A. Concept of a Region

A region is an area of the Earth's surface that has human and/or physical characteristics that give it an identity and that make it different from all the areas around it. The different types of region include: Climatic regions, Physical regions, Administrative regions, Cultural regions, Socio-economic regions and Urban regions. In this case, I have chosen a climatic region. Climatic regions are areas that have their own climate, distinct from those regions surrounding them. Some climate regions are huge, such as the Sahara Desert, while others are small, such as individual island climates.

Cool Temperate Oceanic Climate

Western Europe - which includes Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia, Denmark, Netherlands and the west coast of France, Spain and Portugal - has a Cool Temperate Oceanic Climate.

Temperature

Summers are warm: 15ºC to 17ºC. Winters are cool. January temperatures average 4ºC to 5ºC.

Precipitation (rainfall)

• Rain falls throughout the year, but most falls in winter.
• Relief rain falls in mountain regions.
• Western areas, such as the west of Ireland, receive more rain than eastern areas,such as Dublin.
• Cyclonic rainfall occurs because of depressions that travel across the ocean between 30ºN and 60ºN.

Winds

The South-West Anti-Trades are the prevailing wind of cool temperate regions in the northern hemisphere. The North-West Anti-Trades are the prevailing winds of cool temperate regions in the southern hemisphere.

B. Secondary Activities

The secondary economic activity that I have studied is Intel in Lexlip, Ireland.

Intel located in this area for many reasons, two of which are:

1. A highly skilled and well educated work force and

2. Transport / Infrastructure.

1. Intel in Lexlip produces processing chips e.g. Pentium. It is at the early growth stage of the 'product cycle'. In addition to producing a range of high quality products, it also includes research and development (R&D). An educated, skilled workforce is an important factor in the choice of location for this industry. Most of the English speaking workers come from the indigenous education system in Ireland. As Intel is near Dublin, which is a primate city, there is a readily available labour supply. Highly educated third level graduates from universities such as TCD, UCD and DCU have found employment in Intel.

2. The transport system near the plant is varied and extensive. There is access to the M50 motorway and Dublin airport is in close proximity. It is an international airport, which is important to an MNC with its headquarters in the USA. Both of these transport systems have aided the movement of goods both semi-processed and processed in and out of the area. There is also access to a rail link with Dublin and the port. There is a well developed telecommunications system e.g. broadband telecommunications.

C. Cultural Differences

The region I have studied is Brazil.

Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, it was the home of 4 million or more native peoples. They were divided into two fairly distinct racial and cultural groups. The thinly scattered Paleo-Americans, who were similar in many respects to the North American Plains Indians, occupied the colder and drier lands. They lived mostly by hunting and gathering. The tropical forest tribes were located in the jungles of the Amazon and along the Atlantic coast. Living in villages of as many as 3,000 people, they were expert fishermen and farmers who also manufactured hammocks, canoes and balsa rafts, blowguns for hunting and warfare, and pottery. Their staple food was cassava, or manioc, which is still an important part of the Brazilian diet.

As tropical forest Indians occupied the most accessible and fertile lands, they bore the brunt of early European settlement. They were soon exterminated by war, disease and enslavement. The more isolated and war-like Paleo-Americans survived for several more centuries, and today a few bands still live near remote parts of the Amazon. Although Indians have almost disappeared from Brazil, many of its inhabitants, especially those in the interior, have some Indian heritage.

It did not take the Portuguese long to find out that Indians made poor and unwilling slaves. Therefore, beginning in 1538, they imported Africans to work on the coastal sugar plantations. Later, these slaves were taken to the gold and diamond mines in Minas Gerais and to the coffee plantations in the highlands of Rio de Janeiro. By 1822, when the slave trade was abolished, there were about 4 million Africans in Brazil, by coincidence about the same total as the number of Indians that once inhabited the country. Today, the majority of Brazil's population consists of blacks and mulattoes.

There was a trickle of non-Portuguese European immigration into Brazil throughout the 1800s, but only after the emancipation of the slaves in 1858 did the country attract large numbers of European settlers. From that time until World War I as many as 200,000 arrived each year. About half were from southern Italy and they went mostly to the newly opening coffee lands of São Paulo. After the war immigration rose again, dominated by people from Germany, Eastern Europe and Japan. Then the depression of the 1930s, World War II, and a quota system reduced the numbers of immigrating people once more. After a brief resurgence following World War II, immigration declined again.

Culture and Religion

The customs and practices of Portugal are clearly reflected in Brazil's architecture, language, and Roman Catholic religion. Modern Brazilian culture, however, developed from the contributions of many peoples. The Indians contributed foods, farming methods and many words from their languages; the Africans added their music, cooking, and religious practices; the northern Europeans and Japanese brought their technical and commercial know-how, adding new cultural values in the process. The diverse roots of Brazilian culture can be traced through the evolution of the people's religious beliefs.

A large number of Jesuit priests went to Brazil with the early Portuguese colonists. Their main function was to set up missions to educate and convert the Indians. Many were not converted and in northeastern Brazil, where slaves were in contact with the Indians, the Indian beliefs crept into the Africans' religion and developed into a unique, altogether Brazilian cult, the catimbô.

Although the Africans brought their own religion and rituals with them, these were prohibited and Roman Catholic practices were enforced. But a strange mix of the two faiths developed, each saint masking an African deity. Thus, while they seemed to be praying to Catholic saints, slaves were secretly continuing the practices of their own religion. Numerous Brazilians, both white and black and representing all social classes, continue to endorse both faiths without any feelings of conflict.

Roman Catholicism, however, ceased to be the official religion after the proclamation of the republic in 1889. Finally, over the next century Protestant missionaries, largely of fundamentalist denominations, had considerable success in spreading their religion. The crente, as the Brazilian Protestant is called, is often devout and has usually renounced all other worship to embrace this new faith. Brazil is nominally the world's largest Roman Catholic country but it has many other beliefs that run through its cultural fabric which add to its cultural diversity.