Human Geography Emergency Remote Learning Culture Unit Resources Part 1

Hello Geography family; here are the resources to answer the key questions for the culture unit.

"Where Are Folk and Popular Leisure Activities Distributed"? We'll try to examine two aspects of where folk and popular cultures are in space. First, each cultural activity has a distinctive spatial distribution so examine a social custom’s origin, its diffusion, and its integration with other social characteristics. Second, try to see the relation between material culture and the physical environment.

Look at the differences between folk and popular culture and do this through the lens of music and sport (soccer football, skateboarding, UFC)...

Popular Music (I know it's from 1971 but the video of the Marvin Gaye song below is of musicians from the world over singing a pop song)


Folk Music (Musicians from the Hawaiian Islands singing a song unique to the islands)


Football (not soccer)


So...Customs in folk culture (such as provision of food, clothing, and shelter) are clearly influenced by the prevailing climate, soil, and vegetation (utilizing localized resources). To look at food check out the video below




To look at clothing, focus on the tragic story of Sulli


From the National Public Radio article Sudden Death Of A Young K-Pop Star Spurs Talk Of Action On Mental Health, Bullying

Women in the K-pop industry are particularly scrutinized and harassed accordingly online — whether for reading a book that allegedly promotes feminism, for wearing clothes that are too scandalous on stage, or even just for sporting a phone case that reads, "Girls can do anything." These types of "scandals" have been exacerbated as Korea experiences both a growing feminist movement and a backlash against it. Sulli was one of the most outspoken female celebrities on women's issues — after Korea's Supreme Court ruled that abortion should be legalized, she posted a message of support, drawing the ire of many online commentators.

This is a strong example of the conflict between folk and global culture. I'm hoping that you are seeing some consistent themes in Human Geography this year. Remember that folk culture is traditionally practiced primarily by small, homogeneous groups living in isolated rural areas while popular culture is found in large, heterogeneous societies. Folk culture is influenced heavily by the environment that it develops in while popular culture depends less on the environment because it diffuses on a larger scale (globalization). With the larger globalized scale of popular culture (becoming more dominant), the survival of unique folk cultures is threatened...This is one of the themes I hope you are starting to see.

So...Customs in folk culture (such as provision of food, clothing, and shelter) are clearly influenced by the prevailing climate, soil, and vegetation (utilizing localized resources). Look at housing (looking at folk housing vs popular housing) and watch the video on Toraja village in Indonesia. Consider housing locally...The Comox Box.

During the 1970s, affordability became a major factor in the home buying process. To help make housing more affordable, builders reduced lot sizes and increased the density of developments.To appeal to first-time buyers and stimulate the housing market, CMHC (then Central, now Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation) introduced the Assisted Home Ownership Program (AHOP) in 1971, to help low-income people attain home ownership. This meant that the average lot size in "newer" (1970's) Comox and Courtenay developments was reduced to 0.19 acre and the house size was increased to about 1800 square feet.






"Why Is Access to Folk and Popular Culture Unequal?" Focus on the diffusion of popular culture and look at the mass media of television. The world’s most popular and important electronic media format is television (TV). While the Internet has grown in popularity and importance in recent years, TV remains the foremost electronic media format. Television is a mirror of our world, offering an often-distorted vision of national identity, as well as shaping our perceptions of various groups of people.

In March 2011, then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the argument that U.S. television was giving people around the world a distorted view of Americans. "I remember having an Afghan general tell me that the only thing he thought about Americans is that all the men wrestled and the women walked around in bikinis because the only TV he ever saw was Baywatch and World Wide Wrestling," (a side note, at its peak, Baywatch was broadcast in 142 countries and around the world more than 1 billion people have watched the show).

So you'll have some questions about television to work on and then the Internet and Social Media including "Why do developing nations view television as a new source of cultural imperialism?"

How to stop foreign TV eroding local culture
What is reality TV's influence on culture? 
How have 24-hour sports stations changed society?

The Internet has been a key factor in driving globalization. At its core, globalization is the lowering of economic and cultural impediments to communication between countries all over the globe. While some political and social barriers still remain, from a technological standpoint there is nothing to stop the two-way flow of information and culture across the globe.




So, the Internet has made pop culture transmission a two-way street. The power to influence popular culture no longer lies with the relative few with control over traditional forms of mass media; it is now available to the great mass of people with access to the Internet. As a result, the cross-fertilization of pop culture from around the world has become a commonplace occurrence.

Valerie Berset-Price wrote a lovely piece called From Pop Culture to Global Culture: How Millennials and Technology Are Influencing Our World. In it she states

For Millennials (although you are iGen in the context of this quote that would be you - my inset), two things are happening simultaneously: culture is impacting technology, and technology is impacting culture. On one hand, culture serves as a standard of judgment. It places an importance on what is acceptably good, valuable, and ethical. It conditions how and what we communicate, and it is the lens by which we perceive the world and, in some ways, the way the world perceives us. On the other hand, technology has served as a force for sweeping cultural change, joining the ranks of war, colonization, religious influence and military expansion as cultural modifiers. The expansion of the internet has allowed global communication and information to permeate everything from apartment walls to international borders...Such global exposure has provided the basis for peaceful international homogenization as well as deep conflicts of perspective, and technological advances have increased the speed and frequency of both.

In addition to individuals contributing to culture, Multinational, nongovernmental corporations can now drive global culture. This is neither entirely good nor entirely bad. On one hand, foreign cultural institutions can adopt successful American business models, and corporations are largely willing to do whatever makes them the most money in a particular market. However, cultural imperialism has potential negative effects as well. From a spread of Western ideals of beauty to the possible decline of local cultures around the world, cultural imperialism can have a quick and devastating effect. (from Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication).

For help check out:
Has technology changed cultural taste?
How the Internet has Changed Pop Culture

"Why Do Folk and Popular Culture Face Sustainability Challenges?" 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.

So examine these two things today but start with the potential loss of folk culture through assimilation which is a process of giving up cultural traditions and adopting social customs of the dominant culture of a place, acculturation which is a process of adjustment to the dominant culture of a place all while retaining features of a folk culture, and syncretism which is the creation of a new cultural feature through combining elements of two groups. To help think of:




Or the story of Chanie Wenjack set to the music of Gord Downie (the Tragically Hip singer who died of brain cancer in the fall of 2017)

Look at the creation of uniform landscapes, landscape pollution and resource depletion...to help with a big thinking question:

Placelessness and uniform landscapes …… With the spread of pop culture throughout Canada (specifically restaurants, gas stations, coffee shops, national chains), are cities throughout our country losing their local diversity?  Are we becoming a nation that looks the same no matter what city you are in?  Explain.

Consider this quote to help:

Stroll into your local Starbucks and you will find yourself part of a cultural experiment on a scale never seen before on this planet. In less than half a century, the coffee chain has grown from a single outlet in Seattle to nearly 20,000 shops in around 60 countries. Each year, its near identical stores serve cups of near identical coffee in near identical cups to hundreds of thousands of people. For the first time in history, your morning cappuccino is the same no matter whether you are sipping it in Tokyo, New York, Bangkok or Buenos Aires.

This is one example of many chains that populate many cities all across Canada...all where you can get the same product in a store that looks the same in a place that looks the same....same same same.