Chapter 2 Cultures, Environments, and Regions - Wiley · Chapter 2 Cultures, Environments, and...

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From the field notes

Chapter 2Cultures, Environments, and Regions

“Crossing the Nile at Luxor, I made my way along the west bank of the river

heading toward the Valley of the Kings. The narrow strip of fertile land I

traversed was a world apart from the arid landscape that lay just a few miles

farther to the west. Passing through a series of tiny towns, I was struck by

the visible interplay between culture and environment. The modest houses

were surrounded by reminders of the agricultural life of their inhabitants—

farm tools, animals, and storage containers. Mosques dotted the landscape,

and trees had been planted strategically to provide a modicum of shade and a

buffer between road and field. Here, people’s lives are inextricably

intertwined with the environment, and the landscapes they create reflect

both their culture and the environment in which it is situated.”

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Human geography, as we saw in Chapter 1, is amajor component of the discipline of geography.It is unified by its spatial perspective and by its

focus on the concrete character of human impact on theEarth’s surface. How are the products of human activity

arranged on the Earth? What forces and factors influencedtheir location and distribution? Do different societies orga-nize their space in different ways, and if so, what can belearned from the patterns we observe? How do humansshape the landscape—and with what result? ◆

KEY POINTS

◆ The concept of culture lies at the heart ofhuman geography, for culture mediates allhuman decisions and actions.

◆ Cultural geography focuses on where cul-tural ideas and practices developed, howand where they diffused, and how they af-fect landscape, human perception, andhuman–environment relations.

◆ Cultural hearths are the sources of civi-lizations; ideas, innovations, and ideolo-gies radiate outward from them.

◆ Cultural diffusion can take the form ofexpansion diffusion or relocation diffusion.

◆ Perceptual regions depend on an individ-ual’s cultural context and the mental mapshe or she uses to make sense of the world.

◆ The doctrine of environmental determin-ism, which holds that human behavior is lim-ited or controlled by the environment, hasbeen a subject of intense debate, and broadgeneralizations about the impact of environ-ment on humans have been discredited.

◆ CULTURE AND HUMANGEOGRAPHY

At the heart of the wide-ranging subdiscipline of humangeography lies the concept of culture, for location deci-sions, patterns, and landscapes are fundamentally influ-enced by cultural attitudes and practices. Like the re-gional concept discussed in the previous chapter, theconcept of culture appears to be deceptively simple, butin fact it is complex and challenging. You can prove thisjust by looking up the word “culture” in several dictio-naries and introductory anthropology texts and notinghow widely their definitions vary. Our uses of the wordalso vary. When we speak of a “cultured” individual, wetend to mean someone with refined tastes in music andthe arts, a highly educated, well-read person who knowsand appreciates the “best” attributes of society. As a sci-entific term, however, culture refers not only to themusic, literature, and arts of a society but also to all theother features of its way of life: prevailing modes ofdress; routine living habits; food preferences; the archi-tecture of houses and public buildings; the layout offields and farms; and systems of education, government,and law. Thus culture is an all-encompassing term that

identifies not only the whole tangible lifestyle of peo-ples, but also their prevailing values and beliefs.

The concept of culture is closely identified with thediscipline of anthropology, and over the course of morethan a century anthropologists have defined it in many dif-ferent ways. Some have stressed the contributions of hu-mans to the environment (e.g., M. J. Herskovitz), whereasothers have emphasized learned behaviors and ways ofthinking (e.g., M. Harris). Several decades ago the notedanthropologist E. Adamson Hoebel defined culture as:

The integrated system of learned behavior patternswhich are characteristic of the members of a societyand which are not the result of biological inheritance. . . culture is not genetically predetermined; it isnoninstinctive . . . [culture] is wholly the result of so-cial invention and is transmitted and maintainedsolely through communication and learning.

Hoebel’s emphasis on communication and learninganticipated the current view that culture is a system ofmeaning, not just a set of acts, customs, or material prod-ucts. Clifford Geertz advances this view in his classicwork, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973); much re-cent work in human geography has been influenced by

it. Hence, human geographers are interested not just inthe different patterns and landscapes associated with dif-ferent culture groups, but in the ways in which culturalunderstandings affect both the creation and significanceof those patterns and landscapes.

The concept of culture is so broad ranging that cul-tural geography is sometimes considered to be synony-mous with human geography. More often, however, it isconsidered to be a subset of human geography becausemany questions about population, economy, and politicscan be posed without emphasizing their cultural dimen-sions. Does this mean that cultural geography is limitedto the study of particular elements of culture (language,religion, etc.)? Few contemporary cultural geographerswould see it that way. Instead, they would argue that cul-tural geography looks at the ways culture is implicated inthe full spectrum of topics addressed in human geo-graphy. As such, cultural geography can be seen as aperspective on human geography as much as a compo-nent thereof. And this, in turn, exposes the limitations ofviewing the discipline strictly along the lines suggestedby Figure 1-1. There is much blurring among and be-tween the various components of the discipline, and cer-tain topics (particularly culture, politics, and economics)cut across the entire field.

Components of CultureCulture is so complex that it is useful to identify some ofits interconnected parts. Certain of these parts tie in di-rectly with geography’s emphasis on space. A cultureregion (the area within which a particular culture sys-tem prevails) is marked by all the attributes of a culture,including modes of dress, building styles, farms andfields, and other material manifestations. Cultural geo-graphers identify a single attribute of a culture as a cul-ture trait. For example, the wearing of a turban can bea culture trait of certain Muslim societies; for centuries, itwas obligatory for Muslim men to wear this headgear.Although it is no longer required everywhere, the turbancontinues to be a distinctive trait of many Muslim cul-tures. The use of simple tools also constitutes a culturetrait, and eating with certain utensils (knife and fork orchopsticks) is a culture trait.

Culture traits are not necessarily confined to a singleculture. More than one culture may exhibit a particularculture trait, but each will consist of a discrete combina-tion of traits. Such a combination is referred to as a cul-ture complex. In many cultures, the herding of cattle isa trait. However, cattle are regarded and used in differ-ent ways by different cultures. The Maasai of East Africafollow their herds along seasonal migration paths, con-suming blood and milk as important ingredients of aunique diet. Cattle occupy a central place in Maasai ex-istence; they are the essence of survival, security, andprestige. Although the Maasai culture complex is onlyone of many cattle-keeping complexes, no other culture

complex exhibits exactly the same combination of traits.In Europe, cattle are milked and dairy products, such asbutter, yogurt, and cheese, are consumed as part of adiet very different from that of the Maasai.

Thus culture complexes have traits in common, andso it is possible to group certain complexes together asculture systems. Ethnicity, language, religion, andother cultural elements enter into the definition of a cul-ture system; for example, much of China may be so des-ignated. China’s culture system consists of a number ofquite distinct culture complexes, united by strong cul-tural bonds. Northern Chinese people may eat wheatand those in the south may eat rice as their staple, andthe Chinese language as spoken in the north may not bequite the same as that spoken in the south, but history,philosophy, environmental adaptation and modification,and numerous cultural traditions and attitudes give co-herence to the Chinese culture system.

On the map, a culture region can represent an entireculture system. West Africa, Polynesia, and CentralAmerica are sometimes designated as culture regions ofsorts, each consisting of a combination of culture com-plexes of considerable diversity but still substantial uni-formity. Many geographers, however, prefer to describeregions such as Han China, West Africa, and Polynesia asgeographic regions rather than as culture regions be-cause their definition is based not only on cultural prop-erties but on locational and environmental circum-stances as well.

An assemblage of culture (or geographic) regionsforms a culture realm, the most highly generalized re-gionalization of culture and geography. Together, theculture regions of West, East, Equatorial, and SouthernAfrica can be thought of as collectively constituting theSubsaharan African culture realm. Once again, there aregood reasons for calling these geographic realms ofthe human world: the criteria on which they are based,though dominated by cultural characteristics, extend be-yond culture.

Cultural Geographies Past and PresentThe colonization and Europeanization of much of theworld have obliterated a great deal of the cultural geo-graphy of earlier times. Very little is left of the map wemight have constructed of indigenous North Americanculture regions (Fig. 2-1); similarly, a historical map ofaboriginal Australian cultures would differ radically fromthe contemporary version. At the same time, maps of in-digenous or “traditional” culture complexes do not showthe regional patterns resulting from the European colo-nization and its associated migrations. Thus, when view-ing any map showing culture regions or geographicrealms, it is important to be sensitive to what is being de-picted—and when.

The importance of the latter point becomes clear ifyou compare Figure 2-1 with Figure 2-2. Figure 2-2 is a

Part One Geography, Culture, and Environment22

recent attempt to divide up Subsaharan Africa into differ-ent culture regions. This attempt to depict “modern” cul-ture regions and geographic realms does not reflect thehistorical patterns shown in Figure 2-1; instead it seeksto represent dominant present-day realities—at least asseen by one commentator. Yet elements of the historicpattern still exist—and even influence present patterns.The reality is that the world is made up of a constantlychanging, often overlapping mix of traditional and mod-ern culture regions.

◆ KEY TOPICS IN CULTURALGEOGRAPHY

The field of cultural geography is wide-ranging andcomprehensive. To understand the various ways inwhich geographers look at culture, it is useful to focus

on five traditionally prominent areas of study and research.

1. Cultural Landscape. The imprint of cultures onthe land creates distinct and characteristic culturallandscapes.

2. Culture Hearths. Several sources, crucibles, of cul-tural growth and achievement developed in Eurasia,Africa, and America.

3. Cultural Diffusion. From their sources, cultural in-novations and ideas spread to other areas. Theprocess of cultural diffusion continues to this day.

4. Cultural Perception. Culture groups have varyingideas and attitudes about space, place, and territory.

5. Cultural Environments. This area deals with therole of culture in human understanding, use, and al-teration of the environment.

CHAPTER 2 Cultures, Environments, and Regions 23

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Figure 2-1 Culture Regions of North America. One approach to the regionalization of in-digenous American cultures. Modern boundary lines are included for spatial references.

In the remainder of this chapter, we focus on these areasin more detail.

The Cultural LandscapeThe cultures that occupy or influence an area leave theirimprint on the landscape. Often, a single scene, a pho-tograph or picture, can reveal the cultural milieu inwhich it was made. The architecture, the mode of dressof the people, the means of transportation, and perhapsthe goods being carried—all reveal a distinctive culturalenvironment.

The people of any particular culture transform theirliving space by building structures on it, creating lines ofcontact and communication, tilling the land, and chan-

neling the water. There are a few exceptions: nomadicpeoples may leave a minimum of permanent evidenceon the land, and some peoples living in desert margins(such as the few remaining San clans) and in tropicalforest zones (Pygmy groups) do not greatly alter theirnatural environment. However, most of the time there ischange: asphalt roads, irrigation canals, terraced hill-slopes.

This composite of artificial features is the culturallandscape, a term that came into general use in geogra-phy in the 1920s. The geographer whose name is stillmost closely identified with this concept is University ofCalifornia at Berkeley Professor Carl Sauer. In 1927 Sauerwrote an article entitled “Recent Developments in Cul-tural Geography,” in which he argued that cultural land-


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Figure 2-2 Culture Regions of Subsaharan Africa. Generalized regionalization of indige-nous cultures in mainland Africa south of the Sahara.

scapes are comprised of the “forms superimposed on thephysical landscape” by human activity. However, whenhuman activities change the physical or natural land-scape, the physical landscape itself can take on culturalproperties. For example, a dam built in the upper courseof a river can affect the whole character of the riverdownstream, even hundreds of miles away. It can alterthe strength of the river’s flow and the rate of depositionof sediments in a delta. As such, perhaps the best defini-tion of cultural landscape is the broadest: that the cul-tural landscape includes all identifiably human-inducedchanges in the natural landscape, changes that involvethe surface as well as the biosphere.

The concept of cultural landscape takes on a practi-cal aspect when an area has been inhabited—and trans-formed—by a succession of culture groups, each ofwhich leaves a lasting imprint. As successive occupiersarrive, they bring their own technological and culturaltraditions—and transform the landscape accordingly.Yet successive occupiers can also be influenced by whatthey find when they arrive—and leave some of it inplace. In 1929, Derwent Wittlesey proposed the term se-quent occupance to refer to such cultural successionand its lasting imprint.

The Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam provides an in-teresting urban example of this process. Its site was firstchosen for settlement by Arabs from Zanzibar whosought a mainland retreat. Next it was selected by theGerman colonizers as a capital for their East African do-main, and it was given a German layout and architecturalimprint. After World War I, when the Germans were

ousted, a British administration took over and the citybegan yet another period of transformation. A large Asianpopulation created a zone of three- and four-story apart-ment houses, which look as if they had been transplantedfrom Bombay. Then, in the early 1960s, Dar es Salaam be-came the capital of newly independent Tanzania. Thus,the city experienced four stages of cultural dominance inless than one century, and each stage of the sequence re-mains imprinted in the cultural landscape.

The cultural landscape, then, can be seen as a kindof text offering clues into the cultural practices and pri-orities of its various occupiers. Some cases do not offerthe relatively distinct phases of occupance that charac-terize the Dar es Salaam example, however, and culturalinfluences from outside often complicate the picture.Hence, rather than emphasizing distinct phases of settle-ment, geographers now tend to think more in terms ofprocesses of cultural intermixing in particular places—and the transitions over time they produce. Nonetheless,it is still useful to think about dominant influences at par-ticular times as emphasized in the sequent occupanceconcept, for these often have the most visible impact onan area.

The concrete properties of a cultural landscape canbe observed and recorded with relative ease. Take, forexample, the urban “townscape” (a prominent element ofthe overall cultural landscape), and compare a major U.S.city with, say, a leading Japanese city. Visual representa-tions would quickly reveal the differences, of course, butso would maps of the two urban places. The U.S. centralcity, with its rectangular layout of the central business dis-trict (CBD) and its far-flung, sprawling suburbs, contrastssharply with the clustered, space-conserving Japanesecity (Fig. 2-3). Again, the subdivision and ownership of American farmland, represented on a map, looks un-mistakably different from that of a traditional Africanrural area, with its irregular, often tiny patches of landsurrounding a village. These things help to shape thepersonality of a region.

Still, the whole of a cultural landscape can never berepresented on a map. A cultural landscape consists ofbuildings and roads and fields and more, but it also hasan intangible quality, an “atmosphere,” which is often soeasy to perceive and yet so difficult to define. The smellsand sights and sounds of a traditional African market areunmistakable, but try to record those qualities on maps orin some other way for comparative study! A challenge foranyone interested in place is to appreciate its less tangi-ble characteristics that give it personality—its visual ap-pearance, its noises and odors, and even its pace of life.

Culture HearthsFor as long as human communities have existed on Earth,there have been places where people have thrived,where invention and effort have resulted in an increase in



“The Atlantic-coast city of Bergen, Norway, dis-played the Norse cultural landscape more comprehensively,it seemed, than any other Norwegian city, including Oslo.The high-relief site of Bergen creates great vistas, but alsolong shadows: windows are large to let in maximum light.Red-tiled roofs are pitched steeply to enhance runoff and in-hibit snow accumulation; streets are narrow and housesclustered, conserving warmth.”

numbers, growing strength, comparative stability, andtechnological development. Conversely, there have beenareas where this has not occurred. The areas where suc-cess and progress prevailed were the places where thefirst large clusters of human population developed, bothbecause of sustained natural increase and because otherpeople were attracted to those places. The increasingnumbers of people led to the development of new waysto exploit locally available resources and gain power overresources located farther away. Progress was made infarming techniques and, consequently, in crop yields.Settlements could expand. Societies grew more complex,and there were people who could afford to spend timenot merely in subsistence activities, but in such pursuitsas politics and the arts. The circulation of goods and ideasintensified. Traditions developed, along with ways of lifethat set an example for people in other places, far andnear. These areas were humanity’s early culturehearths—the sources of civilization, outward fromwhich radiated the ideas, innovations, and ideologies thatwould change the world beyond.

Culture hearths should be viewed in the context oftime as well as space. Long before human communitiesbegan to depend on cultivated crops or domesticatedanimals, culture hearths developed in response to thediscovery and development of a tool or weapon thatmade subsistence easier or more efficient. Fishing tech-niques improved, and waterside communities prosperedand grew. Thus the Inuit people, with their early and in-

ventive adaptation to their frigid, watery environment,developed a culture hearth, just as the ancient Meso-potamians did. The nomadic Maasai and their remark-able cattle-based culture still inhabit the region in whichthey developed their culture hearth.

Some culture hearths, therefore, remain compara-tively isolated and self-contained, whereas others havean impact far beyond their bounds. When the innovationof agriculture was added to the culture complexes thatalready existed in the zone of the Fertile Crescent, itsoon diffused to areas where it was not yet practiced andaffected other culture complexes far and wide. In theculture hearth itself, the practice of cultivation led to theevolution of an infinitely more elaborate civilization,where one innovation followed another.

Thus it is appropriate to distinguish between culturehearths, thousands of which have evolved across theEarth from the Inuit Arctic to Maori New Zealand, andthe source areas of civilizations. These latter alsobegan as culture hearths, but their growth and develop-ment had a wider, sometimes global impact. Early cul-ture hearths (Fig. 2-4) developed in Southwest Asia andNorth Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and East Asia inthe valleys and basins of the great river systems. TheMiddle and South American culture hearths evolvedthousands of years later, not in river valleys but in high-lands. The West African culture hearth emerged laterstill, strongly influenced by innovations made by thepeoples of the Nile Valley and Southwest Asia.


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It is important to note that all the ancient culturehearths shown in Figure 2-4 achieved breakthroughs inagriculture. Irrigation techniques, crop domestication,planting, seeding and weeding methods, harvesting, stor-age, and distribution systems all progressed, and individ-ual cultures achieved remarkable adaptations in order tomaximize the opportunities offered by their environment.

Shifts in Culture Hearths The locations and nature ofthe cultural innovations of recent centuries are very dif-ferent. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, theworld was transformed by the spread of innovationsfrom new hearths, new sources of invention and diffu-sion. The ancient agricultural and urban revolutionswere followed, millennia later, by equally consequentialindustrial and technological revolutions that created to-tally new cultural landscapes. These revolutions were(and are) centered in Europe, North America, and EastAsia (Fig. 2-4). And one of the great—and not entirelyanswered—geographic questions is why there, as op-posed to somewhere else.

Think of the ways in which our daily lives have beenchanged by the inventions made in these hearths of inno-vation and how effective modern dissemination systemsare. Also note that in the nineteenth century, Western Eu-rope was the dominant industrial hearth—a position thatwas taken over by the United States during the twentiethcentury. More recently Japan emerged as a major industrialhearth, and despite current economic difficulties other EastAsian industrial-technological giants have sprung up aswell. Will the next century witness yet another shift?

Cultural DiffusionThe ancient culture hearths were focal points of innova-tion and invention; they were sources of ideas and stim-uli. From these source areas, newly invented techniques,tools, instruments, and ideas about ways of doing thingsradiated outward, carried by caravans and armies, mer-chant mariners, teachers, and clergy. Some of the inno-vations that eventually reached distant peoples werequickly adopted and often modified or refined; othersfell on barren ground.

The process of dissemination, the spread of an idea orinnovation from its source area to other cultures, is knownas cultural diffusion. Today the great majority of theworld’s cultures are the products of innumerable ideasand innovations that have arrived in an endless, centuries-long stream. Often it is possible to isolate and trace theorigin, route, and timing of the adoption of a particular in-novation. The phenomenon of diffusion is therefore anessential part of the study of cultural geography.

The appearance of a particular technique or devicein widely separated areas does not necessarily prove thatdiffusion occurred. Various cultures in parts of Asia,Africa, and the Americas developed methods of irriga-tion, learned to domesticate animals and plants, andreached other achievements through independent in-vention. Moreover, a major invention did not guaranteerapid diffusion and adoption everywhere. The wheel,surely a momentous invention, was not adopted inEgypt until 20 centuries after its introduction in nearbyMesopotamia.


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Figure 2-4 Postulated Culture Hearths and Early Diffusion Routes. Ancient and mod-ern culture hearths. The ancient hearths and their diffusion routes are speculative; today’s in-dustrial and technological culture hearths are superimposed. Source: From authors’ sketch.

Diffusion occurs through the movement of people,goods, or ideas. Carl Sauer focused attention on thisprocess in Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952),which was published at about the same time that the pi-oneering diffusion research by the Swedish geographerTorsten Hägerstrand began to appear in print. This fasci-nating research attracted many geographers to the studyof diffusion processes.

Geographers have identified several different pro-cesses whereby diffusion takes place. The differenceshave to do with various conditions: whatever it is that isdiffusing through a population, the distribution and char-acter of that population, the distances involved, andmuch more. Consider two examples: the diffusion of adisease such as Asian “flu” through a population and thediffusion of fax machines. The first case involves involun-tary exposure and the second voluntary adoption. Both,however, are manifestations of diffusion processes.

Expansion Diffusion Geographers classify diffusionprocesses into two broad categories: expansion diffusionand relocation diffusion. In the case of expansion dif-fusion, an innovation or idea develops in a source areaand remains strong there while also spreading outward.Later, for example, we will study the spread of Islamfrom its hearth on the Arabian Peninsula to Egypt andNorth Africa, through Southwest Asia, and into WestAfrica. This is a case of expansion diffusion. If we wereto draw a series of maps of the Islamic faithful at 50-yearintervals beginning in A.D. 620, the area of adoption ofthe Muslim religion would be larger in every successiveperiod. Expansion diffusion thus is a very appropriateterm (Fig. 2-5).

Expansion diffusion takes several forms. The spreadof Islam is an example of contagious diffusion, a formof expansion diffusion in which nearly all adjacent indi-viduals are affected. A disease can spread in this way, in-fecting almost everyone in a population (although noteveryone may show symptoms of the disease).

However, an idea (or a disease, for that matter) maynot always spread throughout a fixed population. Forexample, the spread of AIDS in the United States has notaffected everyone in the population. Instead, it has af-fected particularly vulnerable groups, leapfrogging overwide areas and appearing on maps as clusters in dis-tantly separated cities. This represents another kind ofexpansion diffusion, hierarchical diffusion, in whichthe main channel of diffusion is some segment of thosewho are susceptible to (or adopting) what is being dif-fused. In the case of the diffusion of AIDS, the hierarchyis the urban structure in the United States; the sizes ofcities, towns, and villages are reflected in the clusters ofinfected people.

Hierarchical diffusion is also illustrated by thespread of the use of fax machines. Here the hierarchy is

determined by the equipment’s affordability and the po-tential users’ perception of need. Again, the pattern islikely to show an urban-based order. But not all innova-tions are adopted in cities and towns. The diffusion pat-tern for an improved piece of farm machinery will bequite different.

A third form of expansion diffusion is stimulus dif-fusion. Not all ideas can be readily and directly adoptedby a receiving population; some are simply too vague,too unattainable, too different, or too impractical for im-mediate adoption. But this does not mean that suchideas have no impact at all. They may indirectly promotelocal experimentation and eventual changes in ways ofdoing things. For example, the diffusion of mass-produced food items in the late twentieth century—pushed by multinational retailers—led to the introductionof the hamburger to India. Yet the Hindu prohibition onthe consumption of beef presented a cultural obstacle tothe adoption of this food item. However, retailers began


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selling burgers made of vegetable products—an adapta-tion that was stimulated by the diffusion of the ham-burger but that took on a new form in the cultural con-text to which it diffused.

Relocation Diffusion As noted earlier, expansion dif-fusion takes place through populations that are stableand fixed. It is the innovation, the idea, or the diseasethat does the moving. Relocation diffusion, in con-trast, involves the actual movement of individuals whohave already adopted the idea or innovation, and whocarry it to a new, perhaps distant, locale, where they pro-ceed to disseminate it.

When cultures make contact through relocation dif-fusion, one culture often comes to dominate another. Inthe process, the less dominant culture adopts elementsof the cultural practices and ideas of the dominant cul-ture. This process is known as acculturation. In ex-treme cases, the adoption of cultural elements from thedominant culture can be so complete that the two cul-tures become indistinguishable. This is known as assim-ilation. Yet acculturation, and even assimilation, are notnecessarily one-way streets; dominant cultures oftenadopt aspects of the latter’s culture even as their ownculture has a disproportionate influence.

After Spanish invaders overthrew the Aztec king-dom, Spanish culture began to prevail: towns were trans-formed, a new religious order was introduced, and newcrops were planted. Acculturation proceeded, but mostpeople maintained significant elements of their own cul-ture, so assimilation did not occur. But the peoples ofLatin America were not the only ones affected by this en-counter. Spanish culture also absorbed Aztec influences.Aztec motifs pervaded Spanish architecture, Aztec cropswere transplanted to Iberia, and Spaniards began towear clothing that reflected Aztec influences.

Relocation diffusion has usually produced the type ofcultural contact where one culture has dominated an-other. Occasionally there is contact between culture com-plexes that are more nearly equal in numbers, strength,and complexity. In such cases, a genuine exchange fol-lows, in which both cultures function as sources andadopters. This process is referred to as transculturation.

A particular form of relocation diffusion is known asmigrant diffusion. There are times when an innova-tion originates somewhere and enjoys strong, but brief,adoption there. By the time it reaches distant places, ithas already lost its strength at the place where it started.The diffusion map thus would show a continuous out-ward shift to new adopters, but there would be no stablecore area. Some diseases, such as milder influenza pan-demics, display this process as well. By the time thesereach North America and Europe, they already havefaded away in China, so that the diffusion pattern is oneof migrant, rather than contagious, diffusion.

These are some of the leading processes of diffusionand the factors involved. However, there are also forcesthat can work against diffusion and the adoption of newideas and innovations. One of these is distance; anotheris time. The farther it is from its source, the less likely aninnovation is to be adopted, and the “innovation waves”become weaker. Similarly, the acceptance of an innova-tion becomes less likely the longer it takes to reach itspotential adopters. In combination, time and distancecause time-distance decay in the diffusion process.

Cultural barriers can also work against diffusion.Certain innovations, ideas, or practices are not accept-able or adoptable in particular cultures because of pre-vailing attitudes or even taboos. Prohibitions against al-coholic beverages, as well as certain forms of meat, fish,and other foods, have restricted their consumption. Cul-tural barriers against other practices, such as the use ofcontraceptives, also have inhibited diffusion processes.Cultural barriers can pose powerful obstacles to thespread of ideas as well as artifacts.

Cultural PerceptionAlthough architecture—even simple dwellings in remoteforests or mountains—dominates the cultural landscape,other aspects of daily life also contribute to the characterof places. One of those aspects is the pace of life as it islived in a given area. During the 1960s, when thousandsof students from African countries came to study in theUnited States, a geography professor conducted a surveyof their perceptions of this country. Among the top fiveimpressions was a variation of the following: “Peopleand things move so fast here! Everyone seems to be run-ning from one appointment to the next!”

The pace of life is not something that can be easilymapped, but it is an important aspect of place. Courtesyis another. A similar survey in Britain produced manyreferences to the British habit of “queueing,” or lining upneatly to await one’s turn boarding a bus or paying a bill.Again, while tradition does not have the permanence ofan architectural style, it is nonetheless part of the culturalcharacter of places. Such intangible elements help definethe personality of a region. They also can contribute tocultural conflict. Violation of such traditions by outsiderscan even lead to strife.

Perceptual Regions How is the cultural landscape per-ceived? In Chapter 1, we noted that people of all cultureshave spatial memories, or mental maps, that influencetheir perception. Thus, from the viewpoint of the UnitedStates, many countries appear to be technologically un-sophisticated and poor. But from the perspective ofthose countries, U.S. society may seem overdevelopedand wasteful. So it is with culture and the cultural land-scape. Our perceptions of our own community and cul-ture may differ quite sharply from those of people in


other cultures. Perceptual regions are intellectual con-structs designed to help us understand the nature and dis-tribution of phenomena in human geography. Geo-graphers do not agree entirely on their properties, butthey do concur that we all have impressions and imagesof various regions and cultures. These perceptions arebased on our accumulated knowledge about such regionsand cultures. The natural environment, too, is part of thisinventory. Think of Swiss culture, and the image of a sin-gle Alpine environment may come to mind, even though,in fact, Swiss culture is divided into several distinct regionsby language, religion, and tradition, and the majority ofSwiss citizens today do not live in such environments.

Although we can easily explain in general termshow we perceive a culture region, it is much more diffi-cult to put our impressions on a map. For example, con-sider the Mid-Atlantic Region. Weather forecasters referto the “Mid-Atlantic area” or the “Mid-Atlantic States” asthey divide their maps into manageable pieces. Butwhere is this Mid-Atlantic Region? If Maryland andDelaware are part of it, then eastern Pennsylvania is, too.But where across Pennsylvania lies the boundary of thispartly cultural, partly physical region, and on what basiscan it be drawn? There is no single best answer (Fig. 2-6).

Again, we all have a mental map of the South as aculture region of the United States. But if you drive south-ward from, say, Pittsburgh or Detroit, you will not pass aspecific place where you enter this perceptual region.You will note features in the cultural landscape that youperceive to be associated with the South, and at somestage of the trip they will begin to dominate the area tosuch a degree that you will say, “I am really in the Southnow.” This may result from a combination of features of

the region’s material as well as nonmaterial culture: theform of houses and their porches, items on a roadsiderestaurant menu (grits, for example), a local radio sta-tion’s music, the sound of accents that you perceive to beSouthern, a succession of Baptist churches in a townalong the way. These combined impressions becomepart of your overall perception of the South as a region.

Perceptual regions can be studied at a variety of lev-els. The 12 world geographic realms that form the basisof many courses in world regional geography are percep-tual units at the smallest of scales; at the opposite, largestend of the scale would be a tiny region defined by one ofthe remaining communities of Amish people in theUnited States. Quite possibly, our perceptions are weak-est and least accurate at each end of the scale: at the smallscale because so much information must be synthesizedthat images become distorted, and at the large scale be-cause most diminutive cultures within cultures are notwell-defined parts of our general spatial knowledge. Aninteresting example of regional definition at an interme-diate scale is found in an article by Terry Jordan entitled“Perceptual Regions in Texas” (1978). Like all of us, Tex-ans use regional-cultural names for various parts of theirstate, and in this article Jordan identifies where namessuch as Panhandle, Gulf Coast, Permian Basin, andMetroplex actually apply (Fig. 2-7).

Perceptual Regions in the United States The culturalgeographer Wilbur Zelinsky tackled the enormous, com-plex task of defining and delimiting the perceptual re-gions of the United States and southern Canada. In an article entitled “North America’s Vernacular Regions”(1980), he identified 12 major perceptual regions on aseries of maps. Figure 2-8 summarizes these regions. Ofnecessity, it shows overlaps between certain units. Forexample, the more general term “the West” obviously in-corporates more specific regions, such as the Pacific Re-gion and part of the Northwest.

The problem of defining and delimiting perceptualregions can be approached in several ways. One is toconduct interviews in which people residing within aswell as outside a region are asked to respond to ques-tions about their home and cultural environment. Zelin-sky used a different technique; he analyzed the tele-phone directories of 276 metropolitan areas in theUnited States and Canada, noting the frequencies withwhich businesses and other enterprises use regional orlocational terms (such as “Southern Printing Company”)in their listings. The resulting maps show a close similar-ity between these perceptual regions and culture regionsidentified by geographers.

Regional Identity Culture regions also represent anemotional commitment. Among the perceptual regionsshown in Figure 2-8, one, the South, is unlike any of theothers. Even today, five generations after the Civil War,


Lake Erie

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Figure 2-6 Mid-Atlantic Folk-Culture Region. One delimi-tation of a Mid-Atlantic culture region. Source: H. Glassie, Pat-tern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States.Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968, p. 39.

the Confederate flag still evokes regional sentiments; the“Bible belt” still has some meaning; and the South’sunique position among American regions is entrenchedin songs and dialects. Certainly a “New South” hasemerged over the past several decades, forged by His-panic immigration, urbanization, Sunbelt movements,and other processes. But the South—especially the rural

South—continues to carry imprints of a material culturelong past. Its legacy of nonmaterial culture is equallystrong, preserved in language, religion, music, food pref-erences, and other traditions and customs.

Such cultural attributes give a certain social atmos-phere to the region, an atmosphere that is appreciatedby many of its residents and is sometimes advertised as


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Figure 2-7 Perceptual Regions ofTexas. Prominent perceptual regions inTexas. Source: T. G. Jordan, “Perceptual Re-gions in Texas.” Geographical Review 68,1978, p. 295.

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PERCEPTUAL REGIONS OF NORTH AMERICA

Figure 2-8 Perceptual Regions ofNorth America Source: W. Zelinsky,“North America’s Vernacular Regions,” An-nals of the AAG, 1980, p. 14.

an attraction for potential visitors. “Experience theSouth’s warmth, courtesy, and pace of life,” said one suchcommercial, which portrayed a sun-drenched seasidelandscape, a bowing host, and a couple strolling along apalm-lined path. Such images may or may not representthe perceptions of most inhabitants of the region, but fewSoutherners would object to publicity of this kind.

The South has its vigorous supporters and defend-ers, and occasionally a politician uses its embattled his-tory to arouse racial antagonism. But today the South isso multifaceted, so diverse, so vigorous, and so intercon-nected with the rest of the United States that its regionalidentity is much more complicated than traditional im-ages suggest. This serves as an important reminder thatperceptual regions are not static. Images of the South arerapidly changing, and no identifiable group, or combina-tion of groups, clings to the idea that the region shouldsecede from the United States.

Elsewhere, however, discrete and strongly definedculture regions have become political (and even actual)battlegrounds. Emotional attachments to territory and tra-dition can run so strong that they supersede feelings of na-tional (state) identity, an issue we take up in Chapter 16.

Cultural EnvironmentsThe relationships between human societies and the nat-ural environment are complex. Environment affects soci-ety in countless ways, some of which are reflected by thedifferent types of houses people build, the diverse cropsthey grow, and the kinds of livestock they can maintain.Societies modify their natural environments in ways thatrange from slight to severe. In this book we will fre-quently encounter evidence of human impact on naturalenvironments. Public art and monumental architectureare parts of the cultural landscape, but so are pollution-belching smokestacks, contaminant-oozing landfills, andsludge-clogged streams.

But there is another question involving society andenvironment. Human cultures exist in a long-term ac-commodation with their physical environments, seizingopportunities presented by those environments and suf-fering from the limitations and extremes they sometimesimpose. No culture, no matter how sophisticated techno-logically, can completely escape the forces of nature, ascan be seen in the annual list of tornado casualties in theUnited States. But some cultures have overcome the ap-parent limitations of their natural environments more ef-fectively than others. How can this be explained?

In the 1940s, the geographer Harlan Barrows arguedthat this is a central question for geographers, and heproposed the term cultural ecology to identify the arenain which the necessary research would take place. Actu-ally, the whole issue of nature and culture had alreadytaken center stage, albeit under a different heading.

Environmental Determinism Efforts to explain theachievements of certain cultures under particular envi-ronmental regimes had been going on for decades be-fore Barrows tried to focus the debate. In fact, the funda-mental questions were raised centuries earlier. Theancient Greeks, finding that some of the peoples subju-gated by their expanding Empire were relatively docilewhile others were rebellious, attributed such differencesto variations in climate.

In this connection, let us look again at the map ofancient culture hearths (Fig. 2-4). Note that many ofthese crucibles of cultural achievement lie in apparentlyunfavorable climatic zones such as deserts. Nonetheless,23 centuries ago, Aristotle described the peoples of cold,distant Europe as being “full of spirit . . . but incapable ofruling others” and those of Asia (by which he meantmodern-day Turkey) as “intelligent and inventive . . .[but] always in a state of subjection and slavery.”

Aristotle’s views on this topic were nothing if notdurable. As recently as the first half of the twentieth cen-tury, similar notions still had strong support. Here is howEllsworth Huntington (1876–1947), an early-twentieth-



“Looking down on Florence from above, whatstands out are the symbols of church and state. And whatsymbols they are! The magnificent dome of the Cathedralwas designed by one of the giants of the Italian Renaissance,Brunelleschi, whereas the Palazzo Vechio (the Old Palace)was clearly meant to reflect both the authority of local gov-ernmental leaders and the greatness to which they aspired.Here is a landscape created by and for humans. It evokesmuch more than the aesthetic preferences of the Italians. Itprovides a dramatic reminder of where power and moneywere concentrated in the evolving city.”

century geographer, stated this idea in Principles ofHuman Geography, published in 1940:

The well-known contrast between the energetic peo-ple of the most progressive parts of the temperatezone and the inert inhabitants of the tropics andeven of intermediate regions, such as Persia, islargely due to climate . . . the people of the cyclonicregions rank so far above those of the other parts ofthe world that they are the natural leaders.

The doctrine expressed by these statements is re-ferred to as environmentalism or, more precisely, envi-ronmental determinism. It holds that human behav-ior, individually and collectively, is strongly affectedby—even controlled or determined by—the physicalenvironment. It suggests that climate is the critical fac-tor. Yet what constitutes an “ideal” climate lies in theeyes of the beholder. For Aristotle, it seems to havebeen the climate of Greece. Through the eyes of morerecent commentators from Western Europe and NorthAmerica, the climates most suited to progress and pro-ductiveness in culture, politics, and technology are (youguessed it) those of Western Europe and the northeast-ern United States.

For a time, some geographers attempted to explainthe distribution of centers of culture in terms of the “dic-tating environment.” Quite soon, however, some geo-graphers doubted whether these sweeping generaliza-tions were valid. They recognized exceptions to theenvironmentalists’ postulations (e.g., the Maya civiliza-tion in Mesoamerica arose under tropical conditions)and argued that humanity was capable of much morethan merely adapting to the natural environment. As forthe supposed “efficiency” produced by the climate ofWestern Europe, this idea ignored the fact that for mil-lennia the most highly developed civilizations werefound outside of Western Europe (North Africa, South-east Asia, East Asia, etc.). Surely it was best not to base“laws” of environmental determinism on inadequatedata in the face of apparently contradictory evidence.

Such arguments helped guide the search for answersto questions about the relationships between human so-ciety and the natural environment in different directions,but for several decades some geographers still held tothe environmentalist position. In this connection it is in-teresting to read S. F. Markham’s Climate and the En-ergy of Nations (1947). Markham thought that he coulddetect in the migration of the center of power in theMediterranean (from Egypt to Greece to Rome and on-ward) the changing climates of that part of Europe dur-ing several thousand years of glacial retreat. Markhamsaw the northward movement of isotherms—lines con-necting points of equal temperature values—as a keyfactor in the shifting centers of power in the AncientWorld.

Geographers grew increasingly cautious about suchspeculative notions, however, and they began askingnew questions about societal-environmental relation-ships. If generalizations were to be made, they felt theyought to arise from detailed, carefully designed research.Everyone agrees that the natural environment affectshuman activity in some ways, but people are the deci-sion makers and the modifiers—not the slaves of envi-ronmental forces. And the decisions people make abouttheir environment are influenced by culture.

Reactions to environmentalism produced counter-arguments. An approach known as possibilismemerged—espoused by geographers who argued thatthe natural environment merely serves to limit the rangeof choices available to a culture. The choices that a soci-ety makes depend on its members’ requirements and thetechnology available to them. The doctrine of possibil-ism became increasingly accepted, and environmentaldeterminism became increasingly discredited—at leastwithin geography. For those who have thought less care-fully about the human–environment dynamic, environ-mentalism continues to hold an allure, leading to somehighly questionable generalizations about the impact ofthe environment on humans.

Even possibilism has its limitations, for it encouragesa line of inquiry that starts with the physical environmentand asks what it allows. Yet human cultures have fre-quently pushed the boundaries of what was oncethought to be environmentally possible by virtue of theirown ideas and ingenuity. Moreover, in the intercon-nected, technologically dependent world we live intoday, it is possible to do many things that are seeminglyat odds with the local environment. Hence, researchtoday tends to focus on how and why humans have al-tered the environment, and the sustainability of theirpractices. And in the process the perspectives of culturalecology have been supplemented by those of politicalecology—an area of inquiry fundamentally concernedwith the environmental consequences of dominantpolitical-economic arrangements and understandings.

The fundamental point is that human societies aresufficiently diverse and the human will is too powerfulto be the mere objects of nature’s designs. We cannotescape the environmental contexts in which we aresituated—nor should we try if the environmental degra-dation that has followed such efforts is any guide. In-deed, the effort to avoid any semblance of determinismhas perhaps overly discouraged consideration of theimpact of the environment on humans. What is clear,however, is that any inquiry that does not give cre-dence to the extraordinary power of the intertwineddomains of culture, politics, and economy in human–-environment relations embarks on a path that has con-sistently been shown to be simplistic, if not fundamen-tally wrong.


1. During a certain week some years ago, several peo-ple in a village near a large East Asian city got the flu.Within days, hundreds of people in the city camedown with it. In the surrounding countryside, numer-ous villagers in an ever-widening area became ill.Meanwhile, this Asian flu appeared in such cities asSan Francisco, New York, London, and Moscow.What processes spreading this malady were at workin China and worldwide, and how do they differ? Ifyou were unable to be immunized, how would youuse your knowledge of geography to best protectyourself?

2. Ask a classmate to join you in a geographic experi-ment involving perceptual regions. The idea is toconfirm, through a simple test, how regional percep-tions can vary. First, agree on a U.S. or Canadian re-gion to be defined; this should not be the region inwhich either of you resides. Next, take a blank outlinemap of North America (or at a larger scale, the UnitedStates or Canada), and separately draw a boundarythat, in your view, delimits the region in question(such as the U.S. South or the Canadian West). Nowcompare your maps and, most importantly, explainwhy you defined the region as you did. What under-lies your differing perceptions?


◆ KEY TERMS ◆

acculturationassimilationcivilizationcontagious diffusioncultural diffusioncultural landscapecultureculture complexculture hearthculture realm

◆ APPLYING GEOGRAPHIC KNOWLEDGE ◆

culture regionculture systemculture traitdiffusionenvironmental determinismexpansion diffusiongeographic realmgeographic regionhierarchical diffusion

independent inventionmigrant diffusionperceptual regionpolitical ecologypossibilismrelocation diffusionsequent occupancestimulus diffusiontransculturation

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