The table of contents for the eight units of this study guide appear below.
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Download Cultural Geography study guide for An Amateur's Guide to the Planet (pdf)
- 1. Population: World patterns, regional trends and diaspora
- Slavery and "New Africa"
- Emigration and "New China"
- Famine and "Greater Ireland"
- National decline and "Greater Greece"
- Seafaring and "Greater Indonesia:"
Borneo's cultural parentage of Madagascar and Polynesia, Sumatra's links to the Maya.
- 2. Cultural survival
- Polynesian cultural survival compared in Tahiti and Hawaii;
- African cultural survival compared in Brazil and the United States;
the Dayaks and the Indonesian government. - Language as the cardinal indicator of culture: case studies in Borneo, Polynesia and Brazil
- Generosity and kinship: keystones of African and African American culture.
- 3. Religion
- Views of Heaven, from Bali to the U.S.
- Two kinds of Buddhism: Burma vs. Thailand.
- The role of modern missionaries.
- 4. Poverty
- Burma's hidden riches challenge the West and reveal three different definitions of poverty.
- 5. National greatness, decline
- What the United States can learn from Greece, Rome and Britain, and what Japan and China can expect in the next cycle of greatness and decline.
- 6. Etiquette
- How Japan and Britain fill their role as "formal societies" and how they compare to continental nations' customs.
- 7. Parallel evolution
- How the Maya serve as extraordinary examples of the "parallel evolution" of culture.
- 8. Geography of tourism
- The impact of mass tourism and its inverse relationship to national greatness; travel styles (professional and amateur) and patterns; and learning from travel.
