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Culture is the intersection of people and place

By Becky McCray

A downtown sidewalk with people shopping at a table full of baked goods

The culture of Alva, Oklahoma, comes from the people who live here influenced by the characteristics of this place. Photo by Becky McCray

 

Lots of small towns have a good handle on the importance of the arts. Some have arts councils and arts festivals, and most are starting to better value rural artists. What about the larger concept of culture? Culture is usually only mentioned around urban areas. Rural is almost thought of as the opposite of “cultured.”

One definition I’ve heard of art is how people make meaning for themselves. That’s pretty good, I think. People create things that make meaning out of their lives and surroundings. Culture includes that and more.

Culture is the intersection of people and place. 

When a particular group of people live in a particular place, they create ways of doing things that are their culture: Finding, growing and preparing food; making music; designing buildings; decorating themselves and their clothing; furnishing their surroundings; doing business with each other and surviving the weather. All of these elements of culture exist in rural places.

People living in a place developed a culture that drew from the characteristics of the place itself to create new ways that make life better, easier, richer. When new people arrive, they bring their culture with them, and they interact with the local culture and the place, enriching the mix. When people of different cultures meet in a place, each is influenced by that place and by each other.

Culture is not about preserving a static version of our past ways only for tradition. Culture is a reservoir of shared experiences, a toolkit that equips us to thrive and adapt.

Culture helps us prosper in the future. We bring forward our ways that define us and our place even as we adapt, adopt new ways or even move to a new place.

This is the real reason we teach our culture to our children. It’s not just folk songs or crafts, it’s people, places and our special ways. These are important because they connect us to the past and the future and to this place where we are now.

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
  • Zoom Towns: attracting and supporting remote workers in rural small towns - December 10, 2020
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  • How has 2020 changed the challenges rural small towns face? Tell us here - October 20, 2020
  • The Idea Friendly Method to surviving a business crisis - October 6, 2020
  • Join me for the Rural Renewal Symposium online Oct 13 - September 26, 2020
  • Cheap placemaking idea: instant murals - September 11, 2020
  • Refilling the rural business pipeline - July 7, 2020
  • Huge vacant buildings: grants to renovate? - June 9, 2020
  • Economic self defense for small towns  - June 7, 2020

August 19, 2019 Filed Under: community, rural Tagged With: arts, culture, rural cultural elements

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Comments

  1. Renia Carsillo says

    August 19, 2019 at 12:59 pm

    I like that way of looking at it. It makes me brissle when my friends in urban areas assume we don’t have “culture” in the country. It isn’t the same. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.

    • Becky McCray says

      August 19, 2019 at 3:18 pm

      Absolutely, Renia! It reminds me of this quote from Gene Logsdon:
      “Why does no one speak of the cultural advantages of the country? For example, is a well groomed, ecologically kept, sustainably fertile farm any less cultural, any less artful, than paintings of fat angels on church ceilings?”

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