1. Local and popular culture
What are local and popular cultures?
How are local cultures sustained?
How is popular culture diffused?
How can cultures be seen in the landscape?

2. What are local (folk) cultures?
A group of people in a particular place
who identify themselves as a community,
with shared experiences,
Customs – actions routinely followed
Traits - characteristic used to judge a person
Traditions – long-established rules of behavior,
actively maintained to distinguish themselves from others

3. The local culture:
Accepts or rejects diffusing cultural traits
Religion
Community celebrations
Family structure
Isolation from other cultures
Constantly redefining themselves based on interactions with other cultures
Includes material culture (human made, visible stuff – structures, clothing, food, activities that change the land in some way)
Built environment, architecture
stuff that people use (and how they use it)
Music, art, poetry, prose
Clothing styles, personal grooming
Nonmaterial culture (beliefs, practices, aesthetics, values)

4. Local Culture
“ways of life” practiced by small, isolated, homogeneous groups
Geographers focus on where local cultures are located in space
Identify each particular custom's
origin,
Diffusion,
integration with the other characteristics
Where are these teenagers from?
Can you tell by their clothing?
Can you tell by their hairstyle?

5. How are cultures sustained?
Local cultures are sustained through shared customs,
often the local culture has to isolate themselves from outside world (Mormon Church)
ethnic groups tended to cluster in urban neighborhoods
19th and early 20th C US promoted assimilation (acquire English, learn new skills, public education, self-identify as American
melting pot metaphor
1960’s – attempt to re-establish ethnic heritage (Irish- American, Polish-American)
beef stew metaphor

6. Local cultures are commonly found in relatively isolated rural areas
Easier to control access
Avoid interference by governments
Create and define their own place
Maintain traditions (Makah Indians)
Urban ethnic neighborhoods are now remnants of immigrant neighborhoods
Identified by street names, names of churches, food shops
Typical pattern is for 2nd generations to move out, 4th generations attempt to re-establish traditional place and customs, may be more ethnic than the original neighborhood

7. Defining element of local culture is place
This becomes the symbol of the culture’s existence
Attempts to establish a new place that will support traditions and customs neolocalism
Sometimes cultures are appropriated by the “outside world” (sports teams named for Native Americans)
Commercial interests may patent cultural “secrets”
Local cultures work to hide their defining attributes to avoid outsiders taking ownership

8. Relationship between material culture and physical environment
Folk culture develops over time without outside influence
Changes happen with migration diffusion
New settlement, still no outside influence

9. Commodification - name, good, idea, person regarded as an object that can be bought or sold (Amish bric a brac, Indian sweat lodges, Irish craic)
Leads to questions about authenticity which can only be discovered by interacting with the whole culture, not just the gift shop
Search for mystical sense of authentic cultural place
Often recreates a fictional idea about a reality that never existed (downtown in Tradition)
Based on stereotype of culture (importation of “authentic” Irish pubs)
Real local cultures are dynamic

10. Popular Culture
Large heterogeneous groups that share a particular attribute
Folk – many attributes shared by few people
Pop – few attributes shared by many
Where are these teenagers from?
Can you tell by their clothing?
Can you tell by their hairstyle?

11. How is popular culture diffused?
Traditionally, innovations would be very limited by distance decay time to diffuse was measured in months, years, decades and could be stopped by political divisions or interference
Today, due to effective communications and marketing networks, time- space compression has made the world smaller (ideas move around the world fast)
Relocation diffusion – physical movement of people
Expansion diffusion – transfer without people moving
Contagious – rapid, widespread, “viral” (new medicine, web ideas)
Stimulus – underlying principle spreads without specific brands (technology, McDonalds in India))
Innovation – rapid spread of technology
Hierarchical –
Maladaptive – innovation that causes problems in the new area (housing styles, technology w/o infrastructure)

12. that are subject to rapid change and Influence heterogeneous groups
Popular culture
Learned habits and traits including clothing, art, music, literature, food
that are subject to rapid change and
Influence heterogeneous groups
Hierarchical diffusion through transportation, marketing media, and communications networks
Who are the trend setters for the latest new thing
The cultural hearth is usually in a major urban node
When too many people “know” about the pop culture, it may lose its appeal

13. Diffusion of Pop culture
Node
Hierarchical diffusion -
Attribute is created at hearth (node)
Spreads out through transportation, communication
Type of communication may increase acceptance by select group (in-crowd)
transportation
communication
1st enactors
trendies
hinterlands

14. Hierarchical diffusion in action
POP MUSIC
1900 – 1940s Tin Pan Alley in NYC money selling sheet music
1930's In US, radio networks established, paid to play songs
WWII – Armed Forces Radio brings American music to Europe
English is universal language lingua franca
1950s - Radio Free Europe sends pop music throughout Europe
1960s – communication satellites
Non-English speakers record pop music in English

15. because pop culture is heterogeneous (may include members from many cultural groups), local (national) cultures try to reterritorialize (incorporate local values or symbols into the new pop
minimum % of local artists
use of local language

16. Relationship between material culture and the physical environment
Folk culture is based on the local environment in isolation so there are few changes
Migration diffusion attempts to recreate this environment in the new area through people moving into the new place
Pop culture has many interactions which leads to rapid diffusion (could include internet, magazines, TV, movies, music)
Result is:
Folk culture varies from place to place at any given time
Pop culture varies from time to time at any given place (what is the latest hit music?) (how long will it be popular?)

17. Cultural landscape
cultural landscape - (add to definition) visible imprint of human activity
popular culture affects local cultures as local cultures lose their visual identity, leads to placelessness
chain restaurants, gas stations, retail stores add sameness to communities
“colonial style” McDonalds? Disney Main Street idealized landscape
large urban areas have own accepted design based on height of skyscrapers

18. glocalization
global-local continuum what happens at local scale is affected by what happens at larger scales
local Walmart can only work with Walmart's world-wide operations and distribution system (Fl Walmarts sell California oranges)
glocalization - local cultures mediate (change) global processes
Walmart may sell some items of local interest, usually isolated from their typical merchandise (UF, FSU shirts,

19. Housing types homes are most direct representation of cultural values
may need to be adapted to new conditions (sod houses on Great Plains, log cabins from Sweden)
4 distinct folk-house regions - (New England salt box, Mid Atlantic, Southern Tidewater, western ranch) understand how the attributes reflect local conditions
diffusion routes - what was expansion based on?