What are local and popular cultures?

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

people.

Specialized behavioral patterns, understandings, adaptions, and social

systems that summarize a group of people learned way of life.

1. Shared by a group of people

2. Way of life.

3. passed down/learned

4. Mix of beliefs, behaviors, customs, and rituals.

5. Includes material + non-material.

Age, sex, status, occupation, nationality, ethnicity.

Changed by- external influences, cultural exchange, generational,

technology, environmental (ex: HIV/AIDS, global warming)

Non-Material Culture

Values- culturally defined standards that guide normal living.

Beliefs- special statements that people hold to be true.

Behaviors- actions people take

Based on values and beliefs

Norms

Material culture- a wide range of human creations such as art, houses,

clothing, sports, dance, and foods called artifacts.

Cultural trait- single attribute of a culture

Cultural complex- a combination of traits that form a distinct group

Culture system- group of interconnected culture complexes

Culture region- an area marked by a culture that distinguishes from other

regions.

Cultures Identified in two ways: 1. the people recognize themselves as a

culture. 2. Other people (including academics) can label a certain group of

people as a culture.

Folk culture is small, incorporates a homogeneous population, is typically

rural, and is cohesive in cultural traits.

Popular culture is large incorporates heterogeneous population, is typically

urban, and experiences quickly changing cultural traits.

Local culture is 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.

Some local cultures rely primarily on religion to maintain their belief

systems, community celebrations, or family structures.

Local cultures constantly redefining/refining themselves based on

interactions with other cultures (popular/folk) and diffusion of cultural

traits (popular/folk).

Culture can be distinguished from habit and custom

o A habit is individual

o A custom is a repetitive act of a group.

o A collection of social customs produces a groups material culture

Dominance of popular culture can threaten the environment.

Dying local cultures- reduce local diversity in the world and the intellectual

stimulation that arises from differences in background.

Popular Culture spreads faster in MDCs.

Industrial tech permits production of objects in large quantities.

Folk music- tells stories, life cycle events, and mysterious everyday

happenings such as storms.

First popular music came from the U.S. army radio station.

Popular culture has an anonymous hearth or several hearths.

How are local cultures sustained?

Assimilation- promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into a

dominant culture.

A custom is a practice that a group of people routinely follows.

To sustain a local culture, people must retain their customs.

In the age of globalization, where pop culture changes quickly and diffuses

rapidly, local cultures have to goals: keeping other cultures out, and

keeping their own culture in.

This is done to prevent “contamination and extinction”.

A local culture can also work to avoid cultural appropriation, the process by

which other cultures adopt customs and knowledge and use them for their

own benefit.

Major concern for local cultures because aspects of cultural knowledge, as

natural pharmaceuticals or musical expression, are being privatized by

people outside the local culture and used to accumulate wealth or prestige.

Neolocalism, seeking out the regional culture and reinvigorating it in

response to the uncertainty of the modern world.

Ethnic neighborhoods are usually in major cities, are tight-knit worlds apart

from the other neighborhoods that are used to practice customs and

traditions.

The process through which something (a name, a good, an idea, or even a

person) that previously was not regarded as an object to the bought or sold

becomes an object that can be bought, sold, and traded in the world

market is called a commodification.

When commodification occurs, the question of authenticity follows. To

gain the authenticity of a place directly rather than the stereotype of a

place.

How is popular culture diffused?

Transportation and communication have altered distance decay. No

longer does a map with a bull’s-eye surrounding the hearth of an

innovation describe how quickly the innovation will diffuse to areas

around it.

Time space compression explains how quickly innovations diffuse and

refers to how interlinked two places are through transportation and

communication technologies.

Because technologies link some places more closely than others, ideas

diffuse through interconnected places rapidly rather than diffusing at

constant rates across similar distances.

Popular culture diffuses hierarchically in the context of space time

compression, with diffusion happening most rapidly across the most

compressed spaces.