Diablo Valley College Cultural Geography Discussion
Description
After watching the mini-lecture, and taking notes, please read each of my responses to the frequently asked questions I’ve posted below. Then reply (in 100-150 words each) to three of the questions I’ve posed back to you all after my responses, making sure not to just reply to the original FAQ. Ideally these are the three you’re most unfamiliar with, as to get us to grapple with new issues more.
FAQ1: Would it be an accurate statement to say that a distinct region of a Culture Diaspora population, e.g. China Town, Little Haiti, Germantown etc., is an example of a Functional Region?
-If so,…
Is it fair to say that these types of regions or neighborhoods exclusively exist primarily within close proximity to a Regions Core, or rather, a particular area that has the highest demographic diversity present?
-If not,…
Many of these types of Diaspora Culture populations/neighborhoods feature cultural, economic, and even a degree of political functions, so why would it not be considered a Functional Region?
A: This question highlights a key part of social science and actually a lot of other sciences too: social phenomena/things are rarely clear cut, so to speak. Distinct diaspora populations such as in China towns can be seen as a functional region due to being “organized to function politically, socially, culturally, or economically as one unit” (Neumann and Price 2019:18). In that China Towns (there are many around the world, (e.g. Boston, MA; Sidney, Australia) sometimes have delineated boundaries, they could be seen as a formal region.
Regarding “Is it fair to say that these types of regions or neighborhoods exclusively exist primarily within close proximity to a Regions Core, or rather, a particular area that has the highest demographic diversity present?…
Most of the time they are near the regional core, due to immigration and development patterns, but there are exceptions, e.g. Little Italy of Ottawa (Canada’s capital) is not in the central core.
What are your perspectives on these explanations? Feel free to disagree or differ.
FAQ2: How does globalization affect a region’s infrastructure and economy? And do you have any more examples of formal regions?
A: Formal region examples: California, the Sierra Nevada, Arabic-speaking areas of N. Africa, Hinduism-practicing regions of India. What’s one in your eyes?
Globalization affects each region’s infrastructure and economy differently. In general though, it leads to more homogenization with international, speculative-capital norms and trends, such as opening domestic markets to international business and imports (e.g. rural Northern Thailand), chain stores and Macdonaldization (e.g. in Santa Marta, Colombia), and internet access and mass marketing schemes (e.g. rural Tibet and China).
What are your perspectives on these issues?
FAQ3: Why the impact of globalization on the economic growth of undeveloped and poor countries is not rapid and fast? As we know, many countries in the world cannot provide food and shelter for their people, while many developed countries waste a lot of foods each year. Why globalization is not utilized to rapidly distribute the extra food among the other nations, which disparately need them?
A: Many of the impacts of globalization have actually been quite fast in most developing and poor countries. You could argue it’s been faster than in the global North even. Unfortunately, often the deleterious impacts have outweighed the benefits though, e.g. increased wealth disparity and sociopolitical marginalization. Getting back to the first sentence though, take for instance countries such as China, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and Nigeria. These have all experienced breakneck speeds of hyper-development, mainly just in the last few decades.
Similar to most areas of the world though, concentrations of wealth, power, and greed create staggering a maldistribution of rights, resources, and risks. That same pattern in generally responsible for the maldistribution of food in your last question. However, we cannot overlook the courageous efforts of many people and organizations that do bring food to those in need, e.g. UNICEF, Oxfam, and many smaller ones. Sadly, producing CAFO meat, and tomatoes and lettuce, via water, chemical, and land intensive ag. practices for our fast food nation sends a louder market value signal, stock purchase, and governance priority than caring about starvation, at home or abroad. Let’s not forget 1 out of 6 U.S. children don’t even have enough to eat. Our purchases, personal priorities, and politicians create these patterns. Thus we have the abilities to change them too.
What are your perspectives on these issues? Feel free to disagree or differ.
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