PP Notes: Folk/Pop Culture

Folk and Popular Culture

Important Terms

Custom – frequent repetition of an act until it becomes characteristic of a group of people..

Habit – repetitive act performed by an individual.

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

Popular Culture – found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in personal characteristics.

Material Culture – the physical objects produced by a culture in order to meet its material needs: food, clothing, shelter, arts, and recreation. Carl Sauer (Berkeley, 1930s – 1970s).

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

Folk Culture

Stable and close knit

Usually a rural community

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.

FOLK ARCHITECTURE

FOLK ARCHITECTURE

FOLK FOOD

U.S. House Types by Region

Hog Production and Food Cultures

Taboo – a restriction on behavior imposed by social custom.

Food Taboos: Jews – can’t eat animals that chew cud, that have cloven feet; can’t mix meat and milk, or eat fish lacking fins or scales; Muslims – no pork; Hindus – no cows (used for oxen during monsoon)

Popular Culture

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 Culture

Clothing: Jeans and have become valuable status symbols in many regions including Asia and Russia despite longstanding folk traditions.

Diffusion of TV, 1954–1999

A Mental Map of Hip Hop

Popular Culture

Effects 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.

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

Problems with the Globalization of Popular Culture

Western Media Imperialism?

• U.S., Britain, and Japan dominate worldwide media.
• Glorified consumerism, violence, sexuality, and militarism?
• U.S. (Networks and 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.

Environmental Problems with Cultural Globalization

Accelerated Resource Use through Accelerated Consumption

Furs: minx, lynx, jaguar, kangaroo, whale, sea otters (18^th 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

“Progress?”

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

Marboloro Man in Egypt

Cultural Identity:
Race and Ethnicity

Culture groups

Few or many characteristics (language, religion, race, food, etc.)

Subculture

Races

Single species

Secondary biological characteristics

Ethnic groups

Ethnocentrism

Race

Race in the U.S.

What is ethnicity? How is it different than race?

1. identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth. Thus: customs, cultural characteristics, language, common history, homeland, etc...

2.  a socially created system of rules about who belongs and who does not belong to a particular group based on actual or perceived commonality of origin, race, culture. This notion is clearly tied to place.

Nationalities and States

Nationality - legally it is a term encompassing all the citizens of a state, but most definitions refer now to an identity with a group of people who generally occupy a specific territory and bound together by a sense of unity arising from shared ethnicity, customs, belief, or legal status. Such unity rarely exists today within a state.

State - a politically organized territory that is administered by a sovereign government

Nationalism

Helps create national unity

Can be very dangerous

Can breed intolerance of difference and Others