Culture is the total way of life that characterises a group of people. There are thousands of cultures existing today and each contributes to global diversity. There are so many ways that people can be culturally different. Specifically, a culture consists of numerous cultural components that vary from one culture group to the other. Some of the cultural parameters are religion, language, architecture, cuisine, technology, music, dress, gender roles, law, education, government, agriculture, economy, sport, values, and many more.
Culture Region:
A culture region is a portion of Earth. that has common cultural elements and has distinct cultural authority from other regions. Any number of cultural components may be used to define culture regions. A map of world religions, for example, includes a shaded area in South Asia where Hinduism is dominant.
Culture regions differ greatly in size. Some are exceedingly large, like the Islamic culture region that encompasses millions of square km of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Some are very small, like Spanish Harlem, which encompasses about three square km of Manhattan. Many others are of intermediate. size, like the Corn Belt, which occupies a portion of the mid western United States.
Cultural Diffusion:
Cultural diffusion is the spread of cultural beliefs and social activities from one group of people to another. Mixing of world culture through different ethnicities, religions and nationalities has only increased with advanced communication, transport and technology.
Cultural Landscape:
Cultural Landscapes have been defined. by the World Heritage Committee as "cultural properties representing the combined works of nature and of man".
The World Heritage Committee has identified and adopted three categories of cultural landscape. The three categories extracted from the Committee's Operational Guidelines, are as follows:
(1) "A landscape designed and created intentionally by man
(ii) An "organically evolved landscape" which may be a "relict (or fossil) landscape" or a "continuing landscape";
(iii) An "associative cultural landscape" which may be valued because of the "religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element".
Cultural Interaction:
Cultural interaction focuses on the relationships that often exist between cultural components that characterize a given community. Different factors interact with each other and give rise to prevalent trait.
What language do you speak? What dress do you wear? What food do you like? What is the structure of the house you live in? For the above question by searching the answer we can learn the culture of a human society.
Culture shapes our identity and influencesour behaviours, Culture refers to the sharing language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviours and material objects, which are passed from one generation to the next generation. Cultural geography is the branch of human geography which deals about the areal organization of various cultural aspects in relation to total environment. Some of the cultural aspects are as follows:
Language:
Language plays great force in socialization and historical transmission, which is the primary instrument for transmitting culture. Human can bind any group of people through the network of interaction. Languages are in written or oral form. India (780) has the world's second highest number of languages, after Papua New Guinea (839).
Customs:
Custom in law is the established pattern of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. Habit is a similar word which is adopted by an individual and it has been adopted by most of the people of the ethnic group or society.
Norms:
Norms refers to attitude and behaviours that are considered normal, typical or average within the group. Cultural norms are the standards we live by. They are the shared expectations and rules that guide behaviour of people within social groups. Cultural norms are learned and reinforced from parents, friends, teachers and others while growing up in a society. Norms often differ across cultures, contributing to cross-cultural misunderstandings.
Values:
Values refer to intangible quality or beliefs accepted and endorsed by a society. A culture's values are its ideas about what is good, right, fair, and just. Sociologists disagree, however, on how to conceptualize values. Conflict theory focuses on how values differ between groups within a culture, while functionalism focuses on the shared values within a culture.
Cultural Heritage:
Cultural Heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values. Cultural Heritage is often expressed as either Intangible or Tangible Cultural Heritage. As part of human activity Cultural Heritage produces. tangible representations of the value systems, beliefs, traditions and lifestyles. As an essential part of culture as a whole, Cultural Heritage, contains these visible and tangible traces form antiquity to the recent past.
Cultural Heritage types:
Cultural Heritage can be distinguished in: Built Environment (Buildings, Townscapes, and Archaeological remains), Natural Environment (Rural landscapes, Coasts and shorelines, agricultural heritage) and Artefacts (Books & Documents, Objects, and Pictures).
Cultural diversity:
Cultural diversity refers to having different cultures, respect to each other differences. Cultural diversity is important; because of work place and show increasingly consist of various cultural, racial and ethnic groups. We can learn from one another but first we must have a level of understanding. Cultural diversity exists in many countries around the world, but it can be challenging and, at times, problematic. Through this lesson, you will learn how to define cultural diversity and explore some of the ways in which it influences society.
Cultural Traits:
A cultural trait is a characteristic of human action that's acquired by people socially and transmitted via various modes of communication. Cultural traits are things that allow for a part of one culture to be transmitted to another. There are millions of culture traits, a trait can be an object, a technique, a belief or an attitude. Culture traits are interrelated with each other, their collective function forms culture complex.
Cultural Realms of the World:
Cultural realm refers to a type of cultural region. Cultural region is a continuous geographical area characterized by cultural homogeneity. It may be classified into three categories as macro, meso and micro region. Cultural realm is classified based on the attitude, religious belief, language, racial group, technological development, etc. There are twelve Cultural realms in the modern world. Let us discuss some of them briefly.
Occidental Realm
Occidental culture is the culture of the European society. It is influenced, to a great extent, by Christianity. It has regional modifications on the basis of varying levels of industrialisation, political and economic thought, colonisation, commercialisation, urbanisation, and development of transport system, land development of social, political and economic institutions.
In many parts of the occidental culture, the impact of non-religious factors, particularly the effect of modernisation, is so great that the religious values are sidelined. Post- industrial Europe is fast emerging as a society where traditional values are nearly abandoned. The occidental culture covers a vast area. It is further divided into six sub-regions considering the impact of regional environment.
(1) West European is the most industrialised. and urbanised culture.
(ii) Continental European culture is influenced by different political and economic thoughts, while Christianity remains an important influence.
(iii) Mediterranean Europe includes countries lying to the south of the Alps. It is the region of dominance of Christianity.
(iv) Anglo-American and
(v) Australian cultural realms are practically the offspring's of west European culture. Both are inhabited by migrants from west Europe. There are only some regional differences.
(vi) Latin American culture is very similar to the Mediterranean culture. It is the only region of occidental culture which lies in the tropics and is underdeveloped. It became a part of the occidental culture as a result of conversion of tribes into Christianity. The colonial languages, Spanish and Portuguese, have become the state languages. Regional architecture has been influenced by the Spanish and Portuguese styles. Practically all countries maintain economic, cultural and social ties with the Mediterranean countries.
Islamic Cultural Realm:
The Islamic Cultural Realm is influenced by Islamic values. It covers a vast geographical area from Morocco in the west to Pakistan in the east. The population is sparsely distributed due to inhospitable environment. The coasts, river basins and oases have been the cradles of Arabian culture in this realm. The British call it the Middle-East while the Germans call it a region of oriental culture. This cultural realm lies between the traditional Indian culture in the east and the modernised European culture in the west.
Islamic culture is highly orthodox and based on traditional beliefs, the impact of which can be seen in high female illiteracy rates. These countries have very high per capita incomes, but the level of modernisation is very low,
Indie Cultural Realm:
Indie Cultural Realm is the culture of the Indian sub-continent. Baker called it a sub-continental culture, while D. Stamp used the term paddy culture. This cultural realm is well-defined; it lies between Himalayas in the north, Indian Ocean in the south and Hindukush Mountains in the west.
This cultural realm is characterized by joint family, village community, caste system, semi-feudal land relations, subsistence agriculture, paddy farming, seasonal climate changes and agricultural season coming at the same time all over the region. The culture of this region is greatly influenced by Vedic values. Though the region is inhabited by various communities, the social system has the hidden impact of Vedic cultural values.
East Asian Culture:
This culture is basically a Buddhist culture with regional modifications. True Buddhist culture can be seen in South Korea and Japan. Even these two countries have felt the impact of industrialisation, urbanisation and modernisation. The culture of mainland China has modified the Buddhist system. This culture was adopted after the Second World War.
South-East Asian Culture:
It is a transitional culture lying at a place where different cultures have intermingled. Dominance of Buddhism can be seen in Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Influence of Christianity can be seen in the Philippines and of Indie culture over islands of Indonesia. The Islamic influence is evident in Malaysia and the Indonesian islands. No other region has such peculiarities.
Meso-African Culture:
This culture is also known as the Negro culture. It principally includes tropical Africa. Similar cultural systems can be seen among the American Red Indians, Latin American tribes, Australian aboriginals and several tribes of Asia-Pacific region.
Historian Toynbee has used the term 'marginalised culture for these traditional culture units. Some geographers even include Eskimos under this cultural realm. Thus, it is a widely scattered cultural realm characterised by marginalised and relatively isolated communities.
Major Culture Hearths:
Areas from which important culture traits, including ideas, technology, and social structures, are originated.
Folk Culture
Culture traits that are traditional, no longer widely practiced by a large number of people, and generally isolated in small, often rural, areas.
5.3 Races
The race is a group of people with more or less permanent distinguishing characteristics. There are skin colour and hair colour to which persons concerned attach certain interpretations. Objectives and scientific classification are the division of mankind in to racial groups should be done on the basis of measurable physical features and qualities inherited from a common ancestor. The important features on the basis of which the races are identified and classified include skin colour, stature, shape of head, face, nose, eye, type of hair, and blood group. Human races are classified in to four broad groups: 1. Negroid, 2. Caucasoid, 3. Mongoloid and
4. Australoid.
1. The Negroid
They are usually called as "black race". They have the darkest skin tone than other races, and other common characteristics are the slopped forehead, thick lips, wide nose, and dark hairs. They are living in Sub-Sahara Africa.
2. The Mongoloid
They have the folding eye lids, almond shaped eyes, yellowish skin tone, and V shaped cheeks, Native Americans and Eskimo are also classified as Mongoloid. Compared to the other races, they have the least body hair, least body odour, and smallest limb ratio. Their facial structure is likely to adapt cold mild wind. They are living in East Asia.
3. The Caucasoid
The Caucasoid is known as "white people" characterised by the pointy nose, vertical forehead, pinkish/orange skin tone, visible brow ridge, and colourful eyes/hair. Some believe that their light skin tone is meant to receive more sunlight due to Europe's climate. Some believe that their nose structure is meant to keep the nose moisture from getting dried by the wind. They are living in Europe and Middle East.
4. Australoid Race:
They have visible eye ridge, wide nose, curly hair, dark skin tone, and short in height. Some believe that their visible thick lips helps them to eat stiff foods. They are living in Australia and Papua New Guinea.
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