Chapter 5 Lecture

Chapter 5: Cultural
Geographies

Katie Pratt
Macalester College

© 2016 Pearson Education, Inc.

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 Key Concepts

Figure: Chapter 5 Opener Transgender men

participants in the Miss Tiffany’s Universe beauty
pageant.
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 Culture as a Geographical Process

• Culture
– Shared set of meanings
– Always evolving
– Dynamic concept
– Globalization impacts culture

Figure 5.2 St Patrick’s Day in Japan.

Figure 5.1 Star Trek fans.
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 Culture as a Geographical Process (cont’d)

• Cultural geography
– Space, place, and landscape
– Ongoing process
– Two-way relationship between geography and culture

Figure 5.3 The Internet of Things.

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 Culture as a Geographical Process (cont’d)

• Folk and popular culture as artificial categories

Figure 5.4 Tamil hip-hop.

Apply your knowledge: Identify three aspects of your own culture and the ways
that place and space have shaped it.
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 Building Cultural Complexes

• Carl Sauer
• Cultural landscape

Figure 5.5 Cultural landscape in

Kenya.
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 Building Cultural Complexes (cont'd)

• Critiques of Sauer’s cultural landscape

Figure 5.6 Sauer's cultural landscape, summarized.

Apply your knowledge: Reflecting on Sauer’s words on how culture shapes

landscape, think of one example where you have seen this take place.
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 UNESCO World Heritage Landscapes
(Visualizing Geography)

Figure 5.1.1 UNESCO

World Heritage Sites.

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 Building Cultural Complexes (cont'd)

• European approaches to culture and place

• Historical geography
• Genre de vie

Figure 5.7 Market gardens in Corsica.

Apply your knowledge: What are differences between American and

European approaches to studying human interactions in the landscape?
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 Building Cultural Complexes (cont'd)

• Cultural trait
• Cultural complex
• Cultural region

Figure 5.8 Tuareg men in Niger.

Figure 5.9 Chinese toddler using chopsticks. Figure 5.10 This South-Korean coming of
age ceremony is a right of passage.

Apply your knowledge: How does looking at cultural complexes help us better
understand the relationship between humans and places they live?
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 Shaping Place through Fact and Fiction

Figure 5.B “La Casa de Estudillo” house

in Old Town San Diego. Figure 5.C Souvenirs from the nineteenth-
century novel Romona.

Apply your knowledge: Look around you both at home and in stores. What
souvenirs do you find? What do they remind you of? What geographies—of
landscapes, emotions, peoples, and travels—do these material objects recall for you
or for their collectors?
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 Cultural Systems

• Broad similarities at the national, regional, or local

level

Figure 5.11 Baseball regions, the United States.

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 Cultural Systems (cont’d)

• Kinship
• Tribe

Figure 5.12 Tribes of India.

Apply your knowledge: What is the differences between kinship and tribe?
Identify two other places in the world where tribal relationships are key to the
culture?
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 Culture and Identity

• Sex and gender

– Not separate categories
– Multitude of sexes
– Gender as socially constructed
• Gender identity

Figure 5.13 Biological–Psychosocial Phenotype:

Mutual influences of sex and gender. Figure 5.14 Masculinity and the
dandy in the nineteenth century.
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 Culture and Identity (cont’d)

• Feminism and gender

• Intersectionality
• Gender and class

Figure 5.15 Turkish women in Berlin, Germany

are veiled, in contrast to the women in the
crowd behind.

Apply your knowledge: What do you think of the UN statement that,

“No society treats its women as well as its men”? Why do you think that
is?
How do you think that can change?
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 The Global Gender Gap

Figure 5.D The global

gender gap.

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 Culture and Identity (cont’d)

• Ethnicity

Figure 5.16 Uyghur protest in the city of Figure 5.17 Arab Street neighborhood in
Urumqui. Singapore.

Apply your knowledge: Define all the different ways geographers analyze
cultural identity: sex, gender, and ethnicity. Are there other categories that
you think are critical in assessing cultural identity?
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 Culture and Identity (cont’d)

• Race
• Racialization
• Whiteness, blackness,
and rap music
– Blackophobia
– Blackophilia
– White privilege
Figure 5.18 Students protesting against racist
– White supremacy land rights legislation in Melbourne, Australia.

Apply your knowledge: What are other examples like “blackophobia”

and “blackophilia” in your everyday life?

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 Culture and Identity (cont’d)

• Geographies of disability
• Children’s geographies
• Geographies of childhood

Figure 5.20 Free play and environmental

exploration.

Figure 5.19 Disability and space.

Apply your knowledge: Looking at geographies of race, disability, and

children—what is the role of power in each of these areas of study?
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 Emergent Cultural Geographies

• Actor-network theory
• Non-representational theory
– Affect

Figure 5.21 An actor-network. Figure 5.22 U.S. flag raised at Ground

Zero, NYC.

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 Emergent Cultural Geographies (cont’d)

• Emotional geographies
• Materialism

Figure 5.23 Genocide Museum, Figure 5.24 Statue of Bussa, Barbados.

Rwanda.

Apply your knowledge: What is the difference between “affect” and “emotion”? Can you
think of an example when you have been in a particular space and experiences “affect”?
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 Globalization and Cultural Change

• Americanization
• Global Culture
– World music

Figure 5.25 Top feature films, 2013. Figure 5.26 Bossa nova dancers.

Apply your knowledge: Why has the “culture of beauty”—which used to be very
specific to different places in the world—become Westernized? What do you think
might be lost as a result of a “global standard of beauty”? Can anything be gained?
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 Geographies of Beauty and Plastic Surgery

Figure 5.E Mauritanian

norms of female beauty.

Figure 5.G Plastic surgery worldwide.

Apply your knowledge: How has the spread of capitalism “displaced” beauty
norms and what are some of the effects of this displacement?
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 Future Geographies

• Protecting cultural diversity: UN Convention on the

Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural
Expressions (2005)

Figure 5.27 The cultural economy.

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