Human geography

Compulsory Reading
Human Geography People, Place, and Culture
Chapter 1
Introduction to Human Geography
• In a globalized world, connections are many and simple answers are few
• Hunger and Malnourishment is a major problem in some countries such as SubSaharan Africa. The main reason for malnourishment is poverty, the failure of food
distribution systems and cultural and political practices that may favor some groups
over others.
• Do the best-fed countries have the most farmable land? Let compare Norway and
Bangladesh. Norway’s has only 4 % that is farmable whilst Bangladesh has more than
70% that is farmable. The reason why Norway is wealthy and well fed in comparison
to Bangladesh is because of importing food, which is the reason how they overcome
their inadequate food production.
• If a poor country has a small proportion of arable land, does that destine its population
to a lifetime of malnourishment? It depends on the place. Some land that are farmable
is much more productive than others. For example Kenya who has only 8% land that
is arable, is not the reason for malnutrition. Hunger in Kenya depends on what they
produce, who owns the land, and how Kenya is tied to the global economy. Their land
may be owned by foreign such as Western countries. The small proportions of land
have female workers, but the lands are registered to their husbands or sons because, by
law, they cannot own them.
• Kenya suffers from the complexities of globalization. Because whilst foreign
corporations owns Kenya’s best lands, a globalized economy thrives on foreign
income, tiny farms that are unproductive, a gendered legal system that disenfranchises
the agricultural labor force and disempowers the caregivers of the country’s children.
Therefore Kenya has multiple factors contribution to poverty and malnutrition.
• Kenyan agro-pastoralists (försörjer sig på boskapsskötsel eller kombinerar
bostadsskötsel med jordbruk), these people have higher rates of famine (hunger) since
a drought began in 2006.
• If Kenya lost export revenue, how could the country pay loans it owes to global
financial and development institutions? To answer this question requires geographic
inquiry, the answer is therefore rooted in the characteristics of places and the
connections those places have to other places.
• Geographic fieldwork can be the answer to the question. These people go out in the
field and see what people are doing, observe how peoples actions and reactions vary
across space.
Key questions
1. What is human Geography
Human geographers study people and places. But human geography focuses on how
people make places, how we organize space and society, how we interact with each
other in places and across space and how we make sense of others and ourselves in our
localities, regions and the world. A aspect of interaction is communication and
transportation technologies that are major roles explaining how people are more
interconnected. Economic globalization and rapid diffusion of elements of popular
culture are making more places look alike such as fashion and architecture. Even
though we have thousands of languages, countries, global cites etc. all these attributes
come together in different ways around the globe to create a world of endlessly
diverse places and people. But the main thing is understanding and explaining this
diversity is the mission of human geography. Globalization is a set of processes thar
are increasing interactions, deepening relationships, and accelerating interdependence
across national borders. Also it is a set of outcomes, coming from global processes –
outcomes that are unevenly distributed and differently manifested across the world.
For Geographers globalization is more complex, they employ the concept of ‘’scale’’
to understand individual, local, regional, national and global interrelationships. What
happens at the global scale affects the local but also the individual, regional and
national and similarly the processes at these scales influence the global.
The processes of globalization do not appear at the global scale: what happens at other
scales such as individual, local, regional, national helps create the processes of
globalization and shape the outcome of globalization
2. What are geographic questions?
Human geography is the study of the spatial and material characteristics of the humanmade places and people found on Earth’s surface; physical geography asks similar
questions about the natural environment. Mapping the spatial distribution of a
phenomenon can be the first step to understanding it. Then a question about how the
arrangement came about, what processes create and sustain the particular distributions
or patterns and what relationships exist between different places and things.
Geographers want to understand how and why places are similar or different, why
people do different things in different places and how the relationships between people
and the physical world varies across space.
The spatial perspective
Geography involves more than memorizing places on a map. Place locations are to
geography what dates are to history . Understanding change over time is critically
important, and understanding change across space is equally as important. Human
geographers employ a spatial perspective as they study a multitude of phenomena
ranging from political elections and urban shantytowns to gay neighborhoods.
The five themes
The five themes comes from four major geographical organizations in the US. These
five themes are derived from geography’s spatial concerns.
– Location (1) highlights how the geographical position of people and things on
Earth’s surface affects what happens and why. Location theory, why are villages,
towns, and cities spaced the way they are?
– Human environment (2) interactions. Asking locational questions often means
looking at the reciprocal relationship between humans and environments.
– Region (3). Understanding the regional geography of a place allows us to make
sense of much of the information we have about places and digest new place-based
information.
– Place (4). Each surface o Earth have unique human and physical characteristics,
and one of the purposes of geography is to study the special character and meaning
of places. People develop a sense of place by infusing a place with meaning and
emotions, by remembering important events that occurred in a place, or by
labeling a place with a certain character. Because we experience and give meaning
to places, we can have a feeling of home when we are in a acerating place.
Perceptions of places is something we also develop where we have never been
through books, movies, stories and pictures.
–
Movement (5). Refers to the mobility of people, goods and ideas across the surface
of the planet. Movement is an expression of the interconnectedness of places.
Spatial interaction between places depends on the distances among places, the
accessibility (the ease of reaching one location from another) of places, and the
transportation and communication connectivity (the degree of linkage between
location in a network) among places.
Cultural Landscape
In addition to the five themes, location, human environment, region, place and movement,
landscape is a core element of geography. Landscape is used to refer to the material character
of a place, the complex of natural features, human structures. But human Geographers are
concerned with the cultural landscape, the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape.
Human have made a imprint on every place on the planet. The cultural landscape is the visible
imprint of human activity and culture on the landscape. Such as budling, roads, memorials,
churches, fields and homes.
Derwent Whittlesey proposed the term sequent occupance to refer to these sequential imprint
of occupant, whose impacts are layered one on top of the other, each layer having some
impact on the next.
3. Why do geographers use maps, and what do maps tell us?
Maps are an powerful geographic tool and cartography, the art and science of making
maps, is as old as geography itself. Maps are used for waging war, promoting political
positions, solving medical problems, locating shopping centers, bringing relief to
refugees and warning of natural hazard. Reference maps show locations of places and
geographic features. Thematic maps tell stories, showing the degree of some attribute
or the movement of a geographic phenomenon. Reference maps focus on accuracy in
chosing the absolute location of places, using coordinate systems. The establishment
of a satellite-based global positioning system allows us to locate tings on the surface
of earth with accuracy. Relative location describes the location of a place in relation to
other human and physical features.
Mental Maps
Geographers who study human-environment behavior have made studies of how
people develop their mental maps. Mental maps reflect a personas activity space, what
is accessible to the person in his or her rounds of daily activity and what is not
Generalization in maps
Generalized maps help us see general trends, but we cannot see all cases of given
phenomenon. The map of world precipitation is a generalized map of mean annual
precipitation received around the world.
Remote Sensing and GIS
Geographers monitor Earth from a distance, using remote sensing technology that
gathers data at a distance from earth’s surface remotely sensed data are collected by
satellites and aircraft. Google Earth is remotely sensed images. Geographers use GIS
to compare a variety of spatial data by creating digitized representations of the
environment, combining layers of spatial data and creating maps in which patterns and
processes are superimposed.
4. Why are geographers concerned with scale and connectedness?
Geographer study places and patterns at a variety of scales, including local, regional,
national and global. Scale has two meanings in geography: the first is the distance on a
map compared to the distance on the Earth, and the second is the spatial extent of
something. The phenomena found at one scale are usually influence by what is
happening at other scales; to explain a geographic pattern or process, it requires
looking across scales. The scale at which we study a geographic phenomenon tells us
what level of detail we can expect to see.
Regions
Geographers often divide the world into regions for analysis. In geography a region
constitutes an area that shares similar characteristics. Criteria for a region can be
physical, cultural, functional or perceptual. A formal region has a shared trait, it can be
a shared cultural trait or physical trait. A functional region is defined by a particular
set of activities or interactions that occur within it. Places that are part of the same
functional region interact to create connections. Functional region have a shared
political, social or economic purpose. Functional region is a spatial system: its
boundaries are defined by the limits of that system. Perceptual regions are intellectual
constructs designed to help us understand the nature and distribution of phenomena in
human geography.
Culture
Is an all-encompassing term that identifies not only the whole tangible lifestyle of
peoples but also their prevailing values and beliefs. Culture lies at the heart of human
geography. Cultural geographers identify a single attribute of a culture as a culture
trait for example wearing a turban is a culture trait in certain societies.
Connectedness through Diffusion
When ideas, people or goods move across space, this process of dissemination is
called cultural diffusion. Time and distance cause time-distance decay in the diffusion
process. When a cultural trait such as religion spreads it is a case of expansion
diffusion, when an innovation or idea develops in a hearth and remains strong there
while also spreading outward.
Relocation Diffusion
Occurs through migration. When migrant move from their homeland, they take their
cultural traits with them. Relocation diffusion involves the actual movement of
individuals who have already adopted the idea or innovation, and who carry it to a
new perhaps distant, locale, where they proceed to disseminate it.
5. What are geographic concepts, and how are they used in answering geographic
questions?
Geographic concepts include most of the boldfaced word in this chapter, such as
place, relative location, mental map, perceptual region, diffusion and cultural
landscape. In doing geographic research a geographer thinks of geographic question
one that has a spatial or landscape component, chooses the scales of analysis and then
applies one or mor geographic concepts to conduct research and answer the question.
Geographers use fieldwork, remote sensing, GIS, GPS, and qualitative and quantative
techniques to explore linkages among people and places and to explain differences
across people, places, scales and times.
m
Two theoretical approches
Environmental determinism
Human behavior, individually and collectively is strongly affected by the physical
environment.
Possibilism
In response to environmental determinism, geographers argues that the natural
environment merely serves to limit the range of choices available to a culture. The
choices that a society makes depend on what its members need and on what
technology is available to them. Geographers called this doctrine possibilism.
Today’s Human Geography
It seeks to make sense of the spatial organization of humanity and human institutions
on Earth’s surface, the character of the places and regions created by people and the
relationships between humans and the physical environment.
Chapter 2 Population
This chapter examine the distribution of the world’s population at several scales
in order to understand where people live and why they live where they do.
Health, well-being and population growth tend to be closely related, and this
chapter will study the role of governments in their efforts to control the process.
• China has one of the best and longest metro system so you would think
that they have good infrastructure. However they do not possess any hot
water. It’s not that the hot water but the problem is their location.
• China has undergone incredibly rapid expansion in its mining and
manufacturing sectors, resulting in economic growth rates that are often at
10% a year.
Key Questions
1. Where in the world do people live and why?
Demography is the study of population in general perspective, and population
geographers work in tandem with demographers, seeking answers to the
problem posed by these variations. Variability of demographic features and
factors across space. Demographers report the population density of a country as
a measure of total population relative to land size. Arithmetic population
density….
Physiologic Population Density
Population density relates the total population of a country or region to the area
of arable (farmable) land it contains. This is called the physiologic population
density. The difference in arithmetic density and physiologic density for a single
country revels the proportion of arable land to all land.
Population Distribution
Population distribution – descriptions of locations on the Earth’s surface where
individuals or groups live. Geographers often represent population distributions
on dot maps.
World population Distribution and Density
• Historically people tended to congregate in places where they could grow
food, making for a high correlation between arable land and population
density. People lived closest to the most agriculturally productive areas in
cities that had agricultural areas. In recent history, advances in
agricultural technology and in transportation of agricultural goods have
begun to change this pattern.
• Megalopolis – refers to huge urban agglomerations.
Last note
• China and India account for 40% of the world currently, but India is
predicted to outpace China’s population in the 2030.
2. Why do populations rise or fall in particular places?
It was alarmed in 1960s that the world population was increasing too quickly
and was outpacing our food production. The British economic Thomas Malthus
warned that the world’s population was increasing faster than the food supplies
needed to sustain it. He argued that food supplies grew linearly, adding acreage
and crops incrementally by year, whilst population grew exponentially. The
prediction he made assumed food production is confined spatially, that what
people can eat within a country depends on what is grown in the country. But
this isn’t true. Because of globalization. Wealthy countries that lack arable land
like Norway can import the majority of its foodstuffs. That means that food
production has grown exponentially as the acreage under cultivation expands,
mechanization of agricultural production diffuses, improved strains of seed are
developed.
Dissemination
Population growth at world, regional, national and local scales.
Population change in one place can be affected rapidly by what is going on in a
neighboring country or at the regional scale.
Population growth at the regional and national scales
• Today Africa’s rate of natural increase still is higher than Indias, but subSaharan Africa faces the impact of the aids epidemic, which is killing
millions.
• High growth rates in Muslim countries of north Africa and southwest
Asia. Demographers point to the correlation between high growth rates
and the low standing of women: where cultural traditions restrict
educational and professional opportunities for women and men dominate
as a matter of custom, rates of natural increase tend to be high.
• Wealth is not the only reason for negative population growth rates. Russia
for example is declining because of social dislocation in the wake of the
collapse of the soviet union: deteriorating health conditions, high rates of
alcoholism and drug use and economic problems combine to shorten life
expectancies (especially among males) and to lower birth rates.
• Why are women having fewer children? In wealthier countries, more
women are choosing to stay in school, work on careers, and marry alter,
delaying childbirth.
• Older people retire and eventually suffer health problems, so they need
pensions and medical care. The younger workers in the population must
work in order to provide the tax revenues that enable the state to ay for
these services. As the proportion of older people in a country increases,
the proportion of younger people decreases. Fewer younger workers are
providing tax revenues to support programs providing services for more
retired people. To change the age distribution of an aging country and
provide more taxpayers, the only answer is immigration: influxes of
younger workers to do the work locals are unable or unwilling to do.
Population Growth within Countries
Women in southern India have higher female literacy, greater land ownership
rates, better access to health care, and more access to birth control methods. All
of these factors keep the growth rates lower in the south than the north of India.
Sterilization in India during the 1970, for those who had three or more children.
But today India state governments are using advertising and persuasion- not
guns for sterilization- to encourage families to have fewer children. The
southern states continue to report the lowest growth rats, correlating with higher
wealth and higher education levels and literacy rates of females in these states.
However the eastern and northern states continue to report the highest growth
rates.
The demographic transition
Demographic transitions – great Britain had high birth rates and high date rates
of the 1300s
• Birth rates are lowest in the countries where women are the most educated
and most involved in the labor force
Future population growth
Stationary population level – the populations of most countries will stop
growing at some time during the 21 century, reaching a so-called stationary
population level. Which would mean that the world’s population would stabilize
and that the major problems to be face would involve the aged rather than the
young.
3. Why does population composition matter?
Maps showing the regional distribution and density of populations tell us about
the number of people in countries or regions, but they cannot reveal two other
aspects of those populations – the number of men and women and their ages.
These aspects of population, the population composition are important because a
populous country where half the population is very young has quite different
problems than a populous country where a large proportions of the population is
elderly. Therefore, when geographers study population they are concerned not
only with spatial distribution and growth rates but also with population
composition.
• Age and sex are key indicators of population composition, and
demographers and geographers use population pyramids to represent
these traits visually.
4. How does the geography of health influence population dynamics?
Among the most important influences on population dynamics are
geographical differences in sanitation, the prevalence of diseases, and the
availability of health care.
Infant morality
One of the leading measures of the condition of a country’s population is the
infant mortality rate. Infant and child mortality reflect the overall health of a
society. High infant mortality has a variety of causes, the physical health of
the mother being a key factor. Women who carry many babies way suffer
overwork, dieses and poorly educated. Demographers report that many
children die because their parents do not know how to cope with the routine
childhood problem of diarrhea. This condition together with malnutrition is
the leading killer of children throughout the world.
• The lowest infant mortality rate among larger populations has long been
reported by Japan.
Child Morality
• The child mortality rate, which records the death of children between the
ages of 1 and 5 remains high in much of Africa and Asia.
Life Expectancy
Another indivator of a society’s well-being lies in the life expectancy of its
members at birth, the number of year, on average, someone may expect to
remain alive.
• Women outlive men by about four years in Europe and east asia, three
years in sub-Saharan Africa, six years in north America and seven years
in south America. In Russia 12 years.
• With its low infant and child morality rates and low ferility rates, Japan’s
life expectancy is predicted to rise to 106 by the year 2300.
Influence of health and Well-being
• Medical geographers study diseases. Diseases can be grouped into
categories to make it easier to understand the risk they pose. About 65 %
of all diseases are known as infectious diseases, resulting from an
invasion of parasites and their multiplication in the body. Malaria is an
infectious disease. It can divided into the chronic or degenerative
diseases. Genetic or inherited diseases we can trace to our ancestry. These
can be a special geographic interest because they tend to appear in certain
areas and in particular populations, suggesting the need for special, local
treatment.
• Three geographic terms are used to describe the spatial extent of a
disease. A disease is endemic when it prevails over a small area. A
disease is epidemic when it spreads over a large region. A pandemic
disease is global in scope.
5. How do governments affect population change?
Over the past century, many of the world’s governments have instituted
policies designed to influence the overall growth rate or ethnic rations within
the populations. Certain policies directly affect the birth rate via laws ranging
from subsidized abortions to forced sterilization. Others influence family size
through taxation or subvention. These policies fall into three groups:
expansive, eugenic and restrictive.
• The former soviet union and china under amo Zedong eld other
communist societies in expansive populations policies, which encourage
large families and raise the rate of natural increase.
• In the past some governments engaged in eugenic population policies,
which were designed to favor one racial or cultural sector of the
population over others. Nazi Germany.
• Today many of the world’s governments seek to reduce the rate of natural
increase through various forms of restrictive population policies. Like
birth control.
Chapter 1 Of Men and Mockingbirds
A territory is an area of space, whether of water or earth or air, which an animal or group of
animals defends as an exclusive preserve. The word is also used to describe the inward
compulsion in animate beings to possess and defend such a space. A territorial species of
animals, is on in which all males and sometimes females too, bear an inherent drive to gain
and defend an exclusive property.
Anthropologist Julian H. Steward wondered on ‘’Why are human beings the only animals
having land-owning groups?’’.
Ethology is a new science, pioneered by Austria’s Konrad Lorenz and Holland’s Niko
Tinbergen in the 1930’s. Ethology suggests ethics to the ear, whereas its major concern is
with the precise study of innate behavior patterns in animals.
The existence of innate, genetically determined behavior patterns was by American C. O
Whitman in 1898. Later on Oskar Heinroth in Berlin independently explored the possibility of
patterns to which learning makes a contribution but which are in themselves genetically
controlled. But serious study’s had to wait until the 1930’s.
New hypotheses, new theories sprang up to take account of the new, revolutionary evidences.
Kondrad Lorenz in 1937 published in English his landmark paper ‘’ the companion in the
bird’s world’’ breaing the news that in the life of our backboned comrade, the vertebrate,
problems of instinct could not be reduced to the programmed specifics of insect life. In 1951
Tinbergen published ‘’The study of Instinct’’ about that no scientist, could ignore it entirely.
In 1955 Tinbergen’s rival Adrian Kortlandt published ‘’aspects and prospects of the concept
of instinct’’ that ethology was going to be other than the polite preserve of a pall mall club of
like-minded students, but more fun than a barrel of argumentative monkeys.
When we discuss behavior patterns, such as the territorial. The disposition to possess a
territory is innate. The command to defend is innate. But its position and borders will be
learned. The genetically determined pattern which informs an animal as to how to act in a
given situation.
Chapter 7 Religion
o Religion can unite and divide, flourish and stagnate, surge and fate.
Understanding the changing map of world religions and the role of religion in
culture is essential to appreciating human geography.
Key Questions
1. What is religion, and what role does it play in culture
2. Where did the world’s major religions originate, and how do religions diffuse?
3. How is religion seen in the cultural landscape?
4. What role does religion play in political conflicts?
What is Religion, and what role does it play in culture?
o Religions are constantly changing.
o Religions diffuse through expansion diffusions, including both contagious and
hierarchical, but also diffuse through relocation diffusion.
o Spatial interaction occurs because of migration, missionary efforts, and
conquest. Along these paths, major religions of the world have diffused.
o The cultural landscape is marked by religion – Church, synagogues, temples
and mosques, cemeteries and shrines, statues and symbols.
o Religion also occurs in modes od dress and personal habits (beards, ritual
scars).
o Hard to define but ‘’ A system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order
life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate priorities’’. Where should is in
center.
o Secularism is the indifference to or rejections of formal religion. The most
secular countries in the world today are in Europe, for example Sweden.
o Religion has blocked scientific study, encouraged the oppression of dissidents,
supported colonialism and exploitation and condemned women to an inferior
status in many societies.
Where did the major religions of the world originate, and how do religions
diffuse?
o Religion is classified into three categories based on their approaches to the
–
concept of divinity:
Adherents of monotheistic religions worship a single deity, a God or Allah.
Believers in polytheistic religions worship more than one deity, even thousands
Animistic religions are centered on the belief that inanimate objects, such as
mountains, boulders, rivers and trees possess spirits and should therefore be
revered.
o Universalizing religions – Actively seek converts because they view
themselves as offering belief systems of universal appropriateness and appeal.
Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism all fall within this category.
From the Hearth of South Asia
Hinduism
o One of the oldest religions in the modern world, dating back over 4000 years,
in the Indus river Vallet of today’s Pakistan.
o The religion is based on ancient practices in the Indus River cities of MohenjoDaro and Harappa.
o The beliefs in reincarnation, at least a long journey after death.
o However, Hinduism is no longer associated with its hearth in Pakistan. The
majority of Pakistanis are Muslims. The majority of Indians are Hindu.
o Archaeologists hypothesize that flooding along the Indus spurred the migration
of early Hindus eastward to the Ganges River. The river is sacred to Hinduism.
It’s a spiritual healing power as Earthly manifestations of the Almighty.
o Hindus do not actively seek converts.
o Hinduism’s doctrines are closely bound to Indian society’s caste system, a
universal ladder.
o The caste system locks people into particular social classes and imposes many
restrictions, especially in the lowest of the castes and in those considered
beneath the caste system, Dalits.
o Mahatma Gandhi helped loosen the social barriers of the caste system – in the
effects of modernization during the colonial period.
Diffusion of Hinduism
o Hinduism migrated to Ganges River and diffused throughout South Asia and
into Southeast Asia before the advent of Christianity.
o Hinduism is not a universalizing religion today, the relocation diffusion
produced pockets rather than regions of Hinduism.
Buddhism
o Buddhism splintered from Hinduism over 2500 years ago. It appeared in India
as a reaction to questions about Hinduisms teaching. Reformers questioned
Hinduisms strict social hierarchy that protected the privileged and kept
millions in poverty.
o Siddhartha founded Buddhism.
o Buddhism spread as far south as Sri lanka and later advanced west toward the
Mediterranean, north into Tibet and east into China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam
and Indonesia.
Judaism
o Abraham and God have a covenant in which the Jews agree to worship only
one God, and God agrees to protect his chosen people, the Jews.
Diffusion of Judaism
Christianity and Diffusion
o Christianity split from Judaism
o Christianity declined during the centuries immediately after the fall of the
Roman Empire.
o Diffusion took place as the religious ideas that had been kept alive in remote
places such as a coastal Ireland and Scotland spread throughout western
Europe.
o The worldwide diffusion of Christianity occurred during the era of European
colonialism beginning in the sixteenth century.
o Spain invaded and colonized Middle and South America, bringing the catholic
faith to those areas.
o protestant refugees who were tired of conflict and oppression in Europe came
to North America in large numbers
Islam
o Single founder, Muhammad, born in Mecca in 571 CE.
o Muhammad admired the monotheism of Judaism and Christianity.
o Islam is divided between Sunni Muslims and the Shi’ite or Shiab Muslims.
This division began after Muhammad died in 632 CE.
Diffusion of Islam
o Islam diffused throughout North Africa. By the early ninth century, the
Muslim world included emirates extending from Egypt to Morocco, a caliphate
occupying most of Spain and Portugal and a unified realm encompassing
Arabia, the Middle East, Iran and most of what is today Pakistan.
The rise of Secularism
o In some countries, antireligious ideologies are contributing to the decline of
organized religion.
o Secularism has become more widespread during the past century. People have
abandoned organized religion in growing numbers. Traditions have also
weakened. For example all shops and businesses were closed on Sundays, for
rest and introspection. Today however, they are mostly open and Sunday is
increasingly devoted to business and personal affairs not to church.
How is religion seen in the culture landscape?
o Religion marks cultural landscape with houses of worship such as churches,
mosques, synagogues and temples.
o When adherents voluntarily travel to a religious site to pay respects or
participate in a ritual at the site, the act of travel is called pilgrimage.
o Geographers who study religion are interested in the act of pilgrimage and its
impacts on place, people, religion, culture and environment
o Sacred sites are places or spaces people infuse with religious meaning.
Sacred sites of Jerusalem
o Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.
Landscapes of Hinduism and Buddhism
o The Hindu cultural landscape – urban as well as rural – is dotted with
countless shrines, ranging from small village temples to structures so large and
elaborate that they are virtually holy cities.
o The cultural landscape of Hinduism is the cultural landscape of India, its main
culture region.
Landscapes of Christianity
o Churches
o As a result of mercantilism and colonialism, Europeans exported the ornate
architecture of European Christian churches wherever they settled.
o The reformation, the rise of secularism, and the decline of organized religion
are reflected in the cultural landscape as well.
o Some chirches are not holding services
Landscape of Islam
o Mecca, Saudia Arabia
What role does religion play in political conflict?
o Religious conflicts usually involve more than differences in spiritual practices
and beliefs. Religion often functions as a symbol of a wider set of cultural and
political differences.
o Religious fundamentalism is often born out of frustration over the perceived
breakdown of society’s mores and values, lack of religious authority, failure to
achieve economic goals, loss of a sense of local control, or a sense of violation
of a religions core territory.
o Religious extremism is fundamentalism carried to the point of violence – 9/11
Religion is a major force in shaping and changing culture.
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