CULTURE
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Presentation Transcript
Cultural Geography is the study of how culture varies across space CULTURE
Introduction • What is Culture? • Comes from Latin word “Cultus” – meaning to care about • Includes all the ideas, practices, and material objects associated with a group of people (language, religion, housing, ethnicity, food, etc.) • Includes: • Artifacts: material objects • Customs: set of beliefs and values that set one group apart from another…a widely adopted habit
Folk Culture V. Pop Culture….see handout • Acculturation: cultural change that results when one group adopts traits of dominant society • Assimilation: process where minority population decreases or loses all together its identifying culture and blends into society • Must be a 2-way street – majority population recognizes them as members • Often measured by intermarriage and employment opportunities
Acculturation…..AssimilationA process over time of adopting majority culture • Language • “Anglicanize” name • Dress • Customs • Entertainment – movies, music, TV • Slang • Education – career • Intermarriage
When Cultures Collide…. • Cultural Imperialism: 1 culture is dominant over another (i.e. imperialism/colonialism…the mother country usually dominated indigenous people; taught their language, their religion, their customs) • Cultural Syncretism: new cultural traits emerge as a hybrid blend of two distinct parent traits (i.e. the exchange is never 100% one way…always a mixture)
Where do Folk Culture and Pop Culture originate and diffuse? • Hearth: place of origin • FC has anonymous hearths, anonymous sources, and unknown dates • PC hearth is usually an MDC city
Diffusion of FC and PC • FC transmitted from one location to another slowly, often by relocation diffusion and without technology • (FC looks different from place to place) • PC diffuses hierarchically – starts in large cities and spreads rapidly around globe …driven by technology • (PC looks different from time to time)
Is Globalization of PC a Problem? • Is PC a threat to FC? • Does PC make people reject traditional values? • Does PC lead to dominance of Western values? • i.e. W. dress, food, music, media values • Threatens women’s subservience to men in many cultures (ex: Taliban – women behaving like westerners were shot or beaten – walked alone, makeup, nail polish, etc.) • IN some areas PC has been bad for women – sex tours, internal prostitution (men from MDCs go to Philippines, Thailand, S. Korea)
Globalization of PC a Problem? • Does PC dominate the foreign media as a form of imperialism? i.e. watch our movies, our music, our TV • American TV presents our values – freedom of women, violence, sex, glorification of youth, upward social mobility…not all societies agree w/ this • News media dominated by Associated Press and Reuters out of U.S. and GB
Environmental Impact of PC • Possiblism not environmental determinism….i.e. PC imposes itself on environment • Leads to uniformity…all looks the same • PC generates higher volumes of waste/pollution