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Absolute location

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Position of an object on the global grid; latitude and longitude.

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Acculturation

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Occurs when a less-dominant culture comes into contact with and adopts traits from a more dominant culture.

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Administration phase of boundary creation

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Phase in which a government enforces the boundary it has created.

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Agglomeration

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Clumping together of industries for mutual advantage.

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Agribusiness

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System of food production involving everything from the development of seeds to the marketing and sale of food products at the market.

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Agricultural density

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Number of farmers per area of farmland.

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Allocational boundary dispute

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Conflict over resources that may not be divided by the border, such as natural gas reserves beneath the soil.

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Antecedent boundary

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Boundary that existed before the human cultures grew into current form.

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Antinatalist population policy

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Restrictive policy that discourages people from having babies.

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Apartheid

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South Africa's English-Dutch imposed government segregating white and black inhabitants.

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Arithmetic density

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Number of people per area.

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Asian Tigers

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Group of new industrial countries comprising Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

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Assimilation

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Final completion of the cultural acculturation process, when a culture group loses all its original traits and becomes fully a part of different, domination culture.

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Azimuthal projection

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Map that maintains direction but distorts other properties; flat-plane-constructed map of each hemisphere; direction is accurate, and great-circle routes are apparent.

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Backwash effect

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Occurs when other regions suffer a drain of resources and talent due to agglomeration in another region.

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Balkanization

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Division of a region or state into smaller units, usually along ethnic lines.

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Basic employment sector

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Group of economic functions that bring money into an urban place and represent the city's primary functions.

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Bid-rent curve

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Graph showing the predicted decline in cost of land and population density as you move away from the central business district in the concentric zone model.

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Blockbusting

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Tactic (now illegal) that contributed to ghettoization; used by real estate agents to get people to bout out of their homes because of fear of racial integration.

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Ester Boserup

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Geographer who developed the theory that subsistence farmers want the most leisure time they can have, so they farm in ways that will allow them both to feed their families and to maximize free time. Boserup's theory also posited that farmers will change their approach to farming if the population increases and more food is needed, thus making food supply dependent on human innovation, rather than humans dependent on the food supply.

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Buffer state

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Independent country that exists between two larger countries that are conflicting.

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Buffer zone

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Area consisting of two or more countries located between two larger countries in conflict.

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Capital-intensive farm

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Farm that makes heavy use of machinery in the farming process.

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Carrying capacity

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Maximum number of people a region can reasonably sustain.

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Cartogram

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Map that uses proportionality (i.e., space on the map) to show a particular variable.

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Central business district (CBD)

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Original core of a city's economy, like the nucleus of a cell.

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Central place

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Urban center that provides services to people living in the surrounding rural areas.

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Centrifugal force

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Force that divides a state's people and regions.

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Centripetal force

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Force that unifies a state's people and regions.

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Chain migration

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When migrants move to a new place based on information they received from family or community members who made the same journey earlier.

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Choropleth thematic map

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Map that shows a pattern of a variable, such as population density or voting patterns, by using various colors or degrees of shading.

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Colonial city

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City whose primary identity is as a colony of an invading or conquering imperial power, often showing forced cultural imprints of the colonizer.

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Commodification

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Giving a price tag or value to something that was not previously perceived as having a money-related value.

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Compact state

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State with little variation in distance from its center point to any point on its boundary.

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Comparative advantage

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Ability of a country (or place) to produce a good or offer a service better than another country can.

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Confederate governmental structure

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Organizational structure comprising a weak central government and regional governments holding the majority of power.

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Conformal (or orthomorphic) projection

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Map that maintains shape but distorts other properties.

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Confucianism

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East Asian belief system originally taught by Confucius, stressing morals for all aspects of life.

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Conglomerate corporation

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Massive corporation operating a collection of smaller companies that provide it with specific services in its production process.

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Core of a state

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Region in a state wherein political and economic power is concentrated, like the nucleus of a cell.

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Counterurbanization

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Increase in rural populations resulting from the out-migration of city residents from their city and suburban homes in search of the peace and tranquility of non urban lifestyles.

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Creole

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Pidgin language that has become the language of the people being dominated by invaders.

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Crude birth rate (CBR)

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Number of live births per 1,000 people over a year.

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Crude death rate (CDR)

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Number of deaths per 1,000 people over a year.

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Cultural convergence

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Occurs when one culture adopts a cultural attribute of another.

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Cultural diffusion

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Process by which a cultural element spreads from its hearth across space and time. There are two forms: expansion and relocation.

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Cultural ecology

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Study of human-environment interaction.

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Cultural geography

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Field of human geography that analyzes how and why culture is expressed in different ways in different places.

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Cultural homogeneity

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Occurs when cultures become the same, or uniform, and local diversity is decreased.

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Cultural imperialism

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Invasion of a culture into another with the intent of dominating the invaded culture politically, economically, and/or socially.

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Cultural landscape (or built environment)

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Tangible result of a human group's interaction with its environment.

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Cultural nationalism

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Movement to protect one's culture from invasion or influence from another culture's perceived invasion or influence and threat to one's own culture. Highly related to the emotional attachment an individual has for his/her culture.

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Cultural political boundary

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Political boundary that marks changes in the cultural landscape, such as a boundary dividing territory according to religion or language.

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Culture complex

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Unique combination of culture traits for a particular culture group.

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Culture hearth

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Area where innovations in culture began and from which such cultural elements spread.

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Culture (or geographic) realm

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Cluster of culture regions in which common culture systems are found. Examples include Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

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Culture regions

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Area in which a culture system is found or is prevalent.

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Culture system

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Collection of culture complexes that shape a group's common identity.

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Culture trait

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Single piece of a culture's traditions and practices.

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Cumulative causation

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Contributing factor to uneven development; occurs when money flows to areas of greatest profit, places where development has already been focused, rather than to places of greatest need.

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Cyclic movement

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Movement made on a daily basis that involves a very short move to and from one's home.

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Debt-for-nature swaps

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Efforts to preserve natural farmland by forgiving international debts owed by developing countries in exchange for those countries protecting natural land resources from human destruction.

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Definition phase in boundary creation

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Phase in which the exact location of a boundary is legally described and negotiated.

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Definitional boundary dispute

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Conflict over the language of the border agreement in a treaty or boundary contract.

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Deglomeration

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Unclumping of industries because of the negative effects and higher costs associated with overcrowding.

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Delimination phase of boundary creation

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Phase in which a boundary's definition is draw onto a map.

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Demarcation phase of boundary creation

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Phase in which the boundary is visibly marked on the landscape by a fence, line, sign, wall, or other means.

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Demographic momentum (hidden momentum)

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Phenomenon of a growing population size even after replacement-level fertility has been reached. This occurs when the base of the population pyramid is so wide that the generation of parents will take time to cycle out before zero growth occurs.

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Demography

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Study of population characteristics, transitions, and projections.

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Dependency ratio

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Measurement in which the number of people unable to work because of age is compared with the number of workers in a society.

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Dependency theory

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Theory that exemplifies the structuralist perspective, arguing that the political and economic relations among countries limit the ability of less-developed countries to modernize and develop.

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Geometric political boundary

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Straight-line political boundary that separates territories but do not relate to cultural or physical features.

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Geopolitics

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Branch of political geography that analyzes how states behave as political and territorial systems.

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Gerrymandering

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Redrawing electoral boundaries to give one political party an advantage over others.

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Graying population

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Evidenced by a population pyramid showing a higher number of older, or elderly, people in its projection that younger, working-age people. The pyramid is top-heavy.

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