CONTEMPORARY
HUMAN GEOGRAPHY
CULTURE, GLOBALIZATION, LANDSCAPE
MONA DOMOSH
RODERICK P. NEUMANN
PATRICIA L. PRICE
C. 2015 W.H. FREEMAN & CO.
GEOGRAPHIES OF
RACE AND ETHNICITY
MELTING POT OR TAPESTRY?
RACE OR ETHNICITY:
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Race:
A classification system that is sometimes understood
as arising from genetically significant difference
among human populations, or from visible
differences in human physiognomy, or as a social
construction that varies across time and space.
• In the United States, more and more people now
identify themselves as “racially mixed” or “biracial”
instead of feeling they must choose only one facet
of their ancestry as their sole identity.
RACE OR ETHNICITY:
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
• Studies have demonstrated that there is far more
genetic variability within so-called racial groups
than between them, which has led most scholars to
believe that all human beings are, genetically
speaking, members of only one race: Homo sapiens
sapiens.
Racism:
The belief that human capabilities are determined by
racial classification and that some races are superior
to others.
ETHNICITY
Ethnic group:
A group of people who share a common ancestry and
cultural tradition, often living as a minority group in a larger
society.
• A strong feeling of group identity characterizes ethnicity.
• Membership in an ethnic group is largely involuntary.
• In some cases, outsiders can join an ethnic group by
marriage or adoption.
• Boundaries of ethnicity are fuzzy and shift over time.
FIGURE 5.5 Ethnic minorities in
China. Han Chinese are the
dominant ethnic group,
comprising about 92 percent
of China’s population. In fact,
1 out of 5 of Earth’s inhabitants
are Han Chinese, making this
the world’s largest ethnic
group. Why are China’s ethnic
minority populations
concentrated in sparsely
populated peripheries of the
country? (Source: Adapted
from Hsieh and Hsieh, 1995.)
IMMIGRANT AND
INDIGENOUS GROUPS
• Many ethnic groups originated when they migrated
from their native lands and settled in a new country.
• In their old home, they often belonged to the host
culture and were not ethnic, but when they were
transplanted by relocation diffusion to a foreign
land, they became a minority and ethnic.
• Indigenous ethnic groups that continue to live in
their ancient homes become ethnic when they are
absorbed into larger political states.
ACCULTURATION & ASSIMILATION
Acculturation:
An ethnic group’s adoption of enough of the ways of the
host society to be able to function economically and
socially.
Assimilation:
The complete blending of an ethnic group into the host
society, resulting in the loss of all distinctive ethnic traits.
• Relatively few ethnic groups have been assimilated into
the American melting pot; instead, they use
acculturation as their way of survival.
TRANSCULTURATION
Transculturation: The notion that people adopt elements
of other cultures as well as contributing elements of their
own culture, thereby transforming both cultures.
• Social interactions within ethnic groups can offer cultural
security and reinforcement of tradition.
• Ethnic groups often practice unique adaptive strategies
and usually occupy clearly defined areas, whether rural
or urban …
• The study of ethnicity has built-in geographical
dimensions.
5.1 REGION
THE FOUR TYPES OF
ETHNIC CULTURE REGIONS
• Ethnic homelands
• Ethnic islands
• Urban ethnic neighborhoods
• Ghettos
ETHNIC HOMELANDS
Ethnic homelands:
Sizable areas inhabited by an ethnic minority that
exhibits a strong sense of attachment to the region
and often exercises some measure of political and
social control over it.
• Because of their size, age of their inhabitants, and
geographical segregation, they tend to reinforce
ethnic identities.
• Most homelands belong to indigenous ethnic
groups and include special, venerated places that
serve to symbolize and celebrate the region.
FIGURE 5.6 Selected ethnic
homelands in North
America, past and present,
and concentrations of rural
ethnic islands. The Hispano
homeland is also referred to
as the Spanish American
homeland. With the return
migration of African
Americans from northern
industrial cities such as
Chicago to rural southern
areas, the long-moribund
Black Belt homeland
appears to be
undergoing a revitalization.
(Sources: Arreola, 2002;
Carlson, 1990; Nostrand
and Estaville, 2001; U.S.
Bureau of the Census,
2010.)
ETHNIC ISLANDS
Ethnic islands:
Small ethnic areas in the rural countryside; sometimes
called folk islands.
• Ethnic islands occupy a small area and serve as
home to several hundred to several thousand
people (at most).
• Because of their small size and isolation, they do not
exert as powerful an influence as homelands do.
ETHNIC SUBSTRATES
Ethnic substrate:
Regional cultural distinctiveness that remains following the
assimilation of an ethnic homeland – retains some
distinctiveness (e.g., local cuisine, dialect, or traditions).
• Tuscany in Italy owes its name and some of its
uniqueness to the Etruscans, who ceased to be an
ethnic group 2000 years ago, when they were absorbed
into the Latin-speaking Roman Empire.
• The massive German presence in the American
heartland helped shape the cultural character of the
Midwest – a German ethnic substrate.
ETHNIC NEIGHBORHOODS
Ethnic neighborhood:
A voluntary community where people of like origin reside by
choice.
• An ethnic neighborhood has many benefits:
❖ Common use of a language other than that of the majority
culture
❖ Nearby kin
❖ Stores and services specially tailored to a certain group’s tastes
❖ Employment that relies on an ethnically based division of labor
❖ Institutions important to the group (e.g., churches and lodges)
FIGURE 5.8 Miami Beach, Florida, is home to a large community of Orthodox
Jews, who constitute a visible ethnic presence in this neighborhood. (Jeff
Greenberg 2 of 6/Alamy.)
GHETTOS
Ghetto:
Traditionally, an area within a city where an ethnic group
lives, either by choice or by force. Today in the United States,
the term typically indicates an impoverished African
American urban neighborhood.
• In ancient times, conquerors often forced the vanquished
native population to live in ghettos; religious minorities
usually received similar treatment.
• The term barrio refers to an impoverished, urban, Hispanic
neighborhood.
• Ghettos and barrios are as much functional culture regions
as formal ones.
FIGURE 5.9 Venetian ghetto. In the sixteenth century, Venice’s Jewish
population lived in a segregated, walled neighborhood called a ghetto. On
the left is a map of this early ghetto. Though most of Venice’s Jews do not
reside in the ghetto today (right), many attend religious services there, and
the ghetto continues to lie at the heart of Venetian Jewish life. (Left:
Adapted from the Jewish Museum of Venice; Right: LusoItaly/Alamy.)
THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF
ETHNIC NEIGHBORHOODS AND GHETTOS
• The neighborhoods created by ethnic migrants tend to
be transitory.
• As a rule, urban ethnic groups remain in neighborhoods
while “learning the ropes.”
• Central-city ethnic neighborhoods experience a life
cycle in which one group is replaced by another, laterarriving one.
• As this succession occurs, established groups often attain
enough economic and cultural capital to move to new
areas of the city.
ETHNOBURBS
• In many cities, established ethnic groups move to
the suburbs.
• Even when ethnic groups relocate from inner-city
neighborhoods to the suburbs, ethnic residential
clustering survives.
Ethnoburb:
A suburban ethnic neighborhood, sometimes home
to relatively affluent immigration populations.
RECENT SHIFTS IN ETHNIC MOSAICS
• In the United States, immigration laws shifted in 1965
from the quota system (based on national origins)
to allowing a certain number of immigrants from the
Eastern and Western hemispheres, and giving
preference to certain categories of migrants (e.g.,
family members of those already residing in the
United States).
• Asia and Latin America, rather than Europe, are
now the principal source of immigrants to North
America.
FIGURE 5.11 Asian population by state. People indicating “Asian” alone as a
percentage of the total population by state. (Source: U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 2010.)
FIGURE 5.12 Hispanic population by state. Hispanic or Latino population as a
percentage of the total population by state. “Hispanic” is an ethnic category
and can encompass several racial designations. (Source: U.S. Bureau of the
Census, 2010.)
RECENT SHIFTS IN ETHNIC MOSAICS
• Ethnic populations continue to concentrate in
established ports of entry, most of them in coastal
locations.
• As a nation, we may be becoming more diverse—a
more colorful mosaic—but we are nowhere near
the melting pot we sometimes portray ourselves to
be.
• The United States is home to more foreign-born
people—40 million as of 2010—than any other
country, and these individuals represent 12.9% of
the country’s population.
5.2 MOBILITY
MIGRATION AND ETHNICITY
• All humans descended from a group of Africans who
began to migrate out of Africa about 60,000 years ago.
• Much of the ethnic pattern in many parts of the world is
the result of migration.
• Voluntary migrations have produced much of the ethnic
diversity in the United States and Canada.
• Involuntary migration of political and economic refugees
has always been an important factor in ethnicity
worldwide and is becoming ever more so in North
America.
TYPES OF MIGRATION
Chain migration:
The tendency of people to migrate along routes,
over a period of time, from specific source areas to
specific destinations.
Channelization:
A process whereby a specific source region becomes
linked to a particular destination.
Step migration:
A process by which a group proceeds to its final
destination via a series of intermediate migrations.
INVOLUNTARY MIGRATION
Involuntary migration (forced migration):
The forced displacement of a population, whether by
government policy (such as a resettlement program),
warfare or other violence, ethnic cleansing, disease,
natural disaster, or enslavement.
Internally displaced persons (IDPs):
Persons or groups that have been forced to flee their
homes due to conflict, natural disaster, or persecution but
who remain within the borders of their home country.
Refugees:
Persons or groups that have been forced to flee their
home country due to conflict, natural disaster, or
persecution.
FIGURE 5.16 Syrians displaced by conflict. This map shows the civil war-related
displacement of more than 1.5 million Syrians, who have constituted involuntary
migrants since March 2012. Some have left Syria and are refugees in neighboring
countries. There, they may face discrimination and poverty as unwanted minority
populations. Far more are internally displaced peoples (IDPs) who have moved from
one place to another within Syria, often ending up in so-called buffer zones
established on the borders to protect neighboring states from large flows of Syrian
refugees. (Source: Adapted from Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2012.)
RETURN MIGRATION
Return migration:
A type of ethnic diffusion that involves the voluntary
movement of a group of migrants back to their ancestral
or native country or homeland.
• The large-scale return since 1975 of African Americans
from the cities of the northern and western United States
to the Black Belt ethnic homeland in the South is one of
the most notable return migrations now underway.
• Black Americans are returning to the South (e.g.,
Atlanta) because of greater economic opportunities.
• Cultural factors play a role as well.
CULTURAL SIMPLIFICATION
• Ethnic immigrants never successfully introduce the
totality of their culture – cultural simplification occurs.
Cultural simplification:
The process by which immigrant ethnic groups lose
certain aspects of their traditional culture in the process
of settling overseas, creating a new culture that is less
complex than the old.
• Absorbing barriers prevent the diffusion of many traits,
and permeable barriers cause changes in many other
traits, greatly simplifying the migrant cultures.
CULTURAL ISOLATION
• The degree of isolation an ethnic group experiences in a
new home helps determine whether traditional traits will
be retained, modified, abandoned, or even adopted by
the host culture.
• If the new settlement area is remote and contacts with
outsiders are few, diffusion of traits from the sending area
is more likely.
• Isolated ethnic groups often preserve in archaic form
cultural elements that disappear from their ancestral
country; they may, in some respects, change less than
their kinfolk back in the mother country.
5.3 GLOBALIZATION
A LONG VIEW OF
RACE AND ETHNICITY
• Long-standing cohesion through shared language,
religion, or ethnicity provides group members with
the perception of a common history and shared
destiny.
• Occupying a minority religious, linguistic, or ethnic
position can expose a group to persecution.
RACE AND EUROPEAN COLONIZATION
• Europe’s colonization of vast territories was
predicated on the drawing of sharp distinctions
between the colonizers and the colonized – often
depicted in racial terms.
• European colonialism frequently drew on existing
ethnic and racial cleavages in colonized societies
(e.g., Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda).
Genocide:
The systematic killing of a racial, ethnic, religious, or
linguistic group.
FIGURE 5.19 Rwandan genocide. These skulls are the remains of some 500,000
to 1,000,000 Tutsis, and their Hutu sympathizers, who were massacred over a
period of four months in 1994 by Hutu militias. (Joe McNally/Contributor/Getty
Images.)
INDIGENOUS AND MINORITY IDENTITIES
IN THE FACE OF GLOBALIZATION
• Exposure to U.S.-based cultural practices is thought
to encourage people to shed their distinctive ways
in favor of adopting a homogeneous modern,
Westernized culture.
• Late in the 20th century, however, an ethnic
resurgence became evident in many countries
around the world.
• Many ethnic groups and their geographical
territories have become bulwarks of resistance to
globalization.
FIGURE 5.21 Japanese Brazilians. These girls, who are of Japanese ancestry,
attend a traditional Japanese day of the dead ceremony in Registro, Brazil.
Registro is home to one of the oldest Japanese Brazilian communities.
(Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images.)
5.4 NATURE–CULTURE
CULTURAL PREADAPTATION
Cultural preadaptation:
A complex of adaptive traits and skills possessed in
advance of migration by a group, giving it survival
ability and competitive advantage in occupying the
new environment.
• Most often, preadaptation occurs in groups
migrating to a place that is environmentally similar
to the one they left behind (e.g., Cubans in south
Florida – tropical savanna climate like Cuba).
CULTURAL MALADAPTATION
• Immigrants tend to perceive the ecosystem of their
new home as more like that of their abandoned
native land than is actually the case.
Cultural maladaptation:
Poor or inadequate adaptation that occurs when a
group pursues an adaptive strategy that, in the short
run, fails to provide the necessities of life or, in the
long run, destroys the environment that nourishes it.
HABITAT AND THE PRESERVATION
OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE
• Certain habitats may act to shelter and protect
ethnically or racially distinct populations.
• Mountainous regions, such as the Caucasus, can
provide shelter.
• Islands can also provide shelter (e.g., the coastal islands
of South Carolina, Georgia, and north Florida and the
Gullah culture).
FIGURE 5.22 Ethnic pluralities in
the Caucasus. The Caucasus
Mountains, located in Southwest
Asia, are home to one of the
world’s most ethnically diverse
populations. They are also the
site of much ethnically based
conflict. Because ethnic
territories often overlap, this map
depicts pluralities. The
populations shown comprise at
least 40 percent of that place’s
ethnic population and in most
cases also constitute a majority
population, although some of
the more heterogeneous areas
have no dominant ethnic
population. The racialized term
Caucasian is derived from this
area’s name, although, in fact, it
has little to do with the people
actually living in the region.
(Source: Adapted from
O’Loughlin et al., 2007.)
ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM
Environmental racism:
The targeting of areas where ethnic or racial minorities,
immigrants, and/or poor people live with respect to
environmental contamination or failure to enforce
environmental regulations.
• In spatial terms, being poor frequently equals having the
last and worst choice of where to live.
• In the United States, Hispanics, Native Americans, blacks,
and poor people of all races are more likely than
wealthier whites to reside in places where toxic wastes
are dumped, polluting industries are located, or
environmental legislation is not enforced.
FIGURE 5.24 Industrial air pollution and minority neighborhoods. This figure
maps the locations of TRI (Toxic Release Inventory) facilities with active air
pollution releases in the San Francisco Bay Area, relative to the proportion of
residences of people of color. The map clearly shows the close coincidence
in space between activities harmful to human health and neighborhoods
where one-third or more of the population is Black, Latino, or Asian. In this
example, mapping is used to promote environmental social justice.
FIGURE 5.25 Air pollution and environmental racism. African American and
Latino populations are far more likely to live less than 1 mile away from toxic
release sites in the San Francisco Bay area. White and Asian populations, by
contrast, are more likely to live 2.5 miles or more from these same sites of air
pollution emissions. (Source: Pastor, Morello-Frosch, and Sadd, 2010.)
5.5 CULTURAL LANDSCAPE
ETHNIC FLAGS
Ethnic flag:
A readily visible marker of ethnicity on the landscape.
• Ethnic and racialized landscapes often differ from
mainstream landscapes in the styles of traditional
architecture, in the patterns of surveying the land, in
the distribution of houses and other buildings, and in
the degree to which they “humanize” the land.
• Sometimes the distinctive markers of race and
ethnicity are not visible at all but rather are audible,
tactile, olfactory, or tasty.
FIGURE 5.26 An “ethnic flag” in the cultural landscape. This maize granary,
called a cuezcomatl, is unique to the indigenous population of Tlaxcala
state, Mexico. The structure holds shelled maize. In Mexico, even the
cultivation of maize long remained an indigenous trait because the
Spaniards preferred wheat. (Ryan Watkins/Photographer’s Direct.)
URBAN ETHNIC LANDSCAPES
• Ethnic cultural landscapes often appear in urban
settings.
• Color can connote and reveal ethnicity to the
trained eye (e.g., green for Islam, blue for Greek,
red for Chinese).
• Urban ethnic and racial landscapes are visible in
cities across the world. This is true even when urban
planners try their best to prevent the emergence of
such landscapes (e.g., Brasília, Brazil).
FIGURE 5.27 Mexican American mural located in San Francisco’s Mission
District, a working-class Mexican and Central American immigrant
neighborhood. (Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images.)
FIGURE 5.29 Ethnic storefront in Coney Island, New York. The liberal use of the
color green in this storefront design might indicate an Islamic presence.
Indeed, this is a Pakistani ethnic grocery. (© David Grossman/Alamy.)
THE RE-CREATION OF
ETHNIC CULTURAL LANDSCAPES
• Ethnic groups may choose to relocate to places
that remind them of their old homelands.
• Once there, they set about re-creating some of
their particular landscapes in their new homes.
• Expressions of ethnicity on the landscape are fluid
and ever-changing.
FIGURE 5.31 Restaurant in Little Havana, Miami. How many different national
groups can you identify in this restaurant façade? (Courtesy of Patricia L.
Price.)
ETHNIC CULINARY LANDSCAPES
Foodways:
Customary behaviors associated with food
preparation and consumption.
• “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
• Food is a sensitive indicator of identity and change.
• Cultural geographer Richard Pillsbury famously
quipped that America has no foreign food because
we have accepted every possible foreign cuisine
and made it our own.
FIGURE 5.33 Market in Chinatown, New York City. Grocery stores selling
distinctive produce items are one of the most visible landscape markers of
an ethnic presence. Here, spiny fruits called durian, also known as “stinky
fruit,” hang from bags. Durian is sometimes banned from public places in its
native Asia because of its pungent smell. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens.)
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