Cultural area explained

In anthropology and geography, a cultural area, cultural region, cultural sphere, or culture area refers to a geography with one relatively homogeneous human activity or complex of activities (culture). Such activities are often associated with an ethnolinguistic group and with the territory it inhabits. Specific cultures often do not limit their geographic coverage to the borders of a nation state, or to smaller subdivisions of a state.[1] [2]

History of concept

A culture area is a concept in cultural anthropology in which a geographic region and time sequence (age area) is characterized by shared elements of environment and culture.[3]

A precursor to the concept of culture areas originated with museum curators and ethnologists during the late 1800s as means of arranging exhibits, combined with the work of taxonomy. The American anthropologists Clark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber further developed this version of the concept on the premise that cultural areas represent longstanding cultural divisions.[4] [5] [6] This iteration of the concept is sometimes criticized as arbitrary, but the organization of human communities into cultural areas remains a common practice throughout the social sciences.

Cultural geography also utilizes the concept of culture areas. Cultural geography originated within the Berkeley School, and is primarily associated with Carl O. Sauer and his colleagues. Sauer viewed culture as "an agent within a natural area that was a medium to be cultivated to produce the cultural landscape."[7] Sauer's concept was later criticized as deterministic, and geographer Yi-Fu Tuan and others proposed versions that enabled scholars to account for phenomenological experience as well. This revision became known as humanistic geography. The period within which humanistic geography is now known as the "cultural turn."[8]

The definition of culture areas is enjoying a resurgence of practical and theoretical interest as social scientists conduct more research on processes of cultural globalization.[9]

Types

Allen Noble gave a summary of the concept development of cultural regions using terms such as:

Cultural "spheres of influence" may also overlap or form concentric structures of macrocultures encompassing smaller local cultures. Different boundaries may also be drawn depending on the particular aspect of interest, such as religion and folklore vs dress, or architecture vs language.

Another version of cultural area typology divides cultural areas into three forms:

  1. Formal cultural regions, which are "characterized by cultural homogeneity in a given contiguous geographical area."
  2. Functional cultural regions, which share political, social, and/or cultural functions.
  3. Perceptual, or vernacular, cultural regions, which are based in spatial perception. One example is Braj region of India, which is seen as a spatial whole due to common religious and cultural associations with the specific area.

Cultural boundary

See also: Isogloss. A cultural boundary (also cultural border) in ethnology is a geographical boundary between two identifiable ethnic or ethnolinguistic cultures. A language border is necessarily also a cultural border, as language is a significant part of a society's culture, but it can also divide subgroups of the same ethnolinguistic group along more subtle criteria, such as the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line in German-speaking Switzerland,[12] the Weißwurstäquator in Germany,[13] or the Grote rivieren boundary between Dutch and Flemish culture.[14]

In the history of Europe, the major cultural boundaries are traditionally found:[15]

Macro-cultures on a continental scale are also referred to as "worlds", "spheres", or "civilizations", such as the Islamic world.[16]

Specialized terms

Cultural bloc

The term cultural bloc is used by anthropologists to describe culturally and linguistically similar groups (or nations) of Aboriginal peoples of Australia.[17] It may have been coined first by Ronald Berndt in 1959 to describe the Western Desert cultural bloc, a group of peoples in central Australia whose languages comprise around 40 dialects.[18] [19] Other groups described as a cultural bloc include the Noongar people of south-western Australia;[20] the Bundjalung people of northern New South Wales and southern Queensland;[17] the Kuninjku/Bininj Kunwok bloc and the Yolngu cultural bloc in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory.[21]

Examples of cultural areas

Broad dichotomies

the Western civilization and Western world contrasting with the Orient and Eastern world.

the North–South divide is broadly considered a socio-economic and political divide.

Geographic areas

Language families

Cultures

Religious beliefs

Music

A music area is a cultural area defined according to musical activity. It may or may not conflict with the cultural areas assigned to a given region. The world may be divided into three large music areas, each containing a "cultivated" or classical musics "that are obviously its most complex musical forms", with, nearby, folk styles which interact with the cultivated, and, on the perimeter, primitive styles.[24]

See also

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Culture area Anthropological Definition & Characteristics Britannica . 2023-07-25 . www.britannica.com . en.
  2. Web site: Space and Society: Cultural Regions .
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20050309084859/http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/15 Brown, Nina "Friedrich Ratzel, Clark Wissler, and Carl Sauer: Culture Area Research and Mapping" University of California, Santa Barbara, CA.
  4. Wissler, Clark (ed.) (1975) Societies of the Plains Indians AMS Press, New York,, Reprint of v. 11 of Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History, published in 13 parts from 1912 to 1916.
  5. Kroeber, Alfred L. (1939) Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.
  6. Kroeber, Alfred L. "The Cultural Area and Age Area Concepts of Clark Wissler" In Rice, Stuart A. (ed.) (1931) Methods in Social Science pp. 248–265. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
  7. Web site: Cultural Geography International Encyclopedia of Human Geography - Credo Reference . 2023-07-25 . search.credoreference.com.
  8. Web site: Cultural Geography The Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory - Credo Reference . 2023-07-25 . search.credoreference.com.
  9. Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson (1997). Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  10. Meinig, D. W., "The Mormon Culture Region: Strategies and Patterns in the Geography of the American West, 1847–1964" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 60 no. 3 1970 428-46.
  11. Noble, Allen George, and M. Margaret Geib. Wood, brick, and stone: the North American settlement landscape. Volume 1: Houses, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. 7.
  12. Book: Leimgruber, Walter . Between Global and Local: Marginality and Marginal Regions in the Context of Globalization and Deregulation . 2018-01-18 . Routledge . 978-1-351-16270-8 . en.
  13. Web site: esl-blogger . 2011-05-09 . Der Weißwurstäquator . 2023-07-25 . ESL language studies abroad . en-US.
  14. Web site: Civis Mundi » artikel » Naar betere buren in het inmiddels geëindigde Beste Burenjaar . 2023-07-25 . www.civismundi.nl.
  15. Book: Cultural Borders of Europe: Narratives, Concepts and Practices in the Present and the Past . 2019 . Berghahn Books . 978-1-78533-590-7 . 1 . 30. 10.2307/j.ctvw04dv9 . j.ctvw04dv9 .
  16. Web site: 2017-09-27 . The Macro-Cultural Regions of Asia . 2023-07-25 . WorldAtlas . en-US.
  17. Web site: FAQs . Yugambeh Nation . 31 March 2023.
  18. Book: Dousset, Laurent . Aboriginal Australian kinship: An introductory handbook with particular emphasis on the Western Desert. Part one: A historical and ethnographic overview. 14–44 . Marseille. pacific-credo Publication . 2011. 31 March 2023. 9782956398110. 10.4000/books.pacific.561 .
  19. Berndt . Ronald M. . The Concept of 'The Tribe' in the Western Desert of Australia . Oceania . [Wiley, Oceania Publications, University of Sydney] . 30 . 2 . 1959 . 0029-8077 . 40329194 . 81–107 . 10.1002/j.1834-4461.1959.tb00213.x . 31 March 2023.
  20. Web site: Strong Culture & Community . Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation . 14 November 2019 . 31 March 2023.
  21. Web site: Djelk: Traditional Owners and area of operation . Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences. . 4 December 2017 . 31 March 2023.
  22. Book: Marty, Martin. The Christian World: A Global History. 2008. Random House Publishing Group. 978-1-58836-684-9 .
  23. Book: Ristuccia, Nathan J.. 2018. Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation. Oxford. Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oso/9780198810209.001.0001. 978-0-19-881020-9. 170.
  24. Nettl, Bruno (1956). Music in Primitive Culture, p.142-143. Harvard University Press.