CSS Geography Culture and Development Syllabus

Culture and Development syllabus — full chapter and topic list

Expand any chapter to see its topics and sub-topics. This is the whole examinable outline for Culture and Development in CSS Geography, not a summary of it.

1. 1

   Culture and Its Diffusion

   3 topics

   • Origin and diffusion of culture
   • Geographic patterns of culture
   • Man and habitat: environmentalism and possibilism
2. 2

   Languages and Religions

   4 topics

   • Classification and world distribution of languages
   • Indo-European languages
   • Origins and diffusion of religions
   • Global distribution of religions
3. 3

   Ethnicity and Conflict

   4 topics

   • Ethnicities and nationalities
   • Ethnic diversity in the world
   • Ethnic conflicts and regional conflicts
   • Factors and cases of ethnic cleansing
4. 4

   Development and Its Indicators

   4 topics

   • Economic indicators
   • Social and health indicators
   • Development through trade
   • Impacts of development indicators

Culture and Development flashcards for CSS Geography

25 of 50 cards from the Culture and Development deck — real questions with worked answers.

1. In cultural geography, what is meant by the term 'culture'?

   The body of customary beliefs, social forms, material traits, values, and learned behavior shared by a group and transmitted from generation to generation through socialization (not biological inheritance).

2. What is a 'culture hearth'?

   A region (area of origin) where a distinctive set of cultural traits, innovations, or a civilization develops and from which it spreads outward. Examples: Mesopotamia, Nile Valley, Indus Valley, Mesoamerica.

3. Define cultural diffusion.

   The process by which a cultural trait, idea, or innovation spreads from its hearth (point of origin) outward to other places and people over time.

4. Distinguish relocation diffusion from expansion diffusion.

   Relocation diffusion spreads through the physical movement/migration of people who carry the trait to a new area. Expansion diffusion spreads outward from the source while remaining (and often growing) strong at the origin, without the source losing it.

5. What are the three types of expansion diffusion?

   1) Hierarchical diffusion (spreads through a structured order, e.g. city to city or person of authority to others); 2) Contagious diffusion (rapid, widespread spread through direct contact, like a disease); 3) Stimulus diffusion (the underlying idea spreads and is adopted, but in a modified form).

6. Give an example of stimulus diffusion.

   The underlying concept spreads but is adapted: e.g. McDonald's offering vegetarian/non-beef items in India, where eating beef is culturally restricted — the fast-food idea diffused, the specific product was modified.

7. What is the difference between hierarchical and contagious diffusion?

   Hierarchical diffusion moves through an ordered sequence (top of a hierarchy to lower levels, large places to small), often skipping over intervening areas; contagious diffusion spreads through near-uniform direct contact, affecting nearly all adjacent individuals/places.

8. What is a 'cultural landscape'?

   The visible imprint of human activity and culture on the natural landscape — the fashioning of a natural environment by a cultural group. The concept was popularized by Carl Sauer.

9. Who founded the cultural landscape school and what did he argue?

   Carl Sauer (Berkeley school). He argued that the cultural landscape is the result of culture acting upon the natural landscape over time, and emphasized human agency over environmental determinism.

10. Distinguish folk culture from popular culture.

    Folk culture: practiced by small, homogeneous, often rural/isolated groups; spreads slowly by relocation diffusion; varies place to place but is stable over time. Popular culture: found in large, heterogeneous societies; spreads rapidly via hierarchical diffusion and media; varies over time but is widely uniform across places.

11. What is meant by environmental determinism (environmentalism)?

    The doctrine that the physical environment (climate, terrain, soils) controls and determines the course of human action, culture, and the level of development — humans are essentially passive products of their environment.

12. Name key proponents associated with environmental determinism.

    Friedrich Ratzel (founder, anthropogeography), Ellen Churchill Semple (his student who popularized it in the US), and Ellsworth Huntington (linked climate to civilization).

13. What is possibilism?

    The view that the physical environment sets limits and offers possibilities/constraints, but humans, through culture and choice, decide among those possibilities — humans are active agents, not passive subjects of nature.

14. Who is most associated with possibilism?

    Paul Vidal de la Blache (French school of geography); the term itself was coined by historian Lucien Febvre. The idea was developed further by Isaiah Bowman and others.

15. Contrast environmental determinism with possibilism in one sentence each.

    Determinism: 'Nature controls human destiny.' Possibilism: 'Nature presents options; humans choose among them through culture and technology.'

16. What is 'probabilism' (or neo-determinism) in the determinism debate?

    A middle path proposed by Griffith Taylor: nature offers a range of possibilities, but some choices are more probable than others. The geographer's role is to advise on the 'best' (most probable) course, not dictate it. Often called 'stop-and-go determinism.'

17. Approximately how many living languages are spoken in the world today?

    Roughly 7,000 (estimates commonly range from about 6,000 to 7,100), though the great majority are spoken by very small populations.

18. What is a language family?

    A collection of languages related through descent from a common ancestral (proto-) language that existed long before recorded history.

19. What are the two largest language families by number of speakers?

    Indo-European (largest by number of native speakers) and Sino-Tibetan (which includes Mandarin Chinese, with the most speakers of any single language).

20. Define a lingua franca.

    A language used routinely for communication (especially trade and business) by people who speak different native languages — a common bridge language. Examples: English globally, Swahili in East Africa.

21. Distinguish a pidgin from a creole.

    A pidgin is a simplified contact language combining elements of two or more languages, with no native speakers. A creole is a pidgin that has become the native (first) language of a community, gaining full grammatical complexity.

22. What is an isolated language (language isolate)? Give an example.

    A language unrelated to any other (not part of any known family). Example: Basque (Euskara), spoken in the Pyrenees of Spain and France.

23. What is a dialect, and what is an isogloss?

    A dialect is a regional or social variety of a language differing in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. An isogloss is a boundary line on a map marking the geographic limit of a particular linguistic feature.

24. Which language family is dominant in Sub-Saharan Africa?

    The Niger-Congo family (which includes the Bantu languages), the largest African family by number of distinct languages.

25. What major language families dominate East/Southeast Asia besides Sino-Tibetan?

    Austronesian (Malay, Indonesian, Tagalog, Polynesian languages), Austroasiatic (Vietnamese, Khmer), and Tai-Kadai (Thai, Lao).

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