Cultural geography is the study of culture and its relationship to place. It examines how cultures are distributed across space and how places and identities are produced. Cultural geography analyzes cultural values, practices, expressions, and artifacts, as well as cultural diversity and plurality. It considers how people make sense of places and develop a sense of place. Cultural geography focuses on cultural components like religion, language, architecture, and more, and how they differ around the world. It aims to understand the relationship between humans and their environments. Cultural geography developed from the work of Carl Sauer at UC Berkeley and emphasizes qualitative analysis over quantitative methods. Today, it includes specialized fields like feminist geography and urban geography.

1. • BY:-
• Rajkumar Porel.
• (M.SC GEOGRAPHY)
Cultural geography:

2. 1.1 Cultural geography:
Definition, Evolution and
Apporaches; its nature and content

3. :CONCEPT OF CULTUALGEOGRAPHY:
Cultural geography is one of the two major branches of geography (versus physical geography) and is
often called human geography. Cultural geography is the study of the many cultural aspects found
through out the world and how they relate to the spaces and places where they originate and then
travel as people continually move across various areas.
 What Is Cultural Geography?
Some of the main cultural phenomena studied in cultural geography include language, religion,
different economic and governmental structures, art, music, and other cultural aspects that explain
how and/or why people function as they do in the areas in which they live. Globalization is also
becoming increasingly important to this field as it is allowing these specific aspects of culture to
easily travel across the globe.
Cultural landscapes are also important because they link culture to the physical environments in
which people live. This is vital because it can either limit or nurture the development of various
aspects of culture. For instance, people living in a rural area are often more culturally tied to the
natural environment around them than those living in a large metropolitan area. This is generally
the focus of the "Man-Land Tradition" in the Four Traditions of geography and studies human
impact on nature, the impact of nature on humans, and people’s perception of the environment.
Cultural geography developed out of the University of California, Berkeley and was led by Carl Sauer.
He used landscapes as the defining unit of geographic study and said that cultures develop because
of the landscape but also help to develop the landscape as well. In addition, his work and the
cultural geography of today is highly qualitative rather than quantitative — a main tenant of physical
geography.

4. Today, cultural geography is still practiced and more specialized fields within it such as feminist
geography, children's geography, tourism studies, urban geography, the geography of sexuality and
space, and political geography have developed to further aid in the study of cultural practices and
human activities as they relate spatially to the world.
 A SHORT DEFINITION FOR CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY:-
The study of the relationship between culture and place. In broad terms, cultural
geography examines the cultural values, practices, discursive and material expressions and
artefacts of people, the cultural diversity and plurality of society, and how cultures are
distributed over space, how places and identities are produced, how people make sense of
places and build senses of place, and how people produce and communicate knowledge
and meaning. Cultural geography has long been a core component of the discipline of
geography, though how it has been conceived, its conceptual tools, and the approach to
empirical research has changed quite markedly over time.
Cultural Components:-
The Cultural Components mostly include the religion, language, architecture, cuisine, technology,
music, dance, sports, medicine, dress, gender roles, law, education, government, agriculture,
economy, sports, grooming values, work, ethic, etiquette, courtship, recreation and gestures, to
mention a few. Because of the innumerable cultural differences that characterize people and land all
over the world, there was a need to focus on this subfield of geography. Hence, the subject devoted
to the study of culture was appropriately named as cultural geography. Cultural geography is the study
of relationships between humans and location.

5.  Evolution of culture is directly related to Human evolution (Homo
Sapiens)
 Man,’s culture began with the man’s capacity to use and to create or
produce tools and techniques
 Australopithecus Africanus - 5 Million Years ago used stone tools
 Use of Fire – 2-3 Million years ago
 Tools made of bones - one million years ago( Age of Neanderthal Man)
 Cro- Magnon - 25000 years ago
( A developed Culture than the previous members)
Their contribution to Culture
Cave Paintings, Jewels made of sea shells statues of women that
emphasized pregnancy, weapons made of bones, horn, or ivory.

9. What is Meant by Culture ?.......
 “Culture is a unique possession of man. It is one of the distinguishing traits of human society. Culture
does not exist at sub-human level. Only man is born and brought up in a Cultural environment”
 “Culture is the unique quality of man that separates him from the lower animals”

10. The Meaning of Culture……
Some Definitions
“ Culture is the major way in which human beings adapt to their environments.” –Cultural
Geography- Serena Nanda
”Cumulative creation of man” -B. Malinowski
” The forms Superimposed on the physical landscape by the activities of man” -
Carl O Sauer
” Culture is something adopted , used, believed, practised or possessed by more than one
person. It depends upon group life, for its existance.” -Robert Bierstedt
Characteristics of Culture…..
1. Culture is learnt
2. Culture is social
3. Culture is shared
4. Culture is transmissive
6. Culture is consistent and integrated
7. Culture is dynamic and adaptive
8. Culture is gratifying
9. Culture varies from society to society
10. Culture is super organic ideational5. Culture is continuous and cumulative
Culture Contents…..
Material culture - Man made tools Infra-structure
Non-Material Culture – ways of acting feelings Thinking
Sub Culture-
” A sub- Culture is generally taken to mean a section of a national culture”
Duncan Mitchell