Culture Regions

1. Culture Regions • Folk Culture Regions • Folk Cultural Diffusion • Folk Ecology • Cultural Integration in Folk Geography • Folk Landscapes

2. Cultural integration in folk geography • Interaction between folk and popular cultures • Few folk groups escape some interaction with the larger world • A lively exchange is constantly on-going between folk and popular cultures • Most commonly, the folk absorb ideas filtering down from popular culture

3. Cuzco, Peru

4. Cuzco, Peru • Cuzco, an Inca capital, is a major tourist destinations. Here, llama wool sweaters, ponchos, and rugs are displayed for the tourist trade. Woven on hand-looms, they have natural wool

5. Cuzco, Peru • colors or are colored with mineral or vegetable dyes. • Similar products are also produced by factory machines using chemical dyes for trendy colors for appeal to mass market.

6. Cultural integration in folk geography • Interaction between folk and popular cultures • Occasionally elements of folk culture penetrate the popular society • Folk handicrafts and arts often fetch high prices among city dwellers • They may exhibit quality, attention to detail, and uniqueness absent in factory-made goods • Some folk goods are revised to make them more marketable • Popular folk items include-Irish fisherman sweaters, Shaker furniture, and Panamanian Indian molas

7. Mountain moonshine • Home manufacture of corn whiskey in the Upland South has been going on since the early pioneering days of the 1700s • Probably diffused to America with the pioneering Scotch-Irish • The word whisky has a Celtic origin, probably from the Scottish Gaelic uisge beatha (“water of life”) • Home manufacture of whisky has occurred in many Appalachian hill settlements for 200 years

9. Mountain moonshine • Whiskey making withstood the prohibitionist attitudes of the nineteenth century religious revival • Many mountaineers are devout Baptists or Methodists, but defied antiliquor teachings • Many mountain people proved very willing to vote their areas legally “dry” • Corn whiskey is very persistent in the folk diet

10. Mountain moonshine • Traditionally corn liquor was intended mainly for family consumption • Over the years, Appalachian moonshine began to find its way to market • Proved the best way for hill folk to participate in the money economy • Converted a bulky grain crop of low cash value in a compact beverage of high value per unit of weight

11. Mountain moonshine • Early as 1791, the U.S. federal government began taxing manufacturers of whiskey • From the beginning, mountaineers found ways to avoid the tax • Stills lay concealed in remote coves and hollows to escape detection • When stills were discovered and destroyed, new ones in different locations replaced them • Revenuers were no more successful in stopping whisky making than the churches had been

13. Mountain moonshine • The important effect was mountain folk accepted markets offered by popular culture but rejected its legal and political institutions • By the 1950s, some 25,000 gallons of white lightning reached the market each week from the counties of eastern Tennessee alone • In spite of numerous raids by federal authorities, production continued unabated • Today, a substantial amount of illicit whisky still reaches markets from southern Appalachia

14. Mountain moonshine • Whiskey production, legal and illegal, in Kentucky and Tennessee represents an impressive survival of folk industry to serve a market in popular society • Illegal whisky production and popular culture integration led to the creation of the “folk automobile” • A fast vehicle needed to outrun the law, but humble in appearance • Some have claimed these vehicles were the forerunners of the basic American stock car • Stock-car racing then is considered another result of interplay between folk and popular cultures

16. Country and Western music • Upland Southern folk music had a very impressive impact upon American popular culture • Derived to a great degree, from folk ballads of English and Scotch-Irish, who settled in the upland-South in colonial times • Some have hypothesized use of the fiddle (violin) is an effort to recapture sounds of the Celtic Scottish bagpipe • Gradually, Upland Southern folk music absorbed influences of the American social experience

17. Country and Western music • Derived to a great degree, from folk ballads of English and Scotch-Irish, who settled in the upland-South in colonial times • Became a composite of Old World and New World folk traditions • Long remained confined to the traditional society that developed it • Dealt with themes such as love and hate, happiness and sorrow, comedy and tragedy • Gave expression to a unique life-style and a particular land

18. Country and Western music • Entry of country music into popular culture began about the time of World War I • Diffusion was facilitated by the invention of the radio • Popularization brought changes • Small number of songs in folk culture exploded with the popular culture • Electrical amplification needed in crowded noisy night spots produced a curious mixture with the use of the electric guitar • Themes of lyrics increasingly addressed life in the popular culture

19. Country and Western music • Bluegrass, one of the many styles of country music, emerged in the 1930s • Developed by Bill Monroe • Unique sound is achieved by the joining of a lead banjo with fiddle, guitar, mandolin, and string bass • Using only electric instruments keep it faithful to its origins • High-pitched, emotional vocal sound clearly reveals derivation from Scottish church singing

20. Country and Western music • Bluegrass, one of the many styles of country music, emerged in the 1930s • Acceptance remains greatest in its Upland Southern core area in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina • Most performers come from this core area • Music retains strong identification with Appalachian places

22. Country and Western music • Impact of migration of Upland Southern folk on bluegrass music • Migrated to Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma plus the Depression era movement of “Okies” and “Arkies” to the Central Valley of California • Provided natural areas for bluegrass expansion in the mid-twentieth century

23. Culture Regions • Folk Culture Regions • Folk Cultural Diffusion • Folk Ecology • Cultural Integration in Folk Geography • Folk Landscapes

24. Folk landscapes • Folk architecture most visible aspect of the landscape • Comes from the memory of traditional people • Built on mental images that change little from one generation to the next • Folk buildings are extensions of a people and their region • Provide the unique character of each district or province • Offer a highly visible aspect of the human mosaic

26. Folk Architecture: Maasai House, Kenya • The Maasai are pastoralists who bring their cattle into their circular housing compounds (engangs or manyattas) at night. Maasai bomas (houses) are built by women. • Latticed frames are constructed with termite, ant and beetle resistant wood poles, insulated with packed leaves, and covered with cattle dung readily available in the engang.

27. Folk Architecture: Maasai House, Kenya • A snail-shell entry inhibits entry of human or animal intruders. • Lattice sleeping platforms covered with cowhide are attached to internal walls. There are no windows, only vents for the central fire. Insect damage and leakage call for ongoing maintenance. Using plastic sheeting as a roof cover is a modern luxury few can afford.

28. Folk landscapes • Seek in folk architecture the traditional, the conservative, and the functional • Expect from it a simple beauty • Harmony with the physical environment • A visible expression of folk culture

29. Building materials • One way we classify folk houses and farmsteads is by the type of building materials used

31. Building materials • Structures tend to blend nicely with the natural landscape • Farm dwellings range from: massive houses of stone for permanency, to temporary brush thatch huts

34. Building materials • Environmental conditions influence choice of construction materials) • Climate • Vegetation • Geomorphology • Shifting cultivators of tropical rain forests build houses of poles and leaves

37. Building materials • Sedentary subsistence farming peoples of adjacent highlands, oases, and river valleys of the Old World zone • Rely principally on earthen construction • Sun-dried (adobe) bricks • Pounded earth • In more prosperous regions, kiln-baked bricks are available • People in the tropical grasslands, especially in Africa, construct thatched houses from coarse grasses and thorn bushes

38. Building materials • Buildings of Mediterranean farmers and some rural residents of interior Indian and the Andean highlands • Most live in rocky, deforested lands • Use stone as principal building material • Create entire landscapes of stone • Walls, roofs, terraces, streets, and fences • Lends an air of permanence to the landscape

39. China

40. Folk architecture: China • The Kazak practice transhumance, spending the summer with their horses, goats, sheep and cattle in high pastures of the Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains) of northwestern China. • These yurts have wooden trellis walls and are covered with felt which is pressed animal hair.

41. Folk architecture: China • The top flap can be opened to vent a central fire or closed to keep out rain. • As winter approaches, the yurt is dismantled and carried by pack animals to lower elevations.

42. Folk architecture: China • Many Kazak now winter in Chinese style, mud-brick, sod-roofed houses. • Yurts are experiencing technological change as wood gives way to plastic and felt to canvas.

43. Building materials • Housing in the middle and higher latitudes • Houses made of wood where timber is abundant • In the United States, log cabins and later frame houses • Folk houses of northern Europe and in the mountains of eastern Australia are made of wood

46. Building materials • Housing in the middle and higher latitudes • In some deforested regions — Central Europe and parts of China • Farmers built half-timbered houses • Framework of hardwood beams with fill in the interstices of some other material • Sod or turf houses typify prairie and tundra areas • Russian steppes • In pioneer times, the American Great Plains • Nomadic herders often live in portable tents made of skins or wool

47. Floor plan • Unit farmstead • Single structure where family, farm animals, and storage facilities share space • In simplest form is one storied — People and animals occupy different ends of structure • More complex ones are multi-storied arranged so people and livestock live on different levels

50. Floor plan • Communal unit housing common among some shifting cultivators • Multiple families live under the same roof • Sleeping and cooking done in separate alcoves • Living space is shared