Page 29 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Place, Space, and Geography 13

we humans put meaning, politics, and ideas into physical shape when we
remake the physical world.
The interplay between human culture and physical environment is
always two - way. What kind of community develops in response to an
environment affects the kinds of cultural practices the community engages
in, and those practices in turn shape and reshape the physical environment,
turning it into a human - made landscape. Migratory communities usually
did not possess writing or a transmittable culture of learning. Such things
were not needed for the society to function. The spoken word was para-
mount, and the wisdom and the values that bound the community together
were often transmitted from one generation to the next through chanted
or spoken songs or tales such as Homer ’ s Iliad , stories of martial courage
that taught young men and women the ideals that the community felt were
necessary for its survival. The culture of China was more highly organized.
Because of high levels of agricultural production, the Chinese were able to
develop institutions such as schools, courts, and governments. This much
more institutional culture was transmitted through writing. The religion
promoted by the government emphasized values such as respect for author-
ity and self - restraint, rather than the Greek martial virtues, which would
have been at odds with Chinese culture ’ s bent toward a highly organized,
even bureaucratic kind of social existence.
Culture is spatial in several ways. Populations are distributed geographi-
cally with cultural differences manifesting themselves most palpably as
differences of place (between, say, the culture of China and the culture of
the United States, two geographic regions). Culture is also information that
is transmitted spatially. It diffuses over terrain, bringing the landscape
within the reach of the ideas and conventions of that particular culture.
Settlers brought a new religious ideology to North America in the seven-
teenth century that eventually replaced the indigenous religious ideology.
Culture is spatial also in that it enables power relations that involve the
imposition of one spatial region ’ s will on another region, as when regional
languages in France such as Bretonne and Occitan were subordinated and
subsumed to the language of the Franks, which became the “ national lan-
guage ” known today as “ French. ” Culture understood as a way of life
particular to a community is also spatial, of course, in that such “ ways ”
vary according to location. The way of life of urban Caribbeans in London
or New York is different from that of rural Indians in terms of dress, music,
access to new cultural technologies, and so on. If one factors in economic
differences, spatial differentiations in ways of life can appear within the