What Are Local and Popular Cultures Local culture

What Are Local and Popular Cultures? • Local culture: A group in a particular place that sees itself as a community, shares experiences, customs, and traits, and works to preserve those traits and customs to distinguish the group from others • Popular culture: A large, heterogeneous population, typically urban, with rapidly changing culture

Local Cultures • Acceptance vs. rejection of popular culture traits • Impact on the landscape – Nonmaterial culture: Beliefs, practices, aesthetics, values – Material culture: Constructed items, frequently expressing nonmaterial culture • Establishment of neighborhoods, construction of places of worship and community centers

How Are Local Cultures Sustained? • Assimilation policies: To force people of indigenous cultures to adopt dominant cultures • Preservation of customs: Practices that people routinely follow • Preserving boundaries to keep other cultures out • Avoiding cultural appropriation to keep control over their own culture • Importance of place

Commodification • Process of making something that was not previously bought and sold a commodity in the marketplace – Material culture objects for sale to outsiders – Tourist value of culture as a whole • Question of authenticity of places – Mystical images – Creation of identity from cultural traits

Rural Local Cultures • Isolation • Common economic activity among members • Anabaptists – Mennonites – Amish – Hutterites • Makah Indians, Neah Bay, Washington • Little Sweden, U. S. A. — Lindsborg, Kansas

Urban Local Cultures • Ethnic neighborhoods within cities • Creates a space to practice customs • Can cluster businesses, houses of worship, schools to support local culture • Migration into ethnic neighborhoods can quickly change an ethnic neighborhood