Local Culture, Popular Culture, and Cultural Landscapes

1. Local Culture, Popular Culture, and Cultural Landscapes Chapter 4

2. Key Question 1: What are Local and Popular Cultures?

3. Culture Group of belief systems, norms & values practiced by a people. • “way of life” (de la Blache) • “attitudes, objectives and technical skills of a people” • Human traits acquired through formal or informal learning process • Specialized behavioral patterns, understandings, adaptations, and social systems that summarized a group’s LEARNED way of life.

4. Folk vs. Local vs. Pop Folk Culture: small, encompasses a homogeneous population, is typically rural, and is cohesive in cultural traits All FOLK cultures are LOCAL, but not all LOCAL cultures are FOLK!!

5. Hutterite Colonies in North America Are the Hutterites an example of a local culture?

6. Why are Hutterite colonies located where they are?

7. Local Culture: A group of people in a particular place who see themselves as a collective or a community, who share experiences, customs, and traits, and who work to preserve those traits and customs in order to claim uniqueness and to distinguish themselves from others.

8. Popular Culture: A wide-ranging group of heterogeneous people, who stretch across identities and across the world, and who embrace cultural traits such as music, dance, clothing, and food preference that change frequently and are ubiquitous on the cultural landscape.

9. Material vs. Non-Material Culture • Material culture – of a group of people includes the things they construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, foods (tangible items) • Non-Material culture – includes the beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people. (intangible items)

10. How do cultural traits from local cultures become part of popular culture? Madonna wearing a red string Kabbalah bracelet.

11. How do cultural traits diffuse? Hearth: the point of origin of a cultural trait. Contagious diffusion Hierarchical diffusion