by Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov, Mona Domosh, Roderick P. Neumann, Patricia L. Price
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Product Description
Carrying forward the legacy of original author Terry Jordan-Bychkov, Mona Domosh and new coauthors Roderick Neumann and Patricia Price offer this thoroughly updated new edition of the acclaimed introduction to the cultural geography of the world today. The result is a text that maintains its original distinctive style while addressing contemporary issues and situations that students care about, most importantly, the continuing phenomenon of globalization.
The Thematic Approach of The Human Mosaic
The Human Mosaic introduces five themes in the opening chapter—culture region, cultural diffusion, cultural ecology, cultural interaction, and cultural landscape—then uses those themes as a framework for the topical chapters that follow. Each theme is applied to a variety of geographical topics: demography, agriculture, the city, religion, language, ethnicity, politics, industry, folk and popular culture. Through this organization, students are able to relate to the most important aspects of cultural geography at every point in the text.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 The Human Mosaic , 2008-02-08
The book was highlighted as same as the description. The book was packaged inproperly because the sender put the book in a regular package which was recieved with folded edges while the book was posting.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
 Decent--but Not cohesive..., 2007-10-08
My main gripe about this book is that it is organized in such a fashion that it makes it difficult to outline. The chapters don't develop in a manner that lends itself easily to straightforward interpretation of main ideas. Instead, the authors rely primarily on providing definitions of terms, and then presenting information that is of secondary consequence.
The book is informative, but not linearly coherent.
To address the issues raised by another reviewer about Islam, after some more scrupulous reading of those sections, I believe the reviewer let his anger get the best of him. For example, on the section dealing with the "Sour Grapes" reaction, he automatically combined the imposition of pork-eating taboos with the "sour grapes" reaction, which the authors clearly didn't do. They develop the idea and geographical importance of pork-eating, and gives the "sour grapes" reaction as a possible explanation to the eschewing of pork--and they offer others as well. The idea was to show that we don't know where it began, from a cultural stance. The author attaches from an early stage that eschewing pork was part of Judaism, a much older tradition than Islam or Christianity, and makes the point that the distribution of the taboo follows in line with areas that pork isn't easy to cultivate, since a nomadic lifestyle is not suitable for pork farming.
Note that this is different than saying "Islamic people made conquered peoples eschew pork because Islamic people were jealous of those who raised pork." This statement is almost nonsensical, but if you were to simplify the claim raised by the other reviewer, this is what you get.
Did later islamic kingdoms impose the non-eating of pork in the regions of Babylon and those cities near rivers? Yes they did. The author was wrong to use the language of "for revenge," as it puts a slightly moral stance on the books position, and does paint Islam in a negative light--which a good textbook shouldn't do.
And in dealing with the oft-violent histories of all three monotheist religions, the authors spent a great deal of time on the christian enslavement and mistreatment of Indians by the sword here in the Americas--showing that Christians did bad things in the name of their faith, just as Muslims did.
As far as religions go however, the treatment of buddhism and hinduism is even more sparse than it is on Islam, though I have yet to read a western-written book that covers eastern traditions in an interesting fashion. Most of them have a sudden style-shift from seeming interested in the subject matter to suddenly seeming more like an encyclopaedic regurgitation of well-known facts.
This book is guilty of this as well. Docked one star for its non-linear style, and one star for its poor treatment of eastern religions.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Excellent textbook!, 2007-09-29
I purchased this book for my university level cultural geography course and it's very up to date with excellent explanations of the many aspects of cultural geography. I highly recommend this textbook!
0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
The Human Mosaic, 2005-09-23
Thank you for being so prompt. I am really enjoying the book and class.
1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
Disappointed When Received, 2004-08-18
The condition was listed as "Very Good" but when received it was marked up with yellow highlighter along with other mark-ups. I feel the condition should have been rated lower. I have to say the book was received in a timely manner.
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