2. Key Issues
Where are folk and popular leisure activities distributed?
Where are folk and popular material culture distributed?
Why is access to folk and popular culture unequal?
Why do folk and popular culture face sustainability challenges?

3. Culture Definitions
Cultural landscape – the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the physical landscape (otherwise known as built environment)
Cultural identity – One’s feeling of belonging to a certain cultural group
Cultural hearth - an area where new ideas and innovations spring up and spread to other parts of the world.
Modern cultural hearths are urban areas like New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo.
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4. Early Cultural Hearths
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5. Key issue 1: where are folk and popular leisure activities distributed?

6. Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?
How culture influences behavior - the difference between habit and custom:
1. Habit is a repetitive act performed by an individual.
One college student wears jeans when the rest wear dress pants.
2. Custom is a repetitive act performed by a group.
All college students wear jeans.
Habit is a personal phenomenon while custom is a social phenomenon

7. Habits -> Customs -> Culture
All of a group’s customs come together to form a culture
Like a patchwork quilt
College students wear jeans, drink Starbucks coffee, eat pizza, and listen to hip hop music
Culture
Custom
Custom
Custom
Habit
Habit
Habit

8. What is culture? Types of culture: 1. Material culture:
Survival culture – food, clothing, shelter
Leisure culture – the arts and recreation
2. Non-material culture:
Religious beliefs, political views, language, values

9. Folk Culture and Popular Culture
Folk Culture – traditionally practiced among small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas
Popular Culture – found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain customs despite differences in other personal characteristics
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14. Characteristics of Folk and Popular Culture
1. Origin
Folk Culture
Often in less developed countries
Unknown hearth and date
Popular Culture
Product of developed countries
Known hearth and date – often a specific person or corporation
Culture originates at a hearth, a center of innovation.
Popular music and other elements of popular culture, such as food and clothing, arise from a combination of advances in industrial technology and increases in leisure time.

15. Characteristics of Folk and Popular Culture
2. Diffusion
Folk Culture
Smaller scale and slower diffusion
Spreads mostly through relocation diffusion
Popular Culture
Rapid and extensive diffusion
Spreads through hierarchical or contagious diffusion
Technology spreads pop culture rapidly
Examples include American popular music during the 1940s when the Armed forces Radio Network broadcast music to American soldiers and to citizens where American soldiers were stationed or fighting during WWII.

16. Characteristics of Folk and Popular Culture
3. Distribution
Folk Culture
Generally occurs in a smaller physical space
Often an isolated location
Popular Culture
Widely distributed across many countries
Main obstacle to access is lack of income to purchase the goods

17. Meeting of cultures can result in:
1. Assimilation occurs when the dominant group absorbs the culture of the minority group and the minority’s culture is lost
This sometimes occurs over several generations
2. Acculturation is where the culture of the dominant group is adopted without losing the traditions and customs of the original culture
The dominant culture is often changed by the minority culture, too
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18. Assimilation

19. Acculturation

20. Multiculturalism and Monoculturalism
Multiculturalism describes the existence, acceptance, or promotion of multiple cultural traditions within a single nation or region
Occurs through immigration or annexation of new regions
United States, Australia, Canada, Brazil, United Kingdom, New Zealand
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21. Monoculturalism is the practice of actively preserving a culture via the exclusion of external influences
Characterized by racial homogeneity, strong sense of nationalism, geographic isolation, or political isolation (sometimes but not always under a totalitarian regime)
Occurs today in Japan, China, South Korea, North Korea, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland
Hitler’s ultimate goal
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22. Key issue 2: where are folk and popular material culture distributed?

23. Where Are Folk and Popular Culture Distributed?
Folk culture varies more by location than by time period
You might find a culture unique to a certain group living in a certain area, that has remained unchanged for decades or more
Popular culture varies more by time period than by location
Fashions change with the decades but are universal across the U.S. during that decade

24. Key issue 3: why is access to folk and popular culture unequal?

25. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
Electronic Diffusion of Popular Culture
Principal obstacle to accessing popular culture is lack of access to electronic media.
TV is the most important media format because:
Watching TV is most popular leisure activity in the world.
TV is most important mechanism for rapidly diffusing popular culture around the world.

26. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
Electronic Diffusion of Popular Culture
1. Diffusion of TV: Mid-Twentieth Century
TV technology originated simultaneously in multiple hearths in the early twentieth century: UK, France, Germany, Japan, Soviet Union, and the United States.
Through the second half of the 20th century, television diffusive from the United States to Europe and other developed countries and then to developing countries.

27. FIGURE 4-28 DIFFUSION OF TV Televisions per 1,000 inhabitants in (top) 1954, (middle) 1970, and (bottom) Television has diffused from North America and Europe to other regions of the world. The United States and Canada had far more TV sets per capita than any other country as recently as the 1970s, but several European countries now have higher rates of ownership.

28. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
2. Diffusion of the Internet: Late Twentieth Century
Diffusion follows pattern established by TV but at a more rapid rate.
1995 – less than 1% of the world’s people had an internet connection
Today – around 46%

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31. Internet Users by Country, 2016
China – 721,434,547 (52%)
India – 462,124,989 (35%)
U.S ,942,363 (89%)
Brazil – 139,111,185 (66%)
Japan – 115,111,185 (91%)
Lowest percentage: Eritrea 1%
Highest percentage: Iceland 100%
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32. Worldwide diffusion of TV took half a century, while the same diffusion pattern of the internet took only a decade.
FIGURE 4-32 DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET Internet users per 1,000 inhabitants in (top) 1995, (middle) 2000, and (bottom) Compare to the diffusion of TV ( Figure
4-28 ). Internet service is following a pattern in the twenty-first century similar to the pattern of diffusion of television in the twentieth century. The United States started out with a much higher rate of usage than elsewhere, until other countries caught up. The difference is that the diffusion of television took a half-century and the diffusion of the Internet only a decade.

33. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
3. Diffusion of Social Media: Twenty-First Century
Same diffusion pattern as TV and Internet
Facebook
156.5 million Facebook users in U.S.
1.71 billion worldwide
Twitter
316 million users worldwide today
Top 10 countries by number of Twitter users: USA, Brazil, Japan, UK, Indonesia, India, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, Canada
Snapchat
150 million users worldwide
YouTube
1 billion users each month
Same pattern holds true for YouTUBE.

34. FIGURE 4-35 DISTRIBUTION OF TWITTER USERS More than one-third of the world’s Twitter users were in the United States in 2011.

35. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
Challenges in Accessing Electronic Media
1. External Threat: Developed Countries Control the Media
TV industry is dominated by Japan, UK, and United States.
Leaders of developing countries concerned about American values being imposed on viewers:
Upward social mobility
Freedom for women
Glorification of youth
Stylized violence

36. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
News media in developing countries is dominated by the government, whereas media in the United States is largely owned by private commercial stations.
Many African and Asian government officials criticize freedom of the press in the United States.
Allegedly our media does not convey an accurate view of other countries.

37. 2. Internal Threat: Social Media Limiting Access to TV
Satellite dishes enable people to access information that would otherwise be censored by their governments.
Some governments attempt to limit Internet content including:
Political Content - Opposition to local government
Social Content - Socially sensitive material, such as gambling or sex
Conflict and Security - Armed conflict, border disputes, or militant groups
Internet Tools - , Internet hosting, and Internet searches

38. FIGURE 4-37 LIMITING FREEDOM ON THE INTERNET Countries limit access to four types of Internet content: (top) political content, (second) social content, (third) security content, (bottom) Internet tools.

39. Key issue 4: why do folk and popular culture face sustainability challenges?

40. Sustainability Challenges for Folk Culture:
Increased connection with popular culture makes maintaining centuries-old practices difficult.
Impacts of globalization on the landscape creates challenges in maintaining a unique landscape.
Global diffusion of popular culture beliefs has challenged the lower status of women that is embedded in some folk customs.

41. Popular customs can negatively impact the environment:
“Pollution” of the Landscape
Uniform landscapes used to generate product recognition - motels and fast-food restaurants
Depletion of Scarce Natural Resources
Diffusion of some popular customs increases demand for animal products (fur, meat, leather) and for raw materials
Popular culture tends to modify, control, pollute, or “ruin” the environment