What are the Different Types of Culture?

• Folk: small, incorporates a homogenous population, is typically rural, and cohesive in cultural traits

• Popular: large, incorporates heterogeneous populations, is typically urban, and has quickly changing cultural traits

• Local: group of people in a particular place, who see themselves as a community, who share experiences, customs, and traits, and work to preserve those traits and customs in order to claim uniqueness and distinguish themselves from others

Material vs. Non Material Culture• Material: group of

people includes the things they construct, such as art, houses, clothing, sports, dance, and foods

• Non-Material: includes the beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and values of a group of people

How are Local Cultures Sustained?• Assimilation: people lose

differentiating traits, such as dress, speech mannerisms, when they come into contact with another society

• Customs: practice that a group of people routinely follow

• Cultural Appropriation: process by which other cultures adopt customs and knowledge and use them for their own benefit

• Authenticity: the accuracy with which a single stereotypical or typecast image or experience conveys an otherwise dynamic and complex culture

How is Popular Culture Diffused?• Distance Decay: the effects of

distance on interaction, generally the greater distance the less interaction

• Time-Space Compression: the social and psychological effects of living in world in which time-space convergence has rapidly reached a high level of intensity

– explains how innovations diffuse and how interlinked two places are through transportation and communication

• Popular culture diffuses hierarchically in the context of time-space compression

• All aspects of popular culture have a

hearth

DISTANCE DECAY MODEL

How can Local and Popular cultures be seen in the Cultural Landscape?

• Cultural Landscape: the visible imprint of human activity on the landscape

• Placelessness: loss of uniqueness of place in the cultural landscape so that one place looks like the next

• Glocalization: the process by which people place mediate and alter regional, national, and global processes

Housing Regions• New England: wood-frame

construction, fire place in center of the home, style that dates back from colonial times

• Mid-Atlantic: fireplace not in the center of the house, porch, and second floor

• Southern Tidewater: one story, characteristic porch, built on raised platform, built on raised stone foundations