Cultural Geography

Culture is the total way of life that characterizes a group of people.

There are thousands of cultures on Earth today and each contributes to
global diversity. There are so many ways that Earth’s billions of people
can be culturally different. Specifically, a culture consists of numerous
cultural components that vary from one culture group to the next.
Components of Culture
• Some Cultural Parameters

•Religion
•Language
•Architecture
•Cuisine
•Technology
•Music
•Dress
•Gender Role
• Law
• Education
• Government
•Agriculture
• Economy
• Sport
• Values
Cultural Segregation
Segregation, separation of groups of people with differing characteristics, often taken to connote
a condition of inequality. Racial segregation is one of many types of segregation, which can range
from deliberate and systematic persecution through more subtle types of discrimination to self-
imposed separation. Yet segregation can also be an outcome of circumstances that may not be
morally troubling. Segregation, in and of itself, is not a normative concept, like injustice, but
instead is a condition that, in order to ascribe causation, requires investigation of all its
dimensions.

Human geographical segregation

Segregation, as a broad concept, has appeared in all parts of the world where people exist—in
different contexts and times it takes on different forms, shaped by the physical and human
environments.
The spatial concentration of population groups is not a new phenomenon. Since societies began to
form there have been segregated inhabitants. Either segregated purposefully by force, or gradually
over time.
segregation was based on
socio-economic,
religious,
educational,
linguistic or ethnic grounds.
Some groups choose to be segregated to strengthen social identity.
Legal segregation
Segregation can be caused by legal frameworks.
Segregation can also happen slowly, stimulated by increased land and housing prices in certain
neighborhoods,
resulting in segregation of rich and poor in many urban cities.
Segregation can also be assigned arbitrarily.
This can occur on a global scale, such as is seen in the Partition of India,
Geographical boundaries were often put in place without much consideration for native peoples and
natural geographic terrain and cultural limits that had long been in place.

Social segregation
Segregation can also be caused by social factors that become evident as they happen, but are not
necessarily government sanctioned. This could be things like informal ghettos, or simply rich neighborhoods.
In terms of land capital, over time in a given area, humans will settle down and buy or take land.
Some privileged people will acquire better land (that is, more arable, proximate to potential capital,
more pleasing views).
Demand for these nicer habitats drives up prices, and areas deemed “better” based solely on geography become inherently
exclusionary in their population makeup.
Gated communities

Gated communities could be seen as a combination of both legal frameworks and social conventions regarding
segregation.
A gated community today is a controlled neighborhood, inhabited by people with common interests,
such as safety, or class separation, but not necessarily of the same ethnicity or religion—
it is distinct from an international community (in most cases).
Gated communities are very controversial, as they can be seen as encouraging distinction and separation,
and therefore superiority from those who do not live with the gates community.

Voluntary segregation

Voluntary segregation is almost as common an occurrence as involuntary segregation is. Often, immigrants coming to
a new and foreign country will band together for mutual benefit, and to keep a sense of community in the new country.
These can be called ethnic enclaves and can be formed by any community or people group.
Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture, the global
monoculture, or a homogenization of cultures, akin to cultural decay. The phrase cultural diversity can
also refer to having different cultures respect each other's differences. The phrase "cultural diversity"
is also sometimes used to mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in
the world as a whole. Globalization is often said to have a negative effect on the world's cultural
diversity.
A culture region is a portion of Earth’s surface that has common cultural elements and has
distinct cultural authority from other regions.
Properties of cultural regions
• Culture regions, like cultures themselves, display considerable variety. For starters, any number of
cultural components may be used to define culture regions.
• Culture regions exhibit a certain diversity—their titles identify a dominant characteristic but do not
necessarily mean that everybody who lives there shares that characteristic. One should understand that diversity
typically exists within a culture region through the use of specific examples, to avoid making logical assumptions
that are nevertheless wrong.
• Culture regions differ greatly in size. Some are exceedingly large, like the Islamic culture region that
encompasses millions of square miles of North Africa and Southwest Asia. Some are very small, like Spanish
Harlem, which encompasses about two square miles of Manhattan. Many others are of intermediate size, like the
Corn Belt, which occupies a portion of the midwestern United States.
• Culture regions can be found in urban, suburban, or rural settings. Many cities contain ethnic
neighborhoods. Basically, these are urban culture regions whose borders are defined by the locations of specific
cultural communities. Different cities around the world have ethnic mixes.Urban fringes the world over also exhibit
cultural differences.
• Rural parts of the world may differ on the basis of language, religion, or some other cultural
component as agriculture type or dominant crop. Rural culture regions may be dominated by cattle ranches, rice
fields, banana plantations, or some other form of agriculture.
 Zone Zonal Centre Extent

Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana,

South Culture Zone South Zone Cultural Centre, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
Puducherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep

Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka,

South Central Culture Zone[7] South-Central Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur, Maharashtra
Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Goa

Chandigarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh,

North Culture Zone North Zone Cultural Centre, Patiala, Punjab Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand
[8]

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana,

North Central Culture Zone[9] North-Central Zone Cultural Centre, Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh
Delhi, Uttarakhand

Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura,

East Culture Zone East Zone Cultural Centre, Kolkata, West Bengal
Manipur, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands[citation needed]

Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland,

North East Culture Zone[10] North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur, Nagaland
Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim

Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Daman and Diu,

West Culture Zone West Zone Cultural Centre, Udaipur, Rajasthan
Dadra and Nagar Haveli
Criteria for Delineating the Cultural Regions of
India

• Administrative or " Political "

• Linguistic
• Religious.
• Social criteria