Folk and Popular Culture

Woman with Oxcart, Myanmar

Insanely Rad Scot, with Kilt and Three-Fin Thruster

The Forbidden CityBeijing, China

2004

Beijing, China2004

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.

Turkish Camel Market

Portuguese Fishing Boat

Guatemalan Market

• 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 Culture

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

FOLK FOOD

How did such differences develop?

U.S. House Types by Region

Fig. 4-1-1: Small towns in different regions of the eastern U.S. have different combinations of five main house types.

North American Folk Culture Regions

Terraced Rice Fields, Thailand

Hogan, Monument Valley, AZ Cohokia Mounds, Illinois

Folk Culture and the Land

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 – 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)

Washing Cow in Ganges

Popular CultureWide 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 and have become

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

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

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 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.

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

“Progress?”

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

Beijing, China

Palm Springs, CA

Fiji

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

What race are these guys?

• Does not exist on a scientific level,despite influence of the idea.

• Biological variation is real; the order we impose on this variation by using the concept of race is not. Race is a product of the human mind, not of nature.

•Based on a three category system developed in Europe in the 18th century: caucasians, mongoloids, and blacks.

• The truth is that there is very little fundamental genetic variety between humans and no way to tell where one category stops and another begins. Race is literally skin deep. There has not been enough time for much genetic variation. We do not have distinct “races” or “subspecies.”

Race

Race in the U.S.

Rosa Parks

Japan Town, San Francisco, 1910

Dogs Used to Control Protestors, 1957

• Genetic mixing is so common and complete that most geographers dismiss race as a category since it can not be clearly tied to place.

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.

Kazakh Thai Chinese

ArmenianTurkishPuerto Rican

JapaneseMongolian

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