Chapter 4 Red Books: Local Culture, Popular Culture, and Cultural Landscapes

What are local and popular cultures?

A culture is a group of belief systems, norms, and values practiced by people.

People call themselves a culture.

Or other people, mainly academic, label a group with common values and beliefs as a
culture.

A folk culture is usually a small, typically rural culture that is homogenous with its cultural
traits.
A popular culture is usually cultures that are large heterogeneous populations, urban, and
experiences quickly changing cultural traits.

Spreads through hierarchical diffusion

Hearth is point of origin.

A local culture is a group of people in a particular place who see themselves as a community or
groups, who share experiences and customs, and traits. The group of people works to preserve
their customs and their uniqueness.
Material culture is the part of the culture in what people construct things. Such as art, houses,
dances and foods.
Nonmaterial culture is the part of the culture that includes the beliefs, practices, aesthetics, or
values.

How are local cultures sustained?

From the 1800s to the 1900s, the US government had an official policy of assimilation.

The US wanted to assimilate indigenous people into the dominate culture. The most
American people would get benefits.

Local cultures are also sustained through customs. A custom is a practice that a group of people
routinely follow.
Local cultures have two goals, keeping other cultures out, and keep their own culture in. For
example, some local cultures may create a boundary around themselves.

Cultural appropriation is when other cultures take the local cultures culture traits and use
them for their own benefit.

Local cultures want to avoid this.

Rural local cultures tend to have an easier time maintain their culture because their less
migration in rural twos.
Neolocalism is when the regional culture is celebrated, tolerated, or popularized due to the ever
changing modern world.

In the 1800s a town was very Irish, but eventually in the 1900s the town become Swedish
and celebrated Swedish heritage.

Ethnic neighborhoods are local cultures that successfully built a place to practice and further
make their customs.
Commodification is the process in which a name, object, or idea that previously was not
regarded as an object to be bought or sold, then goes to an object to be bought or sold and can
traded or rather, shown in media and popularized. Ex: Twerking
Authenticity follows when commodification occurs. When a custom or cultural trait is
commodified there is an authentic image which is the complex view and the true one. However
when commodification occurs, the media or popular culture shows a one true authentic image
and stereotypes the cultural traits or objects.

How is culture diffused?

Distance decay has been altered by transportation and communications.
Time-space compression explains how quickly innovation diffuses depending on transport and
communications between places.
Reterritorialization is when people start to produce popular culture themselves.
So transportation and communication like cars, railroads, internet, or even removing blocks from
another town to another might be able to help culture diffuse faster.

How can Local and Popular Cultures be seen in the cultural landscape?
Changes can be seen in the cultural landscape, the visible human mark on landscapes.
Placelessness is when a place looses uniqueness and then cultural landscape looks like another.
Global-local continuum is a concept that emphasizes that what happens at another scale is not
independent of what happens at other scales. So basically one may have caused another, or etc.

Glocalization is where people alter regional, national, and global processes.

Human Geography is not just about the differences in places, but understanding the processes
that produce these differences and how they happen at different scales.
Folk-housing regions are regions where houses tend to reflect the culture of people that are
living in the area.
Diffusion routes are the routes at which cultural traits or ideas are diffused.