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

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

3. 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.

4. Hutterites Anabaptist group Live Communally in Rural areas
Origins traced to Germany
German Speaking
Different from Amish?
Accept Technology

5. 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.

6. Think about it
How do cultural traits from local cultures become part of popular culture?
Celebrities!!
World Travelers
Immigrants and Emmigrants
Photo: Kim Kardashian wearing a Shambhala Bracelet
Shambhala
Buddhist spiritual belief
Mythical Kingdom- Buddhist Pure land

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

9. Thinking Geographically
Employing the concept of hierarchical diffusion, describe how you first became a “knower” of your favorite kind of music – where is its hearth, and how did it reach you?

10. How are Local Cultures Sustained?
Key Question
How are Local Cultures Sustained?

11. Customs A practice that a group of people routinely follows. Examples?
Sports
Religion
Food
An Activity
Makah

12. LittleSweden, USA (Lindsborg, Kansas):
Is the Swedish Dala horse part of material or nonmaterial culture?

13. Material and Nonmaterial Culture
The things a group of people construct
Examples?
Food
Sports
Clothing
The beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people.
Examples?
Religion
Accent
Language
Material
Non-Material

14. what do local cultures do to maintain their customs?
Local Cultures often have two goals:
keeping other cultures out.
create a boundary around itself
Example?
Could you consider the US-Mexico border an example? State your case
keeping their own culture in
avoid cultural appropriation
Process by which cultures adopt customs and knowledge and use them for their own benefit
Don’t let Kim Kardashian wear your bracelet!!

15. Role of Place in Maintaining customs
By defining a place (a town or a neighborhood) or a space for a short amount of time (an annual festival) as representing a culture and its values, members of a local culture can maintain (or reestablish) its customs and reinforce its beliefs.

16. Rural local Cultures Migration into rural areas is less frequent.
Can better separate their culture from others and from popular culture.
Can define their own space.
Daily life my be defined by a shared economic activity.

17. Urban Local cultures Can create ethnic neighborhoods within cities.
Creates a space to practice customs.
Can cluster businesses, houses of worship, schools to support local culture.
Migration into ethnic neighborhoods can quickly change an ethnic neighborhood.

18. Commodification
When an object that is not meant to be bought and sold becomes and object that can be bought and sold
Example?
Shambhala
Who can commodify something?
The local culture or outsiders
What can be commodified?
Anything!!
Whole cultures can be
Observing local customs or people
Example- “Observing” the Amish in PA

19. Authenticity
The question that is asked after something has been commodified.
What does the original place, idea, product, etc look like?
To get a true experience you have to view the actual place not the stereotype of the place
An authentic culture is one that is complex and not stereotyped.

20. Example- Hofbrauhaus
Commodification in Newport
Original in Munich

21. Irish Pub Company Pubs
Irish Pub Company and Guinness Brewing Company created 5 models of pubs and export them around the world.

22. Little Bridge Pub in Dingle, Ireland (not an Irish Pub Company Pub)

23. How is Popular Culture Diffused?
Key Question:

27. How Is Popular Culture Diffused?
Distance decay vs. time-space compression:
With distance decay, the likelihood of diffusion decreases as time and distance from the hearth increases.
With time–space compression, the likelihood of diffusion depends on the connectedness (in communications and transportation technologies) among places (geographer David Harvey).
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

28. With Distance Decay, the likelihood of diffusion decreases as time and distance from the hearth increases.
With Time-Space Compression, the likelihood of diffusion depends upon the connectedness among places.
Which applies more to popular culture?

29. How are hearths of popular culture traits established?
Typically begins with an idea/good and contagious diffusion.
Companies can create/manufacture popular culture. (ie. MTV)
Individuals can create/manufacture popular culture. (ie. Tony Hawk)

30. The hearth of Phish concerts is in the northeastern United States, near where the band began in Vermont.

32. Why are popular culture traits usually diffused hierarchically?
How is fashion in popular culture an example of hierarchical diffusion?

33. Reterritorailization
People within a place start to produce an aspect of popular culture themselves, doing so in the context of their local culture and making it their own.
Hip-Hop
Origins

34. Reterritorailization
Diffusion
Differences

36. Stemming the Tide of Popular Culture—Losing the Local?
At the global scale, North America, western Europe, Japan, India, and South Korea exert the greatest influence on popular culture at present
North America: movies, television, music, sports, and fast food
Japan: children’s television programs, electronic games, and new entertainment technologies
Western Europe: fashion, television, art, and philosophy
South Korea: television dramas, movies, and popular music
India: movies
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

38. How Is Popular Culture Diffused?
Stemming the Tide of Popular Culture—Losing the Local?
The rapid diffusion of popular culture can cause consumers to lose track of the hearth of a good or idea.
When popular culture displaces or replaces local culture, it will usually be met with resistance.
Geographers realize that local cultures will interpret, choose, and reshape the influx of popular culture.
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

39. Think about your local community (your college campus, your neighborhood, your town). Determine how your local community takes one aspect of popular culture and makes it your own.

40. How can Local and Popular Cultures be seen in the Cultural Landscape?
Key Question:
How can Local and Popular Cultures be seen in the Cultural Landscape?

41. Cultural Landscape How have people changed the landscape?
The visible human imprint on the landscape.
How have people changed the landscape?
What buildings, statues, and so forth have they erected?
How do landscapes reflect the values of a culture?

42. Placelessness: the loss of uniqueness in a cultural landscape – one place looks like the next.

43. Convergence of Cultural Landscapes:
Diffusion of architectural forms and planning ideas around the world.

44. Convergence of Cultural Landscapes:
The widespread distribution
of businesses and products
creates distinctive landscape
stamps around the world.

45. Convergence of Cultural Landscapes:
Borrowing of idealized
landscape images blurs
place distinctiveness.

46. UNESCO World Heritage site, Venice, Italy.
The Venetian Hotel Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Venetian Hotel and Casino. Macau, China.

47. How Can Local and Popular Cultures Be Seen in the Cultural Landscape?
Global-local continuum concept: emphasizes that what happens at one scale is not independent of what happens at other scales.
People in a local place mediate and alter regional, national, and global processes, in a process called glocalization.
© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

51. Focus on the cultural landscape of your college campus
Focus on the cultural landscape of your college campus. Thing about the concept of placelessness. Determine whether your campus is a “placeless place” or if the cultural landscape of your college reflects the unique identity of the place. Imagine you are hired to build a new student union on your campus. How could you design the building to reflect the uniqueness of your college?

52. K-Pop