What is a culture, how can it be intimately wrapped up in a location, and how can that be mapped out to better understand its inner workings? In the face of globalization and pervasive online communities, what can conventional wisdom--"location, location, location" and "All politics is local"--tell us about the importance of actual places in cultural formations? We will first orient ourselves with a wide range of music-mapping projects, as well as projects that directly address the significance of a location. From a base in the interdisciplinary field of ethnomusicology, we will then examine how scenes and subcultures can congeal in particular places and times, mapping them in New York City's Lower East Side (punk), Greenwich Village (urban folk revival), and South Bronx (early hip-hop). Deploying a broad conception of culture, we will cover other art forms (e.g., graffiti) and social formations. Haight Ashbury (San Francisco) 1960s counterculture, Laurel Canyon (L.A.) 1970s singer-songwriters, Chicago 1980s post-disco house, and London 1980s post-punk goth will provide complementary case studies. These examples will provide models as students embark on their own to map out a culture of their choice as their midterm and final projects, using Google maps, Story Maps, or some other interactive multimedia format. Readings on theories of place and of subcultures will provide blueprints for issues to be explored, including how group identity and a sense of community can be locally constructed and the significance of physical in-person contact in a world of increasingly virtual relationships. |