trait inspires a related innovation rather than being adopted unchanged. The video uses McDonald’s development of the chicken-based Maharaja Mac for Indian consumers as an example.

5. Historical and Contemporary Causes of Diffusion

Historical Causes

• Imperialism is a powerful state’s attempt to extend its influence or control over another place.
• Colonialism is one form of imperialism in which a state establishes settlements elsewhere for economic or political gain.
• European imperialism spread languages, religions, and other cultural traits in the Americas and Africa.
• The transatlantic slave trade forcibly displaced Africans, who also brought cultural traits—including foods, religious beliefs, and musical traditions—to the Americas.
• Trade also spread cultural traits. The video points to the Silk Roads as routes along which merchants exchanged both goods and ideas, including religions.

Cultural Outcomes of Contact

• A lingua franca is a shared language used by people with different native languages to communicate. The video describes English as a major global lingua franca.
• Creolization is the combination of languages into a new, distinct language. The video gives Afrikaans as an example of a language developed from Dutch and other influences.

Contemporary Causes

• Globalization increases economic, political, and social interdependence among people and places. Digital technology and the internet have accelerated cultural exchange; K-pop’s worldwide popularity is an example.
• Urbanization brings people from varied cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds into close contact, encouraging cultural interaction and change.

Ideas from cities can spread to people outside them through:

1. Media, such as films and television.
2. Technology, including smartphones and social media.
3. Politics, including international organizations and political debates.
4. Economics, including global online retailers.

6. Cultural Convergence and Divergence

• Cultural convergence occurs when cultures interact and become more similar by adopting one another’s traits. The video links this to time-space convergence: improvements in transportation and communication reduce the time needed to connect distant places.
• One concern is that widely shared languages and cultural products may weaken the use of Indigenous languages and other local traditions.
• Cultural divergence occurs when a group maintains or strengthens its distinctiveness, sometimes in response to outside influences. The video’s example is Amish communities rejecting some technologies to preserve their traditions.

7. Language and Religion

Language Classification

• A language family is the broadest category and includes languages descended from a common ancestral language.
• A language branch is a smaller grouping within a family. The video gives Romance languages, descended from Latin, and Germanic languages as examples.
• Individual languages can have dialects, or regional variations in speech, such as differences between Spanish spoken in Spain and Mexico.

Religious Diffusion

Religions originate in cultural hearths and may spread outward.

• Universalizing religions seek or appeal to followers across many cultural settings. The video names Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Sikhism.
  • They commonly spread through relocation and expansion diffusion.
• Ethnic religions are closely tied to particular ethnic groups and regions. The video names Hinduism, Judaism, and Shinto as examples.
  • They tend to remain near their cultural hearths; when they spread, relocation diffusion is common.
• Toponyms, or place names, can reflect cultural and religious change. The video cites Constantinople’s renaming as Istanbul following Ottoman conquest.

8. Effects of Cultural Interaction

The video identifies four outcomes:

• Acculturation occurs when people adopt some traits of another culture while retaining their own. For example, immigrants may learn the receiving country’s language but continue speaking their native language at home.
• Assimilation occurs when people take on most characteristics of the surrounding culture.
  • Forced assimilation is imposed through policies or coercion; the video discusses policies directed at Native Americans.
  • Voluntary assimilation occurs when people choose to adopt another culture’s traits, sometimes to gain acceptance or access to opportunities.
• Syncretism occurs when two or more cultural traits blend to form a new trait. The video describes African religious traditions combining with Christianity in the Americas.
• Multiculturalism describes multiple cultural groups maintaining their distinct identities while coexisting in the same society.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Steve Heimler is the sole speaker and instructor in the video.
• No guest speakers or explicitly cited external sources appear in the subtitles; Heimler presents the historical and geographic examples.