APHuG Culture

"It may seem surprising, but in this age where geographic mobility and instant communication have increased our exposure to people outside of our neighborhoods or towns, American regional dialects are pulling further apart from each other, rather than moving closer together. And renowned linguist William Labov thinks there’s a connection between political and linguistic segregation.

"Labov suggests that it’s these deep-seated political disagreements that create an invisible borderline barring the encroachment of Northern Cities Vowels. When he looked at the relationship between voting patterns by county over the last three Presidential elections and the degree to which speakers in these counties shifted their vowels, he found a tight correlation between the two. And the states that have participated in the vowel shift have also tended to resist implementing the death penalty.

"Social identities are complex, and can be defined along a number of different dimensions like class, race, or ethnicity. Not everyone feels that politics are a part of their core identity. But I suspect that political ideology may become an anchor for accents to the extent that large social groups collectively identify themselves by their political beliefs. According to Bill Bishop, author of The Big Sort, this is happening more and more as Americans voluntarily cluster themselves into homogenous, politically like-minded communities."

While many educators have been using http://popvssoda.com/ to show the linguistic regions in the United States, this is a similar map, with the added social media component.  To map out these regions, the cartographer used the word choice on geo-tagged tweets as the data source.  For another twitter, map, the following link shows which regions are most actively engaged on Twitter: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/06/top-countries-on-twitter_n_1653915.html

What do these regions show us?  What types of regions are these?

We often hear people in the deep South describe there state as the buckle in the Bible Belt.  This map of religiosity in the United States shows a clear Bible Belt with other interesting patterns (with some pertinent political ramifications in an election year). 

This chilling documentary outlines the historical genocide of Tutsi people predominantly by Hutu's in Rwanda during 1994. So often, students who have always lived within a society with effective political institutions are unable to see how such atrocities could even happen. This video lays the groundwork for understanding the disintegration of political institution within Rwanda, reasons the international community underestimated the threat, why the UN in 1994 (after Somalia) was not prepared to use forceful action and why westerners fled. In this state of lawlessness, the cultural tensions and colonial legacy lead to horrific killings. This genocide has no one reason, but a complex set of geographic contexts. This would be a powerful video to show students. WARNING: considering the content, there are necessarily depictions of death.  To learn more about the documentary, see: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/

This article is a great source for discussion material on regions (include the ever-famous "Soda/Pop/Coke" regions).  How do we divide up our world?  What are the criteria we use for doing so?

The geography of religion, religiosity and atheism are all analyzed in this fasinating news article.

One of the free response questions in the 2012 AP Human Geography test focused on increasing Muslim population in many European countries.  The Muslim community has (in the view of most Europeans polled) has not adequately assimilated into European society, and with many Europeans feeling a cultural threat, have created a politically charged situation.  Has Europe failed to integrate Muslims or have Muslims failed to integrate in Europe?  Is this a problem?  Why or why not?  To see the APHG test question, click here:  http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/repository/ap_frq_human_geo_2012.pdf

ALMOST 20% of the world’s parliamentary seats are now occupied by women, up from 17.2% five years ago, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union.