The Cultural Landscapeby RubensteinUnit 3

Chapter 4, 5, 6

Key Issue 1: Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?

Pages 108-115

***Always keep your key term packet out whenever you take notes from Rubenstein. As the terms come up in the text, think through the significance of the term.

*Use page 108 to answer #1 and #2

  1. Define folk culture:
  1. Define popular culture:
  1. What is the difference between a habit and a customand provide an example of each?
  1. Complete the following table comparing and contrasting the origins, diffusion, and distribution of folk and popular culture.

Origins / Diffusion / Distribution
Folk Culture
Popular Culture
  1. List the elements of the origin and characteristics of folk music.
  1. List the elements of the origin and diffusion of popular music.
  1. List the elements of the origin and diffusion of soccer. Be sure to discuss the connection to folk and popular culture.
  1. Label popular sports with the countries in which they are the most popular.

Key Issue 2: Where Are Folk and Popular Material Culture Distributed?

Pages 116-125

  1. In Western countries where popular culture predominates, clothing styles generally reflect ______rather than particular ______.
  1. How does clothing style (in this case shoes) indicate the influence of the environment on folk culture?
  1. Can you think of other restrictions on clothing styles in developed countries, perhaps in schools?
  1. What are three facts about clothing styles associated with popular culture?
  2. Food preferences are strongly influenced by ______.
  1. List three different examples of food habits and the unique folk cultures each illustrates.
  1. Indicate some food taboos, along with the cultures that practice them, in the chart below.

Food Taboos
Cultures/Regions / Foods/Reasons
  1. Consumption of large quantities of snack foods and alcoholic beverages are characteristic of popular culture. Explain how each of these food preferences are expressed regionally, according to culture.
  1. Do your food preferences match the predominant ones in your region?
  1. In what sense are building materials of folk housing unique?
  1. Give three examples of how religious values or belies may influence folk housing.
  1. Fred Kniffen, a cultural geographer, has identified three source regions for American folk housing styles: New England, Middle Atlantic and Lower Chesapeake. List the housing styles he identified with each region.
  2. New England (4 styles) –
  1. Middle Atlantic (1 dominant style) –
  1. Lower Chesapeake –
  1. Complete the chart below to indicate the decade(s) during which each housing style was dominant and a fact about the particular style of house.

Style / Decades(s) / Facts
Minimal
Traditional
Ranch House
Split-Level
Contemporary
Style
Shed Style
  1. What are the Neo-eclectic styles of the 1960’s and 1970’s?

Key Issue 3: Why is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?

Pages 126-131

  1. Give two reasons for which television is an especially significant element of culture
  2. Using the 2005 map in Figure 4-28 on page 126, complete the following chart about television access

Television is Universal / Television is Common / Television is Rare
  1. Using the maps on page 128:
  2. In 2011, where was the Internet most widely available?
  3. In what regions, then, are there populations still relatively untouched by the Internet?
  4. What three countries dominate worldwide television markets?
  5. Why do developing nations view television as a new source of cultural imperialism?
  1. What are the world’s two largest newspaper organizations? What countries are they associated with?

Key Issue 4: Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face Sustainability Problems?

Pages 132-137

  1. Where did Amish culture originate, and how did it diffuse to the United States?
  2. What is happening to the Amish in the United States today?
  3. Label and shade the areas of larger Amish settlements in the U.S. (Use Figure 4-39 on page 132).
  1. How has global diffusion of popular social customs had an unintended negative impact on women in India?
  2. What are the two ways in which popular customs have an adverse effect on the natural environment?
  3. What is a uniform landscape?
  4. How and why is this concept utilized by fast-food restaurants?
  5. How is the playing of golf and golf courses an example of a popular custom that is not generally in harmony with the local environment?
  6. Summarize major sources of waste and how each is recycled (make a chart and/or bulleted list)

Key Issue 1: Where Are Languages Distributed?

Pages 142-149

***Always keep your key term packet out whenever you take notes from Rubenstein. As the terms come up in the text, think through the significance of the term.

  1. Define language:
  1. Define official language:
  2. Define language family:
  3. Define language branch:
  4. Define language group:
  5. Make brief notes on each of the following language families as you read about them in this section (i.e. how many people speak a language of that family, where spoken, common languages, etc.). See pages 146-149.
  6. Indo-European
  7. Sino-Tibetan
  8. Austronesian
  9. Austro-Asiatic
  10. Tai Kadai
  11. Japanese
  12. Korean
  13. Afro-Asiatic
  14. Altaic
  15. Uralic
  16. Niger-Congo
  17. Nilo-Saharan
  18. Khoisan

Key Issue 2: Why is English Related to Other Languages?

Pages 150-157

  1. Using the reading on page 150, complete the following chart about the Germanic Language Branch

Germanic Branch
West Germanic Group / North Germanic Group



  1. Indo-Iranian Branch: Make 2 bullets charts from the reading.

Indic Group (Eastern) / Iranian Group (Western)
  1. How did Russian become the most important East Slavic language?
  2. What is the most important West Slavic language?
  3. Describe the controversy between Czech and Slovak languages under Czechoslovakia’s government? What happened?
  4. Why are South Slavic languages, which were once very similar to each other, becoming increasingly different today?
  5. The four most contemporary Romance languages are ______, ______, ______& ______.
  6. How did English become widely diffused?
  7. What three European people originally came together to form the English people and English language?
  8. Where did these people come from?
  9. What two subsequent invasions added additional words to the evolving English language?
  10. When and why did English diffuse to North America?
  11. How did Latin languages diffuse in Europe? What happened to the native languages?
  12. Define Vulgar Latin:
  13. What is the name of the (theoretical) common ancestral language of all languages discussed in this key issue of the chapter?
  14. Why is its existence difficult (impossible) to prove?
  15. Contrast the two views of the origin of this language in the chart below.

“Kurgan” Theory / Renfrew Hypothesis

Key Issue 3: Why Do Individual Languages Vary Among Places?

Pages 158-163

  1. Dialects are defined as “regional variations of a language” and are distinguished by three things. What are they?
  2. Explain what an isogloss is.
  3. People from all three eastern regions (New England, Southeastern, Midlands) migrated into the Midwest, Great Plains and Western United States. Why is there a relatively uniform form of English (dialect) spoken across this enormous area?
  4. Define standard language:
  5. What is the standard language for of English? Where did it come from (3 cities)? How was it diffused throughout Britain?
  6. In a single word, why is American English different from that spoken in England?
  1. Why don’t people in the United States speak “proper” English?
  2. Why is it that nearly 90% of Spanish & Portuguese speakers live outside of Europe?
  3. Why is it difficult to distinguish individual languages from dialects?
  4. Define creolized language:

Key Issue 4: Why do People Preserve Local Languages?

Pages 164-177

  1. Prepare detailed notes with bullets and notations on the maps regarding the following case studies:
  2. Belgium: Political & linguistic divides(Figure 5-27)

Switzerland: Peace in a multi-lingual state (Figure 5-29)

Nigeria: Problems in a multi-lingual state (Figure 5-30)

  1. Complete the chart below by taking notes on the various languages/countries & the issues they are facing.

Basque –
Icelandic –
Native American –
Hebrew –
Celtic- (Welsh, Irish, Breton, Scottish, Cornish)
Australia-
New Zealand-
Occitan-
  1. Define lingua franca:
  2. Define pidgin language:
  3. How has expansion diffusion occurred with English? Give three examples.
  4. Does the United States have an official language? Why or why not?
  5. Discuss how the French language is important in Canada.
  6. Why is much of the internet in English? Why might this be problematic?

Key Issue 1: Where Are Religions Distributed?

Pages 183-191

***Always keep your key term packet out whenever you take notes from Rubenstein. As the terms come up in the text, think through the significance of the term.

  1. Define universalizing religion:
  2. Define ethnic religion:
  3. Define atheism:
  4. Define agnosticism
  5. Give the percentage of the world’s Christian population belonging to each of Christianity’s three major branches.
  6. Regarding Eastern Orthodox churches, how many separate churches are there, and which has the largest membership?
  7. What percentage of Latin Americans are Roman Catholic?
  8. Protestants comprise 28% of North Americans. List the five largest denominations.
  9. Complete the chart with names of smaller branches of Christianity and their location of concentration.

Branch of Christianity / Region of Predominance
  1. Half of the world’s Muslims live in the Middle East. The other half live in four countries outside the Middle East. Name them.
  2. Give the percentage of each of Islam’s two greatest branches: Sunni & Shiite (Shia).
  3. Only in four countries do Shiite Muslims number more than Sunni. What are they?
  4. Complete this chart dividing Buddhism into its three main branches.

Branch / % of Global Buddhist Population / Regions of Predominance
  1. Why are Buddhists difficult to count?
  2. Where are Hindus concentrated? What percent of all Hindus live there?
  3. Where are most of the rest?
  4. Make a note or two (that seem of geographic interest) about each of the following ethnic religion listed below.
  5. Confucianism:
  6. Taoism:
  7. Primal-Indigenous:
  8. Animism:
  9. Spiritism:
  10. Judaism

Key Issue 2: Why Do Religions Have Different Distributions?

Pages 192-199

  1. Complete the chart below describing the origins and branches of the major universalizing religions.

Buddhism / Christianity / Islam
Year of Origin
Founder
Major Branches & Main Belief of Each Branch
  1. Buddhism is built around “Four Noble Truths” as taught by the Buddha. Summarize them.
  2. How was its origin different than universalizing religions?
  3. When did it originate?
  4. Where did it originate?
  5. What two ancient peoples beliefs blended to form Hinduism?
  6. Give three explanations for the diffusion of Christianity.
  7. Give three ways in which Islam spread.
  8. Give two reasons for the expansion of Buddhism.
  9. Provide three examples of cases in which religions, or religious practices, have blended.

Religions Which Have Blended / Location
  1. How is its distribution very different from other ethnic religions?
  2. What was the diaspora?
  3. How were most Jews treated as they lived among other nationalities?
  4. What is the origin of the term ghetto?

Key Issue 3: Why Do Religions Organize Space in Distinctive Patterns?

Pages 200-211

  1. In what two ways do religious structures often stand out in a landscape?
  2. For what two reasons does a church, the physical structure, play a more critical role than in other religions?
  3. Why do many Christian churches vary in architectural style?
  4. How is a Muslim mosque viewed differently than a Christian church?
  5. Identify four specific, visible features of a typical mosque.
  6. What is the religious purpose of a Buddhist pagoda?
  7. How was pilgrimage a part of the development of pagodas
  8. Formal worship in a pagoda is not typical. Where does it usually take place?
  9. What is a pilgrimage?
  10. Read the section about Holy Places and make notes on three case studies: Buddhism, Islam & Hinduism.

Holy Sites
Buddhist
Islamic
Hindu
  1. How are Hindu temples different than both churches and mosques?
  2. List three typical visible features of a Hindu temple?
  3. Give at least three examples of how religions have incorporated characteristics of cosmogony.
  4. What is the solstice?
  5. Christian practice burial of the dead. Complete the flow chart below to indicate the history of this practice.

  1. Complete the chart below with brief notes on the disposal of the dead in ways other than burial.

Hindus
Parsis
Micronesia
  1. Complete the chart below with brief notes on the religious settlements indicated.

Utopian Settlements
Salt Lake City, Utah
Puritans
  1. Complete the chart below regarding religious calendars.

What is the most prominent feature of the calendar in an ethnic religion? / What is the principle purpose of the calendar in a universalizing religion?
  1. How is the Jewish calendar typical of the ethnic use of the calendar?
  2. Both the Jewish and the Muslims use a lunar calendar, yet in a different way and with very different results. Explain.
  3. How is the date of Easter related to physical geography (the natural world) through the calendar?
  4. Why do different Christian branches celebrate Easter on different days?
  5. How is this similar to Buddhism’s major holidays?
  6. Define hierarchical religion:
  7. List the Roman Catholic hierarchy, indicating geographic region and leader who heads it.
  8. Why are parishes in Latin America so much larger than in Europe?
  9. Describe an autonomous religion:
  10. In the absence of a hierarchy, what is the only formal organization of territory in Islam?
  11. What holds Islam together?
  12. Complete the chart below to categorize other religions and denominations.

Autonomous Religions / Hierarchical Religions

Key Issue 4: Why Do Territorial Conflicts Arise Among Religious Groups?

Pages 212-221

  1. In what ways did the Taliban government of Afghanistan raise conflicts with Western/modern ideas after it took control of the country in 1996?
  2. What aspect of Hinduism has clashed with Western/modern ideas?
  3. What western groups criticized this aspect? Why?
  4. How has the Indian government responded to this issue?
  5. In Russia/Soviet Union, how did each of the following attempt to limit the influence of religion, specifically the Eastern Orthodox Church?

Czar Peter the Great:

Communism:

  1. What happened, and is continuing to happen, in each of the following regions of the Russian Empire/Soviet Union since the fall of Communism in the 1990s? Complete the chart below by adding THREE more countries to each category and then describing what is going on at the present time in that region.

Historic Catholic Regions / Historic Muslim Regions
Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Lithuania, … / Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, …
Currently… / Currently…
  1. How was the Vietnam War detrimental to Buddhism in Southeast Asia?
  2. How were Communist regimes detrimental to Buddhism in Southeast Asia?
  3. Define fundamentalism (You may have to look this up)
  4. What are two religious groups in conflict in Ireland?
  5. Where are the majority of these groups located?
  6. What three religions are in constant conflict over the land in the Middle East?
  7. What was the military campaign by the Christians to recapture their Holy Land from the Muslims?
  8. Complete the chart below regarding the perspective on the Holy Land.

Palestinian Perspective / Israeli Perspective
  1. Complete the chart below regarding Jerusalem

Judaism’s Jerusalem / Islam’s Jerusalem