1.1 Cultures around the world

• Aardrijkskunde
• Middelbare school
• havo, vwo
• Leerjaar 2

1.1 Cultures around the world

Learning objectives

After studying this section, you will be able to:

• Describe what culture is and recognise different cultural elements;
• Explain what it means when two countries are part of the same cultural region.

Culture

What is culture?

Culture is the collection of customs and (unwritten) social laws of a group of people. Culture is something learned, and not something you were born with.

Cultural elements are the most important characteristics of a culture, like religion, language and also values and standards.

Value

Standard

What value is most important to you?

Do you think our culture will
change in the future?

Would you prefer a full English breakfast in the morning?

Cultural region = An area in which you find people with about the same cultural elements.

Language families

Dutch, German and English are pretty similar languages in many ways. This is because they are part of the same language family: a group of related languages that have grown from the same ancestral language. In other words, you might just consider the English and Dutch languages as cousins!

Essence

Culture is a collection of habits and (unwritten) social laws. Every culture consists of different cultural elements like religion, language and also values and standards. The world can be divided into different cultural regions. In a cultural region, you find people with about the same cultural elements. Within these large cultural regions, you can still find cultural differences. The division shows that certain countries have more in common, culturally, than others.