CHAPTER 7: FOLK AND POPULAR CULTURE: DIVERSITY AND UNIFORMITY
OVERVIEW
England, for example. The impress of
1. Culturally complex societies display social
English and continental European ethnics—
and
spatial
ethnic
in different mix from different origins—was
distinctiveness (reviewed in Chapter 6) and
displayed in the Delaware Valley and
in
are
Chesapeake Bay hearths of the Middle
simultaneously being unified by popular
Atlantic. The Southern Tidewater showed
cultural
English, French, African, and West Indian
folk
diversity
cultural
elements
technologies
of
rooted
differences.
spread
in
They
by
modern
communication
and
influences, while French, Spanish, and
transportation. Anglo America serves as a
Haitian inputs were evident in the Delta
case study of the temporally and spatially
hearth. Hispanics in the Southwest and
varying impact of these separate cultural
Mormons in the deep interior were other
influences.
charter
2. In Anglo America, material and nonmaterial
folk culture developed from local adaptations
groups
introducing
distinctive
indigenous or diffused vernacular housing
styles.
and modifications of imported artifacts,
4. From the eastern U.S. hearths, regionally
mentifacts, and sociofacts. Although fast
generalized as the New England, Middle
disappearing,
culture
Atlantic, and Lower Chesapeake, traceable
regions may still be discerned in the built
diffusion paths carried evidence of folk
landscape and in local customs. They had
cultural movement away from the coast; an
their
to
interior “national hearth” of intermingled
recognizable East Coast hearth districts
streams developed in the Upper Ohio
from which expansion diffusion carried
Valley.
origins
evidence
in
of
relocation
folk
diffusion
cultural identities to the continental interior.
5. Nonmaterial folk culture is gradually lost in
Each “hearth” had its own mix of immigrants
modernizing societies, though reminders of
and its own distinctions of landscape and
it persist in foods, folklore, and song.
customs.
Regional folk
and ethnic cuisines are
3. Vernacular housing styles—reflecting spatially
preserved in cookbooks and local and
varied ideas and materials—are an indicator
regional fairs and “fests.” Food and drink
of folk cultural diversity. Those styles were
specialties reflect both immigrant traditions
part of colonists’ imported material culture
and
modified by local resource availability and
adoptions.
environmental requirements. Each of the
imported tradition and American regional
hearth regions displayed and diffused its
isolation,
own folk housing designs: French-inspired in
medicines and cures derive from imported
the Lower St. Lawrence Valley and English
traditional plant remedies and a vast new
in the Upper Valley and southern New
indigenous
Song
foodstuffs
and
recipe
regions
also
reflect
experiences,
and
traits.
Folk
supply of native medicinals revealed by
national sameness, a greater wealth and
Amerindians.
variety of goods and ideas free people from
6. Composite folk cultural regions of the eastern
United States suggest several hearths of
the rigid constraints of folk cultural isolation
and local uniformities.
origin and diffusion: southern and eastern
8. Even with national uniformities, different
New England, southeastern Pennsylvania,
sections of the Anglo American culture
Chesapeake Bay, the coastal Southeast,
realm are felt by their inhabitants to be,
French
somehow, separate and unique. Vernacular
Canada,
and
the
Hispanic
regions are an enduring spatial recognition
borderlands.
7. Such regions are blurred by increasingly
pervasive
regional
popular
differences
culture,
in
the
submerging
uniformity
imposed by nationally standardized facilities
and tastes. Even in the face of leveling
of the threads of diversity within, specifically,
United States society.
EXPANDED KEY WORDS LIST
Key Words
built environment
cuisine
custom
folk culture
folk housing
folklife
folklore
folkways
geophagy
material culture
nonmaterial culture
popular culture
popular region
syncretism
vernacular house
vernacular region
House Styles
central-hall house
Charleston single house
dogtrot house
gable-front house
garrison house
Georgian house
grenier house
lazy-T house
Montreal house
New England large house
Norman cottage
Quebec cottage
saddlebag house
saltbox house
shotgun house
Spanish adobe house
upright-and-wing house
LECTURE AND DISCUSSION TOPICS
1. Continue, or return to, discussion topic 3 in Chapter 6 of this manual—in the present case by
concentrating on rural landscape evidence of folk rather than ethnic cultural evidences. Use the
opportunity to indicate the closeness, in the American context, of the ideas of “ethnic” and “folk”
among groups who have been long established in Anglo America but who retain modified versions of
Old World (Asian or European) customs and practices.
2. Develop a chalkboard list of tangible landscape evidences of popular culture and one of intangible
adoptions. With class discussion, contrast the evidences of popular culture that distinguish the
student subculture from the “town” population. Conclusions about the pervasiveness and specificity of
“popular” may be drawn.
3. Review the concept of vernacular region. What are the understandings and expressions of such
vernacular regional affiliation in your locale? Is there a hierarchy of such recognized regions? Over
what total area, in the opinion of the class, does the recognized region (or regions) extend?
4. Use the “house type” transparencies available from the publisher as the basis for a lecture/discussion
on vernacular housing and temporal and regional house type differences among the various hearth
regions. If interest and time permit, a class field project can be devised to look at residential areas of
the college community to see evidences of original vernacular house designs or their modern-day
descendants. These can perhaps be related to the settlement history of the local area or presented
as documentation of hearth region generalizations given in the text. Where neither settlement history
nor hearth area role is pertinent, local housing styles can often be used as evidence of the
persistence of customary dwelling styles even where facts or concepts of hearths and diffusions do
not apply.
5. Discuss elements of popular culture that have changed in recent decades, or even in your students'
lives. For example, you could discuss how TV sitcom families have changed in the past fifty years,
from the traditional two-parent families of I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver to the remarried parents
of The Brady Bunch to the disfunctional families of The Simpsons, Roseanne and Married with
Children. This, and countless other examples, highlights that cultures change and those changes are
reflected in our material culture.