Local Culture, Popular Culture, and Cultural

Landscapes

Chapter 4

Woman with Oxcart, Myanmar

McDonald’s, Tokyo, Japan

Some Basic terms:

• Culture• Folk culture• Popular culture• Local culture• Non-material culture• Hierarchical of diffusion• Hearth • Assimilate• Custom• Cultural appropriation

• Neo-localism• Ethnic neighborhoods• Commodification• Authenticity• Distance decay• Time-space

compression• Placelessness• Glocalization• Folk housing regions• Diffusion routes

Key Question:

What are Local and Popular Cultures?

What is Local culture/Folk Culture?

Local Culture: (text bk)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.

• Common notion:1. Traditional practice by small group2. Usually a rural community living in relative isolation

3. Homogenous: Stable and close knit

4. Cohesive : Tradition control and Order maintained through religion or family

5. Resistance to change

6. Buildings erected without architect or blueprint using locally available building materials

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

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

Hutterite Colonies in North America

Are the Hutteritesan example of a local culture?

• In developed countries like United States, where folk culture exists, it is regarded as characteristic only of socially or geographically isolated groups E.g. - Amish - Native American communities - Mountain folk of Appalachia

Prevailing Notion: • Artifacts, belief & practices

a. Reminders of the pastb. Touristic curiosities

Definition: (Txt bk) 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.

• Common characteristics:– Large societies– heterogeneous society– sharing certain habits (despite differences in personal characteristics). – wide distribution– small regional variations (over time)—limited variations in choice

regionally– Examples: franchises, cargo planes, internet, alcohol and snacks. – Popular culture is product of industrialization & urbanization (began

in Europe & US) – now expression of globalization

Popular Culture:

Popular CultureClothing: Jeans and have become valuable status symbols in

many regions including Asia and Russia despite longstanding folk traditions.

Marlboro Man in Egypt

A Mental Map of Hip Hop

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

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

Madonna wearing a red string Kabbalah bracelet.

People everywhere tend to discard or alter their folk culture when confronted with the attractions of modernity Few remain to practice their folk culture authentically

How do cultural traits diffuse?

Hearth: the point of origin of a cultural trait.

Contagious diffusion

Hierarchical diffusion

Key Question: How are Local Cultures Sustained?

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

•Local cultures are sustained by maintaining customs.

Folk Culture – rapidly changing and/or disappearing throughout much of the world.

Turkish Camel Market

Portuguese Fishing Boat

Guatemalan Market

Folk Culture: Material and Nonmaterial Culture

Material Culture(tangible elements)The things a group of

people construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, and food.

Nonmaterial Culture(intangible elements)The beliefs, practices,

aesthetics, and values of a group of people.

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

In an age of globalization, where popular culture diffuses quickly, what do local cultures do to maintain their customs?

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.

Local cultures fight to maintain their customs

• Rural Local Cultures (it is comparatively easier)– 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?To reinvigorate the local culture.

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.

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), NY

Commodification

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

what is commodified?

who commodifies it?

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

Authenticity

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

Irish Pub Company Pubs

Right picture: Irish Pub Company and Guinness Brewing Company created 5 models of pubs and export them around the world.

Left Picture: Little Bridge Pub in Dingle, Ireland (not an Irish Pub Company Pub)

How is Popular Culture Diffused?

Key Question:

How are hearths of popular culture traits

established?

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

• Companies can create/manufacture popular culture. (ie. MTV)

• Individuals can create/manufacture popular culture. (ie. Tony Hawk)

Diffusion of TV, 1954–1999

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

Hearth of Popular culture•Example: Phish Music band see-fig 4.12Hip-Hop –from NY diffused to France & Germany

Two important concepts:

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

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

Why are popular culture traits usually diffused hierarchically?

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

Actress Lindsay Lohan

Key Question: How can Local and Popular Cultures be seen in the Cultural Landscape?

The visible human imprint on the landscape.

- How have people changed the landscape?

- What buildings, statues, and so forth have they erected?

- How do landscapes reflect the values of a culture?

Cultural Landscape

Popular CultureEffects on Landscape: breeds homogenous,

“placeless” (Relph, 1976), landscape Complex network of roads and highways Commercial Structures tend towards ‘boxes’

• Planned and Gated Communities more and more common

Disconnect with landscape: indoor swimming pools, desert surfing.

Placelessness: the loss of uniqueness in a cultural landscape – one place looks like the

next.

Swimming Pool, West Edmonton Mall, Canada

McDonald’s, Tokyo, Japan

McDonald’s, Jerusalem

Convergence of Cultural Landscapes:

• Diffusion of architectural forms and planning ideas around the world. (Skyscrapers diffusion)

• Borrowing of idealized landscape images blurs place distinctiveness.

Convergence of Cultural Landscapes:

House Types• Kniffen’s traditional American house types:

Think of other folk housing

• Kraal in South Africa• Uighur yurt in China• Maasai manyatta• Extended family compound of bambara of

Mali