culture
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
Culture:Folk vs Popular, Language, Religion
Culture• shared set of values and meanings practiced in everyday shared set of values and meanings practiced in everyday
lifelife
• displays a social structure – a framework of roles and interrelationships of individuals and established groups.
• transmitted within a society by imitation, instruction, and example (it is learned, not biological).
• Cultural GeographyCultural Geography looks at looks at-how place shapes culture.-how place shapes culture.-how culture shapes place.-how culture shapes place.-how places acquire meaning-how places acquire meaning
CULTURAL IDENTITIESCULTURAL IDENTITIES• LanguageLanguage• RaceRace• ReligionReligion• SubcultureSubculture• EthnicityEthnicity• RegionRegion
Roots of Culture
• End of Ice Age - ~11,000 years ago – plant, animal, and human populations began to spread since they had more availability of land. Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) marks this period – small scattered groups began to develop regional variations. All were hunter-gatherers, tools and traits were indicative of their environment.
Cultural divergence
• Following end of Ice Age, cultures went through periods of cultural evolution from hunt/gather, through development of agriculture and animal domestication (husbandry), to eventually urbanization and industrialization in modern times. Since not all cultures passed through all stages at the same time, or even at all, this divergence became evident
Cultural Hearths • - centers of innovation and invention from which key culture
traits and elements moved to influence surrounding regions.
• Multilinear evolution – each major environmental zone (arid, high altitude, midlatitude steppe, etc) tended to induce common adaptive traits in the cultures of those who exploit it. Idea developed by Julian Steward, anthropologist (1902-72) to explain the common characteristics around the world. Similar traits did not always mean identical traits
• Cultural convergence - sharing of technologies, organizational structures, and cultural traits and artifacts that is evident among widely separated societies in modern world.
Culture is a web of behaviors and attitudes
• habit – action by single person • custom – action by many over time• culture traits – units of learned behavior ranging
from the language spoken to the tools used or the games played.
– object (fishhook)– technique (weaving and knitting of a fishnet) – belief (in the spirits resident in water bodies)– attitude (a conviction that fish is superior to other animal
protein) They are the most basic expressions of culture (building
blocks)
• Culture complex – individual cultural traits that are functionally interrelated.
– keeping cattle was a trait of the Masai of Kenya and Tanzania
• related traits include, measurement of personal wealth by the number of cattle owned, a diet containing milk and the blood of cattle, and disdain for labor not related to herding.
• Cultural systems – grouping of complexes together that have traits in common. Ethnicity, language, religion, define a cultural system
Structure of Culture
• 3 subsystems of culture devised by anthropologists (White and Huxley)
• Mentifacts: Ideological Subsystem – consists of the ideas, beliefs, and knowledge of a culture and of the ways in which these things are expressed in speech or other forms of communication.
– (Myths, theologies, legend, literature, philosophy, folk wisdom).
– These are passed on from generations as mentifacts, or abstract belief systems (or world view),
• tell us what we should believe, value, and how we ought to act. (Language and religion)
• Artifacts: Technological subsystem – composed of the material objects, together with the techniques of their use, by means of which people are able to live. The objects are tools and other instruments that enable people to feed, clothe, house, defend, transport, and amuse ourselves. These basic needs are artifacts aka things people make.
• Sociofacts: Sociological subsystem – sum of those expected and accepted patterns of interpersonal relations that find their outlet in economic, political, military, religious, kinship, and other associations. These are the sociofacts that define the social organization of a culture aka social structures.
Material vs. Non-material Culture• Material culture is made of artifacts (tangible things) and Non-material culture is made up of mentifacts and sociofacts
– a dwelling is an artifact, providing shelter for its occupants. It can also be a sociofact reflecting the nature of the family or kinship group and a mentifact summarizing a culture group’s convictions about appropriate design, orientation, and building materials.
• When cultures change, first thing to go is artifact, then sociofact, then mentifact (ex. Europeans visiting New World – natives give beads, etc)
• Nothing in culture stands totally alone, so when changes occur in the ideas that a society holds, it may affect the sociological and technological systems just as changes in technology force adjustments in the social system. This interlocking nature of all aspects of culture is known as cultural integration.
Cultural Landscape• (Carl Sauer) – a characteristic and tangible outcome of
the complex interactions between a human group and a natural environment
Sauer’s Cultural Landscape Theory
Cultureis the “agent”
Natural areais the “medium”
Cultural landscape is the “result”
How cultureshapes land
French “long lots”system
English grid system
Masai Village, Kenya
Ordinary (Vernacular) Landscapes
Symbolic Landscapes
FOLK CULTURE
•Small homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas
•Culture derived from local, natural elements
Folk Customs
• Create “material culture”
• Usually agrarian or rural
• Highly regionalized• Adapted to local
conditions• Example: haystackers
Folk Housing
• Constructed of local materials• Adapted to local environmental conditions• Built by hand• Most recognizable by floorplan• Other elements to notice
– Gable position– Chimney position– Roof type– Decorative elements
Folk Housing and LOCAL MATERIALS
Shotgun House
• Common in the American South• Associated with African-Americans and
plantations• Probably derives from Haiti• Design
– Gable front
– Row of rooms extending back from street
• Named because one could fire a shotgun in the front and hit all rooms
Shotgun houses in the South today
FOLK HOUSING STYLESof the Northeastern US
• Cape Cod style house• Salt Box house• Double pile (two
chimney) house• New England “Yankee”
Large House• Front gable and wing
house
MAJOR TYPES
CAPE COD HOUSE
• One and a half stories• Gable to the side• Central chimney
SALT BOX HOUSE
• Gable to side
• 2 ½ stories on street
• 1 ½ stories added behind
DOUBLE-PILE HOUSEor TWO-CHIMNEY HOUSE
• 2 stories tall• 4 rooms on each
floor• Each floor’s ceiling
is same height• Gable to the sides• Chimneys on both
gable ends
YANKEE “LARGE” HOUSEor NEW ENGLAND LARGE
• Two and a half stories
• Two rooms deep
• Gable to side
• Central chimneyJohn Johnson House – from Joseph Smith’s history
FRONT GABLE and WING
• L-shaped floorplan• 1 or 2-story home with
gable to front• Single story wing
extends with gable to side
FOLK CULTURE IN THE US
• No true folk culture still exists in the US
• Folk traditions are practiced only by individuals (mainly as hobbies)
• HOWEVER, regions with some distinctive folk traditions can still be identified
FOLK REGIONS in the US
Cultural RegionAreas in which a particular
cultural system prevails
Dominant cultural practices, beliefs, values
Culture region
• a portion of the earth’s surface occupied by populations sharing recognizable and distinctive cultural characteristics.
– cultural characteristics – political organization, religions, economic form, clothing worn, eating utensils, etc
• Culture traits have an areal extent – can be plotted on maps to show spatial distribution, thus creating culture regions.
Culture realm
• – a set of culture regions showing related culture complexes and landscapes are grouped to form culture realm.
– Transition zones mark their contacts and they change over time
– World Realms – European (Europe), Slavic (Russia), Anglo-America (North America), Latin America (two distinct realms according to some geographers – Middle and South), Islamic (North Africa/SW Asia), Sub-saharan Africa, Indic (South Asia – focused on India), Sino-Japanese (East Asia or Jakota Triangle), Southeast Asia, Austral European (Austral realm), Insular Oceanic (Pacific realm)
Global Culture Realms
Cultural Change (induced by innovation, diffusion, and acculturation)
• – • Innovation – changes to a culture that result from ideas
created within the social group itself and adopted by the culture.
• Primitive and traditional societies are not innovative because they are usually at equilibrium with their environment.
• All societies have a resistance to change, but when a group is inappropriately unresponsive (mentally, physically, economically) to changing circumstances and to innovation, it is said to have cultural lag
Diffusion • Relocation – innovation or idea physically carried to new location by migrant or population that possesses it.
• Expansion – spread of an item or idea from one place to others,
and in the process, the thing that diffuses, remains, and is sometimes intensified in the area.
• Contagious – when expansion diffusion affects nearly uniformly all individuals and areas outward from the source region (direct contact).
• Hierarchical – transferring ideas first between larger places or prominent people then smaller places or less important people.
• Stimulus – spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself apparently fails to diffuse. It is not always possible to determine point of origin or the routes of diffusion, and it is difficult to tell if a trait in two distinct areas is the result of diffusion or independent (or parallel) invention.
Diffusion
Types of Cultural Diffusion
Cultural Diffusion
• Pop culture diffuses through hierarchical diffusion from nodes of innovation
• Folk culture diffuses through relocation diffusion (migration)
• Acculturation – a culture group goes through changes by adopting some or all of the characteristics of another, dominant culture group.
• Transculuration – equal exchange of traits or influence between two culture groups which are equal in numbers, strength, and complexity
Diffusion barriers
• any conditions that hinder either the flow of information or the movement of people and thus prevent the acceptance of an innovation. (distance decay, distance friction)
• Absorbing barrier – halting the spread (example is distance),
• interrupting barriers – delaying or deflecting the path of diffusion( example is physical earth), permeable barriers – most barriers, they permit passage of at least some innovations.
• Diffused ideas or artifacts usually go through some form of alteration of meaning or form to make them acceptable to the borrowing group, this process is called syncretism.
SUBCULTURES Punk
SUBCULTURES Rap
Spatial Diffusion of Rap:contagious? relocation? hierarchical?
“New” Cultural Geography
Culture is sociallyconstructed
Culture is an arenafor economicand politicalpower
Landscapes (and maps)are “texts” that canbe read to exposepower relationsBrazilian “favela”
(slum)
GLOBALIZATIONAND CULTURE
Globalization changing,shaping local cultures
But local cultures also changing, shapingglobalization
Folk vs. Popular CultureSlow vs. Fast World
Slow vs Fast Worlds
• Fast: people, regions directly involved as producers, consumers in transnational, modern industry, news, entertainment, etc.
• Slow: (85%) limited participation . Periphery, rural areas, slums, etc. bypassed by modern world-systems.
=>Increasing division between slow and fast worlds
Non-Western vs. Western World Views
• Group cooperation• Achievement as it reflects
group• Harmony with nature• Time is relative• Accept affective
expression• Extended family• Holistic thinking • Religion permeates
culture• Accept world views of
other cultures• Socially oriented
• Individual competition• Achievement for
individual• Master and control nature• Adhere to rigid time• Limit affective expression• Nuclear family• Dualistic thinking• Religion distinct from
other parts of culture• Feel their world view is
superior• Task oriented
Jihad vs McWorld
• According to Benjamin Barber… • McWorld: pop culture, shallow materialism,
Western, Capitalist, modernization• Jihad: values underpinned by religious
fundamentalism, traditional tribal allegiances, opposition to Western materialism
• Modernization is understood as Westernization (Americanization)
Jihad vs McWorld
Pilgrims at Mecca KFC…
A Global Cuisine…
McNifficaArgentinaMcKroket
Netherlands
McNifficaChile
McRyeFinland
Teriyaki McBurgerJapan
Bulgogi BurgerKorea
Tukbul BurgerKorea
VegiMacSwitzerland
KofteBurgerTurkey
Bacon RollUnited Kingdom
Red Bean SundayHong Kong
McFlurryBelgium
Shake Shake FriesHong Kong
Curry Potato PieHong Kong
BicaPortugal
Dining Habits around the globe
• SF Gate: Multimedia (image)
MATERIAL WORLD
In the early 1990s, after hearing a story about "Material Girl" Madonna's latest self-promotional enterprise, photojournalist Peter Menzel had a vision: Rather than take viewers into the mansions of the rich or the "cribs" of MTV celebrities, he wanted to capture the material life of average families around the globe. His resulting book, Material World, offers extraordinary images of families in front of their dwellings with all (or nearly all) of their possessions. Experts at the United Nations and World Bank helped determine the criteria for average families according to location (urban, rural, suburban, small town, or village), type of dwelling, family size, annual income, occupation, and religion. Here, we present five of the photographs Menzel and his team produced, along with updated statistical data for each country.
CHINA
CHINA: The Wu Family
The nine members of this extended family—father Wu Ba Jiu (59), mother Guo Yu Xian (57), their sons, daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren—live in a three-bedroom, 600-square-foot dwelling in rural Yunnan Province. While they have no telephone, they get news and images of a wider world through two radios and the family's most prized possession, a television. In the future, they hope to get one with a 30-inch screen as well as a VCR, a refrigerator, and drugs to combat diseases in the carp they raise in their ponds. Not included in the photo are their 100 mandarin trees, vegetable patch, and three pigs.
INDIA
INDIA: The Yadev Family
At age 25, Mashre Yadev is already mother to four children, the oldest of whom was born when she was 17. Each morning at their home in rural Uttar Pradesh, she draws water from a well so that her older children can wash before school. She cooks over a wood fire in a windowless, six-by-nine-foot kitchen, and such labor-intensive domestic work keeps her busy from dawn to dusk. Her husband Bachau, 32, works roughly 56 hours a week, when he can find work. In rough times, family members have gone more than two weeks with little food. Everything they own—including two beds, three bags of rice, a broken bicycle, and their most cherished belonging, a print of Hindu gods—appears in this photograph.
JAPAN
JAPAN: The Ukita Family
Like many Japanese women, 43-year-old Sayo Ukita had children relatively late in life. Her youngest daughter is now in kindergarten, not yet burdened by the pressures of exams and Saturday "cram school" that face her nine-year-old sister. Sayo is supremely well-organized, which helps her manage the busy schedules of her children and maintain order in their 1,421-square-foot Tokyo home stuffed with clothes, appliances, and an abundance of toys for both her daughters and dog. She and her husband Kazuo, 45, have all the electronic and gas-powered conveniences of modern life, but their most cherished possessions are a ring and heirloom pottery. The family's wish for the future: a larger house with more storage space.
MALI
MALI: The Natomo Family
It is not unusual in this West African country for men to have two wives, as 39-year-old Soumana Natomo does. More wives mean more progeny—and a greater chance you will be supported in old age. Soumana now has eight children, and his wives, Pama Kondo (28) and Fatouma Niangani Toure (26), will likely have more. How many of these children will survive, though, is uncertain: Mali's infant mortality rate ranks among the ten highest in the world. Some of the family's possessions are not included in this photo—another mortar and pestle for pounding grain, two wooden mattress platforms, 30 mango trees, and old radio batteries that the children use as toys. (Note: The Natomos appear on the adobe roof of their house in Kouakourou. An infant son is nestled in his mother's arms. One daughter is absent.)
UNITED STATES
USA: The Skeen Family
Rick and Pattie Skeen's 1,600-square-foot house lies on a cul-de-sac in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. The fire hydrant in this photo is real, but not working—a souvenir from Rick's days as a firefighter. Rick, 36, now splices cables for a phone company. Pattie, 34, teaches school at a Christian academy. To get the picture, photographers hoisted the family up in a cherry picker. Yet the image still leaves out a refrigerator-freezer, camcorder, woodworking tools, computer, glass butterfly collection, trampoline, fishing equipment, and the rifles Rick uses for deer hunting, among other things. Though rich with possessions, nothing is as important to the Skeens as their Bible. For this devoutly Baptist family, like many families around the world, it is a spiritual—rather than material—life that matters most.
Number of Films Produced
Films Imported
Televisions per 1,000 Inhabitants (1970)
Televisions Per 1,000 Inhabitants (2001)
Language
Atocha train station, Madrid- messages of peace in memoriam of those killed in the train bombings in 2004
Freezing Eskimos Have 47 Words for “This Sucks”
• Um-waka-waka, Canada – A group of Harvard linguists studying the Eskimos of northern Canada have discovered that in addition to 34 words for snow, the arctic culture has over 47 words meaning “this sucks.”
• Dr. Trisha Dean, who led the team said, “Language, like other social constructs, is environmentally influenced. For instance, there are ten Russian words for ‘starving’ and twelve for ‘mono-brow’. Naturally, the vocabulary of the Inuits reflects that living on frigid, barren glaciers and eating only fish heads for generations after generation is very sucky.”
• She maintains that the many words allow the Inuits to convey rich nuances of suckiness that go unnoticed by English-speakers. Said Dean, “If an American woke up smelling like rotten tuna, he would say ‘this sucks’, the same thing he would say if he smelled like rotten herring instead. However, an Eskimo would say massak about a tuna-stench, while the latter would require the harsher aput.”
Dr. Dean supplied this list of common Eskimo words for suck and their English translations:
• Tingenek This sucks.• Massalerauvok Long ago, my son, it
did not suck, but that’s not really true at
this time.• Mauja For many moons, it has
sucked. Now it is no different.• Akkilokipok It is as if the great-snow tiger of
suckiness has raped my sister.
Over 6,000 Living Languages
Approximately 50% of the world’s people speak Chinese,
English, Spanish,Russian, Hindi, or Arabic
Many smaller languages endangered
Language Family
Ancient commonorigin, split into:
Languagebranches
Languages
RegionalDialects/accents
Major world language families
Indo-European AustronesianSino-Tibetan Niger-Congo Afro-Asiatic Uralic, Altaic, others
Language Families in Africa
Indo-European language family branches
Multiple tongues:Indo-IranianRomantic (Italic)GermanicBalticSlavicCeltic
Unique:AlbanianArmenianGreek
Indo-European Language Family(Kurgan Hearth Theory of diffusion)
Indo-European Language Family(Anatolian Hearth Theory of diffusion)
Indo-European Family of Languages
Romantic Branch of Indo-European Language Family
Germanic Branch of Indo-European
Language Family
Indo-European Language Tree
night
ночь (noch')
noche nuit nótt
natt
noitenox
Nacht nacht
noapte
nocnatë
naktis
νύκτα (nykta)
Finnish (Uralic): yöTurkish (Altaic): gece
raath
Indo-European Language Tree
month
myesyats
mese mois
mahina
månad
mêsmis
Monat maand
mâh
miesiacmuaj
menuo
minas
Finnish (Uralic): kuuTurkish (Altaic): ay
Official languages
Official language not always spoken by all
Official Languages
Lingua franca
A language used informallyfor communication
in a multiethnic place
Often a formercolonial language
English-Speaking Countries
English-Speaking Populations
PopulationsGoogle site languages
English asan official language?
What is English, anyway?
• Bizarre• Chocolate• Hurricane• Petunia• Assassin• Barbecue• Chipmunk• Ammonia• Banjo• Tundra
WHAT DO THE WORDSIN THE LIST HAVE IN COMMON?
What is English, anyway?
• Bizarre (Basque for beard)• Chocolate (Nahuatl, the Aztec language)• Hurricane (Taino, a Caribbean language)• Petunia (Tupi, Peruvian Indian)• Assassin (Arabic, from hashish smokers)• Barbecue (Carib, a Caribbean language)• Chipmunk (Cree, Native American)• Ammonia (Ancient Egyptian for camel dung)• Banjo (Kimbundu in Northern Angola)• Tundra (Saami, formerly called Lapps)
Local Place Names
• Mt. Diablo
• Tiburon
• Las Lomas
• Tahoe
• Devil Mtn
• Shark
• The hills
• Washoe for Big Water
DIALECT(regional differences within a language)
U.S. regional dialects
Urban Dialects in North American English
2. What is this?
3. What is in these cans?
Is it Soda, Pop or Coke ?
Wisconsin Dialect• BUBBLER: “I gotta get me a drink, once. Where's da
bubbler?”• COMEER ONCE "Comeer once and help me lift dis
half-barrel.”• COUPLE-TWO-TREE: more than one; as in “Delmer
and I drank a couple-two-tree beers.”• STOP-AND-GO LIGHTS: “dese lights aren't just stop
lights. Dey tell ya when to go, too, aina?” • YAH-HEY: affirmative, “Koops makes good custard,
hey?” “Yah, hey!”• YEW-BETCHA: affirmative; also you’re welcome, as
in “Thanks for the lift.” “Yew betcha!”
Aussie
Yeggo ninter tan? Alas yatta gepme some ex and rise-up-lides. I’ll be with ya in a garbler mince whenna see emeny I want. Garment see me anile seaward icon do about the dough.
Fune Marvered like tucker mofer wah neefnink we’d laughter seayuz. Butter dunnif wickairn. Altarpants on Marv. Ee sconofer seesoon enya nairtiz snore flotta doota git ready.
Sarn’s calmer nairt. Scona beer gloria sty. Mine jute still scold zephyr. Cheetwas scold la snite. Weller corset saul-wye-school linnermore ninx. Buttered swarm nuddite-time. Spewffle climb a treely.
Scripts (alphabets)Not same as spoken language.
Script families have close relationship to religion:
Roman Western ChristianCyrillic Orthodox ChristianArabic IslamIndian Hinduism/BuddhismChinese East Asian religionsIndependent scripts:
Japanese, Greek, Armenian, Korean, etc.
= Croatian (Roman)
Non-Roman Scripts
Scripts of the Eastern Hemisphere
Religion– Universalizing religion – religion that attempts to
appeal to all people – also called global or universal
– Ethnic – faiths that dominate a single national culture – also called cultural or regional
– Traditional – also referred to as local or tribal religions
• Found in Africa, South America, interior areas of South East Asia, New Guinea, and North Australia – very limited extent
– Secularism – indifference to or rejection of religious ideas in the modern world
Religious Divisions– Religion- system of formal and uniform worship and faith– Branch – large fundamental division within a religion
• Christian– Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox
• Islam– Sunni and Shiite/ Shia
• Buddhism – – Mahayana, Theravada, and Tantrayana
– Denomination – a division of a branch that united a number of local congregations in a single legal and administrative body
• Christianity– Protestants
» Baptists» Methodists» Pentecostal» Lutheran» Mormon
– Sect – Small group that has broken away from an established denomination
WORLD RELIGIONS
Religions today
Religions today
Diffusion of Christianity in the Roman Empire
First Schism: Western (Catholic) vs. Eastern (Orthodox)
Second Schism: Catholic vs, Protestant
Christianity in Europe Today
Christianity in the U.S. Today
Religions in the U.S. Today
ProtestantChristians100 mil.+
CatholicChristians60 mil.+
Muslims 4 mil.Jews 6 mil.OrthodoxChristian 6 mil.
Origin of Islam: Mecca (Saudi Arabia)
Diffusion of Islamic (Muslim) religion
Spatial Diffusion of Islam:contagious? relocation? hierarchical?
Areas under Muslim rule at certain times
Pecs church(former mosque)
Sunni and Shi‘a Muslim Regions Today
Most Muslims are not Arabs. Many Arabs are not Muslim.
Arabic
Berber
Hamitic
Persian
Kurdish
Turkish (Western)
Turkish (Eastern)
Baluch
Caucasian
Greek
HebrewEthnolinguistic Groups of the Middle East
Diverse languages in the Middle East
Muslims in the U.S. Today
AltoonaMosque(formerchurch)
IranianCurrency
• Farsi (Persian), in
Indo-European
language family
• But uses Arabic script
Turkishcurrency
Arabic script
until 1928
• Converted to Roman
• Some former Soviet Muslim states have also converted
Soviet Currency (Russian in Cyrillic script)
Indian Currency(Hindi, other languages mainly in Indian scripts)