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The Cultural Landscape Chapter 4: Folk and Popular Culture
Folk and Popular Culture
In Chapter 1, culture was shown to combine three things—values, material artifacts, and political institutions.
Geographers are interested in all three components of the definition of culture.
They search for where these various elements of culture are found in the world and for reasons why the observed distributions occur.
This chapter deals with the material artifacts of culture, the visible groups that object possesses, and leaves them behind for the future.
Culture follows logically from the discussion of migration in Chapter 3.
Two locations have similar cultural beliefs, objects, and institutions because people bring along their culture when they migrate.
Differences emerge when two groups have limited interaction.
Material culture derives from the survival activities of everyone's daily life—food, clothing, and shelter.
Culture involves leisure activities—the arts and recreation.
Each cultural group provides for the activities of daily life in distinctive ways.
And each culture group has its own to finish in of meaning for art and stimulating recreation.
Culture can be distinguished from habit and custom.
A habit is a repetitive act that a particular individual performs, such as wearing jeans to class every day.
A custom is a repetitive act of a group, perform to the extent it becomes characteristic of the group—American university students wear jeans to class every day.
Unlike custom, habit does not imply that the act has been adopted by most of the society’s population.
A custom is, therefore, a habit that has been widely adopted by a group of people.
A collection of social costumes produces a group’s material culture—jeans typically represent American informality and a badge of youth.
In this chapter, custom may be used to denote a specific element of material culture, such as wearing jeans, whereas culture refers to a group’s entire collection of customs.
Material culture falls into two basic categories that differ according to scale—folk and popular.
Folk culture is traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas and may include a custom such as wearing a saron (a loose skirt made of a long strip of cloth wrapped around the body) in Malaysia or a sari (a long cloth draped so that one end forms a skirt and the other a head or shoulder covering) in India.
Popular culture is found in large, heterogeneous societies that share certain habits (such as wearing jeans) despite differences in other personal characteristics. The scale of territory covered by a folk culture is typically much smaller than that covered by popular culture.
Geographers focus on two aspects of where folk and popular cultures are located in space.
First, each cultural activity, like wearing jeans, has a distinctive spatial distribution.
Geographers study a particular social customs origin, its diffusion, and its integration with other social characteristics.
Second, geographers study the relation between material culture and the physical environment.
Each cultural group takes particular elements from the environment into its culture and in turn, constructs landscapes (what geographers call “built environments”) that modify nature in distinctive ways.
Geographers observe that popular culture has a more widespread distribution than folk culture.
The reason why the distributions are different is interaction, or lack of it.
A group develops distinctive customs from experiencing local social and physical conditions in a place that is isolated from other groups.
Even groups living in proximity may generate a variety of folk customs in a limited geographical area, because of limited communication.
Landscapes distributed by a collection of folk Customs change relatively little over time.
In contrast, popular culture is based on rapid simultaneous global connections through communication systems, transportation networks, and other modern technology.
Rapid diffusion facilitates frequent changes in popular customs.
Thus, folk culture is more likely to vary from place to place at a given time, whereas popular culture is more likely to vary from time to time in a given place.
In Earth’s globalization, popular culture is becoming more dominant, threatening the survival of unique folk culture.
These folk customs—along with language, religion, and ethnicity—provide a unique identity to each group of people who occupy a specific region of Earth’s surface.
The disappearance of local folk customs reduces local diversity in the world and the intellectual stimulation that arises from differences in backgrounds.
The dominance of popular culture can also threaten the quality of the environment.
Folk culture derived from local natural elements may be more sensitive to the protection and enhancement of the environment.
Popular culture is less likely to reflect the diversity of local physical conditions and is more likely to modify the environment in accordance with global values.
KEY ISSUE 1 - Where Do Folk and Popular Culture Originate and Diffuse?
Each social custom has a unique spatial distribution, but in general, distribution is more extensive for popular culture than for folk culture.
Two basic factors help explain the partial differences between popular and folk cultures—the process of origin and the pattern of diffusion.
Origin of Folk and Popular Cultures
A social custom originates at a hearth, a center of innovation.
Folk culture often has anonymous hearths, originating from anonymous hearths, originating from anonymous sources, at unknown dates, through unidentified originators.
They may also have multiple hearths, originating independently in isolated locations.
In contrast to folk customs, popular culture is most often a product of MDCs, especially in North America, Western Europe, and Japan.
Popular music and fast food are good examples.
They arise from a combination of advances in industrial technology and increased leisure time.
Origin of Folk Music
Music exemplifies the differences in the origins of folk and popular culture.
Folk songs tell a story or convey information about daily activities such as forming, life-cycle events (birth, death, and marriage), or mysterious events such as storms and earthquakes.
In Vietnam, where most people are subsistence farmers, information about agricultural technology is conveyed through folk songs.
When English-language folk songs appear in cold print, similar themes to other songs in different languages emerge, even if the specific information conveyed about the environment differs.
According to a Chinese legend, music was invented in 2697 BC when Emperor Huang Ti sent Ling Lun to cut bamboo poles that would produce a sound matching the call of the phoenix bird.
In reality, folk songs are usually composed anonymously and transmitted orally.
Origin of Popular Music
In contrast to folk music, popular music is written by specific individuals for the purpose of being sold to a large number of people.
It displays a high degree of technical skill and is frequently capable of being performed only in a studio with electronic equipment.
Popular music as we know it today originated around 1900.
At the time, the main popular musical entertainment in the United States and Western Europe was the variety show, called the music hall in the United Kingdom and vaudeville in the United States.
To provide for music halls and vaudeville, music industry was developed in a district of New York that became known as Tin Pan Valley
Tin Pan Alley was located along 28th Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue (now Avenue of the Americas).
It later moved uptown to Broadway and 32nd Street and then again along Broadway between 42nd and 50th streets.
The district was home to songwriters, music Publishers, orchestrators, and arrangers.
The diffusion of American popular music worldwide began in earnest during World War II when the Armed Forces Radio Network broadcasted music to American soldiers and to citizens of countries where American forces were stationed or fighting.
English became the international language for popular music.
Hip-hop is a more recent form of popular music that also originated in New York.
Whereas the music industry of Tin Pan Alley originated in Manhattan office buildings, hip-hop originated in the late 1970s in the South Bronx, the neighborhood predominantly populated by low-income African-American and Puerto Rican people (a changeover from its predominant population of middle-class white people of European origin).
Rappers in other low-income New York City neighborhoods of Queens, Brooklyn, and Harlem adopted the style with local twists—”thug” rap in Queens and clever lines in Brooklyn.
Hip-hop demonstrates well the interplay between globalization and local diversity which is a prominent theme of this book.
Diffusion of Folk and Popular Cultures
The broadcasting of American popular music on Armed Forces Radio during the 1940s and online today illustrates the difference in the diffusion of folk and popular cultures.
The spread of popular culture typically follows the process of hierarchical diffusion from hearths or nodes of innovation.
In the United States, prominent nodes of innovation for popular culture include Hollywood, California, for the film industry, and Madison Avenue in New York City for advertising agencies.
Popular culture diffuses rapidly and extensively through the use of modern communications and transportation.
In contrast, folk culture is transmitted from one location to another more slowly and on a smaller scale, primarily through migration rather than electronic communication.
One reason why hip-hop music is classified as popular rather than folk music is that it diffuses primarily through electronics.
In contrast, the spread of folk culture occurs through relocation diffusion, the spread of a character through migration.
The Amish: Relocation Diffusion of Folk Culture
Amish customs illustrate how relocation diffusion distributes folk culture.
Although the Amish number only about one-quarter million, their folk culture remains visible on the landscape in at least 19 states.
Shunning mechanical and electrical power, the Amish still travel by horse and buggy and continue to use hand tools for farming.
The Amish have distinctive clothing, farming, religious practices, and other customs.
The distribution of Amish folk culture across a major portion of the US landscape is explained by examining the diffusion of their culture through migration.
In the 1600s, a Swiss Mennonite bishop named Jakob Amman gathered a group of followers who became known as the Amish.
In Europe, the Amish families did not develop distinctive language, clothing, or farming practices and gradually merged with various Mennonite church groups.
Several hundred Amish families migrated to North America in two waves.
The first group, primarily from Bern and the Palatinate, settled in Pennsylvania in the early 1700s, enticed by William Penn’s offer of low-priced land.
Because of lower land prices, the second group, from Alsace, settled in Ohio, Illinois, and Iowa in the United States and Ontario, Canada, in the early 1800s.
From these core areas, groups of Amish migrated to other locations where inexpensive land was available.
Living in rural and frontier settlements relatively isolated from other groups, Amish communities retained their traditional customs, even as other European immigrants to the United States adopted new ones.
Amish folk culture continues to diffuse slowly through interregional migration within the United States.
Sports: Hierarchical Diffusion of Popular Culture
In contrast to the diffusion of folk customs, organized sports provide examples of how popular culture is diffused.
Many sports originated as isolated folk customs and were diffused like other folk cultures, through the migration of individuals.
The contemporary diffusion of organized sports, however, displayed the characteristics of popular culture.
FOLK CULTURE ORIGIN OF SOCCER.
Soccer (called football outside of North America) is the world’s most popular sport.
The earliest documented contest took place in England in the eleventh century.
According to football historians, after the Danish invasion of England between 1018 and 1042, workers excavating a building site encountered a Danish soldier’s head, which they begin to kick.
Early football games resembled mob scenes.
A large number of people from two villages would gather to kick the ball.
The winning side was the one that kicked the ball into the center of the rival village.
In the twelfth century, the game— by then commonly called football—was confined to smaller vacant areas, and the rules became standardized.
GLOBALIZATION OF SOCCER.
The transformation of football from an English folk custom to global popular culture began in the 1800s.
Football and other recreation clubs were founded in Britain, frequently by churches, to provide factory workers with organized recreation during leisure hours.
Sport became a subject that was taught in school.
Increasing leisure time permitted people not only to view sporting events but also to participate in them.
With higher incomes, spectators paid to see first-class events.
To meet public demand, football clubs began to hire professional players.
The organization of the sport into a formal structure in Great Britain marks the transition of football from foil to popular culture.
The word soccer originated after 1863 when supporters of the game formed the Football Association.
Association was shortened to assoc, which ultimately became twisted around into the word soccer.
The terms soccer and association football also helped to distinguish the game from rugby football, which permits both kicking and carrying the ball.
Rugby originated in 1823 when a football player at Rugby School (in Rugby, England) picked up the ball and ran with it.
Beginning in the late 1800s, the British exported association football around the world, first to continental Europe and then to other countries.
Football was first played in continental Europe in the late 1870s by Dutch students who had been in Britain.
The game was diffused to other countries through contact with English players.
British citizens further diffused the game trout the worldwide British Empire.
In the twentieth century, soccer, like other sports, was further diffused by new communication systems, especially radio and television.
SPORTS IN POPULAR CULTURE.
Each country has its own preferred sports.
Cricket is popular primarily in Britain and former British colonies.
Ice hockey prevails, logically, in colder climates, especially in Canada, Northern Europe, and Russia.
The most p[opular sports in China are martial arts, known as wushu, including archery, fencing, wrestling, and boxing.
Baseball, once confined to North America, became popular in Japan after it was introduced by American soldiers who occupied the country after World War II.
Lacrosse has fostered cultural identity among the Iroquois Confederation of Six Nation (Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras) who lived in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada.
As early as 1636, European explorers observed the Iroquois playing lacrosse, known in their language as guhchigwaha, which means “bump hips.”
European colonists in Canada picked up the game from the Iroquois and diffused it to a handful of US communities, especially in Maryland, upstate New York, and Long Island.
The name lacrosse is derived from the French word la crosse, for a bishop’s crosier or staff, which has a similar shape to the lacrosse stick.
In recent years, the Federation of International Lacrosse has invited the Iroquois National team to participate in world championships, along with teams from the United States, Canada, and other countries.
Although the Iroquois have not won, they have had the satisfaction of hearing their national anthem played and seeing their flag fly along with those of the other participants.
Despite the diversity of distribution of sports across Earth’s surface and the anonymous origin of some games, organized spectator sports today are part of popular culture.
The common element in professional sports is the willingness of people throughout the world to play for the privilege of viewing, in person or on TV, events played by professional athletes.
KEY ISSUE 2 - Why is Folk Culture Clustered?
Folk culture typically has unknown or multiple origins among groups living in relative isolation.
Folk culture diffuses slowly to other locations through the process of migration.
A combination of physical and cultural factors influences the distinctive distributions of folk culture.
Influence of the Physical Environment
Recall from Chapter 1 that a century ago environmental determinists theorized how processes in the environment caused social customs.
Most contemporary geographers reject environmental determinism.
Nonetheless, the physical environment does influence human actions, especially in folk culture.
Folk societies are particularly responsive to the environment because of their limited technology and the prevailing agricultural economy·
People living in folk cultures are likely to be farmers growing their own food, using hand tools and animal power.
Customs such as the provision of food, clothing, and shelter are clearly influenced by the prevailing climate, soil, and vegetation.
With regard to clothing, for example, residents of arctic climates may wear fur-lined boots, which protect against the cold, and snowshoes, with which to walk on soft, deep snow without sinking in.
People living in warm and humid climates may not need any footwear if heavy rainfall and time spent in water discourage such use.
The custom in the Netherlands of wearing wooden shoes may appear quaint, but it actually derives from environmental conditions.
Dutch farmers wear wooden shoes, which are waterproof, as they work in fields that often are extremely wet because much of the Netherlands is below sea level.
Yet folk culture may ignore the environment.
Not all arctic residents wear snowshoes, nor do all people in wet temperate climates wear wooden shoes.
Geographers observe that broad differences in folk culture arise in part from physical conditions and that these conditions produce varied customs.
More than clothing, the other two material necessities of daily life—food and shelter—demonstrate the influence of the environment on the development of unique folk culture.
Different folk societies prefer different foods and styles of house construction.
Food Preferences and the Environment
Folk food habits are embedded especially strongly in the environment.
Humans eat mostly plants and animals—living things that spring from the soil and water of a region.
Inhabitants of a region must consider the soil, climate, terrain, vegetation, and other characteristics of the environment in deciding to produce particular foods.
Bostans, which are small gardens inside Istanbul, Turkey, have been supplying the city with fresh produce for hundreds of years.
According to geographer Paul Kaldjian, Istanbul has around 1,000 bostans, run primarily by immigrants from Cide, a rural village in Turkey’s Kastamonu province.
Bostan farmers are able to maximize yields from their small plots of land (typically 1 hectare) through what Kaldjian calls clever and efficient manipulation of space, season, and resources.
Fifteen to twenty different types of vegetables are planted at different times of the year, and the choice is varied from year to yearn in order to reduce the risk of damage from poor weather.
Most of the work is done by older men, who prepare beds for planting, sow, irrigate, and operate motorized equipment, according to Kaldjian.
Women weed, and both men and women harvest.
People adapt their food preferences to conditions in the environment
In Asia, rice is grown in milder, moister regions; wheat thrives in colder, drier regions.
In Europe, and traditional preferences for quick-frying foods in Italy resulted in part from fuel shortages.
In Northern Europe, an abundant wood supply encouraged the slow tewing and roasting of foods over fires, which also provided home heat in the colder climate.
Soybeans, an excellent source of protein, are widely grown in Asia. In the raw state, they are toxic and indigestible.
Lengthy cooking renders them edible, but fuel is scarce in Asia.
Asians have adapted to this environmental challenge by deriving foods from soybeans that do not require extensive cooking.
These include bean sprouts (germinated seeds), soy sauce (fermented soybeans), and bean curd (steamed soybeans).
According to many folk customs, everything in nature carries a signature, or distinctive characteristic, based on its appearance and natural properties.
Consequently, people may desire or avoid certain foods in response to perceived beneficial or harmful natural traits.
People refuse to eat particular plants or animals that are thought to embed negative forces in the environment.
Such a restriction on behavior imposed by social custom is a taboo.
Other social customs, such as sexual practices, carry prohibition, but taboos are especially strong in the area of food.
Some folk cultures may establish food taboos because of concern for the natural environment.
These taboos may help to protect endangered animals or to conserve scarce natural resources.
To preserve scarce animal species, only a few high-ranking people in some tropical regions are permitted to hunt, whereas the majority cultivate crops.
Relatively well-known taboos against the consumption of certain foods can be found in the Bible.
The ancient Hebrews were prohibited from eating a wide variety of foods, including animals that do not chew their cud or that have cloven feet and fish lacking fins or scales.
These taboos arose partially from concern for the environment by the Hebrews, who lived as pastoral nomads in lands bordering the eastern Mediterranean.
The pig, for example, is prohibited in part because it is more suited to sedentary farming than pastoral nomadism and in part because its meat spoils relatively quickly in hot climates, such as the Mediterranean.
These biblical taboos were developed through oral tradition and by rabbis into the kosher laws observed today al by tradition some and Jews.
Similarly, Muslims embrace the taboo against pork, because pigs are unsuited for the drylands of the Arabian Peninsula.
Pigs would compete with humans for food and water without offering compensating benefits, such as being able to pull a plow, carry loads, or provide milk and wool.
The widespread raising of pigs would be an ecological disaster in Islam’s hearth.
Hindu taboos against consuming cows can also be partly explained by environmental reasons.
Cows are the source of oxen (castrated male bovine), the traditional choice for pulling plows as well as carts.
A large supply of oxen must be maintained in India because every field has to be plowed at approximately the same time—when the monsoon rains arrive.
Religious sanctions have kept India’s cow population large as a form of insurance against the loss of oxen and increasing population.
But the taboo against the consumption of meat among many people, including Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, cannot be explained primarily by environmental factors.
Social values must influence the choice of diet because people in similar climates and with similar levels of income consume different foods.
The biblical food taboos were established in part to set the Hebrew people apart from others.
That Christians ignore the biblical food injunctions reflects their desire to distinguish themselves from Jews.
The contribution of a location’s distinctive physical features to the way food tastes is known by the French term terroir.
The word comes from the same root as terre (French word for land or earth), but terroir does not translate precisely into English; it has a similar meaning to the English expressions “grounded” or “sense of place.”
Terroir is the sum of the effects of the local environment on a particular food item.
The term is frequently used to refer to the combination of soil, climate, and other physical features that contribute to the distinctive taste of wine.
Folk Housing and the Environment
French geographer Jean Brunhes, a major contributor to the cultural landscape tradition, views the house as being among the essential facts of human geography.
It is a product of both cultural traditions and natural conditions.
American cultural geographer Fred Kniffen considered the house to be a good reflection of cultural heritage, current fashion, functional needs, and the impact of the environment.
The type of building materials used to construct folk houses is influenced partly by the resources available in the environment.
The two most common building materials in the world are wood and brick; stone, grass, sod, and skins are also used.
If available, wood is generally preferred for house construction because it is easy to build with it.
In the past, pioneers who settled in forested regions built log cabins for themselves.
Stone is used to build houses in parts of Europe and South America and as decoration on the outside of brick or wood houses in other countries.
Even in areas that share similar climates and available building material, folk housing can vary because of minor differences in environmental features.
For example, R. W. McColl compared house types in four villages situated in the drylands of northern and western China.
All use similar building materials, including adobe and timber from the desert poplar tree, and they share a similar objective—protection from extreme temperatures, from very hot summer days to subfreezing winter nights.
Despite their similarities, the houses in these Chinese villages have individual designs.
Houses have second-floor open-air patios in Kashgar, small open courtyards in Turpan, large private courtyards in Yinchuan, and sloped roofs in Dunhuang.
McColl attributed the differences to local cultural preferences.
The construction of a pitched roof is important in wet or snowy climates to facilitate runoff and to reduce the weight of accumulated snow.
Windows may lace south in temperate climates to take advantage of the Sun’s heat and light.
In hot climates, on the other hand, window openings may be smaller to protect the interior from the full heat of the Sun.
Today, people in MDCs buy lumber that has been cut by machine into the needed shapes.
Cut lumber is used to erect a frame, and sheets or strips of wood are attached for the floors, ceilings, and roof.
Shingles, stucco, vinyl, aluminum, or other materials may be placed on the exterior for insulation or decoration.
Isolation Promotes Cultural Diversity
A group’s unique folk customs develop through centuries of relative isolation from customs practiced by other cultural groups.
As a result, folk customs observed at a point in time vary widely from one place to another, even among nearby places.
Himalayan Art
In a study of artistic customs in the Himalaya Mountains, geographers P. Karan and Cotton Mather demonstrated that distinctive views of the physical environment emerge among neighboring cultural groups that are isolated.
The study area, a narrow corridor of 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles) in the Himalaya Mountains of Bhutan, Nepal, northern India, and southern Tibet (China), contains four religious groups: Tibetan Buddhists in the north, Hindus in the south, Muslims in the west, and Southeast Asian animists in the east.
Despite their spatial proximity, limited interaction among these groups produces distinctive folk customs.
Through their choices of subjects of paintings, each group reveals how their folk culture mirrors their religious and individual views of their environment:
Buddhists in the northern region paint idealized divine figures, such as monks and saints.
Some of these figures are depicted as bizarre or terrifying, perhaps reflecting the inhospitable environment.
Hindus in the southern region create scenes from everyday life and familiar local scenes.
Their paintings sometimes portray a deity in a domestic scene and frequently represent the region’s violent and extreme climatic conditions.
Muslims in the Islamic western portion show the region’s beautiful plants and flowers because the Muslim faith prohibits displaying animate objects in art.
In contrast with the paintings from the Buddhist and Hindu regions, these paintings do not depict harsh climatic conditions.
Animists from Myanmar (Burma) and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, who have migrated to the eastern region of the study area, paint symbols and designs that derive from their religion rather than from the local environment.
The distribution of artistic subjects in the Himalayas shows how folk customs are influenced by cultural institutions like religion and by environmental processes such as climate, landforms, and vegetation.
These groups display similar uniqueness in their dance, music, architecture, and crafts.
Beliefs and Folk House Forms
The distinctive form of folk houses may derive primarily from religious values and other customary beliefs rather than from environmental factors.
Some compass directions may be more important than other directions.
SACRED SPACES.
Houses may have sacred walls or corners.
In the south-central part of the island of Java, for example, the front door always faces south, the direction of the South Sea Goddess, who holds the key to Earth.
The east wall of a house is considered sacred in Fiji, as is the northwest wall in parts of China.
Sacred walls or corners are also noted in parts of the Middle East, India, and Africa.
In Madagascar, the main door is on the west, considered the most important direction, and the northeast corner is the most sacred.
The north wall is for honoring ancestors; in addition, important guests enter a room from the north and are seated against the north wall.
The bed is placed against the east wall of the house, with the head facing north.
The Lao people in northern Laos arrange beds perpendicular to the center ridgepole of the house.
Because the head is considered high and noble and the feet low and vulgar, people sleep so that their heads will be opposite their neighbor’s heads and their feet opposite their neighbor’s feet.
The principal exception to this arrangement: A child who builds a house next door to the parents sleeps with his or her head toward the parents' feet as a sign of obeying the customary hierarchy.
Although they speak similar Southeast Asian languages and adhere to Buddhism, the Lao do not orient their houses in the same manner as the Yuan and Shan peoples in nearby northern Thailand.
The Yuan and Shan ignore the position of neighbors and all sleep with their heads toward the east, which Buddhists consider the most auspicious direction.
Staircases must not face west, the least auspicious direction, the direction of death and evil spirits.
U.S. FOLK HOUSING.
Older houses in the United States display local folk-culture traditions.
When families migrated westward in the 1700s and 1800s, they cut trees to clear fields for planting and used the wood to build houses, barns, and fences.
The style of pioneer homes reflected whatever upscale style was prevailing at the place on the East Coast from which they migrated.
Geographer Fred Kniffen identified three major hearths or nodes of folk house form in the United States: New England, Middle Atlantic, and Lower Chesapeake.
The Lower Chesapeake or Tidewater style of house typically comprised one story, with a steep roof and chimneys at either end.
Migrants spread these houses from the Chesapeake Bay-Tidewater, Virginia, area along the southeast coast.
As was the case with the Middle Atlantic “I”-house, the form of housing that evolved along the southeast coast typically was only one room deep.
In wet areas, houses in the coastal southeast were often raised on piers or on a brick foundation.
The Middle Atlantic region’s principal house type was known as the “I”-houses, typically two full stories in height with gables to the sides.
The “I”-house resembled the letter “I”—it was only one room deep and at least two rooms wide.
Middle Atlantic migrants carried their house type westward across the Ohio Valley and southwestward along the Appalachian trails.
As a result, the “I”-house became the most extensive style of construction in much of the eastern half of the United States, especially in the Ohio Valley and Appalachia.
New England migrants carried house types northward to upper New England and westward across the southern Great Lakes region.
The New England house types can be found throughout the Great Lakes region as far west as Wisconsin because this area was settled primarily by migrants from New England.
Four major house types were popular in New England at various times during the eighteenth century and early nineteenth centuries.
As the house preferred by New Englanders changed over time, the predominant form found on the landscape varies based on the date of initial settlement.
Today, such distinctions are relatively difficult to observe in the United States.
Houses built in the United States during the past half-century display popular culture influences.
The degree of regional distinctiveness in housing style has diminished because rapid communication and transportation systems provide people throughout the country with knowledge of alternative styles.
Furthermore, most people do not build the houses in which they live.
Instead, houses are usually mass-produced by construction companies.
KEY ISSUE 3 - Why Is Popular Culture Widely Distributed?
Popular culture varies more in time than in place.
Like folk culture, it may originate in one location, within the context of a particular society and environment.
But, in contrast to folk culture, it diffuses rapidly across Earth to locations with a variety of physical conditions.
Rapid diffusion depends on a group of people having a sufficiently high level of economic development to acquire the material possessions associated with popular culture.
Diffusion of Popular Housing, Clothing, and Food
Some regional differences in food, clothing, and shelter persist in MDCs, but the differences are much less than in the past.
Go to any recently built neighborhood on the outskirts of an American city from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon: The houses look the same, the people wear jeans, and the same chains deliver pizza.
Popular Food Customs
Popular culture flourishes when people in a society have sufficient income to acquire the tangible elements of popular culture and the leisure time to make use of them.
People in MDCs are likely to have the income, time, and inclination to facilitate greater adoption of popular culture.
REGIONAL VARIATIONS.
Consumption of large quantities of alcoholic beverages and snack foods is a characteristic of the food customs of popular societies.
Americans choose particular beverages or snacks in part on the basis of preference for what is produced, grown, or imported locally.
Bourbon consumption in the United States is concentrated in the Upper South, where most of it is produced.
Tequila, consumption is heavily concentrated in the Southwest along the border with Mexico.
Canadian whiskey is preferred in communities contiguous to Canada.
Southerners may prefer pork rinds because more hogs are raised there, and northerners may prefer popcorn and potato chips because more corn and potatoes are grown there.
Cultural backgrounds also affect the amount and types of alcohol and snack foods consumed.
Alcohol consumption relates partially to religious backgrounds and partially to income and advertising.
The Southeast has a relatively low rate of alcohol consumption because Baptists—who are clustered in the region—drink less than do adherents of other denominations; Utah also has a low rate because of a concentration of Latter-day Saints.
Nevada has a high rate because of the heavy concentration of gambling and other resort activities there.
Texans may prefer tortilla chips because of the large number of Hispanic Americans there.
Westerners may prefer multigrain chips because of greater concern for the nutritional content of snack foods.
Geographers cannot explain all the regional variations in food preferences.
In general, consumption of alcohol and snack foods is part of popular culture primarily dependent on two factors—high income and national advertising.
Variations within the United States are much less significant than differences between the United States and LDCs in Africa and Asia.
WINE.
The spatial distribution of wine production demonstrates that the environment plays a role in the distribution of popular as well as folk food customs.
The distinctive character of wine derives from a unique combination of soil, climate, and other physical characteristics at the place where the grapes are grown.
Vineyards are best cultivated in temperate climates of moderately cold, rainy winters and finally long, hot summers.
Hot, sunny weather is necessary for the summer for the fruit to mature properly, whereas winter is the preferred season for rain because plant diseases that cause the frit to rot are more active in hot, humid weather.
Vineyards are planted on hillsides if possible, to maximize exposure to sunlight and to facilitate drainage.
A site near a lake or river is also desirable because water can temper extremes of temperature.
Grapes can be grown in a variety of soils, but the best wine tends to be produced from grapes grown in soil that is coarse and well-drained—a soil not necessarily fertile for other crops.
Because of the unique product created by the distinctive soil and climate characteristics, the world’s finest wines are most frequently identified by their place of origin.
Wines may be labeled with the region, town, district, or specific estate.
A wine expert can determine the precise origin of a wine just by tasting because of the unique taste imparted to the grapes by the specific soil composition of each estate.
The year of the harvest is also indicated on finer wines because specific weather conditions each year affect the quality and quantity of the harvest.
Wines may also be identified by the variety of grape used rather than the location of the vineyard.
Less expensive wines might contain a blend of grapes from a variety of estates and years.
Although grapes can be grown in a wide variety of locations, win distribution is based principally on cultural values, both historical and contemporary.
The distribution of popular customs depends less on the distinctive environment of a location than on the presence of beliefs, institutions, and material traits conducive to accepting those customs.
Wine is made today primarily in locations that have a tradition of excellence in making it and people who like to drink it and can afford to purchase it.
The social custom of wine production in much of France and Italy extends back at least to the Roman Empire.
Wine consumption declined after the fall of Rome, and many vineyards were destroyed.
Monasteries preserved the wine-making tradition in medieval Europe for both sustenance and ritual.
Wine consumption has become extremely popular again in Europe in recent centuries, as well as in the Western Hemisphere.
Vineyards are now typically owned by private individuals and corporations rather than religious organizations.
Wine production is discouraged in regions of the world dominated by religions other than Christianity.
Hindus and Muslims, in particular, avoid alcoholic beverages.
This wine production is limited in the Middle East (other than Israel) and southern Asia primarily because of cultural values, especially religion.
Rapid Diffusion of Clothing Styles
Individual clothing habits reveal how popular culture can be distributed across the landscape with little regard for distinctive physical features.
Such habits reflect the availability of income as well as social forms such as job characteristics.
In the MDCs of North America and Western Europe, clothing habits generally reflect occupations rather than particular environments.
A lawyer or business executive, for example, tends to wear a dark suit, light shirt or blouse, and necktie or scarf, whereas a factory worker wears jeans and a work shirt.
A lawyer in California is more likely to dress like a lawyer in New York than like a steelworker in California.
Improved communications have permitted the rapid diffusion of clothing styles from one region of Earth to another.
Original designs for women’s dresses, created in Paris, Milan, London, or New York, are reproduced in large quantities at factories in Asia and sold for relatively low prices in North American and European chain stores.
Speed is essential in manufacturing copies of designer dresses because fashion tastes change quickly.
Until recently, a year could elapse from the time an original dress was displayed to the time that inexpensive reproductions were available in the stores.
Now the time lag is only a few weeks because of the diffusion of fax machines, computers, and satellites.
The globalization of clothing styles has involved increasing awareness by North Americans and Europeans of the variety of folk costumes around the world.
Increased travel and the diffusion of television have exposed people in MDCs to other forms of dress, just as people in other parts of the world have come into contact with Western dress.
The poncho from South America, the dashiki of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and the Aleut parka have been adopted by people elsewhere in the world.
The continued use of folk costumes in some parts of the globe may persist not because of distinctive environmental conditions or traditional cultural values, but to preserve past memories or to attract tourists.
JEANS.
An important symbol of the diffusion of Western popular culture is jeans,m which became a prized possession for young people throughout the world.
In the 1960s, jeans acquired an image of youthful independence in the United States as young people adopted a style of clothing previously associated with low-status manual laborers and farmers.
Jeans became an obsession and a status symbol among the youth in the Former Soviet Union when the Communist government prevented their import.
Gangs would attack people to steal their American-made jeans,. And authentic jeans would sell for $400 on the black market.
The scarcity of high-quality jeans was just one of many consumer problems that were important motives in the dismantling of Communist governments in Eastern Europe around 1990, Eastern Europeans, who were aware of Western fashions and products—thanks to television—could not obtain them, because government-controlled industries were inefficient and geared to producing tanks rather than consumer-oriented goods.
With the end of communism, Levi’s and other brands of jeans are freely sold and even produced in the former Soviet Union.
Ironically, as access to Levi’s increased around the world, American consumers turned away from the brand.
Sales plummeted from $7 billion in 1996 to $4 billion in 2004, the year Levi’s closed its last US factory.
Popular Housing Styles
Housing built in the United States since the 1940s demonstrates how popular customs vary more in time than in place.
Houses show the influence of shapes, materials, detailing, and other features of architectural style in vogue at any one point in time.
In the years immediately after World War II, which ended in 1945, most US houses were built in a modern style.
Since the 1960s, styles that architects call neo-eclectic have predominated.
MODERN HOUSE STYLES (1945-1960).
Specific types of modern-style houses were popular at different times.
Minimal traditional: Dopminatin in the late 1940s and early 1950s, reminiscent of Tudor-style houses popular in the 1920s and 1930s; usually one story, with a dominant front gable and few decorative details; small, modest houses designed to house young families and veterans returning from World War II.
Ranch house: REplaced minimal traditional in the 1950s and into the 1960s; one story, with the long side parallel to the street, with all the rooms on one level rather than two or three, it took up a larger lot and encouraged the sprawl of urban areas.
Split-level: A popular variant of the ranch house between the 1950s and 1970s; the lower level contained the garage and the newly invented “family” room, where the television set was placed; the kitchen and formal living and dining rooms were placed on the intermediate level, and the bedrooms on the top level above the family room and garage.
Contemporary: Especially popular between the 1950s and 1970s for architect-designed houses; they frequently had flat or low-pitched roofs.
Shed: Popular in the late 1960s; characterized by high-pitched shed roofs, giving the house the appearance of a series of geometric forms.
NEO-ECLECTIC (SINCE 1960.
In the late 1960s, neo-eclectic styles became popular and by the 1970s had surpassed modern styles in vogue:
Mansard: The first popular neo-eclectic style, in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the shingle-covered second-story walls sloped slightly inward and merged into the roofline.
Neo-Tudor: Popular in the 1970s; characterized by dominant, steep-pitched front-facing gables and half-timbered detailing.
Neo-French: Also appeared in the early 1970s, and by early 1980 was the most fashionable style for new houses; it featured dormer windows, usually with rounded tops, and high-hipped roofs.
Neo-colonial: An adaption of English colonial houses, it has been continuously popular since the 1950s but never dominant; inside many neo-colonial houses, a large central “great room” has replaced separate family and living rooms, which were located in different wings or floors of ranch and split-level houses.
Electronic Diffusion of Popular Culture
Watching television has been an especially significant popular custom for two reasons.
First, it has been the most popular leisure activity in MDCs throughout the world.
Second, television has been the most important mechanism by which knowledge of popular cultures, such as professional sports, is rapidly diffused across Earth.
In the twenty-first century, other electronic media have become important transmitters of popular culture.
Diffusion of Television
Television technology was developed simultaneously in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union, as well as in the United States, but in the early years of broadcasting, the United States held a near-monopoly.
Through the second half of the twentieth century, television diffused from the United States, first to Europe and other MDCs, then to LDCs.
In 1954, the first year that the United Nations published data on the subject, the United States had 86 percent of the world’s 37 million TV sets.
The United States had approximately 200 TV sets per 1,000 inhabitants in 1954, and the rest of the world had approximately 2 per 1,000.
In 2000, Internet usage increased rapidly in the United States, from 9 percent to 44 percent of the population.
But the worldwide increase was much greater, from 40 million Internet users in 1995 to 361 million in 2000.
As Internet usage diffused rapidly, the US percentage share declined rapidly in five years, from 62 to 31 percent.
In 2008, Internet usage further diffused rapidly.
World usage more than quadrupled in 8 years, to 1.6 billion.
US usage continued to increase, but at a more modest rate, to 74 percent of the population, and the share of the world’s Internet users found in the United States continued to decline to 14 percent in 2008.
The diffusion of television from the United States to the rest of the world took a half-century, whereas the diffusion of the Internet has taken only a decade.
Given the history of television, the Internet is likely to diffuse further in the years ahead at a rapid rate.
Diffusion of Facebook
Facebook, founded in 2004 by Harvard University students, has begun to diffuse rapidly.
In 2009, five years after its founding, Facebook had 200 million active users.
As with the first few years of TV and the Internet, once again the United States had far more Facebook users than any other country.
In the years ahead, Facebook is likely to either diffuse to other parts of the world, or it will be overtaken by other electronic social networking programs and be relegated to a footnote in the continuous repeating pattern of diffusing electronic communications.
KEY ISSUE 4 - Why Does Globalization of Popular Culture Cause Problems?
The international diffusion of popular culture has led to two issues, both of which can be understood from geographic perspectives.
First, the diffusion of popular culture may threaten the survival of traditional folk culture in many countries.
Second, popular culture may be less responsive to the diversity of local environments and consequently may generate adverse environmental impacts.
Threat to Folk Culture
Many fear the loss of folk culture, especially because rising incomes can fuel demand for the possessions typical of popular culture.
When people turn from folk to popular, they may also turn away from society’s traditional values.
And the diffusion of popular culture from MDCs can lead to the dominance of Western perspectives.
Loss of Traditional Values
People in folk societies may turn away from traditional material cultures, such as food, clothing, and shelter.
Exposure to popular culture may stimulate a desire to adopt similar practices.
One example of the symbolic importance of folk culture is clothing.
In African and Asian countries today, there is a contrast between the clothes of rural farmworkers and of urban business and government leaders.
Adoption of clothing from MDCs is part of a process of imitation and replication of foreign symbols of success.
Wearing clothes typical of MDCs is controversial and some Middle Eastern countries.
Some political leaders in the region choose to wear Western business suits as a sign that they are trying to forge closer links with the United States and Western European countries.
Others, such as fundamentalist Muslims, may oppose the widespread adoption of western clothes, especially by a woman living in cities.
Women are urged to abandon skirts and blouses in favor of the traditional black chador, a combination head covering and veil.
Beyond clothing, the global diffusion of popular culture may threaten the subservience of women to men that is embedded in some folk customs.
Women may have been traditionally neglected to perform household chores, such as cooking and cleaning, and to bearing and raising large numbers of children.
Those women who worked outside the home were likely to be obtaining food for the family, either through agricultural work or by trading handicrafts.
Contact with popular culture also has brought negative impacts for women in LDCs.
For example, prostitution has increased in some LDCs to serve men from MDCs traveling on “sex tours.”
These tours primarily from Japan and Northern Europe (especially Norway, Germany, and the Netherlands), include airfare, hotels, and the use of a predetermined number of women.
Leading destinations include the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea.
International prostitution is encouraged in these countries as a major source of foreign currency.
Through this form of global interaction, popular culture may regard women as essentially equal at home but as objects that money can buy in foreign folk societies.
Threat of Foreign Media Imperialism
Leaders of some LDCs consider the dominance of popular customs by MDCs as a threat to their independence.
The threat is posed primarily by the media, especially news-gathering organizations and television.
WESTERN CONTROL OF MEDIA.
Three MDCs—the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan—dominate the television industry in LDCs.
The Japanese operate primarily in South Asia and East Asia, selling their electronic equipment.
British companies have invested directly in management and programming for television in Africa.
US corporations own or provide technical advice to many Latin American stations.
These three countries are also the major exporters of programs.
Even in Europe, the United States has been the source of two-thirds of the entertainment programs.
Leaders of many LDCs view the spread of television as a new method of economic and cultural imperialism on the part of the MDCs, especially the United States.
American television, like other media, presents characteristically American beliefs and social forms, such as upward social mobility, relative freedom for women, glorification of youth, and stylized violence.
These attractive themes may conflict with and drive out traditional social customs.
To avoid offending traditional values, many satellite broadcasters in Asia do not carry MTV or else allow governments to censor unacceptable videos.
Cartoons featuring Porky Pig may be banned in Muslim countries, where people avoid pork products.
Instead, entertainment programs emphasize family values and avoid controversial cultural, economic, and political issues.
LDCs fear the effects of the news-gathering capability of the media even more than their entertainment function.
And the United States most television stations are owned by private corporations, which receive licenses from the government to operate at specific frequencies (channels).
The news media in most LDCs are dominated by the government, which typically runs the radio and TV service as well as a domestic news-gathering agency.
Newspapers may be owned by the government, a political party, or a private individual, but in any event, they are dependent on the government news-gathering organization for information.
In many regions of the world, the only reliable and unbiased news accounts come from the BBC World Service shortwave and satellite radio newscast.
Sufficient funds are not available to establish a private new service in LDCs.
The process of gathering news worldwide is expensive, and most broadcasters and newspapers are unable to afford their own correspondents.
Instead, they buy the right to use the dispatches of one or more of the main news organizations.
The diffusion of information to newspapers around the world is dominated by the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, which are owned by American and British companies, respectively.
The AP and Reuters also supply most of the world’s television news video.
Many African and Asian government officials criticize the Western concept of freedom of the press.
They argue that the American news organizations reflected American values and do not provide a balanced, accurate view of other countries.
US news-gathering organizations are more interested in covering earthquakes, hurricanes, or other sensational disasters than more meaningful but less visual and dramatic domestic stories, such as birth-control programs, healthcare innovations, or the construction of new roads.
In the past, many governments viewed television as an important tool for fostering cultural integration; television could extol the exploits of the leaders or the accomplishments of the political system.
People turned on their TV sets and watched what the government wanted them to see.
Because television signals weaken with distance and are strong up to roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles), few people could receive television broadcast from other countries.
SATELLITES.
George Orwell's novel 1984, published in 1949, anticipated that television—then in its infancy—would play a major role in the ability of a totalitarian government to control people's daily lives.
In recent years, changing technology—especially the diffusion of small satellite dishes—has made television a force for political change rather than stability.
Satellite dishes enable people to choose from a wide variety of programs produced in other countries, not just a local government-control station.
A number of governments and Asia have tried to prevent consumers from obtaining satellite dishes.
The Chinese government banned private ownership of satellite dishes by its citizens, although foreigners and upscale hotels were allowed to keep them.
The government of Singapore banned ownership of satellite dishes, yet it encourages satellite services, including MTV and HBO, to locate their Asian headquarters in the country.
The government of Saudi Arabia ordered 150,000 satellite dishes dismantled, claiming that they were none “un-Islamic.”
Governments have had little success in shutting down satellite technology.
Despite the threat of heavy fines, several hundred thousand Chinese still own satellite dishes.
Consumers can outwit the government because the small size of satellite dishes makes them easy to smuggle into the country and erect out of sight, perhaps behind a brick wall or under a canvas tarpaulin.
A dish may be expensive by local standards—twice the annual salary of a typical Chinese, for example—but several neighbors can share the cost and hook up all of their TV sets to it.
Satellite dishes represent only one assault on government control of the flow of information.
Fax machines, portable video recorders, the internet, and cellular telephones have also put chinks in government censorship.
TV broadcasting has also migrated to new media, such as computers, cellular telephones, and other handheld devices.
Programs can be viewed on-demand, sometimes for a fee.
Environmental Impacts of Popular Culture
Popular culture has less likely than folk culture to be distributed with consideration for physical features.
The spatial organization of popular culture reflects a distribution of social and economic features.
In a global economy and culture, popular culture appears increasingly uniform.
Modifying Nature
Popular culture can significantly modify or control the environment.
It may be imposed on the environment rather than spring forth from it, as with many folk customs.
For many popular customs, the environment is something to be modified to enhance participation in a leisure activity or to promote the sale of a product.
Even if the resulting built environment looks “natural,” it is actually the deliberate creation of people in pursuit of popular social customs.
DISTRIBUTION OF GOLF.
Golf courses, because of their large size (80 hectares, or 200 acres), provide a prominent example of imposing popular culture on the environment.
A surge in US golf popularity has spawned the construction of roughly 200 courses during the past two decades.
Geographer John Rooney attributes this to increase income and leisure time, especially among recently retired older people and younger people with flexible working hours.
According to Rooney, the provision of golf courses is not uniform across the United States.
Although perceived as a warm-weather sport, the number of golf courses per person is actually greatest in north-central states, from Kansas to North Dakota, as well as the northeastern states attributing to the Great Lakes, from Wisconsin to upstate New York.
People in these regions have a long tradition of playing golf, and social clubs with golf courses are important institutions in the fabric of the region's popular customs.
In contrast, access to golf courses is more limited in the south, in California, and in the heavily urbanized Middle Atlantic region between New York City and Washington, D.C.
Rapid population growth in the South and West and lack of land on which to build in the Middle Atlantic region have reduced the number of courses per capita.
Selected southern and western areas, such as coastal South Carolina, Southern Florida, and central Arizona, have high concentrations of golf courses as a result of the arrival of large numbers of golf playing northerners, either as vacationers or as permanent residents.
Golf courses are designed partially in response to local physical conditions.
Grass species are selected to thrive in the local climate and still be suitable for the needs of greens, fairways, and roughs.
Existing trees and Native vegetation are retained if possible (few fairways in Michigan are lined by palms).
Yet, like other popular customs, golf courses remake the environment—creating or flattening hills, cutting grass or letting it grow tall, carting in or digging up sand for traps, and draining or expanding bodies of water to create hazards.
Uniform Landscapes
The distribution of popular culture around the world tends to produce more uniform landscapes.
The spatial expression of a popular custom in one location will be similar to another.
In fact, promoters of popular culture want a uniform appearance to generate “product recognition” and greater consumption.
The diffusion of fast-food restaurants is a good example of such uniformity.
Such restaurants are usually organized as franchises.
A franchise is a company's agreement with business people in a local area to market that company's product.
The franchise agreement lets the local outlet use the company's name, symbols, trademarks, methods, and architectural styles.
To both local residents and travelers, the buildings are immediately recognizable as part of a national or multinational company.
A uniform sign is prominently displayed.
Much of the attraction of fast-food restaurants comes from the convenience of the product and the use of the building as a low-cost socializing location for teenagers or families with young children.
At the same time, the success of fast-food restaurants depends on large-scale mobility: People who travel or move to another city immediately recognize a familiar place.
Newcomers to a particular place know what to expect in the restaurant because the establishment does not reflect strange and unfamiliar local customs that could be uncomfortable.
Fast-food restaurants were originally developed to attract people who arrive by car.
The buildings generally were brightly colored, even gaudy, to attract motorists.
Recently built fast-food restaurants are more subdued, with brick facades, pseudo-antique fixtures, and other stylistic details.
To facilitate reuse of the structure in case the restaurant fails, company signs are often free-standing rather than integrated into the building's design.
Uniformity in the appearance of the landscape is promoted by a wide variety of other popular cultures in North America, such as gas stations, supermarkets, and motels.
American motels and fast-food chains have opened in other countries.
These establishments appeal to North American travelers, yet most customers are local residents who wish to sample American customs they've seen on television.
Negative Environment Impact
The diffusion of some popular customs can adversely impact environmental quality in two ways—depletion of scarce natural resources and pollution of the landscape.
INCREASED DEMAND FOR NATURAL RESOURCES.
Diffusion of some popular customs increases demand for raw materials, such as minerals and other substances found beneath Earth's surface.
The depletion of resources used to produce energy, especially petroleum, is discussed in Chapter 14.
Popular culture may demand a large supply of certain animals, resulting in depletion or even extinction of some species.
For example, some animals are killed for their skins, which can be shaped into fashionable clothing and sold to people living thousands of kilometers from the animals’ habitat.
The skins of the mink, lynx, jaguar, kangaroo, and whale have been heavily consumed for various articles of clothing, to the point that the survival of the species is endangered.
This unbalances the ecological systems of which the animals are members.
Folk culture may also encourage the use of animal skins, but the demand is usually smaller than for popular culture.
Increased demand for some products can constrain the capacity of the environment.
An important example is increased meat consumption.
This has not caused the extinction of cattle and poultry—we simply raised more.
But animal consumption is an inefficient way for people to acquire calories—90% less efficient than if people simply ate grain directly.
Grain could be fed to people directly, bypassing the inefficient meat step.
With a large percentage of the world's population undernourished, some question this inefficient use of grain to feed animals for eventual human consumption.
POLLUTION.
Popular culture also can pollute the environment.
The environment can accept and assimilate some level of waste from human activities.
But popular culture generates a high volume of waste—solids, liquids, and gases—that must be absorbed into the environment.
Although waste is discharged in all three forms, the most visible is solid waste—cans, bottles, old cars, paper, and plastics.
These products are often discarded rather than recycled.
With more people adopting popular customs worldwide, this problem grows.
Folk culture, like popular culture, can also cause environmental damage, especially when natural processes are ignored.
A widespread belief exists that indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere practice more “natural,” ecologically sensitive agriculture before the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans.
Geographers increasingly question this.
In reality, pre-Columbian folk customs included burning grasslands for planting and hunting, cutting extensive forests, and overhunting some species.
Very high rates of soil erosion have been documented in Central America from the practice of folk culture.
The MDCs that produce endless supplies for popular culture have created the technological capacity both to create large-scale environmental damage and to control it.
However, a commitment of time and money must be made to control the damage.