Folk and popular culture
VOCAB, MODELS, AND IMPORTANT FACTS
Culture: The body of customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits that together constitute a group's distinct tradition. Leaned, not biological. Passed down through generations.
Cultural traits: A single attribute of a cultural group. Ex: behavior, objects, attitude.
Culture complex: Individual cultural traits that are functionally interrelated.
Culture region: Portion of the Earth’s surface occupied by populations sharing recognizable distinctive cultural characteristics(religions, political organizations, etc).
Globalization: Actions of processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.
Folk culture: Traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation.
Habit: A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.
Custom: The frequent repetition of an act to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.
Folklore: Traditional stories and legends transmitted orally from generation to generation.
Popular culture: Culture found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other characteristics.
Cultural landscape: The visible human imprint on the landscape.
Placelessness: The loss of uniqueness in a cultural landscape – one place looks like the next.
Environmental Determinism: The study of how the physical environment caused human activities.
Possibilism: The theory that physical environment may set limits on human activities, but human learned to live with it and use alternatives.
Material culture: The visible, tangible aspects of culture
Nonmaterial culture: Aspects of culture that are non-tangible such as tales, songs, beliefs, folklore, superstitions, and customs passed down through generations.
Vernacular region: An area that people believes exists as a part of their cultural identity. AKA. A perpetual region.
Sequence occupance: The idea that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place that add up to the cultural landscape.
Folk and popular culture are dispersed in different ways. Folk culture is dispersed through relocation diffusion, the spread of ideas through migration.
Popular culture was spread through the three types of expansion diffusion:
Folk culture is gradually disappearing due to the effects of globalization and spreading pop culture. Cultural imperialism, the dominance of one culture over another, can lead to cultural assimilation, the process of less dominant cultures losing their culture to a more dominant culture.
When two cultures mix it is called acculturation, or when one group of people adopt the cultural traits of another.
Cultural traits: A single attribute of a cultural group. Ex: behavior, objects, attitude.
Culture complex: Individual cultural traits that are functionally interrelated.
Culture region: Portion of the Earth’s surface occupied by populations sharing recognizable distinctive cultural characteristics(religions, political organizations, etc).
Globalization: Actions of processes that involve the entire world and result in making something worldwide in scope.
Folk culture: Traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation.
- Disappearing. Almost nonexistent in developed world.
- Spreads through relocation diffusion.
- Found in rural communities based on tradition.
- Anonymous origins and clustered distributions.
- Small effects on landscape. Commonly uses farming.
Habit: A repetitive act performed by a particular individual.
Custom: The frequent repetition of an act to the extent that it becomes characteristic of the group of people performing the act.
Folklore: Traditional stories and legends transmitted orally from generation to generation.
Popular culture: Culture found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits despite differences in other characteristics.
- Wide distribution
- Spreads through expansion diffusion and rapidly through technology.
- Creates uniform, placelessness landscapes.
- Often destroys or takes over folk culture.
- Creates rapid resource depletion.
Cultural landscape: The visible human imprint on the landscape.
Placelessness: The loss of uniqueness in a cultural landscape – one place looks like the next.
Environmental Determinism: The study of how the physical environment caused human activities.
Possibilism: The theory that physical environment may set limits on human activities, but human learned to live with it and use alternatives.
Material culture: The visible, tangible aspects of culture
Nonmaterial culture: Aspects of culture that are non-tangible such as tales, songs, beliefs, folklore, superstitions, and customs passed down through generations.
Vernacular region: An area that people believes exists as a part of their cultural identity. AKA. A perpetual region.
Sequence occupance: The idea that successive societies leave their cultural imprints on a place that add up to the cultural landscape.
Folk and popular culture are dispersed in different ways. Folk culture is dispersed through relocation diffusion, the spread of ideas through migration.
Popular culture was spread through the three types of expansion diffusion:
- Hierarchical diffusion: Spread of ideas from larger cities to smaller cities.
- Contagious diffusion: Spread of ideas through direct contact.
- Stimulus diffusion: The spread of ideas, but the ideas are changed based on the affected culture.
Folk culture is gradually disappearing due to the effects of globalization and spreading pop culture. Cultural imperialism, the dominance of one culture over another, can lead to cultural assimilation, the process of less dominant cultures losing their culture to a more dominant culture.
When two cultures mix it is called acculturation, or when one group of people adopt the cultural traits of another.