Popular Culture
Chapter 8
The Human Mosaic
Characteristics of popular culture
 Constantly changing
 Based in large, heterogeneous groups of
people
 Based mainly in urban areas
 Material goods mass-produced by machines
in factories
 Prevailing money economy
Recreation and clothing
Characteristics of popular culture
 More numerous individual relationships, but
less personal
 Weaker family structure
 Distinct division of labor with highly
specialized professions and jobs
 Considerable leisure time available to most
people
 Police, army, and courts take the place of
family and church in maintaining order
Leisure time
Popular culture
 If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it
is change
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Words such as growth, progress, fad, and
trend crop up frequently in newspapers and
conversations
Some people unable to cope with fast change
Change can lead to insecurity expressed in
the term future shock
Vast majority of people in developed countries
belong to the popular culture
Popular culture
 If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it
is change
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Contributions to the spread of popular culture
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Industrialization
Urbanization
Rise of formal education
Resultant increase in leisure time
All the reasons popular culture spread caused
folk culture to retreat
Placelessness: Anywhere USA
 Without the sign, we would
not know if these were
houses, apartments, or
condos.
 Their style is no style; a
sense of sameness
pervades.
 Nothing sets these structures
apart as being in a particular
place; this is placelessness.
Placelessness: Anywhere USA
 In fact, the complex is in
suburban Columbus, Ohio
otherwise known as “Test
Market USA.”
 Because the demographic
character of Columbus offers
a representative cross
section of American society,
it is an appropriate place to
try out new products.
 Most fast food menus are
tested here.
Popular culture
 If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it is
change
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We and our recent ancestors embraced the free, open,
dynamic life-style offered by popular culture
Science challenged religion for dominance in our daily
lives
We profited greatly in material terms through this
transition
In reality, all culture presents a continuum on which
popular and folk represent extreme forms
Popular culture
 If a single hallmark of popular culture exists, it is
change
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Many graduations between the two are possible
Disadvantages become apparent as one moves toward
the popular end of the continuum
 We forfeited much in discarding folkways
 Popular culture is not superior
 We weaken both family structure and interpersonal
relationships
 Tne prominent cultural geographer has said of popular
culture “only two (things) would I dislike to give up:
inside plumbing and medical advances.”
Popular culture
 Popular Culture Regions
 Diffusion in Popular Culture
 The Ecology of Popular Culture
 Cultural Integration in Popular Culture
 Landscapes of Popular Culture
Placelessness or clustering?
 Superficially, popular culture appears to vary less areally than
folk culture
 Canadian geographer Edward Relph’s proposal
 Popular culture produces a profound placelessness
 A spatial standardization that diminishes cultural variety
 Demeans the human spirit
 James Kunstler speaks of “geography of nowhere” in describing
America
 One place become much like another, robbed of its
geographical essence
 Pervasive influence of a continental or worldwide popular
culture
McDonald’s in Tokyo
Wendy’s in Idaho
Pampas Grill in Finland
Placelessness or clustering?
 Folk cultures, rich in uniqueness, appear to
make the geographical face of popular culture
seem expressionless
 Michael Weiss argues that “American society
has become increasing fragmented”
Cappadocia province, Turkey
Placelessness or clustering?
 Jonathan Robbin identifies 40 “life-style clusters”
based on postal ZIP codes
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Says the ZIP codes can tell him what people eat, drink,
drive—even think
Each life-style cluster is a formal region with a colorful
name, for example:
 “Gray Power”—upper middle-class retirement areas
 “Old Yankee Rows”—blue- and white-collar older
ethnic neighborhoods of the Northeast
 Norma Rae-Vile—lower- and middle-class southern
mill towns
Lifestyle clusters
Placelessness or clustering?
 Old Yankee Rowers” typically have a high school
education
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Like bowling and ice hockey
Three times as likely to live in rowhouses or duplexes
 Residents of Norma Rae-Vile
 Mostly nonunion factory workers
 Have trouble making ends meet
 Consume twice as much canned stew as the national
average
Placelessness or clustering?
 The above examples are to make a point
 A whole panoply of popular subcultures exists
in America and the world
 Each possesses its own belief system,
spokespeople, dress code, and lifestyle
 Popular culture creates new places
 Paul Adams sees television as being a
gathering place
 Social space where members of a household
and their friends assemble
Placelessness or clustering?
 Television has become to popular culture,
worldwide, what fire and hearth were to folk
culture
 Must remember region and place exist from
micro to macro scales
Cyberspace
 Perhaps the personal computer and Internet
access have created another new type of
place
 Certain words we use imply it has a
geography—”Cyberspace”
 The information superhighway connects not
two points, but all points, creating a new sort
of place
Cyberspace
 Does cyberspace contain a geography at all?
 Place, as understood by geographers, cannot be
created on the net
 “Virtual places” lack a cultural landscape and a cultural
ecology
 Human diversity is poorly portrayed in cyberspace
 Old people, poor people, the illiterate, and the
continent of Africa are not represented
 On the net, users end up “meeting” people like
themselves
 The breath and spirit of place cannot exist in
cyberspace
 These are not real places and never can be
Cyberspace
 Still, cyberspace possesses some
geographical qualities
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Enhances opportunities for communication
over long distances
Allows access to rare data banks
Encourages and speeds cultural diffusion
The Internet helps heighten regional contrasts
Uneven spatial distribution of Internet
connections creates a new way people differ
Internet Connections
Food and drink
 What we eat and drink differs markedly from one part
of the country and world to another
 Difference in alcoholic drink consumption in the
United States
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Beer has highest per capita consumption levels in the
West
Least beer is sold in the Lower South and Utah
Corn whiskey, both legal and illegal, has been a
traditional southern beverage
Californians place more importance on wine
Kitsch Architecture:
Lacross, Wisconsin
 Kitsch – trivial, showy,
designed for mass
consumption – it is
increasingly common in
placeless landscapes.
 Much kitsch in North
American and Australia is
characterized by gigantism
 This is purported to be the
world’s largest six-pack.
Kitsch Architecture:
Lacross, Wisconsin
 Gottlieb Heileman, a
German immigrant,
founded his brewery in
1870 and this region
has one of the highest
per capita beer
consumption figures in
the nation.
Food and drink
 Foods vary across North America
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In the South, barbecued pork and beef, fried
chicken, and hamburgers have greater than
average popularity
More pizza is consumed in the North
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Focus of Italian immigration
Pizza diffused to the southern states only in the
mid-1950s
Food and drink
 Importance of fast food restaurants varies
greatly within the United States
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Stronghold is in the South — 57 percent in
Mississippi
Northeast has lowest rate of such eateries —
27 percent in New York and Vermont
We should not expect geographical uniformity
within popular culture
Placelessness has been overstated
Popular music
 The many difference styles of popular music all
reveal geographic patterning in levels of acceptance
 Pop musicians can receive adulation of a magnitude
reserved for deities in folk culture
 Elvis Presley, a generation after his death retains an
important place in American popular culture
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Illustrates the vivid geography of the culture
Sale of memorabilia reveals a split personality
Hotbeds of Elvis worship lie in eastern states
Elvis largely forgotten out West
Sports
 Abundant leisure time has allowed North Americans
to devote time watching or participating in sports
 Few aspects of popular culture are as widely
publicized as our games, both amateur and
professional
 From Little League through professional contests,
athletics receive almost daily attention from members
of popular culture
 The further we withdrew from our folk tradition, the
more important organized games became
Sports
 The nineteenth century gave us football, ice
hockey, baseball, soccer, and basketball—our
major spectator sports
 Our folk ancestors played games, but most
were limited to children and little time was
spent on them
 Concept of professional athletes and
admission-paying spectators is not found in
folk culture
Sports
 With diffusion of commercial spectator sports
through North America, distinct
 regional contrasts developed
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“Hotbeds” of football arose in some regions
Basketball became a winter mania in some
areas
Baseball came to rule supreme in some states
Ice hockey reigned in still other provinces
Sports
 Participant sports reveal similar
regionalization
 Ten “sports regions,” each with its own
special character was developed after a study
done by two geographers
 These ten regions provide a more definitive
identity to regions formerly revealed mainly
through intuition
Beauty pageants
 Contests are not confined to sports arenas
 Nearly everyone participates in one or
another less strenuous competition
 Provide a typical expression of American
popular culture
 Began in earnest at Atlantic City, New Jersey
in the early 1920s
Beauty pageants
 Reveal pronounced areal contrasts
 Winners tend to come preponderantly from
certain parts of the country
 A “beauty queen belt” stretches from
Mississippi to Utah
 Directly north of this belt lies a sizable block of
states that have never produced a major
contest winner
 As with other culture regions the question
arises concerning cause and effect
Vernacular culture regions
 Defined as those regions perceived to exist by their
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inhabitants
Product of the spatial perception of the population at
large
Not a formal region based on carefully chosen criteria
Such regions vary greatly in size, from small districts
to multistate areas
Often overlap and usually have poorly defined
borders
Vernacular culture regions
 Example of “Green Country” in northeastern
Oklahoma
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Name pushed by Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation
Commission
Proclaim “where a blend of natural beauty, ideal
climate and frontier heritage offers visitors a
memorable vacation experience”
News media in Tulsa repeatedly drum “Green Country”
into minds of local Oklahomans
Billboards and businesses spread the same message
Vernacular culture regions
 These regions can be found in almost every part of
the industrialized Western world
 Wilber Zelinsky
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Compiled province-sized regions in North America
Used most common provincial name appearing in the
white pages of urban telephone directories
One curious feature is found in the populous districts in
New York, Ontario, eastern Ohio, and western
Pennsylvania where no affiliation to province is
perceived
Vernacular culture regions
 Joseph Brownell, in 1960, sought to delimit the
“Midwest”
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Sent questionnaires to postal employees in the
midsection of the United States from the Appalachians
to the Rockies
Asked each employee whether he/she felt the
community lay in the “Midwest”
Revealed core area where residents felt themselves to
be Midwesterners
Similar survey done 20 years later, using student
respondents, gave almost the same result
Vernacular culture regions
 A resident of Alabama’s “Black Belt” might
also claim residence in “Dixie” and “the
South”
 Vernacular regions of America are perceptual
in character
 Vernacular regions are often perpetuated by
the mass media
Popular culture
 Popular Culture Regions
 Diffusion in Popular Culture
 The Ecology of Popular Culture
 Cultural Integration in Popular Culture
 Landscapes of Popular Culture
Hierarchical diffusion
 Might play a larger role because popular
society is highly stratified
 McDonald’s restaurants
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Beginning in 1955 spread hierarchically
Revealed a bias in favor of larger urban
markets
Hierarchical diffusion
 Wal-Mart stores
 Diffused from its Arkansas base in a largely contagious
pattern
 Spread into neighboring states
 Initially chose smaller towns and markets for locations
using a pattern called reverse hierarchical diffusion
 Later spread into cities
 Combination of contagious and reverse hierarchical
diffusion led Wal-Mart, within 30 years, to become the
nation’s largest retailer
Hierarchical diffusion
 Speed of diffusion in popular culture
 Progresses far more rapidly than in folk culture
 Time-distance decay is considerably weaker
 In the early nineteenth century time span was
measured in decades
 Modern transportation and communications networks
now permit cultural diffusion to occur within weeks or
days
 Rapid diffusion enhances the chance for change in
popular culture
Advertising
 Most effective device for popular culture
diffusion
 Commercial advertising of retail products
bombards us visually and orally
 Using psychology, we are sold products we
do not need
 Popular culture is equipped with the most
potent devices and techniques of diffusion
ever perfected
Advertising
 Modern advertising is very place-conscious
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Products and services are linked to popular,
admired places
Example of the “Marboro Man” and the
romanticized American West
Remarkably such techniques work in countries
as far away as Egypt
Advertising and Diffusion:
Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia
 Advertising plays a key role in
the diffusion of popular culture.
 Symbols are important
marketing tools and companies
aim to get instant recognition for
their products.
 Here a row of former Chinese
shophouses has been
renovated as a “strip mall.”
 The signs are international
status symobls meaning
“American.”
Advertising and Diffusion:
Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia
 American pop culture is
becoming increasingly
popular in Asia to the dismay
of many traditional parents.
 How do you think these
young Malaysians learn
about American products
and why are they so much in
demand?
 Where do you think they are
manufactured?
 What signs do you
recognize?
International diffusion
 Innovations diffuse between countries and
continents as rapidly as jet airplanes and
satellite-beamed television programs
 Popular cultures of North America, Europe,
and Australia have become similar and in
constant contact
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Country-western music now heard in Northern
Ireland’s pubs
Levi-clad Romanians in small towns flock to
American-made movies
International diffusion
 Popular cultures of North America, Europe, and
Australia have become similar and in constant
contact
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Americans lineup to hear touring British rock musicians
Rocky Mountain ski resorts are built in Alpine-Swiss
architecture
Latest Paris fashions appear in American department
stores
Fast-food franchises of MacDonalds and Kentucky
Fried Chicken diffused to Russia
Motel chains such as Holiday Inn took root in Tibet and
other countries
International diffusion
 In many lesser-developed countries
acceptance of Western popular culture occurs
among a socioeconomic elite
 Many people across the world now share
aspects of a global culture
Stimulus Diffusion and Fast Food:
Sao Paulo, Brazil
 Not only have
McDonalds and other
fast food outlets spread
around the world but
also they have
stimulated the
development of new
ones.
Stimulus Diffusion and Fast Food:
Sao Paulo, Brazil
 At McDingos, one can
buy a hamberger,
cheeseburger, a “Big
Dingo” with double
meet and cheese, and a
“Bomba de Chocolate”
ie a chocolate sundae
 The American influence
is unmistakable
Communication barriers
 Spread can be greatly retarded if access to the media is denied
 Billboard, a magazine devoted largely to popular music,
described such a barrier
 Record company executive Seymour Stein complained radio
stations and disk jockeys refused to play “punk rock”
 Stein claimed punk devotees were concentrated in New York
City, Los Angeles, Boston, and London
 Diffusion of punk rock could only be heard in other areas
through live concerts and the record sales they generated
 Other musical forms had the same problem -- pachanga,
ska, pop/gospel, “women’s music”, reggae, and “gangsta
rap”
 Time Warner Inc., a major distributor of gangsta rap, had to
endure scathing criticism in the United States congress in 1995
Communication barriers
 To control programming of radio and television is to control
much of the diffusion of popular culture
 Government censorship can also provide barriers to diffusion
 Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran during 1995
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Long opposed Western popular culture as a corrupting
influence
Outlawed television satellite dishes to try and prevent citizens
from Watching programs broadcast in foreign countries
Repressive regimes must cope with a proliferation of
communication methods—the fax and Internet
It is probably impossible for even totalitarian nations to
completely keep out some influence of popular culture
Communication barriers
 Government censorship can also provide barriers to
diffusion
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Example of Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iran —
outlawed television satellite dishes in 1995
Control of media can approach control of the mind in
popular culture
Repressive regimes must cope with a proliferation of
communication methods
Status of inward-looking “hermit” nations is probably no
longer attainable
Communication barriers
 Newspapers also act as selective barriers
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Reinforce the effect of political boundaries
Between 21 and 48 percent of all news
published in Canadian newspapers is of
foreign origin, mainly United States news
About 12 percent of news in American
newspapers foreign
Diffusion of the rodeo
 Rooted in ranching culture of North American West
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and has never completely escaped that setting
Modern rodeo had its origin in folk tradition
Began simply as roundups of cattle in Spanish
livestock ranching
Started in northern Mexico and the American
Southwest
Word rodeo derived from the Spanish rodear, “to
surround” or “to round up”
Diffusion of the rodeo
 Cowboys from adjacent ranches began
holding informal contests at roundup time to
display their skills
 After the Civil War, some cowboy contests on
the Great Plains became formalized, with
prizes awarded
Diffusion of the rodeo
 Transition to commercial rodeo, with admission
tickets and grandstands, came quickly
 The “Wild West Show” and its role in the diffusion of
the rodeo
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A rodeo at North Platte, Nebraska in 1882 led to some
events being included in a Wild West Show held in
Omaha in 1883
Wild West Shows moved by railroad from town to town
Probably provided the most potent agent of early rodeo
diffusion
Diffusion of the rodeo
 Within a decade of the Omaha affair
commercial rodeos were being held
independently of Wild West Shows at several
towns
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The first apparently at Prescott, Arizona, in
1888
By 1900, commercial rodeos appeared
throughout much of the West
Frontier Days rodeo, at Cheyenne, Wyoming,
was first held in 1897
Diffusion of the rodeo
 By World War I, rodeos became an institution in provinces of
western Canada
 The Calgary Stampede began in 1912
 Professional rodeos are now held in 36 states and 3 Canadian
provinces
 Oklahoma listed 98 scheduled events in 1977
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Ethnic and gender lives have been crossed
Creek Nation All Indian Rodeo at Okmulgee
All Girls Rodeo at Duncan
All Black Rodeo at Wewoka
In Texas and other states, rodeo competition has become an
official high school sport
Major acceptance is found west of the Mississippi River
Diffusion of the rodeo
 Absorbing and permeable barriers to diffusion
 Mexico—bullfighting occupies a dominant position
 Mormon culture region centered in Utah
 In central Mexico the charreada exists as a unique
form of rodeo
 In California the rodeo penetrated the mountains to
reach the Pacific
 Greatest strength of commercial rodeo lies in the
cattle ranching areas
The American diner
 Restaurant in the general shape of a railroad or
trolley car
 Experienced a failure to diffuse throughout the United
States
 Arose before World War II in the northeastern United
states
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Spread through the manufacturing belt states — New
York City-Philadelphia urban quarter
Perhaps as many as 6000 eateries were founded by
26 companies
The American diner
 Spread of the diner generally failed in the
American South
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Connoted cities, industries, ethnicity, and
“northernness”
Threatened southern way of life
Rejected from Virginia southward
Only Florida proved receptive to the idea