Articles in Northern California
Introduction: Cultural Diversity and Political Division in Northern California
For the next several weeks, GeoCurrents will examine California, particularly the northwestern quarter of the state. Our interest in California derives from several sources. First, GeoCurrents strives for global coverage, and as a quick glance at the Master Map reveals, North America has received relatively little attention. Second, northern California is the home base of the website, and as such …
Linguistic Diversity in Northern California
In 1929, anthropologist and linguist Edward Sapir wrote: “Few people realize that within the confines of the United States there is spoken today a far greater variety of languages … than in the whole of Europe. We may go further. We may say, quite literally and safely, that in the state of California alone there are greater and more numerous …
Russians in the Bay Area
As we saw in yesterday’s post, California’s Russian-speaking community is concentrated in the San Francisco region. The nine counties of the Bay Area – Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma – are home to more than 40,000 Russian speakers. The love affair between Russians and the San Francisco Bay Area is of …
Regionalizing California
With thirty-eight million people spread over an area of 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2) and an economy that would rank between the eighth and eleventh largest in the world if it were an independent country, California makes an unwieldy state. Its different regions are so distinctive culturally, economically, and politically that numerous attempts have been made to divide California into two or more …
Cosmopolitan Localism: San Francisco Bay Area Food Movements
While most people around the world eat whatever is available and allowed by custom, for many residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, the answer to “What’s for dinner?” has as much to do with health, the environment, social justice, and social distinction as it does with the food per se. San Francisco and environs have become the fountainhead of …
The Indigenous Peoples of Mendocino County: From Genocide to Marijuana Cultivation
Previous GeoCurrents posts on historical instances of genocide have elicited critical comments from several readers, including one who took us to task for not mentioning genocidal events perpetuated by the United States. There is no denying that the U.S. government has been guilty of numerous genocidal assaults on indigenous communities. The United States engaged in wholesale “Indian removal,” often disregarding …
Northern Californian English: Hella Different?
As discussed in earlier GeoCurrents posts, Northern California, and especially the Greater Bay Area, is demographically, culturally, economically, and politically distinct from the southern part of the state. Are there differences in the speech of Northern and Southern Californians as well? Accents and dialects take time to form, but while English has been spoken in the eastern part of the …
Rural Cosmopolitanism in Mendocino County’s Anderson Valley
An earlier GeoCurrents post described the food culture of a certain segment of the San Francisco Bay Area as exhibiting “cosmopolitan localism.” Such attitudes are not unique to urban areas in Northern California. In Mendocino County, cosmopolitanism takes on distinctly rural cast. In some of the most seemingly isolated areas, one can find pronounced cultural sophistication and global engagement.
Consider, for …
The Geographical Complexity and Linguistic Peculiarities of the Indigenous Languages of Northern California
The linguistic diversity of California is pronounced. Today, variety comes mostly from the languages of relatively recent immigrants, as discussed in an earlier GeoCurrents post. But pre-contact California could have competed with Papua New Guinea for the status of the most linguistically diverse place on earth. Pre-contact California’s 80 to 90 different languages were numerous enough, but it was diversity …
The Rebirth of Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk
The Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk languages, discussed in yesterday’s post, are at the brink of extinction, like most other surviving indigenous languages of California. Most estimations of pre-contact times place the number of Hupa speakers at about 2,000*, but some scholars think that the figure could have been substantially higher. Today the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, claims …
Terranova: The Black Petaltail - A Novel
Diversity Amid Globalization: World Regions, Environment, Development (5th Edition)
Globalization and Diversity: Geography of a Changing World (3rd Edition)
