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CHAPTER 2 43 MANY WORLDS Geographies of Cultural Difference CHAPTER reproduction CHAPTER unauthorized No 2014. Freeman H. W. 2 © What can this scene tell us about nature–culture relations in North American popular culture? Enjoying nature in a national park campground. (Courtesy of Roderick Neumann.) Go to “Seeing Geography” on page 89 to learn more about this image. 43 MANY WORLDS Geographies of Cultural Difference o matter where we live, if you look carefully, you will see how important cultural identity Nis to our daily lives. Cultural difference is evident everywhere—not only in reproductionthe geographic distribution of different cultures but also in the way that difference is created or reinforced by geography. For example, in the United States, the historical legacy of segregating “Whites” from “Blacks” has been important in establishing and maintaining cultural differences between these groups (Figure 2.1). In Chapter 1, we noted that human geographers are interestedunauthorized in studying the geographic differences both among and within cultures. For example, using the conceptNo of formal region (a region inhabited by people who have one or more cultural traits in common), we can identify and map differences among cultures. This sort of analysis is usually done on a very large geographic scale, such as a continent or even the entire world. But, 2014. geographers are also interested in analyses at smaller scales. When we look more closely at a formal culture region, we begin to see that differences appear along racial, LEARNING OBJECTIVES religious, gender-related, and other lines of distinction. Freeman Sometimes groups within a dominant culture become Explain the role of cultural difference in H. 2.1 shaping regions. distinctive enough that we label subcultures Groups W. of people with them subcultures. These can be norms, values, and © Describe the ways that mobility interacts with material practices the result of resistance to the 2.2 that differentiate cultural difference. them from the dominant culture or of a separate dominant culture to which they belong. religious, ethnic, or national group Analyze the potential for globalizing processes forming its own distinct 2.3 to shape and be altered by cultural difference. community within a larger culture (Figure 2.2). We also noted in Chapter 1 that there are many Identify the influence of culture on physical 2.4 geography and physical geography on culture. ways of defining and categorizing cultures. In this chapter, we will begin to explore the vast range of Recognize how landscapes reflect cultural geographies of culture difference. The term difference 2.5 differences. implies a relationship and a set of criteria for 44 CHAPTER 2 MANY WORLDS FIGURE 2.1 Greyhound bus station in 1943 Memphis, Tennessee, FIGURE 2.2 Kuala Lumpur’s “Chinatown” at dusk. with separate facilities for Blacks and Whites. It exemplifies the racial Such ethnicreproduction enclaves may be found in cities around segregation found historically throughout much of the United States. the world. (Jeremy Horner/LightRocket via Getty Images.) Though such practices have long been outlawed, historic patterns of segregation may be found in the landscape today. (Buyenlarge/Getty Images.) comparison and assessment. That is, cultures areunauthorized defined as they relate to each other using a predetermined set of characteristics. But, whatNo does it mean to speak of geographies in the plural? Isn’t there only one geography? The plural form emphasizes that there is no single way of seeing and experiencing place and landscape. Recall2014. from Chapter 1 our discussion on the concept of personal experience in the sense of place, which emphasizes the multiplicity of meanings versus a single, universally shared meaning. Cultural geography studies have shown, for example, that women and men often experience the sameFreeman places in different ways. A certain street corner or tavern might be a comfortable and familiarH. hangout for men but a threatening or uncomfortable zone material culture that women avoid (see Seeing Geography, Chapter 3). To speak of geographies, then, is All physical, tangible W. objects made and to go beyond© the idea of a single way of looking at the world and raise new questions used by members of a cultural group, such about the different meanings that people give to places and landscapes: how these as clothing, buildings, tools and relate to their sense of self and belonging; and how, in multicultural societies, we deal utensils, instruments, furniture, and with these different meanings politically and socially. artwork; the visible aspect of culture. nonmaterial culture The wide cultural group: buildings, furniture, range of tales, songs, MANY CULTURES clothing, artwork, musical lore, beliefs, values, and customs that instruments, and so forth. The pass from generation We classify cultures using many different criteria, both elements of material culture are to generation as part material and nonmaterial. Material culture includes visible. Nonmaterial culture of an oral or written tradition. the physical objects made and/or used by members of a includes the wide range of beliefs, 45 values, myths, and symbolic meanings passed from generation to generation of a given society. Often it is difficult to draw clear lines between material and nonmaterial features of culture. Food, for example, is material, but it is also charged with symbolic meaning and valued differently in different cultures (Figure 2.3). Many Westerners would gag at the mere thought of eating the worms and insects that are the daily food staples and even much valued delicacies in non-Western, rural cultures around the world. Therefore, cultures can be thought of in terms of both material and nonmaterial characteristics. Let’s look briefly at how these material and nonmaterial characteristics were first used to identify, categorize, and map cultures. In eighteenth-century Europe and North America, people first began to speak of “cultures” in the plural form. Specifically, FIGURE 2.3 Wouldreproduction you eat these? Food preferences following Europe’s Age of Exploration and Discovery are strong markers of culture difference. These water (when Europeans began to explore the world by sea), beetles are a common food source in Southeast Asia. they started thinking about “European culture” in (Graham Day/Getty Images.) relation to other cultures they encountered around the world. Although now discredited as ethnocentric and racist, hierarchical models—in urbanized,unauthorized cosmopolitan elites looked to the rural which European culture was ranked above other Nofolk as the source of distinctive national identities cultures—were invented to categorize and rank (Figure 2.4). Similarly, as the United States urbanized cultures. Religion and technology were key criteria in and expanded westward, rural folk were seen as the constructing these hierarchies, with Christian and2014. technologically developed cultures ranked at the top and non-Christian, nonindustrial cultures ranked at the bottom. Freeman Folk Culture As Europe and NorthH. America industrialized and urbanized in the nineteenth century, people began thinkingW. in terms of internal © cultural differences between folk culture Rural, groups. Urban city dwellers started unified, largely self-sufficient groups to view rural country spaces as that share similar inhabited by distinct cultures. customs and Thus, a new term, folk culture, was ethnicity. In terms of material culture, invented to distinguish traditional many items of daily ways of life in rural and agricultural use such as clothing, furniture, and spaces from ways of life in the new housing are urban and industrial spaces. When FIGURE 2.4 Young men in Bavaria dance the handmade, often Europe’s kingdoms and empires “Schuhplattler,” one of the traditional folk dances of from raw materials Germany. The revival of such traditional folk dances by found locally. Most fragmented into new countries food is grown and throughout the nineteenth century urban, educated classes has been important to the consumed locally. and into the twentieth, the formation of modern national identities. (Getty Images.) 46 CHAPTER 2 MANY WORLDS national culture The source of an American national often has resulted in the formation of distinctive controversial idea character defined by self-reliance, regional cuisines, such as the Japanese diet of rice and that citizens possess a set of recognizable perseverance, and a pioneering raw fish or the Mesoamerican diet of maize, beans, values, behaviors, spirit. Hence, the cowboy—an and spicy peppers. In terms of nonmaterial culture, and beliefs—often economically minor and short- folk cultures typically have strong family or clan including the same ethnic and linguistic lived rural occupation in the structures and highly localized rituals, such as an traits—that express nineteenth-century western United annual blessing of water wells and springs or harvest the core culture of each modern nation. States—came to symbolically dances. Generations of gifted individuals within folk embody the imagined American communities create songs, musical styles, and national character. Folk culture and national culture storytelling that are unique to their region. As with thus have been closely associated. The term national food, folk cultures often produce distinctive, highly culture, sometimes regarded as a controversial idea, regionalized musical genres, Appalachian bluegrass suggests that a country’s population possesses a set of music being one well-known example.
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