All Topics  
Folk culture

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Folk culture
 
 
  Topics Folk culture Topic Home

Folk culture refers to the localized lifestyle
Lifestyle

Lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives....
 of a culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
. It is usually handed down through oral tradition
Oral tradition

Oral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants....
, relates to a sense of community
Community

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment .In human communities, intention, belief, Natural resource, preferences, Need assessment, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the Identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness....
, and demonstrates the "old ways" over novelty. Folk culture is quite often imbued with a sense of place. If its elements are copied by, or removed to, a foreign locale, they will still carry strong connotations of their original place of creation.

Examples of American folk cultures include:



The above items have entered mainstream consciousness to varying degrees, but none of them have been so distorted from their original form as to have lost their culturally specific sense of place.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Folk culture'
Start a new discussion about 'Folk culture'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


Folk culture refers to the localized lifestyle
Lifestyle

Lifestyle was originally coined by Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.In sociology, a lifestyle is the way a person lives....
 of a culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
. It is usually handed down through oral tradition
Oral tradition

Oral tradition, oral culture and oral lore are messages or testimony transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants....
, relates to a sense of community
Community

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment .In human communities, intention, belief, Natural resource, preferences, Need assessment, risks, and a number of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the Identity of the participants and their degree of cohesiveness....
, and demonstrates the "old ways" over novelty. Folk culture is quite often imbued with a sense of place. If its elements are copied by, or removed to, a foreign locale, they will still carry strong connotations of their original place of creation.

Examples of American folk cultures include:

  • The cakewalk
    Cakewalk

    Cakewalk is a traditional African American form of music and dance which originated among slavery in the Southern United States. The form was originally known as the chalk line walk....
  • Louisiana Creole cuisine
    Louisiana Creole cuisine

    Louisiana Creole cuisine is a style of cooking originating in Louisiana which is a melting pot cuisine that blends French cuisine, Spanish cuisine, Caribbean, Mediterranean, United States, and African, influences....
    , music, and language
    Louisiana Creole French

    Louisiana Creole is a French-based creole languages language spoken by the mixed Louisiana Creole people of the state of Louisiana. The language consists of elements of French, Native American, Spanish, and West African roots....
  • Handmade quilts
  • The islands of Hawaii
    Hawaii

    File:Pahoehoe and Aa flows at Hawaii.jpgThe State of Hawaii is a U.S. state in the United States, located on an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of Australia....
     maintain a traditional culture including the hula
    Hula

    Hula is a dance form accompanied by chant or song. It was developed in the Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesians who originally settled there. The chant or song is called a mele ....
    , leis, a pantheon
    Pantheon (gods)

    A pantheon is a set of all the gods of a particular polytheistic religion or mythology.Max Weber's 1922 opus, Economy and Society discusses the link between a pantheon of gods and the development of monotheism....
     of nature
    Nature

    File:Jungle in Punjab.JPGNature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical universe, material world or material universe....
     gods, and the concept of aloha
    Aloha

    Aloha in the Hawaiian language means affection, love, peace, compassion and mercy. Since the middle of the 19th century, it also has come to be used as an English language greeting to say wiktionary:Goodbye and hello....
  • Powwows
  • Pative tribal regalia
    Regalia

    Regalia is Latin plurale tantum for the privileges and the insignia characteristic of a Sovereignty.The word stems from the Latin substantivation of the adjective regalis, 'regal', itself from Rex, 'king'....
  • Shaker architecture and furniture
  • Some Alaskan tribe
    Tribe

    A tribe, viewed historically or developmentally, consists of a social group existing before the development of, or outside of, states.Many anthropologists use the term to refer to societies organized largely on the basis of kinship, especially corporate descent groups ....
    s still hunt whales with traditional spiritual rites
  • Tipi
    Tipi

    A tipi is a conical tent originally made of animal skins or birch bark and popularized by the Native Americans in the United States of the Great Plains....
    s
  • Wild rice
    Wild rice

    Wild rice is any of the four species of plants that make up the genus Zizania , a group of Poaceae that grow in shallow water in small lakes and slow-flowing streams; often, only the flowering head of wild rice rises above the water....
     is still gathered by hand in the traditional manner in the United States' northwoods


The above items have entered mainstream consciousness to varying degrees, but none of them have been so distorted from their original form as to have lost their culturally specific sense of place. Blue jeans
Blue Jeans

"Blue Jeans" is a sentimental popular song written by Harry D. Kerr and Lou Traveller in 1920. In the song, the singer is reminiscing about a long-ago young love that happened somewhere in the "hills of the old Cumberland." The chorus echoes the singer's longing:...
 and McDonald's
McDonald's

McDonald's Corporation is the world's largest chain of fast food restaurants, serving nearly 58 million customers daily. McDonald's primarily sells hamburgers, cheeseburgers, chicken products, French fries, breakfast items, soft drinks, milkshakes, and desserts....
 are cultural icons which have, in contrast, been made so international that they have lost their original sense of place; they are no longer considered folk culture. Similarly, Federalist architecture was created in the United States, but in a style influenced by, and meant to appeal to, outside interests. It is the emphasis on looking inward without reference to the outside that separates folk culture from pop culture.

However, folk culture has always informed pop culture and even high culture
High culture

High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of culture products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture....
. The minuet
Minuet

A minuet, sometimes spelled menuet, is a social dance of France origin for two persons, usually in time signature. The word was adapted from Italian language minuetto and French language menuet, meaning small, pretty, delicate, a diminutive of menu, from the Latin minutus; menuetto is a word that occurs only on musi...
 dance of European court society was based on the dance of peasants. Similarly, the European courtly rage for pastoral
Pastoral

Pastoral, as an adjective, refers to the lifestyle of shepherds and pastoralists, moving livestock around larger areas of land according to seasons and availability of water and food....
 romance was based on an idealized vision of shepherds' lives. More recently, the consciously self-centered culture of the Amish
Amish

The various Amish or Amish Mennonite church fellowships are Christian religious denominations, and form a very traditional subgrouping of Mennonite churches....
 has been portrayed for comic value in Hollywood films and big media reality shows, and the archetypal costume
Costume

The term costume can refer to Wardrobe and style of dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period....
 of the cowboy
Cowboy

A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks....
 has been reinvented in gleaming silver by disco
Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music that originated in and was initially popular among African American, gay and Hispanic and Latino Americans communities in the United States in the late 1960s....
 dancers and strippers.

See also

  • Blue collar
    Blue collar

    Blue collar can refer to:*Blue-collar worker, a traditional designation of the working class*Blue-collar crime, the types of crimes typically associated with the working class...
  • Folklore
    Folklore

    Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, superstitions, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group ....
  • Folk music
    Folk music

    Folk music can have a number of different meanings, including:* Traditional music: The original meaning of the term "folk music" was synonymous with the term "Traditional music", also often including World Music and Roots music; the term "Traditional music" was given its more specific meaning to distinguish it from the other definition...
  • Folk costumes, such as the bunad
    Bunad

    A bunad is a traditional Norway costume, typically of rural origin. Bunads are local to Norway's Districts of Norway, and the result both of traditional evolution and organized efforts to discover and modernize traditional designs....
  • Intangible Cultural Heritage
    Intangible Cultural Heritage

    The notion of intangible cultural heritage emerged in the 90s, as a counterpart to the World Heritage that focuses mainly on tangible aspects of culture....
  • Lower class
  • Proletariat
    Proletariat

    The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons....
  • Sex
    Sex

    In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetics traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into male and female types ....
  • Subculture
    Subculture

    In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong....
  • Subsistence
  • Vernacular culture
    Vernacular culture

    Vernacular culture is a term used in the modern study of geography and cultural studies. It refers to cultural forms made and organised by ordinary people for their own pleasure, in modern societies....


External pages