52) People maintain their folk culture despite familiarity with popular culture primarily because
of
A) the high cost of popular customs.
B) a concern for the physical environment.
C) a strong desire to preserve unique customs.
D) a lack of exposure to the media.
E) a fear of foreign influence.
53) Popular culture and folk culture can both result in a higher level of
A) extinction of animal species.
B) demand for raw materials.
C) consumption of animal products.
D) environmental degradation.
E) All of these answers are correct.
54) Which of the following characteristics is more typical of popular culture than folk culture?
A) It has an anonymous origin.
B) It diffuses slowly from its point of origin.
C) It results in a more uniform cultural landscape.
D) It is likely to be derived from physical conditions.
E) Communication is more limited.
55) As they have more contact with popular culture, women in less developed countries are more
likely to
A) bear more children.
B) obtain food for the family.
C) gain more opportunities outside the home.
D) reduce the practice of prostitution.
E) be subservient to men.
56) Diffusion of popular customs can adversely impact environmental quality in two ways:
A) reducing demand for foreign products and promoting local crafts.
B) increased diversity and decreased demand.
C) depletion of scarce resources and pollution.
D) diversity of products and depletion of change.
E) using renewable materials and recycled designs.
57) One impact of large-scale consumption of chicken in more developed countries is to
A) cause chickens to become an endangered species.
B) make inefficient use of the world’s grain supplies.
C) diffuse agricultural products into the physical environment.
D) encourage the development of a new food taboo.
E) displace pork producers.
58) Which of the following statements reflects the environmental impact of culture?
A) Folk culture never causes environmental impacts while popular culture does.
B) Solid waste is the least visible of wastes generated from culture.
C) Popular culture may cause a rapid increase in demand for certain natural resources.
D) Environments are not affected by the level of pollution generated by human activity.
E) Folk culture does not affect the environment but popular culture does.
59) Culture can be defined as a repetitive act that a group performs until it becomes a
characteristic of a group.
60) Lists or collections of customs can be used to define a culture.
61) Culture refers to a habit that is widely adopted by a group of people.
62) Two social groups living in close proximity will retain unique social customs if there is
limited interaction between them.
63) In contrast to popular culture, folk culture is more likely to vary from time to time at a given
place.
64) Popular culture is more likely to be found in More Developed Countries.
65) The physical environment commonly plays an important role in the development of unique
folk customs.
66) The adoption of a popular custom often depends on a person’s amount of disposable income.
67) Although folk cultures have the same process of origin as popular culture, they have a more
limited process of diffusion.
68) The origin of popular music is a good example of how folk culture originates.
69) A major factor in the diffusion of British football was the presence of British citizens in other
countries.
70) Organized spectator sports represent folk cultures since they commonly originate from
anonymous hearths.
71) Bostans, small gardens distributed throughout Istanbul, Turkey, have been supplying the city
with fresh vegetables for centuries by practicing intensive agriculture.
72) Food taboos usually derive from unique characteristics in the physical environment.
73) More precise geographic information is given on the label of an expensive bottle of wine
than on an inexpensive bottle.
74) In general, folk culture is more likely to cause greater uniformity on the landscape than
popular culture.
75) International prostitution is encouraged in some Asian countries as a source of foreign
currency.
76) Leaders of many developing countries fear that the spread of U.S. popular culture will
destroy traditional social behavior.
77) Adoption of Western popular culture seldom results in the elimination of traditional folk
culture.
78) Hotels, fast-food restaurants, and other franchises encourage a uniform appearance on the
landscape to promote customer recognition.
79) The highest concentration of golf courses within the United States is in the Sunbelt.
80) What is the difference between a custom and a habit?
81) What is one of the major differences in the origin of a popular culture compared to a folk
culture?
82) How does the process of diffusion of a popular custom contrast with that of a folk custom?
83) Which country would have a higher per capita consumption of pork, India or China? Why?
84) Which of these countries would you expect to have the highest wine production per capita:
France, Chile, or India? Which of the three would have the lowest?
85) Name three of the six countries in which television technology originally developed.
86) What television technology foils attempts by the governments to restrict television access?
87) Why do promoters of popular customs, such as fast-food restaurants, seek to create a uniform
landscape appearance?
88) Why do leaders of some developing countries fear the loss of folk culture? And what
defensive measures might you recommend they take to protect folk culture?
89) In what ways might gender (gender identities, roles, differences, and interactions) affect the
distribution of customs associated with entertainment offerings in your neighborhood? Which
seem to reinforce gender stereotypes and biases, and which seem to defy them? Which are more
associated with folk culture, and which with popular culture?
90) In what ways do folk cultures respond differently than popular cultures to variations in the
local physical environment?
91) Consult a transportation map or envision the distribution of the streets, highways, railways,
airports, and waterways in your area. How have these elements of the transportation
infrastructure influenced the diffusion of global popular culture, both into and out of your area?
With globalization in mind, judge the relative importance of each component of the
transportation system in your local area.
92) Identify a hybrid, or syncretic, form of art, music, or architecture in your surroundings. What
elements of folk and popular culture does it combine? If you cannot identify any such hybrids in
your surroundings, imagine a new product or item of your own.
93) Evaluate your musical tastes in light of the characteristics discussed in this chapter. How
have your musical preferences been affected by the diffusion and distribution of folk and popular
music, perhaps even long before your favorite songs and groups first appeared?
94) Apply the insights on the diffusion of soccer to another sport with which you are familiar
(without doing additional, outside research), to formulate a hypothesis about the origins and
spread of your sport.
95) Compare and contrast the distribution of jeans (or another clothing type) with the distribution
of wine. What factors seem to account for the differences?
96) Think of a food that you love. Think of a food that you dislike greatly. Sometimes even the
qualities that we take most for granted (like sweetness and saltiness) are culturally selected.
What perspectives does cultural geography provide to help you understand your choices of “best”
and “worst” foods?
97) What folk food preferences and taboos have you seen in your own family, or in other
families with which you are familiar? What might a cultural geographer say about these?
98) Name and discuss examples of sacred housing spaces in Asia. Also discuss how some of
your perceptions of or experiences with urban spaces might be analogous to these geographic
patterns.
99) Excluding college dorm rooms, what kind of housing do you or your family have, and how
does it compare to the housing types discussed in this chapter? If you had to make an educated
guess (without conducting outside research), what patterns of diffusion might you say accounted
for these housing styles?
100) Discuss the ways in which television has diffused popular culture historically as well as in
your own experiences. How does your experience (or inexperience) with television compare to
those larger trends?
101) Consider your use of electronic communications, including social media and the Internet.
When you shop for consumer products or seek out entertainment, do you tend to use this
“virtual” infrastructure more, less, or about the same as you use the physical infrastructure
(streets, highways, etc.)? In what ways might the former have partially displaced the latter? In
what ways might our need for the physical infrastructure have actually increased as Internet use
has spread?
102) From your own experience, give an example of the diffusion of an element of popular
culture in your community, neighborhood, or school. Explain how it is similar to the examples
provided in this chapter and how a geographical perspective helps you to analyze and understand
it further.
103) Thinking about your recent use of social media (or that of your friends, if you do not use
social media), what kinds of popular culture have you been most active in diffusing or
maintaining? What perspectives on this behavior does cultural geography provide?
104) Evaluate your use of the Internet over the last two weeks. In what way, if any, has your use
of social media, search engines, or other applications promoted or reinforced the interest of folk
(not popular) culture? If none of your recent Internet activities have involved folk culture, when
is the last time that you saw electronic resources supporting folk culture, and in what way? Does
your personal Internet use represent an indirect threat to some aspect(s) of folk culture? Why or
why not?
105) How do corporations manipulate folk images for their own purposes? Discuss an example
that you have seen in a corporate or political advertisement. How might this kind of manipulation
have contributed to the diffusion or distribution of related folk customs or materials?
106) How do movies, television shows, and advertisers portray famous sites around the world?
Do they tend to dedicate more resources to showing folk or popular culture? How realistic are
the depictions that they make? Give two or three examples and discuss the motivations and
effectiveness of their portrayals.
107) Considering the changes that you have seen in your life (not the examples already given in
this chapter), discuss one way that you have seen popular culture impinge on folk culture. How
did you or other people that you know react to the situation, and why?
108) Over the course of three days, keep a detailed record of all of the wrappers, containers,
bottles, cans, vegetable matter, and other items that you (a) throw into the garbage or (b) throw
into a recycling bin. Record each item on a separate line, noting its size, weight, and makeup
(animal, vegetable, mineral, paper, etc.). On the third day, compare your list to that of three or
four classmates. How much of the waste was directly linked to popular culture? How might you
change this pattern in the future? And in what ways did this project affect your habits—that is,
did you throw away less waste because you were paying special attention, or were other factors
involved? How would you judge the environmental impact of your classmates in comparison?
109) In your direct experience, what are some of the negative impacts of the diffusion of popular
habits and customs that you have seen?
110) On your college campus (in common areas, your residence, or your classroom), discuss one
way in which popular culture contributes to the depletion of scarce natural resources. What
factors (geographical and other) seem most to blame? And how could the situation be improved?
111) In your community, what are two ways in which popular culture seems to be contributing to
pollution? How does pollution from popular culture in your area differ from other types of
pollution there? Explain how a geographical perspective helps you to analyze and understand
these matters.