| A | B |
|---|
| Apartheid | The name for the legal segregation of races in the country of South Africa. |
| Acculturation | The process of adopting the cultural traits or social patterns of another group. |
| Adaptive strategy | A classification of societies based on correlations between their economies and their social features including five adaptive strategies; foraging, horticulture, agriculture, pastoralism, and industrialism. |
| Barrio | A chiefly Spanish-speaking community or neighborhood in a U.S. city. |
| Balkanization / Shatterbelt | Division of a place or country into several small political units, often unfriendly to one another |
| Blockbusting | A practice used by real estate agents and developers in the United States to encourage white property owners to sell their homes by giving the impression that minority groups (such as African Americans) were moving into their previously racially segregated neighborhood |
| Brown V Board of Education of Topeka Kansas | U.S. Supreme Court ruling (1952) that held segregated schools in the several states are unconstitutional in violation of the 14th Amendment, overturning Plessy v. Furgeson |
| Ethnic Cleansing | When a more powerful ethnic groups removes a less powerful ethnic group from a place by means of forced relocation or murder in order to create their own nation-state. |
| Ethnic Conflict | Fighting between ethnic groups over control of territory or resources. |
| Ethnic Competition | Fighting between ethnic groups over control of the state. |
| Ethnic neighborhood | Enclaves of homogenous ethnic groups inside a larger city. |
| Ethnicity | Identity with or membership in a particular racial, national, or cultural group and observance of that group's customs, beliefs, and language |
| Ethnocentrism | The belief that one’s own ethnic values and identity is in part superior. |
| Ghetto | a section of a city, esp. a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships. |
| Ghetto(2) | ) (formerly, in most European countries) a section of a city in which all Jews were required to live. |
| Irredenta | A population or territory culturally or historically significant to one’s nation that is subject to foreign control. |
| Irredentism | The recovery of territory or population culturally or historically related to one's nation but now subject to a foreign government. |
| Middle passage | Ocean corridor between African and North and South American where Europeans forced the migration 10 million enslaved Africans from 1500-1850 AD. |
| Multi-national states | States which contain more than one nation for example the United Kingdom has four major nationalities; English, Scottish, and Welsh. |
| Multi-state nations / Stateless nations | Nations which are present in multiple states for example; Kurds in Northern Iraq, South Eastern Turkey, North West Iran, Northern Armenia, and Eastern Azerbaijan. |
| Nation | A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language; |
| Nationalism | Feeling of intense loyalty to A people who share common customs, origins, history, and frequently language. |
| Nation-state | A country in which an entire nation is located within the boarders of one state. |
| Plural Society | A medley of ethnicities who mix but do not combine; a stable plural society is characterized by economic interdependence and ecological specialization. |
| Plessy v. Ferguson | U.S. Supreme Court ruling (1896) held that segregated facilities for blacks and whites are constitutional under the doctrine of separate but equal, which held for close to 60 years. |
| Race | Physical characteristics such as body shape, skin color, hair texture, eye color |
| Racism | The belief that one’s own racial makeup and identity is superior to others to the point that all others are inferior. |
| Racist | One who advocates or believes in racism. |
| Segregation | The policy or practice of separating people of different races, classes, or ethnic groups, as in schools, housing, and public or commercial facilities, especially as a form of discrimination. |
| Self-determination | The principle that a population has the right to choose and exercise control over their own government. |
| Sharecropper | a tenant farmer who pays as rent a share of the crop. |
| Social distance | the extent to which individuals or groups are removed from or excluded from participating in one another's lives. |
| Triangular trade | a pattern of colonial commerce in which slaves were bought on the African Gold Coast with New England rum and then traded in the West Indies for sugar or molasses, which was brought back to New England to be manufactured into rum. |
| White Flight | The retreat of Anglo Americans from communities that ethnic minorities, primarily African Americans relocate to. |
| Custom | A repetitive act of a group performed to the extent that It becomes a characteristic. |
| Folk culture | Traditions practiced primarily by isolated, rural, homogenous groups. |
| Folk Housing | Housing styles that very depending on environmental conditions and available materials. |
| Folk Songs | Songs tell a story to convey information about daily activities such as farming, daily life, mysterious events, and culturally significant benchmarks in human life. |
| Folklore | Oral and written stories that articulate the customs and traditions of a culture, sub culture, or group. |
| Habit | A repetitive act of an individual that an individual performs. |
| Imperialism | the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies |
| Media / Mass Communication | the means of communication such as radio, television, newspapers, internet, and magazines that reach or influence people widely. |
| Pollution | the introduction of harmful substances or products into the environment |
| Popular culture | The practices of large, heterogeneous societies that share many characteristics or habits. Popular culture is created, marketed, and diffused to the masses, usually with the purpose of creating profit. |
| Rural | Of or pertaining to, characteristic of the country, country life, or country people. |
| Suburban | Of or pertaining to suburbs; inhabiting, or being in, the suburbs of a city. |
| Taboo | proscribed by society as improper or unacceptable |
| Uniform landscapes | Popular Culture and Urban Sprawl has lead to a repetitive sameness in the American Cultural Landscape. |
| Urban | Characteristic of the city or city life. |
| Dialect | is a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. |
| Ebonics | a nonstandard form of American English characteristically spoken by African Americans in the United States |
| Extinct language | a provincial, rural, or socially distinct variety of a language that differs from the standard language |
| Franglias | A pidgin dialect that mixes French and English. |
| Ideograms | A written symbol that expresses an idea. |
| Indo-European Languages | The World’s Largest Language Family. |
| Isogloss | a line on a map marking the limits of an area within which a feature of speech occurs, as the use of a particular word or pronunciation. |
| Isolated language | A language isolate is a language with no clear relationship to or affinity with other languages such as Basque in North Eastern Spain. |
| Language | a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. |
| Language branch | A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or old as with language families. |
| Language family | A collection of languages related through a common ancestral language that existed long before recorded history. |
| Language group | A collection of languages within a branch that share a common origin in the relatively recent past and display relatively few differences in grammar and vocabulary. |
| Lingua franca | The language of choice to conduct commerce. |
| Literary | A register that is used in literary writing; Classical Latin was the literary register of Latin, as opposed to the Vulgar Latin spoken across the Roman Empire. |
| Monolingual | One language spoken in a state or nation. |
| Multilingual | Multiple languages spoken in a state or nation. |
| Official language | An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other territory |
| Pidgin | any simplified or broken form of a language, esp. when used for communication between speakers of different languages. |
| Spanglish | A pidgin dialect mixing Spanish and English |
| Standard language | The most accepted dialect for mass communication |
| Vulgar Latin | The precursor to all Romance Languages. |
| Animism | The oldest human religion in which people worship animals and forces of nature as spirits or deities. |
| Autonomous religion | Characterized by self-sufficient denominations of believers with little interaction between religious communities. |
| Branch | A fundamental division within a religion. |
| Buddhism | a religion, originated in India by Buddha (Gautama) and later spreading to China, Burma, Japan, Tibet, and parts of southeast Asia, holding that life is full of suffering caused by desire and that the way to end this suffering is through enlightenment that enables one to halt the endless sequence of births and deaths to which one is otherwise subject. |
| Caste | an endogamous and hereditary social group limited to persons of the same rank, occupation, economic position, etc., and having mores distinguishing it from other such groups. |
| Christianity | a monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament and emphasizing the role of Jesus as savior |
| Confucianism | the system of ethics, education, and statesmanship taught by Confucius and his disciples, stressing love for humanity, ancestor worship, reverence for parents, and harmony in thought and conduct. |
| Cosmogony | a theory or story of the origin and development of the universe, the solar system, or the earth-moon system |
| Crusade | any of the military expeditions undertaken by the Christians of Europe in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries for the recovery of the Holy Land from the Muslims. |
| Cult | a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist, with members often living outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader. |
| Denomination | A division of a branch of a religion. |
| Diocese | The district or churches under the jurisdiction of a bishop |
| Ethnic religion | Religions characteristic of an ethnicity; adherents are born into these religions. |
| Enclave | any small, distinct area or group enclosed or isolated within a larger one |
| Fundamentalism | A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism. |
| Feng Shui | The Chinese art or practice of positioning objects, especially graves, buildings, and furniture, based on a belief in patterns of yin and yang and the flow of chi that have positive and negative effects. |
| Geomancy | divination by means of signs connected with the earth (as points taken at random or the arrangement of particles thrown down at random or from the configuration of a region and its relation to another) |
| Hadj | A pilgrimage to Mecca during Dhu'l Hijja, made as an objective of the religious life of a Muslim |
| Hierarchical religion | A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control |
| Hinduism | the common religion of India, based upon the religion of the original Aryan settlers as expounded and evolved in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita. |
| Islam | the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded by the prophet Muhammad and taught by the Koran, the basic principle of which is absolute submission to a unique and personal god, Allah. |
| Islam (Sharia law) | The code of law based on the Koran |
| Islam (Shiite) | A member of the branch of Islam that regards Ali and his descendants as the legitimate successors to Muhammad and rejects the first three caliphs. |
| Islam (Sunni) | a member of the branch of Islam that accepts the first four caliphs as rightful successors to Muhammad |
| Jainism | a dualistic religion founded in the 6th century b.c. as a revolt against current Hinduism and emphasizing the perfectibility of human nature and liberation of the soul, esp. through asceticism and nonviolence toward all living creatures. |
| Jihad | An individual's striving for spiritual self-perfection; |
| Landscapes of the dead | The way funerary monuments and burial practices impact the administration, use, and appearance of space. |
| Missionary | a person sent by a church into an area to carry on evangelism or other activities, as educational or hospital work. |
| Monotheism | the doctrine or belief that there is only one God |
| Mormonism | An American religion based on an ancient prophet believed to have compiled a sacred history of the Americas, which were translated and published by Joseph Smith as the Book of Mormon in 1830 |
| Pagan | One of a people or community observing a polytheistic religion, as the ancient Romans and Greeks. |
| Pilgrimage | a journey, esp. a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion: |
| Polytheism | The worship of or belief in more than one god |
| Reincarnation | the belief that the soul, upon death of the body, comes back to earth in another body or form |
| Religion | a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. |
| Sacred Space | Holy places of a religion set aside for purely spiritual use. |
| Sect | Is a group that is smaller than a denomination. |
| Secularism | the view that public education and other matters of civil policy should be conducted without the introduction of a religious element. |
| Shamanism | The type of religion which once prevailed among all the Ural-Altaic peoples (Tungusic, Mongol, and Turkish), and which still survives in various parts of Northern Asia. The Shaman, or wizard priest, deals with good as well as with evil spirits, especially the good spirits of ancestors |
| Shintoism | the native religion of Japan, primarily a system of nature and ancestor worship. |
| Sikhism | monotheistic religion founded in northern India in the 16th century by the guru Nanak. Sikhism rejects caste distinctions, idolatry, and asceticism and is characterized by belief in a cycle of reincarnation from which humans can free themselves by living righteous lives as active members of society. |
| Taoism | the philosophical system evolved by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, advocating a life of complete simplicity and naturalness and of noninterference with the course of natural events, in order to attain a happy existence in harmony with the Tao. |
| Theocracy | a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities. |
| Universalizing Religion | A religion that admits members of any culture as long as they practice the tenants of that religion. |
| Zoroastrianism | an Iranian religion, founded circa 600 b.c. by Zoroaster, the principal beliefs of which are in the existence of a supreme deity, Ahura Mazda, and in a cosmic struggle between a spirit of good, Spenta Mainyu, and a spirit of evil, Angra Mainyu. |
