Monday, October 29. 2018

Today's schedule is ABCD

A & D Blocks Human Geography - Today we'll try to answer the key question, "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 we'll examine these two things today. We'll 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 last fall)

After we'll look at the creation of uniform landscapes, landscape pollution and resource depletion. We end 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.

B Block Criminology 12 - Today we are off to the library for our last blog assignment for the term and I'd like you to answer the following:

What characteristics must a good burglar have? What theory of criminal behaviour best predicts the development of a good burglar? If a good burglar is a professional thief then is their career path similar to other professionals like lawyers or doctors? 

Look at Neil Shover's explanation on page 234-237 in the CRIM textbook.... Neal Shover studied the careers of professional burglars and uncovered the existence of a particularly successful type--the good burglar. Shover also discovered that a person becomes a good burglar through learning the techniques of the trade from older, more experienced burglars. Also try to answer:

What can you do to reduce the chances of being victimized by a good burglar?