Popular culture is large in scale, incorporates diverse populations, and experiences rapid changes. It is typically practiced in urban areas and spread across identities and the world through both material and nonmaterial forms. Popular culture diffuses through a hierarchical process starting in urban areas and spreading outwards through technology and increased connections between places. However, popular culture is not taken wholesale by other cultures but undergoes a process of "reterritorialization" where it is adapted to local cultural contexts. Popular housing styles, clothing trends like jeans, and snack foods have all widely diffused through improved communication and transportation influencing and shaped by various social and economic factors. Television has played a particularly important role in this diffusion as the most popular leisure activity and important means

1. Popular Culture

2. Popular Culture
 Large
 Incorporates heterogeneous populations
 Typically urban
 Experiences quickly changing cultural traits
 Practiced by people across identities and
across the world
 Also encompasses material and
nonmaterial culture

3. How is popular culture diffused?
 Hierarchical diffusion
 Uses an urban hierarchy (distance decay)
 David Harvey: time-space compression
 Refers to social and psychological effects of living
in a time-space convergence (Donald Janelle)
 Since technology links some places more closely
than others, culture diffuses more quickly rather
than at a constant rate

4.  Popular culture does not take over the
existing popular culture, rather a process
called reterritorialization of popular
culture occurs
 When people w/in a place start to produce an
aspect of popular culture themselves in the
context of their own culture and making it their
own

5. Why is popular culture widely
distributed?
 Popular Housing Styles
A. Modern house styles (1945-1960): minimal traditional,
ranch, split level, contemporary + shed style houses
B. Neo-eclectic (1960-): mansard, neo-Tudor, Neo-French,
neo-colonial
*have great rooms rather than separate living + family
rooms

6. Diffusion of Popular Culture cont.
 Rapid Diffusion of Clothes
 Characterized by income and job characteristics
 Improved communication
 Exposure to folk dress due to increased travel +
television
A. Jeans-know why + how jeans became a part of
popular culture

7. Diffusion of Popular Culture cont.
B. Snack foods and beverages
*preference based on what is made, grown or
imported locally
*also affected by background
*dependent on income and advertising

8. Role of TV in diffusing Popular
Culture
 Significant custom because:
1. Most popular leisure activity
2. Most important means by which culture is
diffused

9. Why Does Globalization of Popular
Culture Cause Problems?
 Threat to Folk Culture:
 Rising income increases demand for items
valued in popular culture
 Can lead to domination of folk culture
 Loss of traditional values (clothing)
 Change in traditional role of women-How?
 Can also cause problems in less developed
nations-increase in prostitution

10. Globalization of Popular Culture cont.
 Threat of Foreign Media Imperialism
 Threatens LDC’s independence
 Seen as a new type of economic + cultural
imperialism
 Allow governments of LDC to censor shows
and/or only program shows appropriate to
traditional values

11. Environmental Impact of Popular
Culture
 Modifies nature
 Uniform landscapes-seen to generate
product recognition + greater consumption

12. Negative Environmental Impacts
 Increased demand for natural resources
 Depletion of resources and/or extinction of
species
 Inefficient use of resources
 Pollution
 Popular culture produces a lot of waste
 Folk culture can also negatively impact the
environment by ignoring natural processes