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• Cultural geography is a subfield of human geography. Culture is defined as the traditions and beliefs of a specific group of people.

• Cultural geography is the study of how the physical environment interacts with ways of life and traditions of people.

• Cultural geographers study language, art, communication, religion, economics, and government structures. An example is research on how the changing climate is impacting agricultural practices and lifestyles of particular regions. Cultural geography is important because its research and knowledge explains why people and societies act and make decisions the way they do.

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Material culture consists of things that are created by humans. Examples include cars, buildings, clothing, and tools.

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Non-material culture refers to the abstract ideas and ways of thinking that make up a culture. Examples of nonmaterial culture include traffic laws, words, and dress codes.

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• Cultural universals are patterns or traits that are globally common to all societies. In many Asian cultures, for example, family members from all generations commonly live together in one household. In these cultures, young adults continue to live in the extended household family structure until they marry and join their spouse’s household, or they may remain and raise their own nuclear family within the extended family’s homestead. In the United States, by contrast, individuals are expected to leave home and live independently for a period before forming a family unit that consists of parents and their offspring.

• Other cultural universals include customs like funeral rites, weddings, and celebrations of births. However, each culture may view and enact these rituals and ceremonies quite differently.

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Anthropologist George Murdock first recognized the existence of cultural universals while studying systems of kinship around the world. Murdock found that cultural universals often revolve around basic human survival, such as finding food, clothing, and shelter, or around shared human experiences, such as birth and death or illness and healing.

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• Ethnocentrism is measuring or judging one's own culture against another culture and can lead to judging someone else's culture negatively. Ethnocentrism is also the belief that one's own cultural rules are the best and often better than another culture's rules.

• Ethnocentrism, as sociologist William Graham Sumner (1906) described the term, involves a belief or attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others. Almost everyone is a little bit ethnocentric. For example, Americans tend to say that people from England drive on the “wrong” side of the road, rather than on the “other” side.

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• Cultural imperialism, the deliberate imposition of one’s own cultural values on another culture.

• Europe’s colonial expansion, begun in the sixteenth century, was often accompanied by a severe cultural imperialism. European colonizers often viewed the people in the lands they colonized as uncultured savages who were in need of European governance, dress, religion, and other cultural practices.

• A more modern example of cultural imperialism may include the work of international aid agencies who introduce agricultural methods and plant species from developed countries while overlooking indigenous varieties and agricultural approaches that are better suited to the particular region.

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Culture shock refers to feelings of uncertainty, confusion, or anxiety that people may experience when moving to a new country or experiencing a new culture or surroundings. This cultural adjustment is normal and is the result of being in an unfamiliar environment.

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Cultural relativism is the practice of assessing a culture by its own standards rather than viewing it through the lens of one’s own culture. Practicing cultural relativism requires an open mind and a willingness to consider, and even adapt to, new values and norms. However, indiscriminately embracing everything about a new culture is not always possible. Sociologists attempting to engage in cultural relativism, then, may struggle to reconcile aspects of their own culture with aspects of a culture that they are studying.

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Xenocentrism is the opposite of ethnocentrism, and refers to the belief that another culture is superior to one’s own. (The Greek root word xeno, pronounced “ZEE-no,” means “stranger” or “foreign guest.”) An exchange student who goes home after a semester abroad or a sociologist who returns from the field may find it difficult to associate with the values of their own culture after having experienced what they deem a more upright or nobler way of living.

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Folk culture describes cultural traditions that are done at a local level and which are derived from longstanding cultural practices. Folk culture is separated from popular and high culture by its traditional and localized nature. The maypole tradition, where traditional dancing takes place around a pole on May 1st in villages and small towns, is a classic example of folk culture.

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Popular culture (or "pop culture") generally refers to the traditions and material culture of a particular society. In the modern West, pop culture refers to cultural products such as music, art, literature, fashion, dance, film, cyberculture, television, and radio that are consumed by the majority of a society's population. Popular culture is comprised of types of media that have mass accessibility and appeal.

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Cultural globalization refers to the spread of a culture throughout the world. For example, the proliferation of Mexican restaurants throughout other countries such as the United States and Canada.