What is culture?

culture is…

• Learned, not biological• Transmitted within a society to next

generations by imitation, tradition, instruction

culture provides…

• a “general framework”• each individual learns & adheres to general

rules• also to specific sub-groups:

– age, sex, status, occupation, nationality

culture provides….

• Subcultures co-exist– Masculine / feminine– Rural / urban– Different ethnicities

• Joined by common traditions, behaviors, loyalties, beliefs– Christmas– Church attendance on Sunday

cultural variables.. micro vs. macro

• Micro – Cultural traits – most elementary– Expression of culture, the smallest distinctions

• Behavior• Object• Beliefs • Attitudes

• Macro– these “building blocks” = a culture complex

culture complexMacro-cultural complex-Individual cultural

traits that are functionally interrelated– Masai of Kenya – cultural traits centered on

cattle– Soccer, futbol – sports culture

culture region

• Portion of the Earth’s surface occupied by populations sharing recognizable distinctive cultural characteristics– Political organizations/boundaries– Religions– Economy type

Types of Cultural Regions• Core Area (nucleus)

• Domain (dominant extension)

• Sphere (zone of outer influence for a culture region)

• Subnational (cultural area that is part of a larger culture – The Mormons)

• National Cultures (The French Culture)

cultural realm

• A set of cultural regions showing related cultural complexes and landscapes– Large region that has assumed fundamental

uniformity in its cultural characteristics and showing significant differences from surrounding realms

culture realms

Cultural Sphere• zone of outer influence for a culture region

Folk Culture

• Folk Culture – traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation.

Folk Culture – rapidly changing and/or disappearing throughout much of the world. Almost nonexistent in the developed world.

Turkish Camel Market

Portuguese Fishing Boat

Guatemalan Market

• Stable and close knit• Homogeneous in customs, ethnicity • Usually a rural community and cohesive

• Subsistence economies; Goods are made by hand according to tradition

• Tradition controls; Resistance to change

• Buildings erected without architect or blueprint using locally available building materials

• anonymous origins, diffuses slowly through migration. Develops over time.

• Clustered distributions: isolation/lack of interaction breed uniqueness and ties to physical environment.

• Some folk traits utilize: astrology, songs, dances, and food

Folk Culture

FOLK FOOD

How did such differences develop?

FOLK ARCHITECTURE

Effects on Landscape: usually of limited scale and scope.

Agricultural: fields, terraces, grain storage

Dwellings: historically created from local materials: wood, brick, stone, skins; often uniquely and traditionally arranged; always functionally tied to physical environment.

FOLK ARCHITECTURE

Terraced Rice Fields, Thailand

Hogan, Monument Valley, AZ Cohokia Mounds, Illinois

Folk Culture and the Land

North American Folk Culture Regions

Hog Production and Food Cultures

Fig. 4-6: Annual hog production is influenced by religious taboos against pork consumption in Islam and other religions. The highest production is in China, which is largely Buddhist.

Taboo – a restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Food Taboos: Jews – must have cloven hooves and chews its cud; can’t mix meat and milk, or eat fish lacking fins or scales; pigs, camel, rabbits are not “kosher” Muslims – no pork; Hindus – no cows (used for oxen during monsoon)

Washing Cow in Ganges

What are Local and Popular Cultures?

Local Culture:A group of people in a particular place who see themselves as a collective or a community, who share experiences, customs, and traits, and who work to preserve those traits and customs in order to claim uniqueness and to distinguish themselves from others.

Hutterite Colonies in North America

Are the Hutteritesan example of a local culture?

Why are Hutterite colonies locatedwhere they are?

Popular Culture:A wide-ranging group of heterogeneous people, who stretch across identities and across the world, and who embrace cultural traits such as music, dance, clothing, and food preference that change frequently and are ubiquitous on the cultural landscape.

Popular Culture=“placelessness”Wide Distribution: differences from place to place

uncommon, more likely differences at one place over time.

Housing: only small regional variations, more generally there are trends over time

Food: franchises, cargo planes, superhighways and freezer trucks have eliminated much local variation. Limited variations in choice regionally, esp. with alcohol and snacks. Substantial variations by ethnicity.

Popular CultureClothing: Jeans have become valuable

status symbols in many regions including Asia and Russia despite longstanding folk traditions.

How do cultural traits from local cultures become part of popular culture?

Diffusion of TV, 1954–1999

Fig. 4-14: Television has diffused widely since the 1950s, but some areas still have low numbers of TVs per population.

A Mental Map of Hip Hop

Fig. 4-3: This mental map places major hip hop performers near other similar performers and in the portion of the country where they performed.

Popular CultureEffects on Landscape: breeds

homogenous, “placeless” (Relph, 1976), landscape

· Complex network of roads and highways· Commercial Structures tend towards ‘boxes’· Dwellings may be aesthetically suggestive of older folk

traditions• Planned and Gated Communities more and more

common

Disconnect with landscape: indoor swimming pools, desert surfing.

Surfing in Tempe, Arizona

Are places still tied to local landscapes?

Swimming Pool, West Edmonton Mall, Canada

McDonald’s, Tokyo, Japan

McDonald’s, Jerusalem

What is Culture?

Part II

Problems with the Globalization of Culture

Often Destroys Folk Culture – or preserves traditions as museum pieces or tourism gimmicks.

· Mexican Mariachis; Polynesian Navigators; Cruise Line Simulations

· Change in Traditional Roles and Values; Polynesian weight problems

Satellite Television, Baja California

Western Media Imperialism?· U.S., Britain, and Japan dominate worldwide

media.· Glorified consumerism, violence, sexuality, and

militarism?· U.S. (Networks, FoxNews, CNN) and British

(BBC) news media provide/control the dissemination of information worldwide.

· These networks are unlikely to focus or provide third world perspective on issues important in the LDCs.

Problems with the Globalization of Popular Culture

Environmental Problems with Cultural Globalization

Accelerated Resource Use through Accelerated Consumption

• Furs: minx, lynx, jaguar, kangaroo, whale, sea otters (18th Century Russians) fed early fashion trends

• Inefficient over-consumption of Meats (10:1), Poultry (3:1), even Fish (fed other fish and chicken) by meat-eating pop cultures

· Mineral Extraction for Machines, Plastics and Fuel· New Housing and associated energy and water use.· Golf courses use valuable water and destroy habitat

worldwide.

Pollution: waste from fuel generation and discarded products, plastics, marketing and packaging materials

“They’re growing houses in the fields between the towns.”- John Gorka, Folk Singer

Beijing, China

Palm Springs, CA

Fiji

Marlboro Man in Egypt

How do cultural traits diffuse?

Hearth: the point of origin of a cultural trait.

Contagious diffusion

Hierarchical diffusion

How are Local Cultures Sustained?

Local cultures are sustained by maintaining customs.

Custom: a practice that a group of people routinely follows.

Material and Nonmaterial Culture

Material Culture

The things a group of people construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, and food.

Nonmaterial Culture

The beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people.

Little Sweden, USA (Lindsborg, Kansas): Is the Swedish Dala horse part of material or nonmaterial culture?

What do local cultures do to maintain their customs in a

globalized world?

Local Cultures often have two goals:

1. keeping other cultures out.

(ie. create a boundary around itself)

2. keeping their own culture in.(ie. avoid cultural appropriation)

What role does place play in maintaining customs?

By defining a place (a town or a neighborhood) or a space for a short amount of time (an annual festival) as representing a culture and its values, members of a local culture can maintain (or reestablish) its customs and reinforce its beliefs.

Rural Local Cultures

• Migration into rural areas is less frequent.• Can better separate their culture from others

and from popular culture.• Can define their own space.• Daily life my be defined by a shared economic

activity.

Makah (Neah Bay, Washington)Why did the Makah reinstate the whale hunt?

Makah (Neah Bay, Washington)Why did the Makah reinstate the whale hunt?

To reinvigorate the local culture.

Little Sweden, USA (Lindsborg, KS)Why did the residents of Lindsborg define it as a

Swedish place?

Little Sweden, USA (Lindsborg, KS)Why did the residents of Lindsborg define it as a

Swedish place?neolocalism: seeking out the regional culture and reinvigorating it in response to the uncertainty of the modern world.

Helen, GA (Alpine Village)

Urban Local Cultures

• Can create ethnic neighborhoods within cities.• Creates a space to practice customs.• Can cluster businesses, houses of worship,

schools to support local culture.• Migration into ethnic neighborhoods can quickly

change an ethnic neighborhood.

For example: Williamsburg, NY, North End (Boston), MA

Runners of the NYC Marathon run through Williamsburg, (Brooklyn), NYHasidic Jewish Neighborhood

Commodification/Glocalization

How are aspects of local culture (material, non-material, place) commodified?

what is commodified? who commodifies it?

Sun City, South Africa

Authenticity

Claims of authenticity abound – how do consumers determine what experience/place is “authentic” and what is not?

How is Popular Culture Diffused?

What are Cultural Hearths

• Ancient Hearths (locations – source of civilization)

• Hydraulic Civilization Theory (cities able to

control irrigated farming over large hinterlands, held political power over other cities)

• Modern Hearths (locations) – Eastern Megalopolis in the United States

How are hearths of popular culture traits established?

• Typically begins with an idea/good and contagious diffusion.

• Companies (MTV) and Individuals (Tony Hawk) can create/manufacture popular culture.

• Hierarchical diffusion: fax machines on a farm/industrial revolution

• Relocation diffusion: British prisoners to Australia

The hearth of Phish concerts is in the northeastern United States, near where the band began in Vermont.

With Distance Decay, the likelihood of diffusion decreases as time and distance from the hearth increases.

With Time-Space Compression, the likelihood of diffusion depends upon the connectedness among places.

Which applies more to popular culture? Time-Space Compression

Factors that Affect Diffusion

• Distance

• Population Density

• Means of Communication

• Nature of the Innovation

• Prestige of the Node

Culture Change and Convergence

• Acculturation -process whereby one culture is substantially changed through the interaction of another culture

• Assimilation -process where two or more cultures fuse, but not necessarily cultural characteristics

• Transculturation -changes that occur from the interaction of cultures that is equal

• Migrant Diffusion -by the time the new ideas and inventions reach a place, they have faded away at their point of origin

• Ethnocentrism -tendency to evaluate other cultures against the standards of one’s own

Why are popular culture traits usually diffused hierarchically?

How is fashion in popular culture an example of hierarchical diffusion?