Culture

1. Culture

2. Culture • Culture is the total of knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors shared by and passed on by the members of a specific group. • Culture can be divided into folk culture and popular culture and can consist of material or non-material items.

3. Culture • Material items can be houses, clothing, weapons, utensils, or toys. • Non-material items can be beliefs, folk stories, fairytales, and political organization.

4. One aspect of culture is non-material culture such as folk stories and fairy tales. This map shows the distribution of folk stories in Switzerland to answer the question where babies come from.

5. Folk Culture • Folk culture is practiced by small homogenous groups that tend to live in rural isolated areas and it is extremely resistant to change. • Some examples of folk culture in the United States are the Amish or isolated cultures in the Appalachian Mountains.

6. Popular Culture • Popular culture is practiced by the majority of people in a society and may spread to other parts of the world. Popular culture is spread to television, radio, and movies. Some examples of popular culture are blue jeans, fast food restaurants, and types of music such as rock, rap, or R&B.

8. Culture • Cultures can change over time through innovations. An innovation is when a culture takes an existing idea or technology and creates something new with existing resources. Some examples of innovations are the printing press, reading and writing, gunpowder, and the moldboard plow.

9. Cultural Hearths • A cultural hearth is the site of an innovation from which basic ideas, materials, and technology diffuse to other cultures. An example of a cultural hearth is the Fertile Crescent where reading and writing started. Another example of a cultural hearth is the Incan homeland in the Andes Mountains where terraced farming began.

10. The fertile Crescent and the Nile River valley.

11. The Maya cultural hearth in southern Mexico and Central America.

12. Cultural Diffusion Culture is spread when an idea interacts with persons, objects, or ideas in other regions. Two basic types of diffusion are relocation and expansion.

13. Expansion Diffusion Expansion diffusion is further divided into hierarchical diffusion, contagious diffusion, and stimulus diffusion.

14. Hierarchical Diffusion The spread of an idea from persons or nodes of authority or power to other persons or places. It may result from the ideas of political leaders, socially elite people, or a place of power such as an urban center.

15. Diffusion of the printing press in Europe. Presses were started in large cities and then spread to rural areas.

16. Contagious Diffusion The rapid, widespread diffusion of a characteristic throughout the population.

17. The hearth area of rodeos and map showing diffusion of rodeos.

19. Stimulus Diffusion The spread of an underlying principle, even though a characteristic itself fails to diffuse.

20. Relocation Diffusion The spread of an idea through a physical movement of people from one place to another.

21. Intervening Barriers • The spread of culture can be stopped by intervening barriers. An intervening barrier is an obstacle that prevents the spread of culture. • Physical Intervening Barriers - Mountains, Bodies of Water, Deserts • Political Intervening Barriers - A law against adopting a certain innovation