Acculturation
Cultural modification or change that results when one culture group or individual adopts traits of a dominant or host society; cultural development or change through "borrowing.
Artifact
The material manifestations of culture, including tools, housing, systems of land use, clothing and the like. Elements in the technological subsystem of culture.
Assimilation
A two-part behavioral and structural process by which a minority population reduces or loses completely its identifying cultural characteristics and blends into the host society.
Built Environment
That part of the physical landscape that represents material culture; the buildings, roads, bridges, and similar structures large and small of the cultural landscapes.
Culture
The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group of people.
Cultural Adaption
The complex strategies human groups employ to live successfully as part of a natural system.
Cultural Complex
A related set of cultural traits descriptive of one aspect of society's behavior or activity. Culture complexes may be as basic as those associated food preparation, serving, and consumption or as involved as those associated with religious beliefs or bus
Cultural Convergence
The tendency for cultures to become more alike as they increasingly share technology and organizational structures in a modern world united by improved transportation and communication.
Cultural Core
The zone of greatest concentration or homogeneity of the cultural traits that characterize region
Cultural Divergence
The likelihood or tendency for cultures to become increasingly dissimilar with the passage of time.
Cultural Extinction
Obliteration of an entire culture by war, disease, acculturation, or a combination of the three.
Cultural Hearth
A nuclear area within which an advanced and distinctive set cultural traits, ideas, and technologies develops and from which there is diffusion of those characteristics and the cultural landscape features they imply.
Cultural Identity
Identification with a group of people who share common cultural traits originating from a common hearth.
Cultural Imperialism
The dominance of one culture over another
Cultural Lag
The retention of established culture traits despite changing circumstances rendering them inappropriate.
Cultural Landscape
The fashioning of a natural landscape by a cultural group.
Cultural Periphery
The area outside the core of a culture region in which the culture is still dominant but less intense.
Cultural Realm
A collective of culture regions sharing related culture systems; a major world area having sufficient distinctiveness to be perceived as set apart from other realms in terms of cultural characteristics and complexes.
Cultural Rebound
The readoption by later generations of later generations of culture traits and identities associated with immigrant forebears or ancestral homelands
Cultural Region
A formal or functional region within which common cultural characteristics prevail. It may be based on single cultural traits, on cultural complexes, or on political, social, or economic integration.
Culture Shock
The confusion and discomfort which occurs when people are placed in a culture region or group with cultural traits other than their own.
Culture Trait
A single distinguishing feature of regular occurrence within a culture, such as the use of chopsticks or the observance of a particular caste system. A single element of learned behavior.
Custom
The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it become characteristic of the group of people performing the act.
Diffusion
The spreading of a feature or trend from one place to another over time.
Diffusion Barrier
Any condition that hinders the flow of information, the movement of people, or the spread of an innovation.
Expansion Diffusion
The spread of a feature or trend among people from one area to another in a snowballing effect.
Folk Culture
Culture traditionally practiced by small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.
Folklore
Oral traditions of a folk culture, including tales, fables, legends, customary observations, and moral teachings
Folk (vernacular) House
An indigenous style of building constructed of native materials to traditional plan, without formal drawings.
Folkways
The learned manner of thinking and feeling and a prescribed mode of conduct common to a traditional social group.
Habit
A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.
Innovation
Introduction of new ideas, practices, or objects; usually, an alteration of custom or culture that originates within the social group itself.
Maladaptive Diffusion
Diffusion processes that are poorly or negatively conducive to the spread of innovations or ideas from one group of people to another.
Material Culture
The tangible, physical items produced and used by members of a specific culture group and reflective of their traditions, lifestyles, and technologies.
Mentifact
The central, enduring elements of a culture expressing its values and beliefs, including language, religion, folklore, artistic traditions, and the like. Elements in the ideological subsystem of culture.
Multiculturalism
Also known as cultural pluralism, having to do with many cultures.
Mulitlinear Evolution
A concept of independent but parallel cultural development advanced by the anthropologist Julian Steward (1902-1972) to explain cultural similarities amond widely separated peoples existing in similar environments but who could not have benefited from sha
Nonmaterial Culture
The oral traditions, songs, and stories of a culture group along with its beliefs and customary behaviors.
Popular Culture
Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habit despite the differences in other personal characteristics.
Relocation DIffusion
The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another.
Sociofact
The institutes and links between individuals and groups that unite a culture, including family structure and political, educational, and religious institutions. Components of the sociological subsystem of culture
Symbolic Landscapes
Representations of particular values or aspirations that the builders and financiers of those landscapes want to impart to a larger public.
Syncretism
The development of a new form of cultural trait by the fusion of two or more distinct parental elements
Taboo
A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.
Tradition
A cohesive collection of customs within a cultural group.