| A | B |
|---|
| Absolute distance | Actual length of space that can be measured with a standard unit of length, such as a mile or kilometer. |
| Absolute location | Position of an object on the global grid, using latitude and longitude. |
| Cartogram | A map that has been simplified to present a single idea in a diagrammatic way; the base is not normally true to the actual locations' scale. |
| Cartography | The science of making maps. |
| Choropleth map | A thematic map in which ranked classes of some variable are depicted with shading patterns or colors for predefined zones. |
| Cultural landscape | Fashioning of a landscape by a cultural group. |
| Culture | The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group of people's distinct tradition. |
| Distortion | Necessary error resulting from trying to represent the round, nearly spherical earth on a flat plane map. |
| Dot map | A thematic map in which a dot represents some frequency of the mapped variable. |
| Equator | The great circle of Earth, existing at 0 degrees latitude, that is equidistant from the North Pole and South Pole. |
| Formal/Uniform/Homogenous Region | Section composed of areas that have a common cultural or physical feature |
| Functional/nodal region | An area organized around a node or focal point. |
| Geographic Information Science (GIScience) | The development and analysis of data about Earth acquired through satellite and other electronic information technologies. |
| Geographic Information system (GIS) | A computer system that stores, organizes, analyzes, and displays geographic data. |
| Global Positioning System (GPS) | A system that determines the precise position of something on Earth through a series of satellites, tracking stations, and receivers. |
| Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) | The time in that time zone encompassing the prime meridian (0 degrees longitude). |
| International Date Line | An arc that for the most part follows 180 degrees longitude (although it deviates in several places to avoid dividing land areas); when heading east and crossing it, the calendar moves back 24 hours; when going west and crossing it, the calendar moves ahead one day. |
| Isoline map | A thematic map with lines that connect points of equal value. |
| Latitude | Numbering system used to indicate the location of the parallels drawn on a globe and measuring distance north and south of the equator. |
| Location | The position of anything on Earth's surface. |
| Longitude | The numbering system used to indicate the location of meridians drawn on a globe and measuring distance east and west of the prime meridian. |
| Map | A two-dimensional, or flat, representation of Earth's surface or a portion of it. |
| Map scale | The relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface. |
| Mental map | An internal representation of a portion of Earth's surface based on what an individual knows about a place, containing personal impressions of what is in a place and where places are located. |
| Meridian | An arc drawn on a map between the North and South poles. |
| North Pole | The end of Earth's axis of rotation, marking the northernmost point on Earth. |
| Parallel | A circle drawn around the globe parallel to the equator and a right angles to the meridians. |
| Perceptual/vernacular region | An area that people believe exists as part of their cultural identity. |
| Place | A specific point on Earth distinguished by a particular character. |
| Prime meridian | The meridian, designated at 0 degrees longitude, that passes through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, England. |
| Projection | System used to transfer locations from Earth's surface to a flat map. |
| Region | An area distinguished by a unique combination of trends or features. |
| Regional (or cultural landscape) studies | An approach to geography that emphasizes the relationships among social and physical phenomena in a particular study area. |
| Relative location | The position of a place with regard to places around it. |
| Remote sensing | The acquisition of data about Earth's surface from a satellite orbiting the planet or from other long-distance methods. |
| Sequent occupance | Theory that a place is occupied by different groups of people, each group leaving an imprint on the place from which the next group learns. |
| Site | The physical character of a place. |
| Situation | The location of a place relative to another place. |
| South Pole | The southern end of Earth's axis. |
| Statistical map | A special type of map in which the variation in quantity of a factor such as rainfall, population, or crops in a geographic area is indicated. |
| Thematic map | Map that zeroes in on one feature such as climate, population, or voting patterns. |
| Time zones | One of the 24 regions or divisions of the globe approximately coinciding with meridians at successive hours from the Prime Meridian. |
| Toponym | The name given to a portion of Earth's surface. |
| Township | A square normally 6 miles on a side, originally set up in the U.S. by the Land Ordinance of 1785. |
| Tropic of Cancer | Boundary of the Torrid Zone, extending 23 1/2 degrees north of the equator. |
| Tropic of Capricorn | Boundary of the Torrid Zone, extending 23 1/2 degrees south of the equator. |
| Abiotic | Composed of nonliving or inorganic matter. |
| Atmosphere | The thin layer of gases surrounding Earth. |
| Biosphere | All living organisms on Earth, including plants and animals, as well as microorganisms. |
| Biotic | Composed of living organisms |
| Built landscape | An area of land represented by its features and patterns of human occupation and use of natural resources. |
| Climate | The long-term average weather condition at a particular location. |
| Concentration | The spread of something over a given area. |
| Connection | Relationships among people and objects across the barrier of space. |
| Conservation | The sustainable management of a natural resources. |
| Contagious diffusion | The rapid, widespread diffusions of a feature or trend throughout a population. |
| Cultural ecology | A geographic approach that emphasizes human-environment relationships. |
| Density | The frequency with which something exists within a given unit of area. |
| Diffusion | The process of spread of a feature or trend from one place to another over time. |
| Distance decay | The diminishing in importance and eventual disappearance of a phenomenon with increasing distance from its origin. |
| Distribution | The arrangement of something across Earth's surface. |
| Ecology | The scientific study of ecosystems. |
| Ecosystem | A group of living organisms and the abiotic spheres with which they interact. |
| Environmental determinism | A nineteenth- and early twentieth-century approach to the study of geography which argued that the general laws sought by human geographers could be found in the physical sciences. |
| Expansion diffusion | The spread of a feature from one place to another in a snowballing process; there are three types: contagious, hierarchical, and stimulus. |
| Friction of distance | Negative impact that distance has on spatial interaction, including communication and travel. |
| Globalization | Actions or processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope. |
| Hearth | The region from which innovative ideas originate. |
| Hierarchical diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend from one key person or node of authority or power to other persons or places. |
| Housing bubble | A rapid increase in the value of houses followed by a sharp decline in their value. |
| Hydrosphere | All of the water on and near Earth's surface. |
| Lithosphere | Earth's crust and a portion of upper mantle directly below the crust. |
| Natural landscape | Physical environment that has not been affected by human activities. |
| Network | A chain of communication that connects places. |
| Nonrenewable resource | Something produced in nature more slowly than it is consumed by humans. |
| Pattern | The geometric or regular arrangement of something in a study area. |
| Polder | Land created by the Dutch by draining water from an area. |
| Possibilism | The theory that the physical environment may set limits on human actions, but people have the ability to adjust to the physical environment and choose a course of action from many alternatives. |
| Preservation | The maintenance of resources in their present condition, with as little human impact as possible. |
| Relative distance | Length of space that includes the costs of overcoming the friction separating two places; often describes the amount of social, cultural, or economic connectivity between two places. |
| Relocation diffusion | The spread of a feature or trend through bodily movement of people from one place to another. |
| Renewable resource | Something produced in nature more rapidly than it is consumed by humans. |
| Resource | A substance in the environment that is useful to people, is economically and technologically feasible to access, and is socially acceptable to use. |
| Scale | Generally, the relationship between the portion of Earth being studied and Earth as a whole; specifically, the relationship between the size of an object on a map and the size of the actual feature on Earth's surface. |
| Space | The physical gap or interval between two objects. |
| Space-time compression | The reduction in the time it takes to diffuse something to a distant place as a result of improved communications and transportation systems. |
| Stimulus diffusion | The spread of an underlying principle even though a specific characteristic is rejected. |
| Sustainability | The use of Earth's renewable and nonrenewable natural resources in ways that do not constrain resource use in the future. |
| Transnational corporation | A company that conducts research, operates factories, and sells products in many countries, not just where its headquarters or shareholders are located. |
| Uneven development | The increasing gap in economic conditions between core and peripheral regions as a result of the globalization of the economy. |
| Age distribution | The proportion of individuals of different ages within a population. |
| Agricultural density | The ratio of the number of farmers to the total amount of land suitable for agriculture. |
| Agricultural Revolution | The time when human beings first domesticated plants and animals an no longer relied entirely on hunting and gathering. |
| Arithmetic density | The total number of people divided by the total land area. |
| Carrying capacity | Maximum number of people an area can reasonably sustain. |
| Census | A complete enumeration of a population. |
| Cohort | A particular group of people that share a common characteristic, usually age. |
| Crude birth rate (CBR) | The total number of live births in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society. |
| Crude death rate (CDR) | The total number of deaths in a year for every 1,000 people alive in the society. |
| Demographic equation | CBR-CDR = NIR; used for evaluating population change on global and subglobal levels; at the global level, CBR and CDR are the only two factors of change; at the subglobal level, immigration and emigration are taken into account. |
| Demographic momentum | Phenomenon of a growing population size even after replacement-level fertility has been reached; occurs when the base of the population pyramid is so wide that the generation of parents will take time to cycle out before zero population growth occurs. |
| Demographic regions | Areas grouped together by the stage of the demographic transition model that most countries in the area are in. |
| Demographic transition | The process of change in a society's population from a condition of high crude birth and death rates and low rate of natural increase to a condition of low crude birth and death rates, low rate of natural increase, and higher total population. |
| Demography | The scientific study of population characteristics. |
| Dependency ratio | The number of people under age 15 and over age 64 compared to the number of people active in the labor force. |
| Diffusion of fertility control | The rate at which family planning methods are distributed throughout the world. |
| Doubling time | The number of years needed for a population to be twice its size, assuming a constant rate of natural increase. |
| Ecumene | The portion of Earth's surface occupied by permanent human settlement. |
| Epidemiological transition | Distinctive causes of death in each stage of the demographic transition. |
| Epidemiology | The branch of medical science concerned with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases that are prevalent among a population at a special time and are produced by some special causes not generally present in the affected locality. |
| Gendered space | Place designed for or claimed by men or women. |
| Industrial Revolution | A series of improvements in industrial technology that transformed the process of manufacturing goods. |
| Infant mortality rate (IMR) | The total number of deaths in a year among infants under one year of age for every 1,000 live births in a society. |
| J-curve | The shape of a line on a population graph when growth is exponential. |
| Life expectancy | The average number of years an individual can be expected to live, given current social, economic, and medical conditions. |
| Maladaptation | An adaption that does more harm than good. |
| Malthus, Thomas | British demographer who wrote An Essay on the Principles of Population, alarming those living at the time during the Industrial Revolution; he predicted food production would outpace population growth rates; warned of negative checks, such as famine, and called for positive checks, such as birth control. |
| Medical revolution | Medical technology invented in Europe and North America that has diffused to the poorer countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, that have eliminated many of the traditional causes of death in poorer countries and enabled more people to live longer and healthier lives. |
| Mortality | Death-related activity in a population; related to crude death rate. |
| Natality | Birth-related activity in a population; related to crude birth rate. |
| Natural increase rate (NIR) | The percentage growth of a population in a year, computed as the crude birth rate minus the crude death rate. |
| Neo-Malthusian | Contemporary believers in the idea of population checks, such as disease; promote sustainable population growth to be achieved through birth control teachings and regional attention to birth patterns. |
| Overpopulation | A situation in which the number of people in an area exceeds the capacity of the environment to support life at a decent standard of living. |
| Pandemic | Disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and affects a very high proportion of the population. |
| Physiological density | The number of people per unit of area of arable land, which is land suitable for agriculture. |
| Population density | Measurement of the number of people per given unit of land. |
| Population distribution | Description of locations on the earth's surface where populations live. |
| Population explosion | Rapid growth of the world's human population during the past century, attended by ever-shorter doubling times and accelerating rates of natural increase. |
| Population projection | Estimated population at a certain time in the future. |
| Population pyramid | A bar graph representing the distribution of population by age and sex. |
| S-curve | Traces the cyclical movement upwards and downwards in a graph; relates to growth and decline in the natural increase. |
| Sex ratio | The number of males per 100 females in the population. |
| Standard of living | Refers to the quality and quantity of goods and services available to people and the way they are distributed within a population. |
| Total fertility rate (TFR) | The average number of children a woman will have throughout her childbearing years. |
| Underpopulation | Occurs when a population size is below its carrying capacity and cannot sustain the economic development it has reached; measure that is difficult to pinpoint |
| Zero population growth (ZPG) | A decline of the total fertility rate to the point where the natural increase rate equals zero. |
| Activity space | Places in a local area where cyclic movement takes place. |
| Asylum seeker | Someone who has migrated to another country in the hop of being recognized as a refugee. |
| Brain drain | Large-scale emigration by talented people. |
| Chain migration | Migration of people to a specific location because relatives or members of the same nationality previously migrated there. |
| Circulation/Periodic movement | Short-term, repetitive, or cyclical movements that recur on a regular basis. |
| Counterurbanization | Net migration from urban to rural areas in more developed countries. |
| Emigration | Migration from a location. |
| Floodplain | The area subject to flooding during a given number of years, according to historical trends. |
| Forced migration | Permanent movement, usually compelled by cultural factors. |
| Guest worker | A term once used for a worker who migrated to the developed countries of Northern and Western Europe, usually from Southern and Eastern Europe or from North Africa, in search of a higher-paying job. |
| Immigration | Migration to a new location. |
| Internal migration | Permanent movement within a particular country. |
| Internally displaced person (IDP) | Someone who has been forced to migrate for similar political reasons as a refugee but has not migrated across an international border. |
| International migration | Permanent movement from one country to another. |
| Interregional migration | Permanent movement from one region of a country to another. |
| Intervening obstacle | An environmental or cultural feature of the landscape that hinders migration. |
| Intervening opportunity | The presence of a nearer, more favorable circumstance that greatly diminishes the attractiveness of sites farther away. |
| Intraregional migration | Permanent movement within one region of a country. |
| Migration | A form of relocation diffusion involving a permanent move to a new location. |
| Migration transition | A change in the migration pattern in a society that results from industrialization, population growth, and other social and economic changes that also produce the demographic transition. |
| Mobility | All types of movement between locations. |
| Net migration | The difference between the level of immigration and the level of emigration. |
| Pull factor | A factor that induces people to move to a new location. |
| Push factor | A factor that induces people to leave old residences. |
| Quotas | In reference to migration, laws that place maximum limits on the number of people who can immigrate to a country each year. |
| Refugees | People who have been forced to migrate from their homes and cannot return for fear of persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group, or political opinion. |
| Step migration | Migration to a distant destination that occurs in stages. |
| Undocumented/Unauthorized immigrants | People who enter a country without proper documents to do so. |
| Voluntary migration | Permanent movement undertaken by choice. |
| Acculturation | When weaker of two cultures coming in contact with one another adopts traits from the more dominant culture. |
| Adaptive strategies | The unique way in which each culture uses its particular physical environment, especially those that serve to provide the necessities of life. |
| Architectural form | The look of housing, affected by the available materials, the environment the house is in, and the popular culture of the time. |
| Assimilation | The loss of the original traits of a weaker culture when coming in contact with a more dominant culture, when they become completely erased and replaced by the traits of the dominant culture. |
| Cultural adaptation | When a foreigner readily accepts the new culture as part of his or her life and practice. |
| Cultural core/periphery pattern | Idea that the core maintains the main economic power of a region and the outlying region or periphery possesses lesser economic ties. |
| Cultural identity | Ones belief in belonging to a group or certain cultural aspect. |
| Cultural realm | The entire region that displays the characteristics of a culture. |
| Custom | The frequent repetition of an act, to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act. |
| Folk Culture | Body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits traditionally practiced by a small, homogenous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups. |
| Folk food | Cuisine that is traditionally made by the common people of a region and forms part of their culture. |
| Folk house | Dwelling units that reflect cultural heritage, current fashion, functional needs, and the impact of environment. The form of each house is related in part to environmental as well as social conditions. |
| Folk songs | Composed anonymously and transmitted orally, a tuneful expression that is derived from events in daily life that are familiar to the majority of the people, that tell a story or convey information about daily activities, life cycle events, or mysterious events, such as storms and earthquakes. |
| Folklore | The traditional beliefs, myths, tales, and practices of a people, transmitted orally. |
| Habit | A repetitive act performed by a particular individual. |
| Innovative adoption | Study of how, why, and at what rate new technology spreads throughout a culture. |
| Material culture | The physical manifestations of human activities, including tools, campsites, art, and structures. |
| Nonmaterial culture | Ideas, knowledge, and beliefs -the non-tangible components- that influence people's behavior in a region. |
| Popular Culture | Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics. |
| Taboo | A restriction on behavior imposed by social custom. |
| Terroir | The contribution of a location's distinctive physical features to the way food tastes. |
| Traditional architecture | Common or time-honored building styles of different cultures, religions, and places. |
| Creole/Creolized language | A language that results from the mixing of a colonizer's language with the indigenous language of the people being dominated. |
| Denglish | A combination of German and English. |
| Dialect | A regional variety of a language distinguished by vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation. |
| Ebonics | A dialect spoken by some African Americans. |
| Extinct language | A language that was once used by people in daily activities but is no longer used. |
| Franglais | A term used by the French for English words that have entered the French language. |
| Ideograms | The system of writing used in China and other East Asian countries in which each symbol represents an idea or a concept rather than a specific sound, as in the case with letters in English. |
| Indo-European languages | Language family of which its languages are spoken by half of the world's population which includes Germanic, Romance, and Slavic subfamilies. |
| Isogloss | A boundary that separates regions in which different language usages predominate. |
| Isolated language | A language that is unrelated to any other languages and therefore not attached to any language family. |
| Language | A system of communication through the use of speech, a collection of sounds understood by a group of people to have the same meaning. |
| Language branch/subfamily | A collection of languages related through a common ancestor that existed several thousand years ago. Differences are not as extensive or as old as with language families, and archaeological evidence can confirm that the branches derived from the same family. |
| Language family | A collection of languages related to each other through a common ancestor 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 | A language mutually understood and commonly used in trade by people who have different native languages. |
| Linguistic diversity | Where a variety of languages are spoken within a particular area. |
| Literary tradition | A language that is written as well as spoken. |
| Logogram | A symbol that represents a word rather than a sound. |
| Monolingual | Describes states where only one language is spoken. |
| Multilingual | Describes states where more than one language is spoken. |
| Official language | The language adopted for use by the government for the conduct of business and publication of documents. |
| Pidgin language | A form of speech that adopts a simplified grammar and limited vocabulary of a lingua France; used for communications among speakers of two different languages. |
| Received Pronunciation (RP) | The dialect of English associated with upper-class Britons living in London and now considered standard in the United Kingdom. |
| Spanglish | A combination of Spanish and English spoken by Hispanic Americans. |
| Standard Language | The form of a language used for official government business, education, and mass communications. |
| Trade language | Also referred to as a lingua franca. |
| Vulgar Latin | A form of Latin used in daily conversation by ancient Romans, as opposed to the standard dialect, which was used for official documents. |
| Agnosticism | Belief that nothing can be known about whether God exists. |
| Animism | Belief that objects, such as plants and stones, or natural events, like thunderstorms and earthquakes, have a discrete spirit and conscious life. |
| Atheism | Belief that God does not exist. |
| Autonomous religion | A religion that does not have a central authority but shares ideas and cooperates informally. |
| Branch | A large and fundamental division within a religion. |
| Buddhism | The teaching of an Indian prince (Siddhartha Gautama) that life is permeated with suffering caused by desire, that suffering ceases when desire ceases, and that enlightenment obtained through right conduct, wisdom, and meditation releases one from desire and suffering and rebirth. |
| Caste | The class or distinct hereditary order into which a Hindu is assigned, according to religious law. |
| Christianity | A monotheistic system of beliefs and practices based on the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus as embodied in the New Testament, emphasizing his role as savior. |
| Confucianism | The system of ethics, education, and statesmanship taught by a Chinese administrator and his disciples, stressing love for humanity, ancestor worship, reverence for parents, and harmony in thought and conduct. |
| Cosmogony | A set of religious beliefs concerning the origin of the universe. |
| Denomination | A division of a branch that unites a number of local congregations into a single legal and administrative body. |
| Diocese | The basic unit of geographic organization in the Roman Catholic Church. |
| Ethnic religion | A religion with a relatively concentrated spatial distribution whose principles are likely to be based on the physical characteristics of the particular location in which its adherents are concentrated. |
| Fundamentalism | Literal interpretation and strict adherence to basic principles of a religion (or a religious branch, denomination, or sect). |
| Geomancy | A method of prediction that interprets markings on the ground or handfuls of dirt. |
| Ghetto | During the Middle Ages, a neighborhood in a city set up by law to be inhabited only by Jews: now used to denote a section of a city in which members of any minority group live because of social, legal, or economic pressure. |
| Hajj | In the fifth pillar of Islam, it is a pilgrimage to Mecca during the month of Dhu al-Qadah. |
| Hierarchical religion | A religion in which a central authority exercises a high degree of control. |
| Hinduism | Created in India, it is based on a wide spectrum of laws and prescriptions based on karma, dharma, and societal norms. |
| Interfaith boundaries | Geographic divisions between the major religions. |
| Islam | The religion of Muslims collectively which governs their civilization and way of life. |
| Jainism | A religion that branched off from Hinduism, founded by Mahavira; its beliefs include that everything has a soul and the soul must be cleansed. |
| Judaism | The monotheistic religion of the Jews having its spiritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Torah and in the Talmud. |
| Landscapes of the dead | Certain area where people have commonly been buried. |
| Missionary | An individual who helps to diffuse a universalizing religion. |
| Monotheism | The doctrine of or belief in the existence of only one God. |
| Mormonism | Religious, ideological, and cultural aspects of the various denominations of the Latter Day Saint movement, primarily concentrated in Utah. |
| Pagan | A follower of a polytheistic religion. |
| Pilgrimage | A journey to a place considered sacred for religious purposes. |
| Polytheism | Belief in or worship of more than one god. |
| Proselytic religion | A universalizing religion that attempts to convert another person to the religion. |
| Reincarnation | Embodiment in a new form. |
| Religion | A system of beliefs and practices that attempts to order life in terms of perceived ultimate priorities. |
| Sacred space | Place that people infuse with religious meaning. |
| Sect | A relatively small group that has broken away from an established denomination. |
| Secularism | Worldly; not pertaining to church or religious matters. |
| Shamanism | An animistic religion of northern Asia having the belief that the mediation between the visible and the spirit worlds is affected by shaman. |
| Shari 'a laws | System of Islamic law, sometimes called Qu'ranic Law; this law can be based on legal precedence. |
| Shi'ite | Adherents to Islam, representing the Persian variation who believe in the infallibility and divine right authority of the Imams, descendants of Ali. |
| Shintoism | Religion located in Japan and related to Buddhism; focuses particularly on nature and ancestor worship. |
| Sikhism | A sect of Hinduism that combines some elements of Islam; although it practiced by many, its worship is concentrated in South Asia. |
| Solstice | An astronomical event that happens twice each year, when the tilt of Earth's axis is most inclined toward or away from the Sun, causing the Sun's apparent position in the sky to reach it most northernmost, or southernmost extreme, and resulting in the shortest and longest days of the year. |
| Sunni | Largest branch of Islam, this belief, considered to be orthodox, acknowledges the first four caliphs as the rightful successors of Muhammad. |
| Syncretic | A religion that combines several traditions. |
| Taoism | A Chinese sect, claiming to follow the teaching of Lao-tzu but incorporating pantheism and sorcery. |
| Theocracy | A state whose government is under the control of a ruler considered to be divinely guided or under the control of a group of religious leaders. |
| Universalizing religion | A religion that attempts to appeal to all people, not just those living in a particular location. |
| Zoroastrianism | Considered to be the oldest monotheistic religion in the world, it is practiced mainly in Iran and India under the motto "Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds." |
| Apartheid | Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas. |
| Balkanization | A process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities. |
| Balkanized | Descriptive of a small geographic area that could not successfully be organized into one or more stable states because it was inhabited by many ethnicities with complex, long-standing antagonisms toward each other. |
| Barrio | An urban area in a Spanish-speaking country. |
| Blockbusting | A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood. |
| Centrifugal force | Something that tends to divide people and countries. |
| Centripetal force | An attitude that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state. |
| Enclave | A small area occupied by a distinctive minority culture. |
| Ethnic cleansing | A process in which a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a less powerful one in order to create an ethnically homogeneous region. |
| Ethnicity | Identity with a group of people that share distinct physical and mental traits as a product of common heredity and cultural traditions. |
| Exclave | An enclave geographically separated from the main part by surrounding alien territory. |
| Genocide | The mass killing of a group of people in an attempt to eliminate the entire group from existence. |
| Nationalism | Loyalty and devotion to a particular nationality. |
| Nationality | Identity with a group of people that share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a particular place as a result of being born there. |
| Race | Identity with a group of people descended from a biological ancestor. |
| Racism | Belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. |
| Racist | A person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism. |
| Sharecropper | A person who works fields rented from a landowner and pays the rent and repays loans by turning over to the landowner a share of the crops. |
| Triangular slave trade | A practice, primarily during the eighteenth century, in which European ships transported slaves from Africa to Caribbean Islands, molasses from the Caribbean to Europe, and trade goods from Europe to Africa. |
