Cultural Landscape
In this lab we will be looking at two datasets to look at a portion of the cultural landscape of the world. The first dataset we will use contains a global set of provinces with the dominant religion, the proportion of the population that is Christian, and the proportion of the population that is part of the dominant religion. Open up the Religion of the World.kml in Google Earth.
Religion is a complex cultural component around the world. People engage in a broad array of religious activities each day, and we can see the effects of those activities in our daily lives, in both good and bad ways. Following a disaster, people may organize with fellows of their religion to provide aid to a devastated nation. On the flip side, people may also organize with fellows of their religion to try to dominate or destroy people of other religions.
The dataset we are using provides a very coarse view of religion around the world, aggregated (grouped) at the provincial level. It does not capture variations within major religious, such as identifying Catholics from Protestants in the Christian religious family. It instead displays the dominant religious family. Even with only identifying the major religious families, you should be able to see just by looking at the provinces in the dataset that there is significant variation around the world.
Let's start by taking a look at the United States. Use the search function or zoom in to the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest. Click anywhere inside the state's boundary to create a popup with information about the state. We want to look at two important pieces of information: HighRelig (the dominant religion) and ReligCatP (the percentage, or proportion, of the population that is part of the dominant religion).
1. What is the dominant religion in the state of Washington? What proportion of the state's population is in the dominant religion?
2. What is the dominant religion of the state of Utah? What proportion of the state's population is in the dominant religion?
3. Even though Christianity is the dominant religion in the United States, based on proportion of population in the religion by state, do you think that conflicts over religion can occur in the United States?
4. What proportion of the population practices Islam (remember: ReligCatP)?
5. What proportion of the Jakarta Raya province is Muslim?
6. What language family (hint: look at the legend or click on the province) is dominant in Beijing?
7. What language family dominates the center of Taiwan (hint: it's not the yellow area)?
8. Which language family dominates the small city of Xilinhot?