Cultural Geography

Cultural geography is a subfield of Human Geography, which is one of the main branches of the larger discipline of geography. I would like to take the time to offer a brief overview of cultural geography, as I previously did in an article I wrote for another website. The original article, "How to Understand Cultural Geography" is located at:
How to Understand Cultural Geography

This brief article outlines the major and important points of cultural geography. Cultural geography is a subfield of human geography and seeks to explain and identify human cultural patterns and how those patterns vary across the landscapes of the world. "Culture" may be defined as the behaviors, understandings, adaptations, and social systems that characterize a group of people's lives. Cultural geographers often look for and observe "cultural traits", which include such elements as diet, clothing styles, music, religion, and language. These may also include or influence aspects of government and economy. Cultural traits often emerge from centers of innovation called "cultural hearths". Cultural geographers also want to know how culture shapes human-environment relations in addition to how people perceive as well as modify the landscape.

A "Cultural Landscape" describes the way in which a person's culture influences his or her perception of the environment. Carl Sauer (a formative geographer in the first half of the 20th century) described cultural landscapes in a famous 1925 article. Additionally, "Cultural Ecology" seeks to understand the relationship between a cultural group and the natural environment that particular group occupies. However, this gave rise to the no defunct idea of environmental determinism (which states that the physical environment is the sole determinant of human behavior and actions).

Cultural geography today is somewhat different than that of the earlier twentieth century. Cultural geographers currently deal less with aspects of the natural environment while instead focusing on issues such as communication and culture, as well as various meaning and symbolism present in cultural landscapes. Other topics currently studied from the framework of cultural geography include: globalization; ideas of Westernization, Americanization, or Islamization; theories of cultural hegemony, cultural pluralism and assimilation, multiculturalism, or cultural imperialism; cultural regions; as well as sense of place, colonialism, post-colonialism, internationalism, immigration and emigration, tourism, and more.

Link to original article by Paul McDaniel:
How to Understand Cultural Geography