Geography II: Population, Migration, Culture, Political Geography, Development

This is Unit Eleven of Social Sciences and History, part two of two: human geography from place names to the core and the periphery. Part one closed on asking what a measure counts. This part asks what a term defines, because the exam's political and development items turn on pairs that look alike and are not: a nation and a state, a state religion and a theocracy, an enclave and a ghetto, a ladder every country can climb and a system that keeps some at the bottom. The capstone at the end maps the world as core and periphery and attributes every theory that explains the map, endorsing none, which is how this course treats a contested model. By the end you will be able to sort religions and their divisions. To tell an enclave from a ghetto and cleansing from genocide. To classify a political unit. To name a development path. And to map core and periphery with the theories attributed.

Five entries on names and religion: place names and dialect, religion's two kinds, division and blending, sacred space, and conflicts called religious.

Place names and dialect.

SSH 1025 Toponymy and Dialect

Toponymy is the study of place names, which reveal a place's significance, landscape, honored people, and distant references. Dialects of American English have changed with the settlement histories and political events the anchor lists: the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican-American War, annexations, with twenty fifteen Census data on language diversity. Mapping web-language use is unattainable now, the anchor admits.

Religion's two kinds.

SSH 1026 Universalizing Against Ethnic Religions

A universalizing religion seeks converts; an ethnic religion is associated with a particular ethnic group. The general historical trend, the anchor says, has been toward a small number of universalizing religions gaining ground over local, ethnic ones. Monotheism holds one god; polytheism, many, and religion is identity, inward and in the landscape. The religious world changes, but slowly.

Division and blending.

SSH 1027 Branches, Schism, Syncretism

A branch is a large division of a religion; a schism is the fracturing of an organization; sectarian violence is violence between sects of one religion. A syncretic religion forms by combining others, and fundamentalism is belief in a text's absolute authority; new religions arise while others fade. The chapter's outcome asks hearths and diffusion, and unit ten's diffusion types apply.

Sacred space.

SSH 1028 Sacred Space, Pilgrimage, Sanctuary

Sacred spaces are places associated with a sense of the divine, and a pilgrimage is a journey to one; a sanctuary is a legal haven. A state religion is a state's official religion, not the same as theocracy, rule by religious principles; secular means separation of state from any religion, agnostic unknowable, atheistic nothing supernatural. State religion against theocracy is the exam's pair.

Conflicts called religious.

SSH 1029 Religious Conflict, and Conflicts Called Religious

Religious differences can lead to conflict, but many conflicts presented as religious have their roots elsewhere, the anchor says, a war named for faith and fought for territory. Like language, religion sorts people into groups, for good or ill, and the chapter's outcome ties belief to trade, colonialism and empire. That is the anchor's caution, with no example added.

Three entries on ethnicity and race: three definitions, enclave against ghetto, and ethnic cleansing against genocide, voiced as the record.

Three definitions.

SSH 1030 Ethnicity, Race, Nation: Three Definitions

Ethnicity is a group sharing a common cultural or national heritage, often a language or religion. Race is categorization by physical characteristics or ancestry. This chapter's nation is an ethnicity or a people; the next chapter's is a group bonded by cultural attributes. Belonging is felt inside; exclusion is set by the group in power. Discrimination has economic roots too.

Enclave and ghetto.

SSH 1031 Enclave Against Ghetto; Segregation

An enclave is self-enforced separation for a racial or ethnic group; a ghetto is an area of externally forced, legally defined separation. Segregation is spatial or social separation by race or ethnicity, and Jim Crow laws enforced segregation and disenfranchisement in the South; first effective settlement sets the template. Acculturation reconciles culture groups; xenophobia fears the different.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide.

SSH 1032 Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide

Ethnic cleansing is an attempt to expunge or remove all traces of another population from a place; it may or may not involve genocide, which has the purpose of exterminating an entire people. Both are voiced as the record. Environmental justice means burdens and benefits shared equally across groups; a foodway is food's cultural practices. Majority and minority are counts, over or under half.

Four entries on the state: classifying a political unit, three boundary types, shapes and forces, and supranational organizations.

Classifying a political unit.

SSH 1033 State, Nation, Nation-State, Stateless Nation: Classifying a Unit

The exam describes a political unit and asks what it is, and the anchor's political chapter defines the set. A state is a formal region whose government has sovereignty within its territorial boundaries. A nation is a group bonded by cultural attributes such as language, ethnicity and religion. A nation-state is a state whose boundaries encompass a group with a shared ethnicity. A multinational state holds more than one nation within its borders. A stateless nation aspires to a nation-state but has no territory of its own. A boundary is an invisible vertical plane, taking in the airspace above and the ground below. A people with a language and a history, ruled across four countries and holding none: stateless nation. A country whose one people fill its borders: nation-state. A country of several peoples with their own languages: multinational state. A territory with a sovereign government, whatever its peoples: state. Ask two questions: is there sovereignty, and how many peoples does it hold. The trap is using nation for country; in this chapter nation is the people, state the territory and government. The second trap is the perfect nation-state, which the anchor treats as an ideal type few states match. What the term defines decides the item.

Boundaries.

SSH 1034 Boundaries: Physical, Geometric, Ethnic

A physical boundary follows a natural feature, a river, mountain range or lake, the Rio Grande. A geometric boundary follows a straight line and may coincide with a line of latitude or longitude, the forty-ninth parallel. An ethnic boundary encompasses a particular ethnic group, a language line. The outcome asks boundary types and how disputes develop.

Shapes and forces.

SSH 1035 State Shapes; Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces

A compact state's distance from center to any border varies little, roughly circular. A fragmented state's territory is not contiguous, islands for instance, and the anchor names only these two shapes. Centripetal forces bind a state together, a national language; centrifugal forces break it apart, a secessionist region. Terrorism, the key term, is intimidation by violence for political aims.

Alliances.

SSH 1036 Supranational Organizations and Irredentism

A supranational organization is an alliance of three or more states with shared economic, political, military or cultural objectives. Irredentism is an effort to expand a state's political influence over kin in a neighboring state. Gerrymandering redraws legislative districts to benefit the party in power, and the chapter's electoral map is not narrated. Unit nine carries gerrymandering as United States politics.

Four entries to close: the measures of wealth, two development paths, Rostow and his critics, and core and periphery with every theory attributed.

The measures of wealth.

SSH 1037 GDP, GNI, PPP, HDI

Gross domestic product is all goods and services produced within a country in a year: consumption, investment, government spending, net exports. Gross national income adds net income from overseas. GDP per capita divides by population, and purchasing power parity adjusts for cost of living. The HDI of nineteen ninety combines life expectancy, literacy and income. The anchor's dollar figures stay dated and unconverted.

Two paths.

SSH 1038 Two Paths: International Trade or Self-Sufficiency

The exam describes a country's development strategy and asks which path it follows, and the anchor's chapter sets out two. The international trade model: a country embraces free trade, specializes in goods and services valuable as exports, accepts rising imports, and removes trade barriers; its strength is growth through comparative advantage, its weakness dependence on world markets. The self-sufficiency model: a centralized strategy to develop all sectors inside the borders and reduce dependence on outsiders, with tight controls on trade and heavy protection for domestic producers; its strength is insulation, its weakness inefficiency. The instruments belong to the second: tariffs, taxes on imports; quotas, limits on amounts; nontariff barriers, regulations and embargoes; domestic subsidies. Market liberalization removes them. A country specializing in coffee for export and importing its machinery: international trade. A country building its own steel and car industries behind high tariffs: self-sufficiency. A fair-trade label guaranteeing growers a higher price: neither path but a trading system with social aims. Ask whether the country opens or closes. The trap is the anchor's conclusion, that history seems to favor openness but with serious risk; the course voices it as the anchor's judgment. The second trap is comparative against absolute advantage: the anchor's absolute advantage is rare resources, comparative the lowest opportunity cost.

Rostow.

SSH 1039 Rostow's Stages and Their Critics

Walter Rostow, an American government official, proposed the Stages of Growth in nineteen sixty: countries follow a similar, predictable path through five stages, traditional society, transitional, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption. The anchor's glossary calls the stages deterministic, and modernization theory makes the same claim; human agency is the anchor's counterweight to models. The Asian Tigers: exports, education, high savings.

Core and periphery.

SSH 1040 Core and Periphery: Dependency, World Systems, and the Brandt Line

The exam's spatial-interaction item names core and periphery, and the anchor's development chapter, read with Finlayson's first chapter, supplies the geography and the theories that explain it. The geography first. The Brandt line, drawn in nineteen eighty, divides a Global North, the countries generally considered more developed, from a Global South, generally less developed; Finlayson draws the same map as core and periphery, with a semi-periphery between. The United Nations sorts the poor end further: the least developed countries, forty-eight of them in twenty fifteen by the anchor's count, home to nine hundred fifty million people, more than half earning under one dollar twenty-five a day, a dated figure voiced with its year; the anchor prefers developing, a dynamic label, to a static one. The theories second, all attributed. Modernization theory and Rostow's stages say every country can climb the same ladder with the right intervention. Dependency theory answers that the global system disadvantages certain regions: colonial trade made some countries producers of low-profit goods, and the trade system outlived independence, so they remain dependent. World systems theory generalizes it: one world economy in which some countries benefit while others are exploited. The resource curse adds that places rich in natural resources are often harmed by extracting them. The institutions third. The International Monetary Fund lends short-term to governments in crisis and attaches structural adjustment programs; the World Bank lends for large projects; the World Trade Organization promotes trade and enforces agreements, created, the anchor's glossary says, in nineteen ninety-four, an agreement signed that year for an organization operating from nineteen ninety-five, as unit nine's anchor has it; both dates are correct for different events. The anchor's own close is voiced as its own: history seems to favor openness, at serious risk; a country can spend itself into debt and upheaval; and seventy years of gains have come at an environmental cost that makes sustainability the anchor for decisions ahead. Every theory here is attributed and none is endorsed. The gravity model is not in this anchor, and spatial interaction is carried by friction of distance, diffusion, the laws of migration, and this map. A ladder everyone can climb against a system that keeps some at the bottom: what each term defines, and who says so, is the whole of this lecture.

Look at what you can now do. You can tell a universalizing religion, which seeks converts, from an ethnic one, a state religion from a theocracy, and a branch from a schism. You can tell an enclave, self-enforced, from a ghetto, forced by law, and ethnic cleansing, removal, from genocide, extermination, both voiced as the record. You can classify a political unit by asking whether there is sovereignty and how many peoples it holds, and you never use nation for country. You can name a development path by whether the country opens or closes, and you voice the anchor's preference for openness as its judgment. And you can map core and periphery along the Brandt line and attribute modernization, dependency and world systems theory without endorsing any, which is what a term defines and who says so, this lecture's habit to the end. Unit twelve opens on agriculture and the Green Revolution.