Culture Vocab
Debra Troxell, NBCT
Definition of Culture
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A group of belief systems, norms and
values practiced by a people
Recognized in 1 of 2 ways
1.
People call themselves a culture
2.
Others can label a certain group of people as a culture
• Acculturation - cultural modification or
change that results when one culture
group adopts traits of a dominant society;
cultural development or change through
“borrowing
• Assimilation – the minority population
reduces or loses completely its identifying
cultural characteristics and blends into the
host society
Material Culture • Artifacts
– The Built Environment – the landscape
created
– a human-made object which gives information
about the culture of its creator and users
• The Contents of Houses & Shops
– Physical, Visible Things
• Musical Instruments, Furniture, Tools, Buildings
Nonmaterial Culture
Mentifacts & Sociofacts
– Oral Traditions, Folk Songs, Stories,
Philosophies
– Includes beliefs, practices, aesthetics, and
values of a group of people
• Mentifacts represent the ideas and beliefs
of a culture, for example religion, language
or law
• Sociofacts represent the social structures
of a culture, such as tribes or families.
Folk Culture
Folk Culture
• Cultural traits such as dress modes,
dwellings, traditions, and institutions of
usually small, homogeneous, traditional
communities
aka Local Culture
• group of people in a particular place
– who see themselves as a collective or
community,
– who share experiences, customs, and traits,
and
– who work to preserve those traits and
customs
– in order to claim uniqueness and to
distinguish themselves from others
How are local cultures
sustained?
• Local culture sustained through customs
• Simon Harrison
– 2 goals of local cultures: keep other cultures out; keep
their culture in
– Must avoid cultural appropriation (the process by
which other cultures adopt customs and knowledge
and use them for their own benefit)
• Not just folk culture being preserved but also
protected from becoming popular culture
Protecting Local Culture
• Choosing to live apart from mainstream societies
– By creating ethnic neighborhoods
• Hasidic Jews
– Rural Colonies/Communities
• Hutterites
• Amish
• May mean rallying around unique ideas or
practices
– Parsi families
– Makah American Indians reinstated whale hunting
– Little Sweden
Hasidic Jews
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Ethnic Neighborhoods –
Pious
Distinctive clothes
Speak Yiddish
Do not watch tv, but will listen to radio
Other Urban Local Culture examples
– Italian neighborhoods, Chinatowns, Mexican,
Russian, Polish
Hutterites
• Anabaptist groups (Hutterites, Amish, &
Mennonites) broke away from Catholics
and Protestants during Reformation times
• Since then have sought to protect their
way of life …
– By choosing rural locations
– Being selective in adopting technology
Hutterites
• absolute pacifism
• Live in rural, self-sufficient, communal
“colonies”
• Forbid use tv, radio, usually only 1
telephone for the community
• Avoid pictures
• Colonies will specialize in products, such as
feed, feeders, or dairy products
Protecting Local Culture
• Choosing to live apart from mainstream societies
– By creating ethnic neighborhoods
• Hasidic Jews
– Rural Colonies/Communities
• Hutterites
• Amish
• May mean rallying around unique ideas or
practices
– Parsi families
– Makah American Indians reinstated whale hunting
– Little Sweden
Parsi Families
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Zoroastrians
Migrated to India from Iran around 700 – 900 AD
Present day – financially successful
In last 30 years, population has declined from
100,000 to 56,000
– Attributed to intermarriage is not allowed
– Intermarried women and their children included
– Parsi women, much like in developed countries, are
well-educated professionals, marrying later and having
fewer children.
• However, intermarriage ban attributed to
preservation of culture/religion within a
predominantly Hindu country
Makah American Indians
• Early culture included whale hunting
• Whale hunting in the 17th – 19th century- increasingly
commercial and detrimental to the whale population
• 1946 – International Whaling Commission instituted
regulations
• 1990’s – Makah American Indians, Washington
reinstated whale hunting facing
much protest
• 1999 – whale killed but not in traditional
way with canoes and harpoons, but
according to IWC regulations a
.50 caliber rifle
Lindsborg, Kansas
• 1869 - Originally founded by Swedish
Lutherans
• 1950s – town decided to highlight heritage
• Neolocalism – seeking out regional culture and
reinvigorating it (ex. Little Sweden in Kansas)
• Commodification of a culture can compromise
authenticity becoming a stereotype –examples?
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Cherokee
Branson, Mo
Guinness and the Irish Pub Co.
Hawaiian Luaus
Homework
• Examine the remaining slides and answer
the included questions. You do not need to
print the slides.
1. Which statement about culture is true?
a. Culture is the traditions and beliefs of a
group of people.
b. Cultures are dynamic and always
changing.
c. Culture is learned behavior that is passed
from one generation to the next.
d. Cultural traits are a reflection of a group’s
values.
e. All of the above.
2. The theory that the physical environment
causes social and cultural development is
called
A. environmental ecology.
B. cultural ecology.
C. cultural determinism.
D. environmental determinism.
E. environmental landscape.
3. How have hot dog stands across the
country maintained diversity?
a. Only limited areas have a custom of
eating hot dogs.
b. Hot dogs are really the worst part of the
animal.
c. The hot dog restaurant has not been
standardized and mass marketed.
d. Contrary to some opinion, hot dog
service has been commercialized
4. A group that migrates to another country
intermarries with people from the new
country, and within three generations, the
group is indistinguishable from the dominant
country. This process is best described as
a. migration diffusion
b. Acculturation
c. transculturation
d. assimilation
5. What has most contributed to ethnocide,
according to Wade Davis?
a. hierarchical diffusion
b. single stories
c. cultural dominance
d. lingua franca
What is the influence of the
Physical Environment on Culture?
• Customs are influenced by climate, soil and
vegetation (Environmental Determinism)
• Particularly responsive to environment b/c low
level of technology and agricultural economy
• 2 necessities of life: food and shelter
– Shows the influence of cultural values and the
environment on the development of unique folk
culture
1. List 2 examples of how the environment affects
food, clothing or shelter in a folk culture.
Distinctive Food Preferences
• Derived from the environment
• Adapt food preferences to environmental
conditions (Pigs must be slaughtered when
below freezing therefore few pigs in warmer
climates)
• Role of terrior (effects of the environment on a
particular food item)
Food attractions and Taboos
• People eat and don’t eat certain things
based on a response as to whether it is
socially acceptable or not
– The nutritional value is one of the determining
factors in whether someone eats something
or not
– Some things are eaten b/c they enhance
some characteristic the culture deems
important
2. What is a taboo food in the US? Justify why
it is taboo.
Food and drink
Local cuisine based on what is available
• Also is based on local customs
• Ex. Geophagy – eating dirt,
– common in Africa & southern United States,
– may counteract digestive issues,
– common among pregnant women
3. Why is eating dirt common in the
southern US but not other US areas?
Folk food regions
• Mexico—
– abundant use of chili peppers in cooking and maize for tortillas
• Caribbean areas —
– combined rice-bean dishes and various rum drinks
• Amazonian region —
– monkey and caiman
• Brazil —
– cuscuz (cooked grain) and sugarcane brandy
• Pampas style —
– carne asada (roasted beef), wine and yerba mate (herbal tea)
4. Does your family have favorite foods from your folk
culture? What food and which culture?
Folk food regions
• Latin American foods derive from
Amerindians, Africans, Spaniards, and
Portuguese
• Pattern of Latin American is not simple
and culinary regions are not as
homogeneous as the map we saw
suggests
5. Why do Latin American foods have
African, Spaniard and Portuguese
influences?
Music
• American folk music began as transplants of Old
World songs
– Northern song
• Featured unaccompanied solo signing in clear hard tones
• Featured Fiddle or fife-and-drum
– Southern, Backwoods, and Appalachian song
• Featured unaccompanied high pitch and nasal solo singing
• Marked by moral and emotional conflict
• Roots of country music
– Western song
• Factual, narrative songs
• Themes of natural beauty, personal valor, and feminine purity
• Some songs reworked as lumberjack ballads
6. What happens when you play a country music
album backwards? See next slide
You get your dog back, your truck back, get
your job back, you get out of jail, you get
your wife back…
If you don’t understand, we will explain in
class.
7. Bluegrass became popular culture during this time period. Why
are there music festivals in the west but no bluegrass performers
homes?
2012
Bluegrass bars, museums, etc.
Folklore regions
• Displays regional contrasts in much the same way as
material folk culture
• Folk geographers consider diverse nonmaterial
phenomena as folktales, dance, music, myths, legends,
and proverbs
• Most thoroughly studied in Europe
– First research appeared early in the nineteenth century
– We know more about vanished folk cultures than surviving ones
– Example of Switzerland
8. Write a brief explanation about the folk lore story
involving what happens when you lose your baby teeth?
Where did babies come from?
Switzerland
9. Have you heard any of these explanations? Rank the folk lore
explanations in order of the ones you were told, the ones you have heard,
the ones you understand the reference, ones you are completely
unaware.
Amish and Haka
• Amish:
10. What do the Amish gain by living apart?
11. How does popular culture threaten the
Amish?
• Haka:
12. How does folk culture serve the Haka?
Amish and Haka
13. How do the Amish protect folk culture?
14. How do the Haka protect folk culture?
15. Which method is most successful at
protecting folk culture?