2. Key Issues
Where are folk and popular leisure activities distributed?
Where are folk and popular material culture distributed?
Why is access to folk and popular culture unequal?
Why do folk and popular culture face sustainability challenges?

3. Culture Definitions
Built environment - The part of the physical landscape that represents material culture, including buildings, roads, bridges, etc.
Cultural identity – One’s feeling of belonging to a certain cultural group
Cultural landscape – the visible imprint of human activity and culture on the physical landscape
Cultural hearth - an area where new ideas and innovations spring up and spread to other parts of the world.
Most modern cultural hearths are urban areas like New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo.
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4. Early Cultural Hearths
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5. Key issue 1: where are folk and popular leisure activities distributed?

6. Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?
How culture influences behavior - the difference between habit and custom:
1. Habit is a repetitive act performed by an individual.
One college student wears jeans when the rest wear dress pants.
2. Custom is a repetitive act performed by a group.
All college students wear jeans.

7. Habits -> Customs -> Culture
All of a group’s customs come together to form a culture
College students wear jeans, drink Starbucks coffee, eat pizza, and listen to hip hop music
Culture
Custom
Custom
Custom
Habit
Habit
Habit

8. Material culture includes:
What is culture?
Culture combines:
Values
Material artifacts
Politics
Material culture includes:
Survival activities – food, clothing, shelter
Leisure activities – the arts and recreation

9. Folk Culture and Popular Culture
Folk Culture – traditionally practiced among small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas
Popular Culture – found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics
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14. Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?
Characteristics of Folk and Popular Culture
1. Origin
Folk Culture
Anonymous hearths
Anonymous sources
Unknown dates
Popular Culture
Product of developed countries
Typically North America or Europe
Origin often traceable to specific person or corporation in a particular place
Culture originates at a hearth, a center of innovation.
Popular music and other elements of popular culture, such as food and clothing, arise from a combination of advances in industrial technology and increases in leisure time.

15. Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?
2. Diffusion
Folk Culture
Smaller scale and slower diffusion
Spreads mostly through relocation diffusion
Popular Culture
Spreads through hierarchical diffusion
Diffuses rapidly and extensively form hearths or nodes with help of modern communications
Examples include American popular music during the 1940s when the Armed forces Radio Network broadcast music to American soldiers and to citizens where American soldiers were stationed or fighting during WWII.

16. Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?
3. Distribution
Folk Culture
Generally occurs in a smaller physical space
Physical factors such as isolation affects distribution
Popular Culture
Widely distributed across many countries with little regard for physical obstacles
Main obstacle to access is lack of income to purchase the goods

17. Meeting of Cultures
Indigenous people often lose unique cultural traits, such as how they dress, when they come into contact with another society or culture
Often this happens to immigrants when they come to a new country or region
Historical examples include:
U.S. federal government’s program to make “Indians” into “Americans”
Canada, Australia, Russia and other colonial powers used similar policies toward indigenous people – used schools, churches, and government agents to discourage native practices
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18. Tom Torlino, Navajo, before and after
Tom Torlino, Navajo, before and after. Photograph from the Richard Henry Pratt Papers, Yale University. Circa 1882

19. Acculturation and Assimilation
Meeting of cultures can result in:
Assimilation occurs when some of the cultural aspects of the dominant group are absorbed in such a manner that the minority’s cultural aspects are lost
This sometimes occurs over several generations
Acculturation is a process where the cultural aspects of the dominant group are adapted without losing the traditions and customs of the minority community
The dominant culture is often changed too (Spanish has been added to U.S. signs and phone recordings)
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20. Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism describes the existence, acceptance, or promotion of multiple cultural traditions within a single nation or region
This can happen when a nation is created or expanded by merging areas with two or more different cultures or through immigration from different nations around the world
Multiculturalism has been described as a "salad bowl" or "cultural mosaic" rather than a "melting pot”
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21. Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism as an official national policy started in Canada in 1971, followed by Australia in 1973 
Recently, governments in several European states—notably the Netherlands and Denmark— have reversed the national policy and returned to an official monoculturalism
In the United States, multiculturalism is not clearly established as a federal policy, but ethnic diversity is common in both rural and urban areas due to past and present immigration
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22. Key issue 2: where are folk and popular material culture distributed?

23. Where Are Folk and Popular Material Culture Distributed?
Folk material culture varies more by location than by time period
Popular material culture varies more by time period than by location
Fashions change with the decades but are universal across the U.S. during that decade

24. Key issue 3: why is access to folk and popular culture unequal?

25. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
Electronic Diffusion of Popular Culture
Principal obstacle to accessing popular culture is lack of access to electronic media.
TV is the most important media format because:
Watching TV is most popular leisure activity in the world.
TV is most important mechanism for rapidly diffusing popular culture around the world.

26. How Americans spend their weekends
FIGURE 4-31 HOW AMERICANS SPEND THEIR WEEKENDS Watching TV is by far the most common leisure activity for Americans.

27. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
Electronic Diffusion of Popular Culture
1. Diffusion of TV: Mid-Twentieth Century
TV technology originated simultaneously in multiple hearths in the early twentieth century— e.g., UK, France, Germany, Japan, Soviet Union, and the United States.
Over the course of the twentieth century, the United States went from dominating the world share of TVs to being nearly equal in rates of ownership with most developing countries.
Through the second half of the 20th century, television diffusive from the United States to Europe and other developed countries and then to developing countries.

28. FIGURE 4-28 DIFFUSION OF TV Televisions per 1,000 inhabitants in (top) 1954, (middle) 1970, and (bottom) Television has diffused from North America and Europe to other regions of the world. The United States and Canada had far more TV sets per capita than any other country as recently as the 1970s, but several European countries now have higher rates of ownership.

29. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
2. Diffusion of the Internet: Late Twentieth Century
Diffusion follows pattern established by TV but at a more rapid rate.
In 1995, Internet users in the United States accounted for more than half of the global users.
By 2011, 77 percent of the U.S. population accessed the Internet.
Today 40% of the world’s people have internet access

30. FIGURE 4-32 DIFFUSION OF THE INTERNET Internet users per 1,000 inhabitants in (top) 1995, (middle) 2000, and (bottom) Compare to the diffusion of TV ( Figure
4-28 ). Internet service is following a pattern in the twenty-first century similar to the pattern of diffusion of television in the twentieth century. The United States started out with a much higher rate of usage than elsewhere, until other countries caught up. The difference is that the diffusion of television took a half-century and the diffusion of the Internet only a decade.

31. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
3. Diffusion of Social Media: Twenty-First Century
Same diffusion pattern as TV and Internet
Facebook
156.5 million Facebook users in U.S.
665 million worldwide
Twitter
316 million users worldwide today
Top 10 countries by number of Twitter users: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, France, India, South Africa
Same pattern holds true for YouTUBE.

32. FIGURE 4-35 DISTRIBUTION OF TWITTER USERS More than one-third of the world’s Twitter users were in the United States in 2011.

33. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
Challenges in Accessing Electronic Media
1. External Threat: Developed Countries Control the Media
TV industry is dominated by Japan, UK, and United States.
Leaders of developing countries could view dominance as impressing American values upon viewers:
Upward social mobility
Freedom for women
Glorification of youth
Stylized violence

34. Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?
News media in developing countries dominated by the government, whereas media in the United States is largely private commercial stations.
Many African and Asian government officials criticize freedom of the press in the United States.
Allegedly media do not convey an accurate view of other countries.

35. Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed?
2. Internal Threat: Social Media
Limiting Access to TV
Satellite dishes enable people to access information that would otherwise be censored by their governments.
Some governments attempt to limit Internet content including:
Political Content - Opposition to local government
Social Content - Socially sensitive material, such as gambling or sex
Conflict and Security - Armed conflict, border disputes, or militant groups
Internet Tools - , Internet hosting, and Internet searches

36. FIGURE 4-37 LIMITING FREEDOM ON THE INTERNET Countries limit access to four types of Internet content: (top) political content, (second) social content, (third) security content, (bottom) Internet tools.

37. Key issue 4: why do folk and popular culture face sustainability challenges?

38. Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face Sustainability Challenges?
Sustainability Challenges for Folk Culture:
Increased connection with popular culture makes maintaining centuries-old practices difficult.
Impacts of globalization on the landscape creates challenges in maintaining a unique landscape.
Global diffusion of popular culture beliefs has challenged the lower status of women that is embedded in some folk customs.

39. Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face Sustainability Challenges?
Sustainability Challenges for Popular Culture:
Diffusion of some popular customs can adversely impact the environment:
“Pollution” of the Landscape
Uniform landscapes used to generate product recognition. e.g., motels and fast-food restaurants
Golf courses remake the environment by drastically modifying its natural state.
Depletion of Scarce Natural Resources
Diffusion of some popular customs increases demand for animal products (fur, meat) and for raw materials