1. Folk and Popular Culture
Chapter 4
Folk and Popular Culture
AP Human Geography

2. Origins and Diffusion of Folk and Popular Cultures
Culture: A group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by people.
Folk culture: small, incorporates a homogeneous population, is typically rural, and is cohesive in cultural traits.
Pop culture: large, incorporates heterogeneous populations, typically urban, and experiences quick changes in cultural traits.

3. Folk Culture vs. Popular Culture

4. Popular Culture:
Food, music, dance, clothing, entertainment

5. Popular Celebrities

6. In Popular Culture: Trends
Hierarchical diffusion
Example: Fashion
Starts at the point of origin: Milan, Paris, New York
Major fashion houses: LA, Hollywood etc.
Shopping mall

7. Distance Decay: the likelihood of diffusion decreases as time and distance from the hearth increases.
Hearth
Time Space Compression: the likelihood of diffusion depends upon the connectedness among places: communications and transportation technologies.

8. Commodification
The process through which something—a name, a good, an idea or even a person—that previously was not regarded as an object to be bought or sold.. Becomes an object that can be bought, sold, and traded in the world market.
                                   

9. Convergence of Cultural Landscapes
Convergence of cultural landscapes has three dimensions:
Particular architectural forms and planning have diffused around the world
Individual businesses and products have become so widespread that they now leave a distinctive landscape stamp on far flung places
The wholesale borrowing of idealized landscape images, though not necessarily fostering convergence, promotes a blurring of place distinctiveness

10. McDonalds World Wide Locations

11. Wide Dispersion of Popular Culture
Diffusion of popular housing, clothing, and food
Popular housing styles
Rapid diffusion of clothing styles
Popular food customs
Television and diffusion of popular culture
Diffusion of television
Diffusion of the internet
Government control of television

12. Clustering of Folk Cultures
Influence of the physical environment
Distinctive food preferences
Folk housing
U.S. folk house forms

13. Amish Settlements in the U.S.
Fig. 4-4: Amish settlements are distributed through the northeast U.S.

14. Home Locations in Southeast Asia
Fig. 4-7: Houses and sleeping positions are oriented according to local customs among the Lao in northern Laos (left) and the Yuan and Shan in northern Thailand (right).

15. House Types in Western China
Fig. 4-8: Four communities in western China all have distinctive house types.

16. Diffusion of House Types in U.S.
Fig. 4-9: Distinct house types originated in three main source areas in the U.S. and then diffused into the interior as migrants moved west.

17. Diffusion of New England House Types
Fig. 4-10: Four main New England house types of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries diffused westward as settlers migrated.

18. U.S. House Types, 1945–1990
Fig. 4-11: Several variations of the “modern style” were dominant from the 1940s into the 1970s. Since then, “neo-eclectic” styles have become the dominant type of house construction in the U.S.

19. U.S. House Types by Region
Fig : Small towns in different regions of the eastern U.S. have different combinations of five main house types.

20. Diffusion of TV, 1954–1999
Fig. 4-14: Television has diffused widely since the 1950s, but some areas still have low numbers of TVs per population.

21. Distribution of Internet Hosts
Fig. 4-15: The U.S. had two-thirds of the world’s internet hosts in Diffusion of internet service is likely to follow the pattern of TV diffusion, but the rate of this diffusion may differ.

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

23. Words to Know Culture Folk Culture Popular Culture Local Culture
Hierarchical diffusion
Hearth
Assimilate
Custom
Commodification
Distance Decay
Time-Space Compression