FOLK & POPULAR CULTURE

Chapter 4

WHAT ARE THE FIVE MOST COMMON THINGS YOU EAT?

What are the five weirdest things you eaten?

What makes them weird?

Would You Eat?

• 1) pig • 2) raw fish • 3) eel• 4) alligator• 5) tree grubs• 6) cow brain• 7) cow stomach • 8) duck• 9) snail• 10) ants

• 11) turtle• 12) jellyfish• 13) scorpion• 14) frog• 15) snake• 16) raw chicken• 17) raw horse meat• 18) pork blood• 19) puppy• 20) human toe nails

Culture

• Is the body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute the distinct tradition of a group of people.

• It combines three things: 1) values, 2)material artifacts, and 3) political institutions

Material Culture

Comes from the survival activities of everyone’s daily life

Should welfare include the following?

• Clean water?• Medicine?• Food?• Clothes?• Home?• Computer?• Transportation?• Plastic surgery?

Arts & Entertainment

• What makes art meaningful to a cultural group?

• Who decides what is meaningful for the whole group?

• What kind of art would you say best represents what is meaningful to American society?

• Music, visual art, plays, theater

Recreation

• What makes recreation meaningful to a cultural group?

• What kind of recreation would you say best represents what is leisurely to American society?

• Sports, Art, Philosophy, Eating

Individual vs the Group

• Habit is a repetitive act that a particular individual performs.

• What are some of your habits concerning 1) what you wear 2) recreation 3) eat/ drink 4) behavior-wise

• Custom is a repetitive act of a group, performed to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group? (widely adopted habits by a group)

• What are some customs of Americans?

• When you greet someone?• When you eat with your

hands?• When you eat with a fork?• When you have to relieve

yourself?

Folk Culture:

• is traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas. (small scale)

Popular Culture

• is found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics. (Large scale)

• How does it work?• Based on rapid simultaneous global

connections through communications systems, transportation networks, and other frequent changes in popular customs.

Geographers want to know

WHERE folk and popular cultures are located in SPACE

DIFFUSIONDIFFUSIONORIGIN

INTEGRATION

Built Environments

• Relation between material culture & physical environment

Globalization is becoming more dominant, threatening the survival of unique folk cultures.

WHERE DO FOLK AND POPULAR CULTURES ORIGINATE AND DIFFUSE

C4K1

Objectives

• Origin of Folk and Popular Cultures• Diffusion of Folk and Popular Cultures

Origin of Folk & Popular Cultures

• Unknown origins/ dates of folk cultures, whereas pop culture is product of MDCs. Why?

• Industrial technology & leisure time. (agricultural to service/ manufacturing society)

Origin of Folk Music

• Convey information on daily life, life cycles, natural phenomenon

• Anonymous, orally transmitted, later generations modify

1894• I once did know a girl named

Grace– • I'm wukkin' on de levee; She

done brung me to dis sad disgrace levee.

• I been wukkin' on de railroad All de livelong day,

• I been wukkin' on de railroad Ter pass de time away.

• Doan' yuh hyah de whistle blowin'? Ris up, so uhly in de mawn;

• Doan' yuh hyah de cap'n shouin', "Dinah, blow yo' hawn?"

• Sing a song o' the city; Roll dat cotton bale; Niggah aint half so happy As when he's out o' jail

• Norfolk foh its oystahshells, Boston foh its beans,

• Chahleston foh its rice an' cawn, But foh niggahs New Awleens.

1927

Origin of Popular Music

• Written for specifically to be sold to large numbers of people.

• Highly technical… can’t be replicated (copyright).

• Origin: 1900, NYC, provide music for variety shows.

• Armed Forces Radio: Diffusion of Pop music

How did Hip Hop become Pop?

• Originated as inner-city folk music in the 1970… NYC. What happened to the folk?

• How do you take a folk music and make it commercial?

• The same way you can make Jesus’s birthday and make it Christmas Season

COMMERCIALLY DEPENDENT

• 1) REPACKAGE IT SO PEOPLE BUY IT… • 2) MAKE IT A PLEASURABLE EXPERIENCE SO

THEY GET HOOKED… • 3) THEN FEED THEM NEW VERSIONS

WHENEVER POSSIBLE SO THEY WILL ALWAYS BE A PAYING CUSTOMER

HIP HOP BEYOND THE BEATS & RHYMES

Coming to Portable 33

Diffusion of Folk and Popular Cultures

• PC nodes of rapid diffusion 1) Hollywood for film 2) Madison Ave for advertising

• Folk Culture diffuses primarily through migration.

Case Study: Amish

• Who: Jakob Ammann 1600 Swiss Mennonite Bishop

• What: conservative Christians who don’t adopt modern ways.

• When: 1600• Where: Europe to

Pennsylvania to Kentucky• Why: religious freedom

and cheap land

Sports: Hierarchical Diffusion

• Soccer: obscure origin: Kick the Dane’s head

• Globalization of Soccer: work recreation to main event

• 1863: Assoc-iation to Soccer

• Diffused through British Empire and Industrialization

• American Baseball has similar story. Why didn’t American football have the same story?

THE END

MEET ATHROPOLOGIST WADE DAVIS

WE promote diversity in Globalization while killing it in our indigenous communities.

The disappearance of local folk customs reduces local diversity in the world and culture expression that arises from it.

Folk customs along with language, religion, and ethnicity that took thousands of years to develop are experiencing a form of genocide.