Glossary - Human Geography: People, Place and Culture - page 507

Calvin, and others challenged many of the fundamental teachings of the
Roman Catholic Church.
Proto-Indo-European (language) Linguistic hypothesis proposing
the existence of an ancestral Indo-European language that is the hearth
of the ancient Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit languages which hearth would
link modern languages from Scandinavia to North Africa and from
North America through parts of Asia to Australia.
Pull factor Positive conditions and perceptions that effectively attract
people to new locales from other areas.
Push factor Negative conditions and perceptions that induce people
to leave their abode and migrate to a new locale.
Quaternary economic activity Service sector industries concerned
with the collection, processing, and manipulation of information and
capital. Examples include fi nance, administration, insurance, and legal
services.
Queer theory Theory defi ned by geographers Glen Elder, Lawrence
Knopp, and Heidi Nast that highlights the contextual nature of opposi-
tion to the heteronormative and focuses on the political engagement of
“queers” with the heteronormative.
Quinary economic activity Service sector industries that require a
high level of specialized knowledge or technical skill. Examples include
scientifi c research and high-level management.
Quotas Established limits by governments on the number of immi-
grants who can enter a country each year.
Race A categorization of humans based on skin color and other physi-
cal characteristics. Racial categories are social and political construc-
tions because they are based on ideas that some biological differences
(especially skin color) are more important than others (e.g., height, etc.),
even though the latter might have more signifi cance in terms of human
activity. With its roots in sixteenth-century England, the term is closely
associated with European colonialism because of the impact of that de-
velopment on global understandings of racial differences.
Racism Frequently referred to as a system or attitude toward visible
differences in individuals, racism is an ideology of difference that as-
cribes (predominantly negative) signifi cance and meaning to culturally,
socially, and politically constructed ideas based on phenotypical features.
Radioactive waste Hazardous-waste-emitting radiation from nuclear
power plants, nuclear weapons factories, and nuclear equipment in hos-
pitals and industry.
Rank-size rule In a model urban hierarchy, the idea that the popula-
tion of a city or town will be inversely proportional to its rank in the
hierarchy.
Rare earth elements seventeen chemical elements that commonly
occur together but are diffi cult to separate. They are commonly used to
make high tech electronics and weapons systems.
Reapportionment Process by which representative districts are
switched according to population shifts, so that each district encom-
passes approximately the same number of people.
Rectangular survey system Also called the Public Land Survey, the
system was used by the U.S. Land Offi ce Survey to parcel land west of
the Appalachian Mountains. The system divides land into a series of
rectangular parcels.
Redlining A discriminatory real estate practice in North America in
which members of minority groups are prevented from obtaining money
to purchase homes or property in predominantly white neighborhoods.
The practice derived its name from the red lines depicted on cadastral
maps used by real estate agents and developers. Today, redlining is of-
fi cially illegal.
Reference maps Maps that show the absolute location of places and
geographic features determined by a frame of reference, typically lati-
tude and longitude.

Refugees People who have fl ed their country because of political per-
secution and seek asylum in another country.
Region The third theme of geography as defi ned by the Geography
Educational National Implementation Project ; an area on the
Earth's surface marked by a degree of formal, functional, or perceptual
homogeneity of some phenomenon.
Regional scale Interactions occurring within a region , in a regional
setting.
Relative location The regional position or situation of a place rela-
tive to the position of other places. Distance, accessibility , and connec-
tivity affect relative location.
Religion Defi ned by geographers Robert Stoddard and Carolyn
Prorak in the topic Geography in America as “a system of beliefs and prac-
tices that attempts to order life in terms of culturally perceived ultimate
priorities.”
Religious extremism Religious fundamentalism carried to the
point of violence.
Religious fundamentalism Religious movement whose objectives
are to return to the foundations of the faith and to infl uence state policy.
Relocation diffusion Sequential diffusion process in which the items
being diffused are transmitted by their carrier agents as they evacuate
the old areas and relocate to new ones. The most common form of re-
location diffusion involves the spreading of innovations by a migrating
population.
Remittances Money migrants send back to family and friends in their
home countries, often in cash, forming an important part of the econ-
omy in many poorer countries.
Remote sensing A method of collecting data or information through
the use of instruments (e.g., satellites) that are physically distant from the
area or object of study.
Renewable resources Resources that can regenerate as they are
exploited.
Renfrew hypothesis Hypothesis developed by British scholar Colin
Renfrew wherein he proposed that three areas in and near the fi rst agri-
cultural hearth, the Fertile Crescent , gave rise to three language families:
Europe's Indo-European languages (from Anatolia [present-day Turkey]);
North African and Arabian languages (from the western arc of the Fertile
Crescent); and the languages in present-day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
and India (from the eastern arc of the Fertile Crescent).
Repatriation A refugee or group of refugees returning to their home
country, usually with the assistance of government or a non-governmental
organization.
Rescale Involvement of players at other scales to generate support for
a position or an initiative (e.g., use of the Internet to generate interest on
a national or global scale for a local position or initiative).
Residential segregation Defi ned by geographers Douglas Massey
and Nancy Denton as the degree to which two or more groups live sepa-
rately from one another, in different parts of an urban environment.
Restrictive population policies Government policies designed to re-
duce the rate of natural increase.
Reterritorialization With respect to popular culture, when people
within a place start to produce an aspect of popular culture themselves,
doing so in the context of their local culture and making it their own.
Roman Catholic Church One of three major branches of
Christianity , the Roman Catholic Church, together with the Eastern
Orthodox Church , a second of the three major branches of Christianity,
arose out of the division of the Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian
into four governmental regions: two western regions centered in Rome,
and two eastern regions centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul,
Turkey). In 1054 CE, Christianity was divided along that same line when