Chapter 4

Local Culture, Popular Culture,Local Culture, Popular Culture,& Cultural Landscapes & Cultural Landscapes

Field Note: Preserving culture

•The Tata Family (Corporation)- members of Parsi Religion, followers of Zoroastrianism .

-Own many businesses in India & the World•India is overwhelmingly Hindu (85 %)-Followers of Parsi make up 0.00046 Percent (fewer than 60,000 Parsi)of the Indian pop

•What were the dominant factors in the Parsi success?-Cohesive community and the maintenance of cultural practices.

-Same traits threaten to destroy the Parsi (number of Parsi people is dwindling)

•A Local Culture such as the Parsi is maintained through the preservation of cultural traits and practices.

•Children born of Parsi women who are married to non-Parsi(called “outsiders” by the Parsi) are not accepted.

•The Parsi are struggling to maintain their culture & sustain their sense of community in a changing world.

Key Question:

What is Culture?

Culture- a group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by a people.•A group of people who share common beliefs can be recognized as a culture in one of two ways:•(1) the people call themselves a culture•(2) other people (including academics) can label a certain group of people as a culture

Types of culture

•Folk Culture- small, incorporates a homogeneous population.

-Typically rural, and is cohesive in cultural traits.

•The Amish•Navajo people

•Popular Culture- large, incorporates heterogeneous population.

-Typically urban, and experiences quickly changing cultural traits.

Local Culture 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; changes in local culture brought about by the onslaught of popular culture tend to disrupt customs; efforts to conserve local cultures often focus on the local customs.

• Local cultures also affect places:

Establishing neighborhoods

Building churches, community centers•Material Culture- a group includes things they construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, and foods.•Nonmaterial culture- includes beliefs, practices, aesthetics (what they see as attractive), and values of a group of people.

Popular culture diffused (hierarchically)• Fashion diffuses

incredibly quick today.• Dress designers around

the world interpreted or copied Kate Middleton’s, Duchess of Cambridge, gown within hours. Fewer than ten hours after the wedding, dress designers at Kleinfeld Bridal Salon started to sell the replicated dress for $3500 within 48 hours.

Hierarchical Diffusion

• In popular culture, fashion trends spread quite quickly through the interconnected world; it is a classic case of Hierarchical diffusion.

• Hierarchical Diffusion- A form of diffusion in which an idea or innovation spreads by passing first among the most connected places or peoples.

• The hierarchy in the fashion world typically begins with the runways of major fashion houses in world cities, including London. Milan, Paris, and New York, which act as the hearth.

Hearth

• The area where an idea or cultural trait originates.

• In this case, a designer is the hearth, models are the next tier, celebrities and editors and writers of major magazines follow in close order. Anyone walking through a shopping mall can become a “Knower” in the diffusion of a fashion innovation.

Popular Culture

•Traditions, such as painting henna on one’s hands or practicing mystical Kabbalah beliefs, are carried from centuries-old customs of local cultures to the global popular culture through a popular culture icon or through the corporations ( such as the media industry) that work to construct popular culture.

Employing the concept of hierarchical diffusion, describe how you first became a “knower” of your favorite kind of music – where is its hearth, and how did it reach

you?

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

Key Questions

HOW ARE LOCAL CULTURES SUSTAINED? IN WHAT WAYS DO LOCAL AND POPULAR CULTURE INTERACT?

LOCAL CULTURES

Local cultures are sustained through customs. A custom is a practice that a group of people routinely follow. People have customs regarding all parts of their life, from eating and drinking to things such as sports. To sustain a local culture, the people must retain their customs. The customs sometimes change in a small way over a period of time but they are maintained despite the onslaught of popular culture. Researcher Simon Harrison recognizes that local and cultural groups purposefully and often create boundaries around their culture and distinguish themselves from other local cultures. A local culture can create a boundary around itself and try to keep other cultures out in order to avoid “contamination and extinction”

What is assimilation?During the 1800s and into the 1900s, the US government had an official policy of Assimilation. It wanted to assimilate indigenous peoples into the dominant culture in order to make Americans Indians into ‘’Americans’’ rather than just ‘’Indians’’.In the U.S. the federal government forced tribal members to settle in one place and to farm rather than to hunt or to fish. Governments awarded the Indians they thought were more ‘’American’’ with citizenship and paid jobs. In 2008 Canadian and Australian governments apologized for the assimilation policiesThe U.S government has still not formally apologized to American Indians for the policy of assimilation Recently, Puerto Ricans living in Spanish Harlem in NY feel challenged by Mexican immigrants. This is an example of the threat of assimilation to an ethnic neighborhood.

cultural appropriation

Cultural appropriation is the process by which other cultures adopt customs and knowledge and use them for their own benefit.

Harrison explains that cultural appropriation is a major concern for local cultures because people outside the local culture often privatize the cultural knowledge of a local culture to accumulate wealth or prestige.

Local cultures desire to keep other cultures out and keep their own culture intact and to maintain control over customs and knowledge.

Local cultures can work to keep their customs and knowledge to themselves, to avoid cultural appropriation.

rural local cultures

Members of local cultures in rural areas often have an easier time maintaining their cultures because of thief isolation.

By living together in a rural area, members of a local culture can easily keep external influences on the outside.

It is no accident that you will find Anabaptists groups such as the Hutterites, the Amish, and the Mennonite living in rural areas such as South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Anabaptists For the past centuries many Anabaptists groups have migrated to

rural areas other than these three states with the expressed purpose of living apart and staying together.

During the Protestant Reformation, Anabaptist broke away from the Catholic church and the Protestant churches. Anabaptists meaning baptized again. A group of Anabaptist called the Hutterites, eventually migrated to North America in the second half of the 1800s.

The Hutterites are the only Anabaptists group that live communally. Rather than loving with immediate family they live in colonies of 100 from infants to elders. They differ from the Amish in that they accept modern technology.

The most prominent position in a colony is held by the minister, who speaks in archaic German, reading sermons written into the sixteenth century.

The Makkah American IndiansIn the late 1900s, the Makkah American Indians did what the environmentalists considered: the reinstated the whale hunt. This picture to the left are Makkah Indians showing their support for the return of the whale hunt. The Makkah hunted whales for 1500 years but the U.S. stopped them in the 1920s because the whales became endangered. In 1999, the Makkah brought up again the whale hunt. Even though the Makkah wanted to hunt their whales like their ancestors did, their hunts took place in a different context than the year before---instead of using harpoons, they used .50-caliber rifles required by the International Whaling Commission.

Little Sweden USA

The town of little Sweden has transformed into a place where Swedish culture is celebrated every day in gift stores on Main Street and buffets in restaurants. Lindsborg in Kansas benefits economically from tourists who flock to buy trinkets and celebrate Swedish festivals. During festivals, the townspeople, whether they are Swedish or not dress up in peasant clothes to celebrate. Geographer James Shortridge refers to this as neolocalism, seeking out the regional culture and reinvigorating it in response to the uncertainty of the modern world. The Makkah, the Hutterites, and the people of Lindsborg have something In common: each is inundated with a pulsating popular culture that challenges their place in their world. The picture in the left Is a Dala horse a traditional Swedish folk craft that has that has to be adopted as the town symbol.

Urban local cultures Some cultures have successfully built a world apart, a place practice their customs, within a major city by constructing tight-knit ethnic neighborhoods. Runners of New York City can see the example of the ethnic neighborhoods. Ethnic neighborhoods would be examples of the Hadistic Jews in Brooklyn, New York, and Italian Americans in the north end of Boston, Massachusetts, maintain their distinct local cultures in urban environment. Having their own ethnic neighborhood enables members of a local culture in an urban area to set themselves apart and practice their customs, become places of cultural persistence. The greatest challenge to local cultures in cities Is the migration of members of the popular culture or another local or ethnic group into their neighborhood. The local cultures in Brooklyn and the North End work to maintain their culture and customs.

FIELD NOTE:

When running through the Hasidic Jewish neighborhood in the New York City marathon the residents wear traditional dressings and were quietly cheering for the runners. One of the challenges to urban ethnic neighborhoods is a breakdown in the sense of separateness.

Key Question:

What is an ethnic neighborhood? Choose an example of an ethnic neighborhood and describe the traditions, customs, and traits that set the ethnic group and its neighborhood apart from the popular culture. What are some of the internal and external threats to the local culture of the ethnic neighborhood you have chosen?

Local Cultures and Cultural Appropriation

Local Cultures and Cultural Appropriation…

Cultural Appropriation---the process by which cultures adopt customs and knowledge from other cultures and use them for their own benefit.

The process through which something that previously was not regarded as an object to be bought or sold becomes an object that can be bought, sold, and traded in the world market is called commodification.

Commodification affects local cultures in ways such as… These things can be commodified by themselves or

nonmembersTheir nonmaterial culture, their religion, language, and beliefs, can be commodified by nonmemebers.Local cultures may be commodified as a whole

• Material culture• Jewelry and clothing • Food and games

When commodification occurs the question of authenticityauthenticity follows.

When local cultures or customs are commodified, usually one image or experience is typecast as the “authentic” image or experience of that culture, and it is that image or experience that the tourist or buyer desires.

To gain an “authentic” sense of place, people need to experience the complexity of a place directly rather than the stereotype of a place.

An “authentic” local culture does not fit into a single experience or image, rather an “authentic” local culture is one that is complex and not stereotyped.

Authenticity of Places

“Authentic” tourist destinations are deigned to exploit the mystical in local cultures. A South African theme park, The Lost City, capitalizes on mystical images of Africa described in a legend, thereby “freezing” the continent to a time that never existed. Sun City is a good example of the commodification of nature.A local culture need not be “mystical” in order to create an authentic place. The city of Branson, MO is capitalizing on a local culture in the Ozarks that melds a number of people and perceptions in one place so that tourists can consume the place. Branson has effectively tapped its local customs such as food, history, and music to create an “authentic” identity for Branson that sets it apart from neighboring towns.

The commodification of local customs freezes customs in place and time for consumption, with claims of “authenticity” abounding.

The search for “authentic” local cultures implies an effort to identify peoples who are seemingly untouched by change or external influence.

The commodification process of a local custom or artifact often leads to the development of an image of “authenticity” which amounts to an example of cultural stereotyping.

The search for an “authentic” local culture merely perpetuates myths about local cultures.

Members of local cultures are constantly renegotiating their place in this world and making sense of who they are in the midst of the popular culture onslaught.

Field Note: The Dingle Peninsula in Ireland was primarily an

agricultural village just a few decades ago. They have a pub called The Little Bridge Pub in the older town, and this is an example of an “authentic” pub.

In 1830 there were over 290 local breweries in Ireland. The number declined to less than 10 in 1980. Today, Irish beer and prefabricated Irish pubs are marketed to the world by global brewing corporation, Guinness.

The Irish Pub Co. has designed pubs throughout the world including the US, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and New Zealand but only one in South America (Buenos Aires) and none in Africa.

What is the last place you went to or the last product you purchased that claimed to be “authentic?” What are the challenges of defending the authenticity of this place or product while refuting the authenticity

of the other similar places or products?

Key questionHow is Popular Culture Diffused?

How do cultural traits diffuse?

Relocation Diffusion: an idea being spread from the old areas to new onesHierarchical Diffusion: an idea spread by one place to anotherStimulus Diffusion: cultural adaption introduced from another place Hearth: the point of origin of a cultural trait.Expansion DiffusionContagious Diffusion

How do cultural traits diffuse? How fast do they diffuse? What factors determine the speed of diffusion? The innovation of agriculture took nearly ten thousand years to diffuse around the world.

The diffusion of developments such as the printing press or the industrial revolution was measured over the course of one hundred years or more.

In the twentieth century, pace of diffusion shrank to months, weeks, days, and in some cases even hours.

How do cultural traits diffuse?

In 2009, China banned Facebook, Twitter, and Google. One third of China’s 1.3 billion people have internet access.

In 2011, the Social Network, RenRen, boasted one hundred and sixty five million Chinese users.

Chinese who want to use Facebook have to use proxy servers to get around the government’s ban.

Phish concert locations

The hearth of Phish concerts is in the northeastern United States.

The Dave Matthews Band established a hearth in Charlottesville, Virginia and gained popularity through hierarchical diffusion among college towns. Bands like Dave Matthews that begin on college campuses or in college towns build a hearth for their sound’s diffusion first through contagious diffusion and then through hierarchical diffusion.

Merchants of Cool

2001 PBS documentary analyzes the roles corporations and marketing agencies play in creating popular culture. According to Sharon Lee a founding partner of Look-Look, a research company specializing in youth culture, the company has “correspondents out in the field who report on what's going on. They do various different things. They have kids complete surveys. They go out and they find kids who report on certain things that are happening in their area, who will take pictures, who will take a videotape. They send all that stuff in. We look at it. We compile it. We look for trends and themes that are happening through all the information, and that's the stuff that we put on our website..” This description is a perfect story of the hierarchical diffusion of traits and trends in popular culture.

Reterritorialization- the process in which people start to produce an aspect of popular culture themselves, doing so in the context of their local culture and place, making it their own. For example, Hip Hop grew out of the iner cities of NY and LA during the 1980s and 90s, representing the hearths of of Hip Hop. Neighborhood venues around the US became the best place to enjoy an authentic performance, and the lyrics reflected the importance of local places to the music itself. The Hip Hop from these hearths diffused abroad, especially to major cities in Europe. MC Solaar (top right) in France, Die Fantastischen Vier in Germany, and Jovanotti (bottom right) in Italy each made Hip Hop their own by writing music that connected with the youth of their country.

Key Question

Think of your favorite local bands. In what ways do the music, attitudes, styles, and lyrical references of the band reflect local culture? In what ways does the band attempt to reterritorialize popular culture in the local context?

How do cultural traits diffuse?

Places that lack transportation and communications technologies are know more removed from interconnected places than ever.

New technologies create the infrastructure through which innovations diffuse.

American musical groups can diffuse by beginning in college bands or in college areas such as a campus ground.

Which applies more to popular culture?

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 (transportation and communication) among places. Geographer David Harvey refers to the increasing speed by which innovations in popular culture diffuse as time-space compression.

Fashion Latest phone

Why are popular culture traits usually diffused hierarchically?

How is fashion and having the latest in popular culture an example of hierarchical diffusion?

Thinking geographically

What is the last place you went to or the last product you purchased that claimed to be “authentic?” What are the challenges of defending the authenticity of this place or product while refuting the authenticity of other similar places or products?

How do cultural traits diffuse?

Hearth: the point of origin of a cultural trait.

Expansion Diffusion

Contagious diffusion

Hierarchical diffusion

Stimulation Diffusion

Relocation Diffusion

EXAMPLES OF DIFFUSION

•Expansion Diffusion- e.g. Islam spread from its hearth area in Saudi Arabia to other areas around and outside of its hearth while remaining strong in Mecca and Medina.

•Contagious diffusion- e.g. The outward spread of the commonly known fast food restaurant, McDonalds from where is started in the United States to a worldwide status.

•Hierarchical diffusion- e.g. Hip-Hop music diffused in a hierarchical pattern, spreading from a few large inner cities to other large inner cities, and then to smaller inner cities, and finally to more-suburban and rural places.

•Stimulus Diffusion- e.g. the diffusion of fast, mass-produced food in the late 20th century led to the introduction of the hamburger in India where the Hindu religion prohibits consumption of beef so retailers sold burgers made of vegetable products.

•Relocation Diffusion- e.g. The Bantu people migrated from place to place in sub-Saharan Africa spreading their language and bronze tools.

• Baseball, football, and basketball are historically the big 3 sports in the U.S.

- All benefited from advancements in transportation technology, communication technology, and institutionalization.

Diffusing from its hearth

An example of something diffusing from its hearth is skateboarding.-Skateboarding diffused from its hearth in Southern California (1970)- Baseball, which is one of the big three, took a back seat to skateboarding in 2001.

•Tony Hawk and Shaun White are the original anchors for replacing the big three: baseball, football, basketball, with surfing, skateboarding, and snowboarding.

- In other words, they expanded three new sports into mainstream popular culture.

Example of how popular culture is diffused

Ex. Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) - The Fight Network reports the UFC has

diffused to over 130 countries, territories and jurisdictions, reaching 430 million homes worldwide, in 20 different languages. The hearth of mixed martial arts fighting which grew to the UFC in 1993 was Brazil.

Popular culture

• The influence of Europe, the U.S., Japan, and South Korea in global popular culture makes many people feel threatened by cultural homogenization.

• North America, Western Europe, Japan, India, and South Korea currently have the greatest influence on popular culture.

Assimilation policies

- American, Canadian, Russian, Australian, and New Zealand assimilation policies practiced by governments were official policies designed for the express purpose of distributing and changing indigenous and local cultures.

Influences on popular culture

At the global scale, North America, Western Europe, Japan, India, and South Korea exert the greatest influence on popular culture at present.

North America influences: movies, television, music, sports, and fast food.

Western Europe influences: fashion, television, art, and philosophy.Japan influences: children's television programs, electronic games, and new entertainment technology's.

India influences: mainly moviesSouth Korea influences: television dramas, movies, and popular music.

Hallyu in Asia (Field note) • Hallyu- waves of Southern Korean popular

culture, including television shows, movies, fashion, and music diffused throughout the East and South-east of Asia, including Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines and later even to the Middle East and East Europe.

• “Korean wave,” or “Korean Fever,” it refers to the sudden increase in popularity of South Korean culture in the last ten years.

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

Key Question

Cultural Landscape

The visible human imprint on the landscape. Reflect the values, norms, and aesthetics of a culture.By studying cultural landscapes you gain insight into

the social structures of local cultures- How have people changed and shaped the landscape?- What buildings, statues, and so forth have they erected?- How do landscapes reflect the values of a culture?

PlacelessnessThe loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape to the point that one place looks like the nextGeographer Edward Ralph coined the term

Ex: you drive past Arby's, Walmart, and McDonald’s, then you drive a couple miles and drive past the same groups of stores.

Convergence of Cultural Landscapes: Diffusion of architectural forms and planning ideas around the

world.

Convergence of Cultural Landscapes:

1. Particular architectural forms and planning idea have diffused around the world.

Ex: skyscrapers 2. Individual business and

products have become so widespread that they now leave a distinctive landscape stamp on far flung places

Ex: Hard rock café in Germany 3. The wholesale borrowing of

idealized landscape images Ex: The Venetian Hotel on the

Las Vegas strip is built to resemble Venice, Italy

Global-Local Continuum – What happens at one scale is not independent of what happens at other scales; the idea posits that the world is comprised of an interconnected series of relationships that extend across space.

What happens in an individual place is the product of interaction across scales

Glocalization – The process in which local places mediate and alter regional, national, and global processes

The character of place ultimately comes out of a multitude of dynamic interactions among local distinctiveness and wider-scaled events and influences

Morphology – size and shape of places, buildings, streets, and infrastructures

Cultural Imperialism-the dominance of one culture over another. For example US fast-food chains, pop music, and films have infiltrated other countries across the world. Traditional British, French, Japanese, Spanish and Russian cultures have been widely disseminated. Effects: diluting of traditional cultural practices and social systems; cultural extinction where traditional ways of life are lost; linguistic diversity as native tongues are abandoned in favor of English or French.

Mormons

o Geographer Donald Meinig, Richard Francavigilia, and Allen Noble have studied the Mormons

oMormons began in New York, then Joseph Smith and his followers moved to Independence, Missouri.

oFrom there they migrated west to Salt Lake, Utah and spread into Arizona, Nevada, and Idaho

oOne fundamental characteristic of the Mormon cultural landscape is farmsteads and houses clustered together in the plains to form farming villages.

Homestead Act – 1862 US law that encouraged farmers to establish single farmsteads where a farm family lived alone of their 60 acres and the nearest neighbor was down the dirt road, many miles away leading to extreme loneliness

In Malaysia, the citizens work together to share rice and prepare for floods

Focus on the cultural landscape of your college campus. Think about the concept of placelessness. Determine whether your campus is a “placeless place” or if the cultural landscape of your college reflects the unique identity of the place. Imagine you are hired to build a new student union on your campus. How could you design the building to reflect the uniqueness of your college?