1. Cultural Landscapes

2. Local vs. Popular Culture
Local Culture (Folk Culture & Indigenous 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.
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.

3. Material and Nonmaterial Culture
The things a group of people construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, and food.
Nonmaterial Culture
The beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people.

4. Material and Nonmaterial Culture
Material Culture – also known as Artifacts
Artifacts: Material expressions…Food, Possessions, Clothing and Shelter
Nonmaterial Culture – includes both Mentifacts & Sociofacts
Mentifacts: Value expressions…Religious & Philosophic
Sociofacts: Social expressions…Political & Economic

5. Viewing other cultures:
Cultural Relativism: examining other cultures’ beliefs and practices from their point of view (not imposing your own judgment)
Ethnocentrism: examining other cultures’ beliefs and practices through the lens of your culture (imposing judgment)
For example: Western cultures judging Islamic women who choose to wear the hijab.

6. Folk & Local Architecture
Building Materials
Choice of construction materials more dependent upon resources available in the local area
Reflects geographic location
Examples:
Adobe construction in the Southwest
Timber frames in the Pacific Northwest

7. Folk/Local housing in the South
Dogtrot house: two log rooms separated by an open roofed breezeway
Shotgun house: African-American, one room wide, but two to four rooms in depth

8. Dogtrot
The dogtrot house, also known as a breezeway house, is a style of house that was common throughout the Southeastern United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

9. Shotgun House (Southern Tradition)
A "shotgun house" is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than about 12 feet (3.5 m) wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other and doors at each end of the house.

10. Local Architecture around the globe

12. Kitsch Architecture: Lacrosse, Wisconsin
Kitsch – trivial, showy, designed for mass consumption – it is increasingly common in placeless landscapes.
Much kitsch in North American and Australia is characterized by gigantism
This is purported to be the world’s largest six-pack.

13. Cotton Gin Inn Clarksdale, MS Cotton Gin Inn
Cotton Gin Inn
Clarksdale, MS

14. Shack Up Inn Clarksdale, MS
Shack Up Inn
Clarksdale, MS

15. Gatorland Kissimmiee, FL
Kissimmiee, FL – Gatorland (Prior to being torn down)
Gatorland
Kissimmiee, FL

16. Wigwam Village Cave City, KY Wigwam Village – Dixie Hwy, Cave City, KY
Wigwam Village
Cave City, KY

17. Mammy’s Cupboard Natchez, MS Natchez, MS – open since 1940

18. Impacts of the Globalization of Popular Culture
Threats to folk culture
Loss of traditional values
Foreign media dominance
Loss of folk cultural landscape
Environmental impacts of popular culture
Modifying nature
Uniform cultural landscapes
Negative environmental impact

21. Japanese Geisha with modern technology

22. Placelessness
Superficially, popular culture appears to vary less areally than folk culture
Canadian geographer Edward Relph’s placelessness
Popular culture produces a profound placelessness
A spatial standardization that diminishes cultural variety
Demeans the human spirit
James Kunstler’s “geography of nowhere”
One place become much like another, robbed of its geographical essence
Pervasive influence of a continental or worldwide popular culture

23. Where is this Place? Toronto!
Skyscrapers in Toronto—From the picture, it is hard to “place” these.

24. Placelessness: Anywhere USA
Without signage, how do we know what type of place this is?
Is there a sense of distinctiveness?
Nothing sets these structures apart as being in a particular place; this is placelessness.

25. Placelessness: Anywhere USA
This is suburban Columbus, Ohio
“Test Market USA.”
Columbus -- representative cross section of American society; place to try out new products.
Most fast food menus are tested here.

26. McDonald’s in Tokyo

27. Wendy’s in Idaho

28. Pampas Grill in Finland

29. Commodification
Acculturation
Appropriation
Assimilation