1. Unit 3 Culture

2. Playing For Change

3. What Is Culture?
Culture consists of all the shared products of human groups, both physical and abstract. A society consists of the people who share a culture. (Technology, Language, Symbols, Values, Norms)
Known as material culture
Includes automobiles, books, building, clothing, computers, and cooking utensils
Physical products
Known as nonmaterial culture
Beliefs, family patterns, ideas, language, political and economic systems, rules, skills, and work practices
Abstract products –

4. The Components of Culture
Technology
Refers to objects and the rules for using them
Any tool and its usage
Any rule that makes a use of an object illegal
Symbols
The basis of human culture
Any words, gestures, or images
Different cultures use different symbols

5. The Components of Culture
Language
Organization of written or spoken symbols into a standardized system
Can be used to express any idea
Values
Values are shared beliefs
Distinguish between good and bad, right and wrong, desirable and undesirable
Group’s values help to determine character and culture

6. The Components of Culture
Norms
Shared rules of conduct in specific situations
Folkways do not carry heavy moral significance
Mores carry heavy moral significance
Laws are written and enforced by government

9. Symbols

11. Culture
Choose a subculture to examine as a sociologist. Rubenstein says that culture is a combination of: Values, Material Artifacts, Political Institutions Material Culture – visible objects that a group possesses and leaves behind

12. Name that Culture
For each of the following images name the culture that is represented and their location on Earth. Images will address: Material Culture (CH4) and Beliefs and Values including: Language (CH5), Religion (CH6), and Ethnicity (CH7)

13. Culture Concepts Habit – A repetitive act that an individual performs
Custom – A repetitive act of a group performed to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group. A custom is a habit that a group of people have widely adopted. A collection of customs produces culture.

14. Folk and Popular Culture
Folk Culture- practiced primarily by a small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas.
Popular Culture- is found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics

15. Folk and Popular Culture
Scale – A territory covered by a folk culture is smaller than that of a popular culture.
Geographers study: 1. a particular social custom’s origin, it’s diffusion, and integration with other social characteristics. 2. the relationship between material culture and the physical environment.

16. CH 4: Key Issue 1: Where do Folk and Popular Cultures Originate and Diffuse?
Origin of Folk and Popular Cultures Popular culture is often a product of the economically more developed countries especially in North America, Western Europe , and Japan Popular Culture arises from advancements in industrial technology and increased leisure time.

17. The Concepts of Culture

18. Culture Trait
A single, distinguishing feature of regular occurrence within a culture, such as the use of chopsticks of the observance of a particular caste system. A single element of learned behavior. Examples?

19. Cultural Diffusion
The Spread of people culture across space. Diffusion - Stimulus, Contagious, Hierarchical

20. Acculturation This is the process of cultural change and psychological change that results following meeting between cultures.
Assimilation
The process through which people lose originally differentiating traits, such as dress, speech, particularities, or mannerisms when they come into contact with another society or culture. Often it is the weaker culture that is usurped by the more dominant culture.
Multiculturalism
Of many cultures.

21. Cultural Region
A portion of the earth’s surface occupied by population sharing recognizable and distinctive cultural characteristics.
Vernacular Region "An area defined by local, ordinary folks' subjective perceptions reflecting their feelings & images about key place characteristics."

22. Vernacular Region

23. Cultural Hearth
Area where innovations in culture began and from which such cultural elements spread.

24. Cultural/Food Production Hearths

25. Pop (changes from time to time)vs. Folk (changes from place to place)
Large groups of people
Heterogeneous groups
Changes quickly
Dispersed – Global scale
Ex. Wearing jeans, eating fast food,
Small, isolated groups
Homogeneous groups
Slow to change
Clustered – local scale
Little interaction w/ others
Ex. Wearing a sari, driving a horse and buggy

26. 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.

28. Diffusion of Culture Pop diffuses…? Folk diffuses…?
Hierarchically through major centers i.e. NYC, LA, Chicago, London
Pretty soon, what’s there is here
Folk diffuses…?
Relocation i.e. movement of Amish people from PA. to KY.

29. Why is Folk Culture Clustered?
Isolation
Keeps folk cultures from changing much
Physical Environment
Limits some choices of how people can survive
Connects to POSSIBILISM!!
Some cultures in similar environments have different cultural traits
Some cultures in different environments have similar cultural traits (pop culture)
Some examples of these…

30. Why Do Folk Cultures survive or NOT?
Stunning portraits of the world’s vanishing tribes
Before They Pass Away – Jimmy Nelson TED Talk (13.31)

31. Why is P. C. Widely Dispersed?
Diffusion of Housing
Housing becomes standard across cultures in MDCs
Cheaper to build
Built by professionals
Housing varies across time NOT space
Diffusion of Clothing
Dress = Status/Income
(Folk Culture: Dress = Cultural Group)
Clothing choices NOT environmentally driven
Diffusion of Food
MDCs consume LOTS of snack foods & alcohol (higher standards of living)
Huge $$$ on advertising to encourage consumption

32. Diffusion of TV, 1954–2005
Fig. 4-14: Television has diffused widely since the 1950s, but some areas still have low numbers of TVs per population.

33. Role of Tech. in Diffusion Pop Culture
Diffusion of TV
Most popular leisure activity in the world
Most popular means of communicating pop culture around the world
Most MDC countries have at least 1 TV in every household
Diffusion of the Internet
Growing means of communicating pop culture
Beginning to diffuse from U.S. to other MDCs more rapidly and now to developing and LDCs

35. Problems of Popular Culture Globalization
Impact on the Environment
Uniform landscapes = most suburban areas VERY similar
Depletion of nat. resources
Golf courses use up a lot of land
Over-killing of animals for products (Africa)
Eating meat instead of grains – inefficient and expensive; Suitability for LDCs??
Pollution
MDCs create MUCH more waste than LDCs (where folk culture is more prevalent)
(Keep in mind folk cultures also produce waste)

37. Does Urban Sprawl = Progress?

38. 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, indoor ski resort in Dubai.

39. Ski Dubai?

40. McDonald’s, Tokyo, Japan
Swimming Pool, West Edmonton Mall, Canada
McDonald’s, Jerusalem

41. Countries without a Mickey Ds

42. Faces from Different Cultures

45. A Question About Culture
Is the internet doing more to preserve local cultures or destroy them?