Annals of the American Association of Geographers ISSN: 2469-4452 (Print) 2469-4460 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag21 The Geographical Legacies of Mountains: Impacts on Cultural Difference Landscapes Wenjie Wu, Jianghao Wang , Tianshi Dai & Xin (Mark) Wang To cite this article: Wenjie Wu, Jianghao Wang , Tianshi Dai & Xin (Mark) Wang (2017): The Geographical Legacies of Mountains: Impacts on Cultural Difference Landscapes, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2017.1352481 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1352481 Published online: 28 Aug 2017. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=raag21 Download by: [Inst of Geographical Sciences & Natural Resources Research] Date: 29 August 2017, At: 00:43 The Geographical Legacies of Mountains: Impacts on Cultural Difference Landscapes Wenjie Wu,* Jianghao Wang ,y Tianshi Dai,z and Xin (Mark) Wang{ *The Urban Institute, Heriot-Watt University yState Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences & Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences zCollege of Economics, Jinan University, and China Center for Economic Development and Innovation Strategy Research of Jinan University {School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, and HSBC Group Large-scale mountains that affect civilized linguistic exchanges over space offer potentially profound cultural difference landscape implications. This article uses China’s national trunk mountain system as a natural experi- ment to explore the connection between spatial adjacency of mountains and cultural difference landscapes. Our spatial design documents that the presence of mountains widens the linguistic difference between two cit- ies located on the opposite mountain sides, particularly when they are adjacent to administrative borders. The effect dwindles as spatial contiguity margins between city pairs increases. The results shed light on the impor- tance of conceptualizing geographic contextual constraints to the configuration of cultural difference land- scapes. Key Words: cultural difference, geocomputation, geographic contextual, spatial econometrics. 影响各地文明的语言交换的大规模山岳, 为深刻的文化差异地景提供了潜在的意涵。本文运用中国全 国山系作为自然实验, 探讨山岳的空间邻近性与文化差异地景之间的连结。我们的空间设计, 记录了山 岳的存在, 的确加深了坐落于山岳两翼的两座城市间的语言差异, 特别是当两座城市邻近行政边界之 时。该效应随着两座城市间的空间持续边缘增加而减少。本研究结果, 对于概念化地理脉络限制之于 文化差异地景构成的重要性提供了洞见。 关键词： 文化差异, 地理计算, 地理脉络, 空间计量经济。 Las montanas~ de escala mayor que afectan los intercambios lingu€ısticos civilizados a traves del espacio poten- cialmente generan implicaciones para el paisaje reflejadas en profundas diferencias culturales. Este artıculo usa el sistema montanoso~ principal de China a manera de experimento natural para explorar la conexion entre la contiguidad€ espacial de las montanas~ y la diferenciacion cultural de los paisajes. Nuestro diseno~ espacial per- mite establecer que la presencia de las montanas~ amplıa la diferencia lingu€ıstica entre dos ciudades localizadas en los lados opuestos de las montanas,~ particularmente cuando ellas son adyacentes a los lımites administrati- vos. El efecto se disminuye en la medida en que se incrementan los margenes de contiguidad€ entre pares de ciu- dades. Los resultados arrojan luz sobre la importancia de conceptualizar los obstaculos geograficos contextuales con la configuracion de paisajes con diferencia cultural. Palabras clave: diferencia cultural, geocomputacion, con- texto geografico, econometrıa espacial. nce upon a time, there were only mountains Benedict argued that each culture had its own configu- (e.g., Himalayas, Rockies, Andes, Alps, ration and involved linguistic exchanges. This anthro- OPyrenees, and Scandinavia mountains) but no pological methodology has been widely applied to civilized societies on the Earth. Over time, civilized understanding the geography of civilized development, Downloaded by [Inst of Geographical Sciences & Natural Resources Research] at 00:43 29 August 2017 societies developed through trade and linguistic although there have been critical debates about the rec- exchanges across cities and regions. Historically, onceptualization and reinvention of patterns of culture mountains are prominent geographic barriers that (see, e.g., Tuan 1974; Duncan 1980; Cosgrove 1992; have been involved with configurations of cultural dif- Gregson 1992; Price and Lewis 1993; Jackson 1996). ference landscapes over space. Interest in cultural difference landscapes has a long In Patterns of Culture, Benedict (1934) transformed history. Recently, there has been an appeal to use the the literature by using anthropological methodology to geography of linguistics or dialects as the evolutionary draw attention to the spatial configurations of cultures. outcome of cultural identities in civil society (Lazear Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 0(0) 2017, pp. 1–14 Ó 2017 by American Association of Geographers Initial submission, August 2016; revised submissions, April and May 2017; final acceptance, May 2017 Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC. 2 Wu et al. 1999; Grogger 2011). In light of Darwin’s seminal city fixed effect. A number of controls, such as geo- work Origin of Species, these dialect data are proxy for graphical and socioeconomic factors, are also added to “genome” and have recorded configurations of cultural the regression models to assess the sensitivity of the differences in the geographic context (Cavalli-Sforza estimates. We control for whether there are substantial 2000; Huang et al. 2016). The growing body of litera- impacts arising from political border changes since the ture on empirical evaluations has so far paid little late Qing Dynasty. Additionally, we assess the sensitiv- attention to the roles of mountains in the spatial man- ity of the observed effects to changes in different spatial ifestation of cultural ties or cultural differences—iden- contiguity margins. Overall, we find evidence support- tified by linguistic dissimilarity across cities. ing the claim that mountains have significant effects on This article presents a novel step in this direction. shaping the cultural difference landscapes. As one of the largest mountainous countries in the In the second stage, we complement the regression world, China and its diversified dialect environments approach with a spatial synthetic control method. provide a suitable case for our investigation. For the This method allows us to go beyond offering the aver- configuration of cultural difference landscapes, we ask age generalized effects and provide new insights into whether a mountain would influence the linguistic dif- the detailed localized effects of cultural difference ference between city pairs located on the opposite landscapes on the basis of individual treatment cases. sides. Measuring the linguistic difference between two We define city pairs that are spatially adjacent with administrative regions is potentially challenging, as each other and that are on the opposite side of moun- each Chinese region is likely to have a spectrum of tains as individual treatment cases. To circumvent the dialects. Following the recent literature, we measure drawbacks of the linear regression model in statistical the linguistic difference between dialects by using a inference, the synthetic control method was pioneered city pair’s linguistic distance—a reduced-form expression by Abadie and his coauthors (Abadie and Gardeazabal about cultural difference landscapes (Spolaore and 2003; Abadie, Diamond, and Hainmueller 2010, Wacziarg 2009; Tabellini 2010; Falck et al. 2012; Wu, 2015) under the panel data context. It is designed to Wang, and Dai 2016). construct a synthetic control for a treated case by tak- Methodologically, our analyses proceed in two ing a weighted average of selected control units. In our stages. In the first stage, we estimate the effect of moun- article, a key methodological innovation has been to tains on the linguistic distances between city pairs. As improve on this methodology by matching each city mountains involved in the study are the outcome of pair with a synthetic counterfactual under the cross- prehistorical geological processes, they are less likely to sectional spatial data context. Wong (2015) pointed induce endogeneity concerns in the regression analysis. out that under confoundedness, linear regression is a It is possible, however, that the linguistic distance special case of synthetic control method. By bringing between city pairs is not only affected by the existence the identification power of the synthetic control of mountains but also influenced by other geographic method into the spatial setting, we look at a specific features such as rivers, lakes, and canyons. This is par- city pair treatment case (Tianjin and Chengde), which ticularly the case when two cities are separated by a is obstructed by the Yan Mountain. Our analysis quan- long geographical distance with more unobservable tifies the localized cultural difference effects of the geographical factors in between, making it difficult to Yan Mountain through constructing a synthetic city infer the role of mountains. We resolve this issue by pair for comparison. The city pair is constructed by focusing on city pairs located close by. The level of taking the weighted average over a selection of city closeness