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Understanding the Clustering of Folk Culture: The Role of Environment and Isolation

This piece explores the distinctions between folk culture and popular culture, emphasizing how local cultures are sustained through isolation and the practice of customs and traditions. Folk culture is closely tied to the physical environment, with rural practices reflecting agricultural lifestyles. We examine how food preferences, housing, and sacred spaces are influenced by geography. The clustering of folk cultures enhances their diversity and allows communities to maintain cultural heritage amidst external pressures, offering insights into their unique social structures.

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Understanding the Clustering of Folk Culture: The Role of Environment and Isolation

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Presentation Transcript

  1. Ch. 4 Key Issue 2 Why is Folk Culture Clustered?

  2. Quick Write • Explain the differences between local/folk and pop culture.

  3. How a local cultures sustained? • By clustering • By being isolated • By practicing customs/traditions

  4. Influence of the physical environment • Folk culture = close connection to the environment • Most folk cultures are rural and agricultural • Clothing is often tied to environmental conditions • Example: Wooden clogs in the Netherlands

  5. Food Preferences and the Environment • Terroir- effects of local environment on food (wine) • Food preferences are adapted to the environment • Example: In Asia, rice is grown in milder, wetter environments; wheat is grown in colder, drier environments • Soybeans- poisonous if not cooked

  6. Food Preferences and the Environment • Food taboos may be especially strong • People avoid certain foods because of negative associations with that food • Developed for environmental (protect endangered animals) and cultural (religion) reasons • Examples- no pork for Jews or Muslims

  7. Swine Stock Figure 4-8

  8. Folk housing and the environment (non US) • Housing = a reflection of cultural heritage, current fashion, function, and the physical environment • Function of house is to protect from extreme elements of the environment • May use environmental elements to build houses

  9. Why Is Folk Culture Clustered? • Isolation promotes cultural diversity • Examples: • Unique cultural landscapes • Beliefs and folk house forms • Sacred spaces • U.S. folk housing

  10. Landscapes of Local/Folk Cultures • Studying the landscape gives you insight into social structures of local cultures • Mormon landscape in Western US • Farming villages with clustered houses– contrasts the landscape in surrounding states (160 acre plots per farmer) • Clustering allowed for protection- from Indians and other persecutors • Wide streets so farmers could turn a cart and horse around

  11. Sacred Spaces • Determines layout of folk housing • Ex: Java- front door faces south; Madagascar- important people are seated against the north wall

  12. Do not want to face neighbor's feet, parallel w/ street, perpendicular w/ stream All sleep same direction- East

  13. Folk Housing in US • Migrants took memories of housing styles and built them as the moved throughout the US, they also built what was “in style” from the hearth at the time • Three hearths • Lower Chesapeake and Tidewater • Middle Atlantic • New England

  14. Diffusion of New England hearth house types

  15. Rural Local Cultures • Have an easier time maintaining local cultures because of their isolation • Rurality allows local cultures to define their space to practice their beliefs and customs- creating their own rural landscape • Anabaptists- baptized again, broke from church and state due to persecution. Wanted to live apart and stay together • Hutterites- Northern US, Canada; live in communities/colonies of 100 people • Amish- Pennsylvania • Mennoninites- Virginia

  16. Rural Local Cultures • Makah American Indians • Whale hunting issues • Little Sweden, USA • Lindsborg, Kansas • Celebrating of Swedish ancestors • Economic motives? • Neolocalism- reinvigorating the local culture into the landscape in the face of an uncertain (culturally) world

  17. Is this authentic culture or “Disneyesque” fakery used to attract tourists? Top: Lindsborg Bottom: Sweden

  18. Urban Local Cultures • Successfully built their own “place” to practice their customs within a major city by constructing ethnic neighborhoods; able to maintain their distinctness among members of the popular culture • Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn • Italian Americans in North Boston • Threatened by nonmembers of the local culture moving into their neighborhoods

  19. http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/sidebar-who-is-a-jew/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sidebar-who-is-a-jewhttp://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/sidebar-who-is-a-jew/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sidebar-who-is-a-jew

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