Fast Food and Its Influence on Human Migration and Movement Pecha Kucha

Link to Book Search Blog on the Humanized Environment

http://humanizedenvironment.blogspot.com

Chapter 1 Quizlet Links

https://quizlet.com/47931050/ap-human-geography-unit-one-set-1-flash-cards/

https://quizlet.com/48410019/ap-human-geography-unit-one-set-2-flash-cards/

Chapter 1: 'An Introduction to Human Geography'

Trevor Jones
AP Human Geo
September 15, 2015

Thoughts and Ruminations:

Article: http://newint.org/easier-english/Garment/jhistory.html

Miners wanted pants that wouldn't rip and fray so easily, but no such thing existed that would meet their needs, so Levi Strauss fashioned the first blue jeans out of denim and copper rivets, then the blue jeans caught the attention of greasers and hippies in the 50's and 60's, and later diffused to the rest of the United States and the world. 

Map: 

Strauss sold blue jeans to the gold miners in San Francisco, which later spread to the surrounding western/southwestern states for use by Cowboys.

Essay:

Readings:
The Tipping Point 
Globalization in a Bottle
"Chapter One: An Introduction to Human Geography" from Human Geography

Essay Question: How does a product such as blue jeans reach its 'tipping point' and diffuse throughout America, and eventually become a cultural trait?

What defines our nations culture? Well, some may say it's the food that we eat, or the music that we listen to, or even, our appearance. When most people think about the common American man, they will think of a a guy wearing blue jeans, eating a hamburger. These defining features of our culture are called cultural traits. But how does something become a cultural trait you might ask? The trait, or product in this case, must undergo a 'tipping point', meaning a single point in time when the product greatly increases in demand. 

The Gold Rush in San Fransisco, California attracted thousands of gold miners to the area, and these gold miners all faced one problem, their pants did not withstand the rough surfaces they were forced on. This lead Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss to create a pair of more sturdy denim pants, with copper rivets to reinforce points of stress, and called them jeans. These jeans solved the problem for the gold miners of California and sold like wildfire, by a process known as contagious diffusion. These sturdy blue jeans soon spread to most of the western/southwestern region for the use of cowboys, a process called regional diffusion. 

By the 1950's and 60's, blue jeans were being featured in cowboy movies which picked up the attention of greasers and hippies all over the country. This moment was the tipping point for blue jeans in America, and suddenly the industry boomed. Americans all over were buying blue jeans out of fashion which lead to the creation of designer jeans in the 80's, as well as the global diffusion of jeans in continents such as Asia, Europe, and South America, leading to the product's globalization. Jeans sales kept growing until the worldwide recession in the 90's, when sales stopped growing on a global scale. The worldwide recession as well as time-distance decay, meaning the farther a cultural trait is from the hearth, the less likely the innovation will be adopted, both contributed to the slowing of jeans sales inside and outside of the United States. However, blue jeans are still fashionable today and define our culture here in the United States.