3.1 Introduction to Culture

Essential Question: What is Culture and how can we identify patterns of culture on the landscape?

Culture consists of the…
- shared practices
- technologies
- attitudes
- behaviors

all transmitted by a society.


Folk Culture: small scale, often isolated, homogenous groups. Has limited technology, passed through generations and by physical movement of people.

Popular Culture: Abundance of technology, large scale, heterogeneous. Spreads very quickly and to areas where technology is present.

• Practice / Traits:

  • Architecture and Land Use:
    Folk cultures utilize what is in the environment and build based on envirnmental conditions. This creates a sense of place.

  • Popular culture tends to create universal styles and uses materials from around the world. This creates a uniform landscape and placelessness.

  • Taboos: restrictions on behaviors imposed by social customs.

  • Food Preferences: Folk cultures produce food based on environment and tradition, pop culture accesses food from anywhere.
    

• Attitudes and Behaviors towards cultural differences:
  - Ethnocentrism: Judging other cultures in terms of one’s own standards and often includes the belief that one’s own culture/ethnic group is better than others.
  - Cultural Relativism: not judging a culture to our own standards of what is right or wrong, strange or normal. Trying to understand cultural practices of other groups in its own cultural context.