Old Definition: "Learned Behaviour" acquired by people as members of a society

Old definition of society: a group of human beings distinguished by shared institutions and a common culture

Newer Definition: A shared set of meanings that are lived through the material and symbolic practices of everyday life.

Parsing the Definition of Culture

"A shared set of meanings..."

-shared by whom? .... society... often living in a bounded territory.

"Meanings"

-not intrinsic but learned.

"That are lived through the material and symbolic practices"

-ie. knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, technology

"Of everyday life"

-taken for granted

-the nitty gritty of what we humans really do and believe.

-characteristic and tangible outcome of the complex interactions between a human group and a natural environment.

Parsing

"Characteristic"

-distinct, identifiable

"tangible"

-visible and concrete

"complex interactions b/w a human group and a natural environment"

-extraction of resources

-production

-consumption (using technology, which changes over time)

"every day life": we take our cultural landscape for granted

-ie. grain elevator, feed lots, paved highway shoulders, concrete driveways and back alleys, casinos, portable signs.

University of California, Berkeley Professor

-rejected environmental determinism

-uniqueness of landscape (cultural and physical processes)

-expressed belief that natural landscape moulded culture ... ie. population density, mobility, housing, plan structure, production, communication

-created a cultural landscape

culture trait

-single aspect of the complex of routine practice that constitute a cultural group

-married men grow beards without moustaches (Hutterites)

culture complex

-combination of traits characteristic of a particular group

-distinctive beards plus communal organization of family life and agricultural lifestyle

-speaking archaic german plus anabaptist christian belief

culture system

-collection of interacting elements that, taken together, shape a group's collective identity

-including trait, territorial affiliation, and shared history

-internal variation but with broad similarities

-christianity unites all protestant religions

cultural region

-area within which a cultural system prevails

Geography and Religion

Religion:

 -belief system and a set of practices that recognize the existence of a higher power than humans

-can be ethnic or universalizing

Religious change

-conversion through missionizing

-diaspora: a spatial diffusion of a previously homogeneous group

Sacred Places

-power of place

-importance of spirituality in travel..... intrinsically sacred-worship..... sites of historic interest or beauty become associated in some way with spirituality

-ie. salt lake temple

Language: a means of communicating ideas or feelings by means of a conventionalized system of signs, genstures, marks, or articulate vocal sounds.

dialect: regional variations from a standard language in terms of accent, volcabulary and grammar.

-language families are prehistoric, language branches are common origin, and language groups have similar syntax and vocabulary

official language: languages in which the government has a legal obligation to conduct its affairs and in which the public has the right to receive federal services

-some states are multilingual

isolate: language that has no known relationship with any other and cannot be assigned to a language family (ie. Basque)

mother tongue: language first learned and still understoon

allophone:  a person whose mother tongue is neither English nor French

home language: the language most often spoken at home by an individual

language shift: an indicator of the number of people who adopt a new language, usually measured by the difference b/w mother tongue and home language populations (ie. in Can, 68% report English as home language and 59% report it as mother tongue)

Pidgen

-is a contact language

-any language created out of two or more languages

-simplified grammar and vocabulary

-specialized purpose (ie. trade)

-simplified version of English/French in colonial setting

Creole

-'first language' that develops from a Pidgin- creolization

-Jamaican Creole.. Patois: English-African

-Papiamento: Spanish/Dutch

-Antillean Creole: French-African

-Swahili: a lingua franca in east Africa

-Afrikaans

-an effort to protect regional and national cultures from the homogenizing impacts of globalization, especially from teh penetrating influence of US culture

Islam

-a religion with about 1 billion adherents

-Islamism is a cultural counterforce to globalization

-anti-colonial, anti-impoerial and anti-core movement within islamic countries to resist globalization, notably in the form of modernization and secularization

-creation of a universal islamic state.... protecting the purity and centrality of islamic percepts

ethnicity: a socialy created system of rules about who belongs and who does not belong to a particular group based on actual or perceived commonality

ethnic: any group that has a common cultural tradition, that identifies itself as a group, and that constitutes a minority in the society where it lives

-minority or visible minority

Race: a problematic classification of human beings based on skin colour and other physical characteristics

-no such thing as a human race from biological perspective

-how can you say race does not exist?

-no consisten/coherent races based on genes

Race is a social Construct!!

-chaotic construct... yet powerful belief (Barack Obama)

-Jewish religion (not jewish race)

-aryan language (not aryan race)

-ghettos, trailer parks, reserves, etc.

Global Culture and Consumption: Homogenization

-Disapearance of local cultures

-westernization of culture driven by media 

-destruction of the local and authentic 

-single commodity/single identity world

Global Culture?

-no such thing

-identity has intense emotional ties

-cultural attachment is bound in tradition

-mass marketing and pop culture is no threat!!

-no common pool of memories

-no common global way of thinking

-Egypt

-construction begins 1899

-to provide irrigation water and energy

-industrialization and urbanization make it necessary

Benefits

 -increased irrigable land

-flood control

-energy

-no atmospheric pollution

Detriments

-flooding

-evaporation

-disease (mosquitoes)

-aquatic ecosystem changes

1907-1964

-marine scientist

-mother of the modern environmental movement

-wrote "Silent Spring"

Nature as a Concept

Nature: a social creation as well as a physical universe that includes human beings

Environment: Total of the external conditions that surround an organism, community or object

-meaning of environment is historically and culturally contingent!!

Society: Sum of the inventions, institutions, and relationships created and reproduced by human beings across particular places and times

Technology: Physical objects or artifacts, activities, or processes and knowledge or know-how

literal definition: the study of skill or craft

narrow definition: application of science to economic objectives

*technological change usually related to the broad definition!

-the relationsip between society and nature is mediated by technology

-harvesting of resources

-emission of wastes in manufacturing of goods and services

-emission of wastes in consumption of goods and services

-is technology a problem or solution?

Human Impact on Environment

I=PAT

impact = population*affluence*technology

Ecological Footprint

-A measure of the biologically productive last area needed to support a country by providing for its needs and absorbing its wastes

-Canada's is 8.56 per capita

-average global is 2.8

-only 0.75 available on planet

RELIGIOUS

Tao

-nature has intrinsic value

Buddhist

-everything is bound up in the totality of existence... any harm hurts me

Islamic

-heavens and Earth were made for human purposes

-human authority and contrtol over nature is a test of responsability

Judeo-Christian

-nature created by god and subject to god; men also created by god but in god's image

-humans must dominate nature

-man has dominion over nature yet responsible (environmental stewardship)

Animist

-nature has conscious, spiritual existence

-aboriginal beliefs

Philosophies

Romanticism

-interdependence of humans and nature

-reaction to industrialism?

Conservation

-view that natural resources should be used wisely in a spirit of stewardship not exploitation

-Henry David Thoreau (1800s)... alternate view to man over nature

-is passive, accepts political status quo

Preservation

-Approach to nature advocating that certain habitats, species, and resources should remain off-limits to human use, regardless of whether the use maintains or depletes the resource

-radical and aggressive; critical ofgovernment and many NGOs

Ecofeminism

-feminist approach to environmental ethics

-patriarchal oppression takes many forms... domination of nature is linked with masculine culture of oppression

-spiritual

• Egocentrism: the tendency to perceive understand and interpret
  the world in terms of the self

• Ethnocentrism: the tendency to look at the world primarily from
the perspective of one's own culture

• Anthropocentrism: humans must be the central concern, and that
humanity must judge all things accordingly

• Biocentrism: the belief that all forms of life are equally valuable
and humanity is not the center of existence

• Ecocentrism: a philosophy that recognizes that the ecosphere, rather than any individual organism, is the source and support of all life and as such advises a holistic and eco-centric approach to
government, industry, and individual.

-first agricultural revolution

-cultivation and domestication and global warming

-this was the end of the last ice age

-social surplus

-permanent settlements, village life

Impact

-artificical selection, monoculture, simplification of ecosystems, loss of diversity, vulnerability

Technological change

-irrigation

-hydraulic civilization

-draft animals, stirrup, plow, yoke, and wheel

Factors in Population Growth

-domestication of plants and animals

-expansion of land under cultivation

-capitalist globalization

-demographic transition

Factors in Population Decline

-epidemic disease

-warfare

Virgin Soil Epidemics

-conditions in which the population at risk has no natural immunity or previous exposure to the disease within the lifetime of the oldest member of the group

-ie. smallpox, typhus, measles, chicken pox, cholera, scarlet fever

 Columbian Exchange

-interaction b/w the Old World, originating with the voyages of Columbus, and teh New World

"Greatest loss of human life in history"

Industrialization and Urbanization

-revolutionized our relationships with the environment

-environmental impact beyond the regional/local scale

-three areas: energy use, land use, natural resources

ENERGY USE

Industrial Revolution

-discovery and utilization of coal, oil, natural gas

-as energy demands increased, so does the extraction and production

-exist renewable and non-renewable

-every step in the energy conversion process has an impact on the physical landscape

-discovery/extraction/processing/utilization

acid rain- the wet deposition of acids on earth created by the natural cleansing properties of the atmosphere

CORE/PERIPHERY

-energy production and consumption are greater in the core

-the periphery has 4 times the population but uses only 1/3 the energy

-energy demands in the periphery are rising

CORE:

-capital intensive energy sources

-much higher demands

-industrialized

PERIPHERY:

-labour intensive energy sources (ie. firewood)

-lower energy demands

-urbanization: a major force

Kyoto Protocol: Reducing green house gases to a level that is 5% lower than that in 1990 in all core countries

LAND USE

-two types: conversion (wholesale transformation of land from on use to another ... urbanization) and modification (alteration of existing cover.... forest thinning vs clear cut)

Deforestation

-the permanent clearing and destruction of forests

-renewable resource being destroyed faster than it can be replenished

-forests cleared for resources and to accommodate humans..... ~half of the world's forests have been harvested

-destruction of natural habitat

-destabilization of exygen and carbon dioxide cycles

-increased erosion

-is worse in periphery

Agriculture

-Core: reduced land ... better efficiency. In periphery less efficient

desertification: the degradation of land cover and damage to the soil and water in grasslands and arid and semi-arid lands

-overgrazing of grasslands is a major culprit

-is a big problem in costa rica

NATURAL RESOURCES

carrying capacity- the maximum number of users that can be sustained over the long term by a given set of natural resources

Fish

MSY- maximum sustainable yield is the equilibrium b/w a fish population's biological productivity and the level of fishing effort; theoretically the MSY for a fish stock is the largest number that can be caught while ensuring that enough remain for a productive fishery the next year.

Fishing Capacity- the ability of a fleet to catch fish, most easily measured by counting the number of boats in a fishing fleet

-fishing exceeds MSY!!.... overcapacity!!

global change- combination of political, economic, social, historical and environmental problems at the world scale

environmental justics- movement reflecting a growing political consciousness, largely among the world's poor, that their immediate environs are far more toxic that wealthier neighbourhoods.

DISASTERS

-indonesian Tsunami 2004

-new orleans hurricane 2005

-pakistan earthquake 2005

Hazard

-source of potential harm or damage

-can be natural or anthropogenic

-magnitude, timing, and spacing are important

Conclusion

-environment has been globalized along with the economy

-people and environment are linked in complex and essential ways

-environments are resources as well as disasters