Elements of folk and popular culture face challenges in maintaining identities that are sustainable into the future. For folk culture, the challenges are to maintain unique local landscapes in an age of globalization. For popular culture, the challenges derive from the lack of sustainability of practices designed to promote uniform landscapes.
Key Issue 4: Why do Cultures Face Sustainability Challenges?
Maintaining Unique Folk Culture Growing connections with popular culture can make it difficult for folk culture to maintain centuries-old practices and customs. In the transition to popular culture traditional values may be abandoned and Western perspectives become more dominant.
Amish Migration: Preserving Cultural Identity The Amish in the United States avoid the use of any mechanical or electrical power and have preserved their language and culture through the years. Even though numbering only one-quarter million people, their culture has diffused through migration and the practice of giving each adult son a farm of his own. This practice has led the Amish to move to places with lower land values such as Kentucky. The less concentrated Amish communities have encountered increased the difficulty of maintaining a distinctive cultural identity.
Marriage in India: Challenging Cultural Values The global diffusion of popular culture has challenged the subservience and traditional roles of women embedded in some folk cultures. This has been both a good thing and a bad thing for women in developing countries. The family of the bride in India is sometimes expected to provide the groom with a dowry. Some women in India have been killed because their family did not pay a large enough dowry to the groom. Although anti-dowry laws were enacted by the government of India in 1961, they are largely ignored, and women still face the consequences of the harsh reality of this custom.
The Future of Folk Culture Influences from the outside world, migration for economic opportunities, and international trade has increasingly challenged folk cultural traditions.
Cultural Convergence Popular culture’s tendency to create uniform landscapes and experiences can greatly modify the environment, with little regard for local environmental conditions. As popular culture spreads it replaces localized folk culture and creates a convergence of cultural preferences known as cultural homogenization. Some have labeled the dominance of the Western countries in creating these landscapes, cultural imperialism. The diffusion of some popular customs can negatively impact environmental quality and cultural diversity in three ways: landscape pollution, depletion of scarce natural resources, and the crowding out of locally owned businesses.
Uniform Cultural Experiences More uniform landscapes are created through the diffusion and distribution of popular culture. The spatial expression of a popular custom in one location will be similar to another. Fastfood restaurants spread through franchises, agreements between the corporation and the owner to market the corporation’s products in the local area. The franchise agreement permits the local owner use the company’s name, trademarks, and signs. Name and brand recognition attract customers as they move from one area of the country to another. Physical expression of uniformity in popular culture has diffused from North America to other countries, further establishing uniformity in the global landscape.
Golf Golf courses require large expanses of open, carefully managed grass. Some golf courses are designed partially in response to local physical conditions. Many courses have little regard for local conditions and usually dramatically alter the natural landscape of an area. Golf courses remake the environment by creating or flattening hills, cutting grass, carting in or digging up sand for traps, and draining or expanding bodies of water to create hazards.
Cultural Divergence Despite the rapid diffusion of popular culture, differences in cultural preferences persist at different scales.
Urban-Rural Differences Rural areas with economies focused on agriculture and manufacturing, tend to value more traditional forms of popular culture. In contrast, urban places with higher populations, a greater diversity of ethnic groups, and a concentration of wealth may value the more progressive forms of popular culture.
Cultural Differences: Interregional Scale Vernacular regions such as the South or the Midwest often display traditional cultural differences.
Cultural Differences: Individual Scale Surveys of how people spend their time during the day vary by age, gender, ethnicity, and place of residence.
4.4
Acculturation Adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another
Assimilation The process of a person or group losing the cultural traits that made them distinct from the people around them
Cultural convergence When two cultures become more similar because of frequent interactions
Cultural divergence When a culture splits into different cultures because of lack of interaction
Cultural relativism The idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, rather than be judged through the eyes of another culture
Ethnic (folk) culture The cultural traditions that are generally held by a specific ethnic group, often localized in a specific area
Ethnocentrism Judging people or traditions based on your own cultural standards
Folk culture Culture traditionally practiced by a small, homogeneous, rural group living in relative isolation from other groups.
Popular culture Culture found in a large, heterogeneous society that shares certain habits despite differences in other personal characteristics.
Key Issue 4: Why do Cultures Face Sustainability Challenges?
A Maintaining Unique Folk Culture
1 Amish Migration: Preserving Cultural Identity
2 Marriage in India: Challenging Cultural Values
3 The Future of Folk Culture B Cultural Convergence
B. Cultural homogenization—spread of a popular culture product across larger spaces results in a loss of localized folk culture diversity and convergence of cultural preferences
1 Adverse effects of some popular customs
a landscape pollution
b depletion of scarce resources
c crowding-out locally owned businesses
2 Uniform cultural experiences
a franchise—agreement between a corporation and business to market the corporation’s product in the local area
b golf
C Cultural Divergence
1 Urban-rural differences
2 Cultural differences: Interregional scale
3 Cultural differences: Individual scale
a gender
b ethnicity
c place of residence