Local Culture, Popular Culture, and
Cultural Landscapes (pt.2)
How is Popular Culture diffused?
Cultural Diffusion
has been increasing
throughout the
world due to
increasing
interconnectedness
Programs like
Facebook allow
people on separate
sides of the
country to connect
within seconds
Countries like
China who don't
want the outer
world influencing
their countries
people create
copies of Facebook
and add
restrictions
Transportation
and
communication
technologies
have all but
destroyed
time-distance
decay
now it is more the time-space decay
which centers around interlinked the
two places are the more an innovation
will diffuse
All aspects of popular culture have a
hearth, and that hearth is first
established by contagious diffusion and
spreading knowledge of their
innovation/idea
EX--The Dave Matthews Band
started out with one guy
asking his friends to help him
make some songs, then they
played at their college, then at
other colleges, encouraging
people to spread the news
Popular culture can be
manufactured by big
corporations pushing
innovations and ideas at
people, and creating an
environment where people
believe this is a "thing"
Triangle=== the top is
the innovators, then
the trend-setters,
then early adopters,
then everyone who
follows or doesn't
participate
Reterritorialization is
when you take an
aspect of popular
culture and combining
it with local culture you
make it your own
Hip hop began in New
York, Los Angeles during
the 1980-1990's
Diffused abroad to Europe, each
country incorporating their own
language and local culture struggles.
Then diffused to Asia, then doing the
same as the Europeans. Soon
everyone in the world knew Hip Hop
The big three sports-
Baseball, Football, and
Basketball, have all
benefitted from advances in
technology and
communication, but have
also been hurt extremely,
by the need for "something
fresh"
Increase in
communication have
made the games easier
to follow, and
transportation has
made the scale much
bigger
alternate sports like surfing caught
peoples eye as something new, then
diffused to skateboarding and
snowboarding and the creation of
the X games
Tony Hawk has created a new
world of alternate sports. He now
has clothing lines, skateboards,
many advertisement agreements,
music festivals- all encouraging
new sports, alternatives to the big
three
TV shows like Cribs creates an image of masculinity
that men strive for, and the show profits through the
men using products to obtain this look
Also Ultimate Fighting, which began in
Brazil and moved to fights in the US, is
a mixture between boxing and martial
arts
The fan base grew quickly and it turned into a TV show,
which diffused to over 130 countries, that now are creating
their own versions of the show
The desire to stand outside of popular culture with keep spurring
these changes in culture, and people will capitalize on this to make
their product "socially desirable"
we find that wealthier countries seek to promote
local culture, and poorer countries are the ones
that seek to keep their culture in, and poorer
countries that are the most worried about
assimilation
Popular media can often feel like assimilation because of the
pressure to adopt these ways---the most influential regions are North
America, Western Europe, Japan, India, and South Korea.
Americans mostly diffuse movies, tv, sports, and fast
food, Europe is art, fashion philosophy, Japan is
electronic games and entertainment tech., India is
movies, and South Korea is TV dramas, and music.
In China, South Korean TV dramas were aired late at night and
soon had a large audience in China, who cut their time down to
15%, which just spurred an even larger movement of South
Korean culture into China.
South Korea was hesitant at first to expand
their culture, but it couldn't be stopped as
Korean culture flooded social media
How can Local culture and popular culture be seen in the cultural
landscape?
Cultural landscapes reflect the values, norms, and aesthetics of a culture
Edward Relph termed the loss of uniqueness in a place PLACELESSNESS
cultural landscapes are
conveyed in 3 ways 1)particular
architectural forms and
planning ideas have diffused
around the world 2)individual
businesses leave their mark of
uniqueness 3) borrowing of
idealized landscape has created
the blended image of culture
Skyscrapers were first seen on Chicago,
then diffused to every major city in the
world and can represent anything from
world status to economy
you can
find the
same
stores
basically in
any
country
you visit
because
the
companies
have
worldwide
holdings
in Las Vegas they have a venetian
hotel with canals and everything, even
though its not on the ocean. And when
the hotel expanded to China, where
gambling is illegal, it spread anyways
the global-local continuum concept is
about how processes at different scales,
and what they are changing and how the
affect each other
Glocalization is
when people at a
local scale affect
national scale,
then global scale
Travel is so interesting because
you can find local culture
anywhere and from the cultural
landscape, you can learn about
the inside workings of it
Traveling to the great
plains you can find
towns of Mormons who
moved there from the
homestead act to
escape persecution
Houses on equal squares of land
and clumped together shows us
the Mormon side, because if the
houses are together they can
protect each other
The indigenous people of Malaysia like in group
homes of about 200, and they provide for each other
and share their food. Also they live on houses on stilts
because of the flooding river