Geography as a broad
definition is concerned with the Earth and everything that is on the planet;
man’s place within environments, how populations develop in different areas,
economics of the world, and the natural world around us.
Geography also encompasses
many different specific subject areas, such as Physical geography which is
concerned with the physical and natural Earth, they way in which ecosystems and
environments operate and how man fits into this tight equilibrium of existence.
Human geography which deals with man and his place and effect
on the world. Cultural geography is another discipline of geography
which deals with the different populations across the globe in terms of how
materials and objects through beliefs and values can define and shape a new
cultural population.
Culture is not a new area of
study, since the late 1800’s, Darwin and other early
explorers have been distinctly involved in the exploration and identification
of new, vibrant and differing cultures. These newly identified cultures would
contain practices, languages, indigenous behaviour, foods, religious beliefs
and history than had been seen before. For example, the anthropologist Marshall
Sahlins was describing the Western surprise of the Indian’s belief
that the cow is a sacred animal, it’s path is never interrupted and the animal
although edible is never eaten. As ‘weird’ as this may be for a Western person
to understand the ethics behind worshipping a cow, equally an Indian person may
be as perplexed as to understand how we (the West) worship and care for the
dog.
The underlying point to this
is that we cannot assume that there is a similar trend or similar
characteristics within all populations. All populations must defend themselves,
find and produce food, establish a religious belief system, and in differing
degrees operate a hierarchical system of government and politics. Each nation
and each nation’s cultures finds these answers in
differing ways, adding to the global diversity of he world’s cultures.
What may be sacred to one
culture may be worthless to another. It is for this reason that historically,
different cultures have battled against each other in an effort to prove who’s cultural beliefs are ‘better’. What develops cultural
understanding is the combining of cultures together in areas such as a city
centre; where millions of people from many different backgrounds work and play
together, all undergoing the perils of traffic and pollution but all learning
to live with the constraints of a society that they cannot change. In this way,
with people living and working together we see how different cultures learn to
adapt to different environments and surroundings. Working together, different
cultures may have advantages in different areas, and so group work or tackling
a problem using the indigenous advantages of different cultures can yield a
wealth of different answer, solved in different ways.
Pierre Bourdieu
in 1984 said that all cultures were a mixture of colours and sounds until one
learnt the rules that guide and make sense of it. For instance, the Japanese
culture, language and images are distinctly different from those of the
American media led Western styles.
What we are loosing in the
twenty first century is cultural diversity in the West, Globalisation and the
creation of enormous powerful businesses whose marketing and products line
shopping arcades throughout the West are influencing and defining the culture
in which we live. For instance, with the buy-out of Asda
by the world’s biggest retailer Wall*
Individuality is something we
are taught from being a child, everyone is different,
and special in different ways. The goods and services offered to us in the
Western world do not serve to broaden our cultural diversity,
we are slowly becoming one culture in the west, and increasingly throughout the
developed world.
The West and more specifically
the American influence on culture relates to the ideologies of superpower
control and existence. Without the internationally exported brand labels of MNC’s, (multi-national-corporations) which find themselves
marketed into different cultures with the same slogan of advertising,
suggesting when and where to use it, suggesting that without it you are not as
good as someone who does use it; the US would not be as powerful or have the
ability to affect our cultural identity to such a great extent.
Geographers as scientists, have worked for many years to identity and
explain the patterns of cultural spread throughout the world. Geographers
attempt to appreciate the balance of nature, the environment and people
together. If analysis of culture was done by scientists who did not appreciate
the interrelationship between nature and humans, and the reasons for this
cultural diversity, then our understanding of culture would be significantly
different. Through using geography and it’s teaching research methods we learn
more of a culture’s history, how that culture has learnt from others, how it
provides food for it’s people and manages self-sufficient economic systems than
we would if the research had been carried out by political or economic
scientists.
A cultural geographer looks
not only at objects such as clothing, material possessions and lifestyles but
also would make reference to the belief system that keep
the community or culture together. It is this aspect that is overlooked by
other disciplines, which attempt to define and understand cultural diversity.
Cultural diversity comes not only from the possessions which we own but the
ideas and thoughts in our head, which show that different people from around
the world believe in different things, worrying about different things and
being happy from different things.
Culture may also mean the
‘high-culture’ of expressionism and representation of cultural identity through
the use of theatre, art, opera, literature or poetry. What must be remembered
is that these expressions of culture are stored and remembered in museums,
galleries and books for other people to read and base a historical inaccurate
picture of previous generations. For example, the objects of expressionism left
from the seventieth century, inaccurately portray a lifestyle of large
mansions, great estates and castles for all. What we do not see is the
representation of a larger group of people whose lifestyle was plagued with
ill-health and a poor standard of living. Without a true representation of a
culture it is difficult to truly understand the ways in which the society
worked and the ideologies of those who controlled it/them. Present day study of
a culture is therefore easier, for we have the opportunity to first hand
experience these expressions of ‘high-culture’ from every different source. For
example, if a ‘high-society’ snapshot was taken from every county in the
The history of a country such
as the
The identification of cultures
continues today because cultural diversity is a constantly changing thing that
is influenced by external features, which may have never existed before.
And so the job of a cultural
geographer in the 21st century is to appreciate the exported goods
and thoughts from different cultures as the world becomes more of a mixed place
with a greater number of people moving location and living in a different place
than ever before.
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Bibliography
·
Introducing Human Geographies – Paul Cloke, Philip Crang, Mark Goodwin
·
Cultural Geography – Mike Crang