Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Disney World, or if you have visited the centers of any
number of “quaint” historic towns on the eastern sea-
board. Each town center is designed to make you think
of all things American and to feel immediately “home”
in the place.
In less obvious ways, cultural borrowing and mix-
ing is happening all around the world. This idea is
behind the
global-local continuum
concept. This
notion emphasizes that what happens at one scale is not
independent of what happens at other scales. Human
geography is not simply about documenting the differ-
ences between places; it is also about understanding the
processes unfolding at different scales that produce
those differences. What happens in an individual place is
the product of interaction across scales. People in a local
place mediate and alter regional, national, and global
processes, in a process called
glocalization
. The charac-
ter of place ultimately comes out of a multitude of
dynamic interactions among local distinctiveness and
wider-scaled events and infl uences.
Figure 4.26a
UNESCO World Heritage site,
Venice, Italy.
© Alexander
B. Murphy.
Cultural Landscapes of Local Cultures
What makes travel interesting for most people is the
presence of variety in the cultural landscape. Travel
beyond the tourist sites and the main roads, and one
will easily fi nd landscapes of local cultures, even in
wealthy countries including the United States and
Canada. By studying local cultural landcapes, you can
gain insight into the social structures of local cultures.
In everything from the houses to the schools to the
churches to the cemeteries, a local cultural landscape
reveals its foundation.
Founders and early followers of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints created the Mormon
landscape of the American West as they migrated west-
ward under persecution and in search of a place where
they could practice their religion freely. The Mormon
Church began in New York, and then Joseph Smith and
his followers moved westward to Independence,
Missouri. From there, Mormons migrated westward to
present-day Salt Lake City, Utah. The easiest place to
see the foundations of the Mormon cultural landscape
are in the small towns established by Mormons through-
out Utah and stretching into Arizona, Nevada, and
Idaho (Fig. 4.27).
Geographers, including Donald Meinig, Richard
Francaviglia, and Allen Noble, have studied the Mormon
landscape and discerned the roots of the Mormon culture
in the local landscape. If you drove from Chicago west to
Las Vegas and traveled through the rural areas of
Nebraska and Utah on your path, you would immediately
notice one fundamental difference in the landscape:
farmsteads in the plains replaced by farming villages in
Figure 4.26b
The Venetian Hotel Casino in
Las vegas, Nevada.
© David Noble
Photography/Alamy.
Figure 4.26c
The Venetian Hotel and casino in
Macau, China.
© Paul Yeung/
Reuters/Landov
