CONCLUSION

Decorated Farmhouses of Halsingland

In this chapter, we have just scratched the surface of the complex nature of the geographies of cultural difference. Using just a few of the multiple categories of cultures and subcultures, we learned that there are many ways of perceiving and being in the landscape. We have also seen how important geography is in the construction of national and cultural identities and vice versa. Religion, often a defining element of cultural difference and cultural identity, is also vitally important. Chapter 7 is devoted to this major cultural trait.

DOING GEOGRAPHY

Self-Representation of Indigenous Culture

Indigenous cultures are reasserting themselves after 500 years of marginalization. For centuries, the roar of dominant national cultures drowned out indigenous peoples’ voices. Members of dominant national cultures—academics, missionaries, government officials, and journalists—have been largely responsible for writing about the histories and cultures of indigenous peoples. This is changing as some indigenous groups have prospered economically and as the indigenous rights movement gains increasing support worldwide. Today, more and more indigenous peoples are taking charge of representing themselves and their cultures to the outside world by building museums, producing films, hosting conferences, and creating web sites.

This exercise requires you to carefully study one of these platforms for cultural expression: self-produced indigenous peoples’ web sites. To do so, follow the steps below.

Steps to Understanding Indigenous Culture

Based on your research and analysis, systematically analyze how indigenous populations represent their cultural identities. Consider these questions:

How do indigenous groups speak about their relationship to the land and the environment?

What do they say about territorial claims and homelands? What roles do maps play on the web sites?

What are their ideas on biodiversity conservation and bioprospecting (the search for genetic resources and other biological resources)?

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In addition, look for discussions of conflict, cooperation, or dis-agreement with national governments or multinational corporations:

Is there a project or policy (e.g., disposal of radioactive material) under dispute?

What position is taken on the web site? How is the position framed in relation to indigenous rights and culture?

What major issues and challenges does the site highlight and how do these relate to globalization?

Finally, think about possibilities for comparison:

Are there regional (on either the U.S. national or global scale) differences in terms of the quantity and content of web sites?

Did you find common themes across or within regions?

Are there indigenous cultures that produce contrasting or competing representations?

Do some indigenous cultures have more than one self-generated web site and do those sites present different ideas?

Match each of the terms on the left with its definition on the right. Click on the term first and then click on the matching definition. As you match them correctly they will move to the bottom of the activity.

Question

You can learn more about some of the categories of culture difference discussed in this chapter on the Internet at the following web sites:

How we think about and interact with nature reveals a great deal about how we understand our place in the world. For example, within contemporary popular culture we often think of our relationship with nature as something outside the routine of daily life. We seek out nature on weekends, during vacations, or in retirement. Nature is equated with pretty scenery, which in popular culture typically means forests, mountains, and wide-open spaces. This scene from Everglades National Park in Florida reveals a great deal about one of the main ways within popular culture that we express this understanding of nature: camping in the “great outdoors.”

Of course, there are many ways to camp. This particular form, recreational vehicle (RV) or motor home camping, is extremely energy intensive. Unseen in this photo is the supporting industrial manufacturing complex organized to produce a fleet of vehicles, trailers, and equipment, all of which are intended to be situated on an asphalt slab and connected to an electrical power grid. A lot of natural resources have to be consumed to experience nature in this way. Such an experience is shaped less by direct physical interaction with nature than by interaction with mass-produced commodities. Nature serves mainly as background scenery.

Thinking of nature as background scenery suggests a stage set for actors to interact on. Look carefully at the photo and you will see that this campground is a stage for both extremely private and highly public interactions. On one hand, every set of “campers” has its own private home completely sealed from the outside (e.g., note the satellite dish and rooftop air conditioners). Each RV is self-sufficient, requiring interactions neither with nature nor with human neighbors. On the other hand, the RVs are extremely closely spaced. Interactions among campers are almost forced, for merely stepping out of the RV puts one in public view. Conversations with strangers—even sharing drinks and meals—become a cultural norm in such a setting. Indeed, meeting new people is one of the reasons campers give when explaining why they enjoy camping. Could it be that getting in touch with nature really means getting in touch with one another in ways that would be difficult in the daily routines of popular culture?

Alcorn, Janice. 1994. “Noble Savage or Noble State? Northern Myths and Southern Realities in Biodiversity Conservation.” Ethnoecologica 2(3): 7-19.

Ambinakudige, Shrinidhi. 2009. “Revisiting ‘the South’ and ‘Dixie’: Delineating Vernacular Regions Using GIS.” Southeastern Geographer 49(3): 240-250.

Bebbington, Anthony. 1996. “Movements, Modernizations, and Markets: Indigenous Organizations and Agrarian Strategies in Ecuador.” In R. Peet and M. Watts (eds.), Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, pp. 86-109. London: Routledge.

Bebbington, Anthony. 2000. “Reencountering Development: Livelihood Transitions and Place Transformations in the Andes.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 90(3): 495-520.

Buijs, Arjen E., Bas Pedroli, and Yves Luginbu. 2006. “From Hiking through Farmland to Farming in a Leisure Landscape: Changing Social Perceptions of the European Landscape.” Landscape Ecology 21: 375-389.

Clevinger, Woodrow R. 1938. “The Appalachian Mountaineers in the Upper Cowlitz Basin.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 29: 115-134.

Clevinger, Woodrow R. 1942. “Southern Appalachian Highlanders in Western Washington.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 33: 3-25.

Crang, Mike. 2011. “Tourist: Moving Places, Becoming Tourist, Becoming Ethnographer.” In T. Cresswell and P. Merriman (eds.), Geographies of Mobilities: Practices, Spaces, Subjects, pp. 205-224. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate.

de Blij, Harm, and Peter Muller. 2004. Geography: Realms, Regions and Concepts. 11th ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Faria, Caroline. 2010. “Contesting Miss Sudan.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 12(2): 222-243.

Faria, Caroline. 2011. “Staging a New South Sudan in the USA: Men, Masculinities, and Nationalist Performance at a Diasporic Beauty Pageant.” Gender, Place, and Culture 20(1): 87-106.

Gade, Daniel W. 1982. “The French Riviera as Elitist Space.” Journal of Cultural Geography 3: 19-28.

Glassie, Henry. 1968. Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Godfrey, Brian J. 1993. “Regional Depiction in Contemporary Film.” Geographical Review 83: 428-440.

Goss, Jon. 1999. “Once-upon-a-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to the Mall of America.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 89: 45-75.

Harner, John, and Bradley Benz. 2013. “The Growth of Ranchettes in La Platta County, Colorado, 1988-2008.” The Professional Geographer 65(2): 329-344.

Hecock, Richard D. 1987. “Changes in the Amenity Landscape: The Case of Some Northern Minnesota Townships.” North American Culture 3(1): 53-66.

Hopkins, Jeffrey. 1990. “West Edmonton Mall: Landscape of Myths and Elsewhereness.” Canadian Geographer 34: 2-17.

International Labour Organization (ILO). 1989. Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention. http://members.tripod.com/PPLP/ILOC169.html.

Jackson, Peter. 2004. “Local Consumption Cultures in a Globalizing World.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 29: 165-178.

Kay, Jeanne, et al. 1981. “Evaluating Environmental Impacts of Off-Road Vehicles.” Journal of Geography 80: 10-18.

Kniffen, Fred B. 1965. “Folk Housing: Key to Diffusion.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 55: 549-577.

Knopp, Lawrence, and Michael Brown. 2008. “Queering the Map: The Productive Tensions of Colliding Epistmologies.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98(1): 40-58.

Kunstler, James H. 1993. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Light, Duncan. 2012. The Dracula Dilemma: Tourism, Identity and the State in Romania. Farnham, U.K.: Ashgate.

Lowenthal, David. 1968. “The American Scene.” Geographical Review 58: 61-88.

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McDowell, Linda. 1994. “The Transformation of Cultural Geography.” In Derek Gregory, Ron Martin, and Graham Smith (eds.), Human Geography: Society, Space, and Social Science, pp. 146-173. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Mings, Robert C., and Kevin E. McHugh. 1989. “The RV Resort Landscape.” Journal of Cultural Geography 10: 35-49.

Nietschmann, Bernard. 1973. Between Land and Water: The Subsistence Ecology of the Miskito Indians, Eastern Nicaragua. New York: Seminar Press.

Nietschmann, Bernard. 1979. “Ecological Change, Inflation, and Migration in the Far West Caribbean.” Geographical Review 69: 1-24.

Raitz, Karl B. 1987. “Place, Space and Environment in America’s Leisure Landscapes.” Journal of Cultural Geography 8(1): 49-62.

Relph, Edward. 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.

Richards, Paul. 1975. “‘Alternative’ Strategies for the African Environment. ‘Folk Ecology’ as a Basis for Community Oriented Agricultural Development.” In Paul Richards (ed.), African Environment, Problems and Perspectives, pp. 102-117. London: International African Institute.

Richards, Paul. 1985. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution. London: Hutchinson.

Robertson, David S. 1996. “Oil Derricks and Corinthian Columns: The Industrial Transformation of the Oklahoma State Capitol Grounds.” Journal of Cultural Geography 16: 17-44.

Rocheleau, Diane, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari (eds.). 1996. Feminist Political Ecology: Global Issues and Local Experiences. New York: Routledge.

Sack, Robert D. 1992. Place, Modernity, and the Consumer’s World: A Rational Framework for Geographical Analysis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Walker, Peter, and Louise Fortmann. 2003. “Whose Landscape? A Political Ecology of the ‘Exurban’ Sierra.” Cultural Geographies 10: 469-491.

Williams, Raymond. 1976. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.

Zonn, Leo (ed.). 1990. Place Images in Media: Portrayal, Experience, and Meaning. Savage, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.

(For additional suggested readings, see the Contemporary Human Geography LaunchPad: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpad/DomoshCHG1e.)

Aitken, Stuart. 2001. Geographies of Young People: The Morally Contested Spaces of Identity. London and New York: Routledge. The author presents youth as a fundamental category of cultural difference rather than a developmental stage toward adulthood in this study of the interaction of space, place, and childhood identity.

Burgess, Jacquelin A., and John R. Gold (eds.). 1985. Geography, the Media, and Popular Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press. The geography of popular culture is linked in diverse ways to the communications media, and this collection of essays explores facets of that relationship.

Harris, Dianne. 2013. Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. The author shows how, following the Second World War, marketing and popular media portrayed the new suburban developments as exclusively White. The study demonstrates that racial segregation and racial identities were constructed and reinforced through inequalities in the housing market.

Jackson, Peter, and Jan Penrose (eds.). 1993. Constructions of Race, Place, and Nation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. An edited collection that examines the way in which the ideas of racial and national identity vary from place to place; rich in empirical research.

Johnston, Lynda, and Robyn Longhurst. 2010. Space, Place, and Sex: Geographies of Sexualities. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Employing feminist and queer theories, the authors examine the geography of sex and sexuality from the scale of the body to the globe. They highlight throughout the interactive effects between sexuality and place.

Jordan, Terry G., Jon T. Kilpinen, and Charles F. Gritzner. 1997. The Mountain West: Interpreting the Folk Landscape. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Reading the folk landscapes of the American West, three geographers reach conclusions about the regional culture and how it evolved.

Price, Patricia. 2004. Dry Place: Landscapes of Belonging and Exclusion. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Price explores the narratives that have sought to establish claims to the dry lands along the U.S.-Mexico border, demonstrating how stories can become vehicles for reshaping places and cultural identities.

Roberts, Les (ed.). 2012. Mapping Cultures: Place, Practice, Performance. New York: Palgrave. The individual chapter authors explore ways to map a range of cultural expression such as music, collective memories, and political identity.

Warf, Barney (ed.). 2012. Encounters and Engagements between Economic and Cultural Geography. New York: Springer. A diverse set of chapters based on up-to-date literature reviews on the themes of the “cultural turn” in economic geography and the “rematerialization” of cultural geography.

Zelinsky, Wilbur. 2011 Not Yet a Placeless Land: Tracking an Evolving American Geography. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Zelinsky brings a lifetime’s worth of knowledge of North American cultural geography to bear on the question of whether the country’s land and citizens are homogenizing. To his own observations he adds a survey of literature on a range of American landscapes, regions, and cities. Arguing there are multiple countervailing forces at work, he concludes that standardization is occurring simultaneously with diversification.

Indigenous Affairs. A quarterly journal published by the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs thematically focused on issues of indigenous cultures. Volume 1 was published in 1976.

Journal of Popular Culture. Published by the Popular Culture Association since 1967, this journal focuses on the role of popular culture in the making of contemporary society. See, in particular, Volume 11, No. 4, 1978, a special issue on cultural geography and popular culture.

Material Culture: Journal of the Pioneer America Society. Published twice annually, this leading periodical specializes in the subject of the American rural material culture of the past. Volume 1 was published in 1969, and prior to 1984 the journal was called Pioneer America.