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WORLD CULTURAL FESTIVALS AND HOLIDAYS TEM 404

1. What is culture?

• Culture (def.): the learned set of practices, beliefs, values, and rules for proper behavior, and material objects that are shared by members of a society
• culture is a universal feature of human social life
• culture is learned
• culture is shared
• culture is cumulative

Three components of culture:

• Cognitive component (how we think)
  • language
  • symbols
  • values
  • society?s beliefs (Weltanschauung, world hypotheses, and domain assumptions)
  • understanding of reality
• Normative component (how we act)
  • norms
  • folkways (group habits, customs)
  • mores (moral imperatives)
• Material component (what we make)
  • artifacts
  • art
  • architecture
  • other material objects that a society creates and to which it assigns meanings

Ethnocentrism (making judgements about other cultures from the perspective of one's own culture)

2. Expressions of Culture

• Culture is how people in a region live, behave, and think – Culture is often reflected in symbols – Symbol: an object that stands for something

3. civilization and Culture

• A civilization’s culture impacts peoples’ morals and values  

4. Culture Regions

• A culture region is an area that is unified by common cultural traits, or characteristics. – For Example: • Mexico, Central America, and South America form the cultural region of Latin America

5. Social Groups

• Among social groups, geographers study rich, poor, and middle class people.  They may look at age or gender.  They may study different ethnic groups, or people who share a common language, history, religion, and some physical characteristics.

6. Language

• One may hear a local form of a language, or dialect, that differs from the main language. – Pop vs. Soda – “Ya’ll ain’t from around here.”

7. Religion

• Religion helps people answer basic questions about life’s meaning.
• Religious beliefs vary greatly around the world and have resulted in conflicts and struggles based on religious differences.

8. Daily Life

• Daily life varies in different cultures, including: – How we get, prepare and eat our food. – Types/shapes of houses. – Routines we have.

9. History

• History shapes how people view the world.
• Many cultures celebrate holidays that honor their heroes and heroines.
• A culture is influenced by how it remembers its successes, as well as its disasters and defeats.

10. Arts

• Culture is expressed through art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, dance, music, theater, and literature.
• Insight into a culture can be gained by studying what its people think is beautiful and important.

11. Government

• Types of government can reflect a country’s culture.
• A democracy is a form of limited government in which power rests with the people of a nation.
•  In a representative democracy, such as the United States, citizens elect representatives.

12. Government (cont.)

• Some governments are led by individuals.
• In a dictatorship, dictators control and rule as they wish.
• In a monarchy, kings and queens inherit the power to rule.

13. The Economy

• In studying how the people of a culture earn a living, geographers study the culture’s economic system.
• This “system” sets rules for how people decide what goods and services to produce and how they are exchanged.

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