Culture

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Understanding Your Environment Lesson 4

Introduction

Where are you from? This is one of the most significant factors contributing to who you have become as an adult. If you are from the United States, for example, there is a good chance that you had electricity and indoor plumbing in your home. Your family probably had at least one television and telephone, and most likely had a car.

You had access to education, and in fact legally had to be enrolled in a school program until you were 16 years old (statistically speaking, you probably stayed in school until you were at least 18 years old).

All of these factors together signify that the people around you probably had most, if not all their basic needs adequately met to a degree that allowed them to pursue various extracurricular activities, such as playing sports, taking part in after-school clubs, reading, playing video games, or going out with friends.

Contrast your situation with someone who is from India where the majority of people come from small villages with intermittent access to electricity, clean drinking water, and education, and the average salary is less than $1,000 a year (less than $3.00 a day). You will find that economic and environmental conditions result in a very different life experience for these people.

The differences result from the effects of the environment. When cultural geographers talk about environments, they include both the physical features that surround us (weather, landscape, etc.) and the built environment (buildings, street patterns, use of public spaces).

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In India, people's living situations have arisen due to the history, physical location, daily practices, and meanings associated with the place, as well as the vision of it held by its inhabitants and non-Indians. How people and their environments shape each other is at the core of the study of cultural geography and of this lesson.

Lesson Objectives

Lesson objectives are important to keep in mind as you go through the lesson. All of your exam questions - and hopefully improved life skills - are built around these objectives.

1. Recognize, define, and distinguish between terms associated with Cultural Geography and its primary concepts.

2. Understand what a cultural geographer means by "environment", and how environment, location, and culture influence each other. Identify examples that show:

a. Locations influence culture and the environment.

b. Culture (human interaction) influences the environment and the location.

c. Environment (both built and natural) influences location and culture.

3. Explain how the concepts of Geographic Scale and Geographic Perception provide an advantage to understanding culture, cultural geography, and sources of conflict.

4. Distinguish between linear and cyclical views of time and how those views impact geographic perception.

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Lesson Enhancement

The required reading(s) appear throughout the lesson. For your convenience, they also appear at the beginning of the lesson in case you want to read ahead.

A City of 2 Million Without a Map

Ross, Oakland. 21 April 2002. A City of Two Million Without a Map. The Toronto Star.

BEST way to OPEN internal links like this one is by first RIGHT CLICKING the link and SELECTING "Open Link in New Window".

Cultural Geography

Cultural geography asks the question:

"HOW and WHY do cultures vary from place to place?"

It focuses on the ways culture shapes, and is shaped, by people's ideas about the following:

How places on earth should look

Who should occupy those places?

What behaviors and norms should and should not be tolerated within those places?

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Cultural geographers are interested in understanding how location and human interaction influence each other in various and unique ways. They study:

how humans alter their environments to meet their needs. They examine how massive cities have been built in areas that have rough natural terrain (such as San Francisco) or conditions inhospitable to humans (e.g., Las Vegas and Tucson)

how human cultures themselves are significantly shaped by the environments in which they develop. An example is the effects on Japanese culture of living on an island prone to earthquakes and tsunamis

The tools we give you in this lesson will help you get to know a location and the people who inhabit it. When your understanding of the local geography is similar to that of the locals, then you have a better basis to relate to them.

Examples from North and Central America

Take Americans and Canadians, for example. The majority of people from both countries speak English as their first language and both groups share a lot of the same characteristics. Canadians and Americans largely listen to the same music, watch the same TV shows, and laugh at the same jokes. Underneath the surface, however, Canadians and Americans have some important cultural differences. Why? Because the cultures of each group of people evolved in very different places.

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For example, it should be obvious why ice hockey is the most widely played youth sport in Canada, while very few Americans outside the northern states bordering Canada play organized hockey as children. But what about other stereotypes of Canadians? Can you think of any that may be related to Canada's history in the fishing and fur-trapping trades? (Yes, THESE guys again!)

Moving from North America to Central America, let's look at one more example. This is a short article by Oakland Ross from the Toronto Star, A City of Two Million without a Map.[1] In it, he describes how the people in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, function without maps or street names and addresses.

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Click HERE to read the article and then do the Cultural Log Exercise. Questions from this article may appear on the lesson quiz!

CULTURAL LOG ACTIVITY 4.1 – City of Two Million Without a Map

The way you respond to these questions above reflects your cultural beliefs about the way people "should" live in cities.

Next: read our interpretation of this article.

Two Million People without a Map

In the previous page, we asked why Managuans accept and even perpetuate their way of life without maps. Here is the AFCLC's cultural geographer's response to this particular question:

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Managuans live in a society in which little to no value is placed on going places that lie outside the familiar confines of the neighborhood. Most people live, work, play, go to school, and shop within walking distance of their homes. Rather than being seen as a functioning mega-city, Managua is better understood as a collection of hundreds of small neighborhoods located really close to one another. It is not uncommon for residents of the city to spend their entire lives without leaving the confines of a few square miles. This means that people's *worldviews within Managua itself can be very different at various locations within the city. Someone from one neighborhood may feel that he is in a completely different microculture when he visits another part of the city.

Another significant factor related to cultural geography is that Nicaragua is a poor country. Even if the will had been there to rebuild the city's colonial era grid-pattern streets after the devastating 1972 earthquake, the resources were simply not available. People adhere to and perpetuate this way of organizing their lives because of the combination of local cultural patterns and socioeconomic conditions. This is an example of the influence of Economics and Resources (one of the 12 cultural domains defined in Lesson 1) on the culture and environment of Managua.

To Americans, the thought of a city with two million people without some sort of standard street address system is unacceptable. Our view is influenced by our culture and our values. American values are largely influenced by our country's history, its early settlers from northwestern European countries, and our common experiences of traveling outside our home areas in the U.S.

Our economic resources and our cultural perceptions of time and space have created, in American towns and cities, environments in which cost-effective and efficient ways of getting from place to place are highly valued characteristics and roads and public transit systems are constantly being upgraded in order to make our travel as easy and short as possible. In fact, many people now

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rely on GPS technology to find the most efficient ways of getting from point A to point B. In Managua, GPS technology would be useless because the GPS requires the name of the destination.

In Managua, the woman who lives "next to the yellow car" probably sees nothing odd or unique in the way she organizes the various locales of the city in her own mind. To her, navigating a large city through nothing more than landmarks seems completely "normal" whereas in the United States it is increasing "normal" to find your way from point "A" to point "B" with detailed directions read to you by a device.

When we discuss the difference between the American and Managuan perspective of a city, we are employing three concepts central to Cultural Geography that we will discuss in this lesson:

Geographic Mental Maps

Geographic Scale

Geographic Perception

Geographic Mental Maps

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Geographic mental maps are virtual maps existing in our minds that are formed in two ways:

1 By direct experience with our environments

2 Through ideas we learn from other people. Those ideas include information about what differentplaces in the world look like and how people in those places live.

In addition, geographic mental maps contain two types of information:

1 The location of places, spaces, and objects

2 The cultural associations we make to those things

Few people consciously realize the impact that mental maps have on their daily lives. As beings that occupy and move through space every minute of every day, we develop a keen sense of where we are on the surface of the planet, where we came from, and where we are going. Repetitive patterns of movement imprint onto our brains mental maps that are so accurate that they allow us to move from one place to another without giving it any thought.

Mental maps start to form as soon as we are able to move as toddlers trying to navigate around our homes. The path from the nursery to the bin of toys in the living room gets so ingrained in a child's developing mind that even when a parent or object stands in its way, the child figures out how to circumvent the obstacle in order to reach its desired destination.

Similar patterns of movement become ingrained as people mature. Soon, the toddler can find the bathroom, the refrigerator, or the backyard without giving it much thought.

These patterns become so automatic that it is usually possible for people to navigate around their own home in pitch darkness just based on the spatial memory that has been "programmed" into their heads in the form of mental maps created through repetitive experience.

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One aspect of culture shock that we discussed in Lesson 2 is the disruption to your routine that lack of mental maps for a new place causes. How many times have you stood on a corner or sat at a stop light in a new city and wondered which way is home? That feeling can be frustrating and even frightening, leading to general sensations of uneasiness and anger about the unfamiliar place.

Understanding this impact of mental maps on your perceptions will not only help you overcome culture shock, but will make you a more effective Airman when dealing with people from other cultures.

Let's turn now to the concept of geographic scale.

Geographic Scale

Geographic scale means the degree of specificity of a person's geographic view at a particular time or for a particular purpose. In the example from Nicaragua, the scale that citizens living in Managua seemed to use on a daily basis did not extend beyond the confines of their neighborhood. Their specific focus was on their zone of the city.

If you think of a map that you would call up electronically on MapQuest or Google to get directions to a locale, you can relate to the concept of geographic scale. The map typically defaults to a view of the whole region, with the path you need to drive highlighted.

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You may decide that you need more specificity. In this case, you "zoom in" to a closer view of the neighborhood you are trying to reach.

Zooming shows two things:

1 More detail in your target area--streets that were not visible in the larger view, and a betterrepresentation of that leg of the trip. It might also show buildings and actual businesses in the area.

2 Less information about the larger area. You lose part of the larger region, because you areconcentrating on an area of smaller size.

Larger and Smaller Geographic Scale

The human mind is structured to allow you to think across geographic scales.

This means that while the daily lives of most people center around local geographic scale (thinking about and doing things like going to work, to the store, or looking for other things to do close to home), we also have the ability to extend our relationship to the larger world around us.

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On 9/11/2001, for example, the vast majority of Americans did not directly experience the attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the foiled attack that ended in disaster in a field in Pennsylvania. However, because we have the ability to think across geographic scales (helped in large part by communication technology such as cable news and satellite TV, the Internet, and telecommunications), Americans collectively interpreted the attack on one geographic location in the U.S. as an attack against the U.S. as a whole.

Thinking across geographic scales happened even before television and the Internet were widely used. When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, many Americans had never heard of it, but they learned that it was part of the U.S. through media or even word of mouth. Nevertheless, they viewed the attack in a similar way to how the 9/11 attacks were perceived, as an assault on all of America.

The larger the geographic scale you use, the more generalizations you will make about an area and the cultures that exist within it. The smaller the geographic scale you use, you will make fewer generalizations because you will have specific information about the area and its cultures. There is nothing "wrong" or "right" about either of these statements. This is the natural way our brains work. The next page will show you an example of the use of larger and smaller geographic scale.

Geographic Scale: Language Maps

For example, take a look at Figure 1 showing a world language map HERE:

1 Do you think this map shows all thespoken languages of the world today?

2 What information do we gain by looking at the world at this large geographic scale?

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Figure 1--world map showing languages

The geographic scale used for this global map is very large. According to it, people in China speak Chinese. People in the U.S. speak English. People in North Africa speak Arabic. We gain information about the variety of languages people speak across the globe. We can see variation according to region and national boundaries, too.

Now look at this map of China HERE:

Figure 2--Map showing Chinese dialects

According to Figure 2, there are 11 languages spoken in China, and 15 dialects of four of those languages!

If a tourist going to China saw only the first map of world languages above, she might think it possible to travel from one end of China to another while communicating in Mandarin with everyone she met. If she saw only the second map, this assumption might be in question.

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What would you expect the tourist to find if we zoomed to an even more narrow geographic scale?

What geographic factors do you think contribute to the linguistic diversity of China?

Here's our response: Country size, ethnic group origins or traditional homes of ethnic groups, mountain ranges that separated linguistic populations have led to variations, expansion of China's territory over history.

This interview excerpt comes from a tourist who traveled to China in 2007.

Q: What did you notice about local languages while you were traveling in China?

A: Well, I went from Hong Kong to the free economic zone in the south and then took a bus tour all the way up to the city of Canton. Along the way, I had different Chinese tour guides, who spoke English to us. When we stopped to eat, I noticed that the tour guides would speak among themselves in English, too. I asked them why they didn't speak Chinese to each other. They told me they couldn't understand each other's dialects, so they used English to communicate!

Mission Focus: Applying Geographic Scale

What does geographic scale mean to your developing cross cultural competence?

The geographic scale you use to think with naturally changes according to your purpose. However, to develop your awareness of how geographic scale affects your thinking, you should:

Think about the level of geographic scale you are using when analyzing a situation.

Consider how geographic scale might influence your tendency to make generalizations and assumptions about the area.

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Consider how geographic scale might influence what you observe and how you orient.

Learn about the geographic scale the local people use. How is it similar or different from your own? What assumptions would they make that you wouldn't make?

These techniques will improve your observation and orientation skills, and will help you relate, communicate, and negotiate with local people.

The concept of geographic scale is extremely important to Cultural Geography AND to your jobs as Airmen. For example, if you are preparing for a deployment to the CENTCOM region, you will probably learn something about Islam before you go, since Islam is the predominant religion in the region.

You will most likely learn about some of the basic tenets of the religion, such as the "Five Pillars of Islam," food taboos, and general behavioral guidelines. Doing so, you will come away with a pretty good understanding of the general cultural impacts of the region.

If you are going to Iraq, however, you should learn about more specific Islamic observances of groups in that country, such as the varied practices of Sunni and Shi'a Muslims.

Can you think of a military application of large and small scale thinking?

If nothing pops up when your roll your mouse over the blue text above then see below.

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The next topic, geographic perception, illustrates the effect that geography has on the ways we attribute meaning to places.

Geographic Perception

Geographic perception is the way individuals and societies envision the world around them and their roles within it.

Geographic perception is different than a mental map. An individual's mental map is their conception about a particular place.

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In contrast to mental maps, geographic perception includes the following:

All your mental maps

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Your experiences from interacting with different environments and places

Your assumptions about how other people interact with their environments

Your values related to the way you and others interact with your environment.

Therefore, geographic perceptions are cultural perceptions. They are linked to your concepts of self and other, and to the ways you attribute meaning to others' behaviors and beliefs. Whereas the concept of Geographic Scale is more closely related to the purpose of your interaction or concern with a particular location, Geographic Perception is more closely related to the meaning you assign to your and others' interaction with that location.

For example, an assumption of the Ancient Romans was that the universe was well- ordered and predictable. Romans associated clean, well-ordered cities with "good" life and good people, and the chaotic wilderness (including chaotically structured cities) as "evil."

The legacy of this culturally-based urban planning can be seen today in such cities as Rome, Jerusalem, and London, which were all influenced by Roman rule. In fact, the road networks emanating from the Roman cities are still prominent in much of Europe.

The Romans' "self" was therefore "good", and the "other" was "evil". As you read in Lesson 2, the tendency of people to differentiate themselves from other people (into groups, ethnicities, cities, clans, gangs, etc.) is a universal human trait. Our ideas about "us" and "them" emanates from the family first. Then, it expands to include more geographically influenced divisions.

Examples are:

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People who supposedly live on the wrong side of the tracks

"Good" neighborhoods vs. "bad" neighborhoods

High school rivalries within a city—"a tough school"

City/region rivalries with sports (Philadelphia Eagles, Dallas Cowboys)

International differences that might lead to conflict

You may have noticed that some examples above are associated with socioeconomic status. The economy and cultural geography of a place are so interconnected that it is difficult to talk about one without the other.

Cultural Log Activity 4.2 — Geographic Perception

Individual and Collective Geographic Perceptions

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So far we have focused primarily on how our experience creates mental maps and how these maps, along with our values and assumptions about other places, add up to form our geographic perceptions.

Just as we share common identities with others in our culture, we also share geographic perceptions - this is what we mean by collective geographic perceptions. Individuals' geographic perceptions are frequently related to, or derived from, our culture's collective geographic perceptions about the world and our places in it.

How do we learn about places we've never been? How does our geographic perception become shaped when we don't have first-hand experience with a place?

Our geographic knowledge comes from a variety of sources, some of which are pretty accurate, while others are completely ridiculous. Even the ridiculous images are powerful and can have a lasting impact on our own ethnocentrism. Most of these sources exist in mass media such as movies, music videos, and television shows, and are designed to be consumed by large audiences.

If a myth about a place is presented as fact, people tend to accept that myth as fact. This is especially true if the myth is presented in a professional and convincing manner. One example of this is in the depiction of women in Arabia in 20th Century media.

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From historically-based movies, such as Lawrence of Arabia, to nonsensical Bugs Bunny cartoons, until about the mid-1990s, different media perpetuated the myth that Arab men surround themselves with beautiful women who serve their every wish. The belief that visiting Western men would be presented a beautiful woman for their pleasure by wealthy Sheiks was so pervasive that American businessmen would travel to Saudi Arabia fully expecting to find "Harem Girls" dancing for them.

They were surely disappointed when they discovered that even casual relations among unrelated men and women are strongly discouraged; and it is not uncommon for Western men to barely catch a glimpse of an Arab man's female relatives. These myths formed collective geographic perceptions that painted the entire Middle East as an exotic place where carnal pleasures and even riches awaited weary travelers. Any Airman who has been to the Middle East knows these perceptions are deeply flawed.

Collective U.S. geographic perceptions of the Middle East have currently shifted to ones of violence, terrorism, and danger. Most Americans believe they have a pretty clear idea of what the Middle East is like, what people do in their daily lives, and what values people hold there, even though few have ever been to the Middle East.

Even the most seasoned traveler has never seen, and will never see most places in the world, but this does not mean there are completely blank spots in our mental maps when it comes to envisioning the world.

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Many times we project our ideas about what these unfamiliar places are like, with great incorrectness.

Geography and Conflict

Geographic perceptions

form the basis for how we think our own environments should look and feel

assess who should be allowed to occupy them

decide what activities should take place within them

Our perceptions also influence our attachments to particular places. We often think of them as "sacred." This is important for Airmen to think about because disputes over the use of "sacred" places often lead to extended conflicts, even wars.

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An American example of this association between geographic perception and conflict is the 2010 controversy surrounding the building of an Islamic mosque near Ground Zero in New York City (location of attack by terrorists on 9/11/2001). The fact that the United States was attacked at that location has made Ground Zero a place of deep meaning for Americans, and we treat it with reverence.

Before 9/11, the area where the World Trade Center stood was a "normal" place where economic and social activities took place. On that fateful day, however, the ground on which the Twin Towers stood became saturated with the physical and emotional blood that was spilled there, and it became a sacred place in American society.

Once Ground Zero had such deep associations for Americans, there was great controversy among those who envisioned certain activities as acceptable and unacceptable for that area. Many who opposed the construction of an Islamic Center and mosque near Ground Zero saw it as an insult to the memory of those who were killed there in the name of religious extremism.

Others saw the building of an Islamic Center as representative of American values of tolerance, and a step in reconciling East and West.

This conflict represents a common American perception of who is "self" and who is "other", with the "others" being Muslims in general.

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Those deep emotional associations won over outside influence, and today the site hosts a memorial that consists of two reflecting pools where the towers once stood. For a very good amateur, but somber tour, click the video below:

NOTE--this video may take awhile to load but well worth it!

The emotional nature of the mosque controversy illustrates two points that are crucial to cultural geography:

1 people develop such strong attachments to certain places that they are willing to use extrememeasures (and in some cases violence) to protect their idea of what a particular place means

2 places connected with political issues are often the catalyst of large scale conflict

This controversial issue shows us another cultural universal related to cultural geography: Humans are territorial.

We exhibit territoriality by attempting to "affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships by delimiting and asserting control over a geographic area."[2] When humans exert territoriality, we not only strive to exclude outsiders, but to control the behaviors of those who are inside the territory.

Nearly every war in human history has been influenced by territoriality and people's wish to control an area and its people.

What examples of human territoriality can you think of?

Time and Space

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In addition to the idea of sacred places, the way different cultures view Time can have a strong impact on territoriality, conflict, and geographic perception.

Some cultures, especially those with a long, shared history and legacy, tend to view present day circumstances and decision-making through a lens that is focused more heavily on the relevance and significance of past events.

Cultures that have a cyclical sense of time think of past, present, and future as one entity that repeats itself in cycles. Seasons cycle, the moon cycles, people live and die, wars are won and wars are lost - the past will repeat itself, although not exactly identically. The immediate future is generally viewed as uncontrollable by the individual because unforeseen circumstances can arise - such as a family issue - that may simply delay an intended activity, such as a meeting or work task. Interruptions to a schedule are expected and accepted.

When someone refers to the idea that "there is nothing new under the sun," that is cyclical thinking.

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Other cultures favor living in the present and focusing on the future with little regard for past events. These cultures have a more linear sense of time and tend to look at the past, the present, and the future as separate entities.

Linear time orientation assumes change over time, and the future is viewed as unknown and new, but full of prospects and to some degree, within individual control. When someone refers to "the good old days," they generally assume that those days are gone forever - that is linear thinking. When linear time-oriented cultures look back on history, it is to justify the present.

When a cyclical time-oriented culture looks back on history, it may be looking to return to that position.

Think about how these different orientations to time would impact your worldview and your geographic perception of places. Does this shed any light on the continual conflict over territory in the Middle East?

Cyclical time example

Holding a cyclical orientation to time would likely ensure that lost territory is not necessarily be considered a 'done deal' or a situation that one learns to live with. The reality is that nearly everyone involved in a conflict over territory in the Middle East has a legitimate claim, depending on what point in time they look back to!

Linear time example

In comparison, the British once controlled a great empire to include thirteen colonies on the eastern shores of North America. Upon losing that territory in the American Revolutionary War in 1783, the British left and have never again tried to retake the thirteen states they once ruled. Despite

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occasional disagreements on policy or priority, today the United States and Great Britain are the best and strongest of allies. That reflects a linear time orientation - we've all moved on and only look back for historical reference, not for basing present day decisions and goals.

The domain of Time & Space has an obviously strong relationship with understanding the environment, and especially the concepts of geographic perception and geographic scale.

Geographic Aspects of Other Cultural Domains

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Cultural Domains, as you know, are areas of human interaction that are common to all cultures. The USAF has identified 12 of these, which were introduced in Lesson 1. Every lesson of this course mentions place or geography in some context. This is a clear indication that there is a geographical aspect to every domain! The table below provides examples.

DOMAIN DOMAIN CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY COMPONENT

Religion and Spirituality Holy places, sacred places

History and Myth Traditional ownership or control of territory, past successes and glory, pasttransgressions and failures

Family and Kinship

The home, where people live, where families gather, places where women and families are allowed

Time and Space Ease with which people can travel (see Managua example), linear vs. cyclicalorientation to time and its impact on geographical perception

Political and Social Relations

Where the political power rests; how American military presence has changed the power geography

Aesthetics and Recreation

Places dedicated to sports and leisure, and the role these places play in local culture (Fenway Park, the Olympic stadium, and so forth)

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Lesson Summary

This lesson was not only about getting used to one's surroundings, but identifying the influence of geography on the way we perceive the world and people in other cultures, as well as ourselves.

WHERE a person lives influences lifestyle, behaviors, beliefs, values, norms, perceptions, and priorities.

As you progress through your military career and experience different environments and cultures, you will be expanding your geographic and cultural mental maps far more than most of your peers and more than the various people you will encounter in your travels. This is a wonderful opportunity for you, especially if you know how to leverage it.

As you travel to other cultures, you can practice becoming culturally familiar with new locations by using these concepts along with the OODA Loop. First, note your own associations to places by means of a cultural mental map, and then learn the cultural associations that your host cultural group has to its geographical surroundings. What may seem to be arbitrary or make no sense upon first impression, may have a very real basis in necessity, history, or traditions that are tied to the location.

It is important to observe (suspend judgment) and orient (consider local perspective) when you interact with new cultures. Geographic Scale and Geographic Perception are two of the concepts you are now familiar with that will assist you in familiarizing, or orienting yourself to a new environment.

Geographic Scale is the size of the "zoom" you or another person is using to base your interactions. If you deploy to Africa, it will serve you well to "zoom in" your focus to exactly where in Africa you are going to learn about local concerns and history. If you try to interact with a local person whose geographic scale encompasses his tribe and goat herd, and your geographic scale is West Africa with its rich variety of art, history, crops, and religions, you may mistakenly make generalizations or assumptions that will counter attempts at negotiation or influence.

Your scale will vary depending on the purpose of your interaction. This also ties very closely to geographic perception, which is what you use to attribute meaning to others' behaviors and beliefs (and conversely, what THEY use to attribute meaning to YOUR actions).

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As you travel throughout your career, your geographic perception, which includes your mental maps, your experiences, your values, and your assumptions about other people and their environments, will broaden. This broadening will mean more specific information, and hopefully fewer assumptions to base your interactions on. You will have a bigger base to draw from to attribute meaning to others' behaviors and beliefs.

Finally, collective geographic perceptions are the source of innumerable conflicts throughout the world. All too often, conflicts based on locations and environments surface, resurface, and are never resolved. The idea of holding a cyclical orientation to time where past, present, and future are all destined to repeat themselves, can contribute to the refusal to ignore perceptions of rightful claims. Holding a linear orientation to time leads to more acceptance of change over time, as the focus is on the present and the future, not the past.

Human territoriality is a cultural universal, and one that is important for you to be aware of.

Every lesson in the remainder of this course has information in it about the physical setting or environment of your location. Being observant of your surroundings is a necessary skill for cross-cultural competence (3C).

There were four objectives presented at the beginning of this lesson. They were:

1. Recognize, define, and distinguish between terms associated with Cultural Geography and its primary concepts.

2. Understand what a cultural geographer means by "environment" and how environment, location, and culture influence each other. Identify examples that show:

- Locations influence culture and the built environment.

- Culture (human interaction) influences the environment and the location.

- Environment (both built and natural) influences location and culture.

3. Explain how the concepts of Geographic Scale and Geographic Perception provide an advantage to understanding culture, cultural geography, and sources of conflict.

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4. Distinguish between linear and cyclical views of time and how those views impact geographic perception.

If you are unclear on any of these objectives, be sure to revisit the information in this lesson before attempting the quiz! The next few lessons cover Cultural Domains, and they demonstrate involvement of several geographic factors.

To start things out, click on the graphic below for an optional jigsaw puzzle and a closer view of this important culture model.

References

Lesson 4 Endnotes

[1] Ross, Oakland. 21 April 2002. A City of Two Million Without a Map. The Toronto Star.

[2] Sack, Robert. 1986. Human Territoriality: Its Theory and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. P. 5.