Cultural Identity

Now I have looked at what cultural geography is all about and understood its relevance in the classroom, I think it is time to get stuck into some topic areas and look at how I might begin to teach these. I’m going to start with the basics – talking about what defines our own cultural identities...

On our earth today there are literally thousands of cultural regions each with their own ‘cultural identity’ (common cultural elements). The reason such a large number of regions exists is that there are simply so many ways that our earth’s 6.3 billion people can be considered as culturally “different”. For example, language could be used to identify cultural regions; whilst some communities speak English, others speak Arabic, Spanish or another one of the thousands of languages (Figure One). Similarly, groups of people could also be identified according to their religion and how they choose to practise it (Figure Two). There are simply so many factors that can group various communities of people together and just a few more of these include: gender roles, dance, music, education, work ethics, etiquette, architecture and more (Heatwole, 2006).

Figure One  A map to show how language can be used to group areas of people (ibid.)

Figure Two A map to show several culture regions across the world. (ibid)

Once students can use resources such as the above to define the factors that work towards producing a regions cultural identity, I think it is important to get them to consider what their own cultural identities comprise of. To do this I would encourage the students to undertake a class survey compromising of questions derived from the types of themes illustrated in Figure Three. After the completion of this task I think it would then be appropriate for students to actively group themselves in different areas of the room according to some of the factors discussed such as what type of house they live in, whether they live in a rural or urban environment, what religion or ethnicity they feel they are etc. In this way pupils can actively begin to appreciate how different everyone is and consider how we all have our own varying factors that make up our individual cultural identities.  It can then open up group discussion activities such as discussing which factors shape their own cultural identities more prominently - where they live or what gender they are etc.

Figure Three Factors that can be used to determine an individual’s cultural identity. (wikispaces –Teaching Identity, 2013)

Heatwole. C.A., (2006) Culture:Ageographical Perspective. Found at: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/socst/grade3/geograph.html#geo and cult

Wikispaces – Teaching Identity, 2013. Found at: http://teachingidentity.wikispaces.com/6.+Cultural+identity