Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Top-down vs. bottom-up


Historians talk often of “top-down” change (an agenda carried out by elites) vs. “bottom-up” change (a groundswell of ideas from everyday people.)  Where do you see examples of each kind?  Can there be such a thing as a purely “top-down” or “bottom-up” piece of popular culture?  Explain.

10 comments:

  1. I think some prominent examples of "top-down" change are the Sears Catalog, Coney Island, and Central Park, as Professor mentioned in class. These all started with an elite or a group of higher individuals rather that beginning with regular citizens. It was more difficult for me to think of examples that were purely "bottom-up," but saloons seem to be an example of that kind of change. Saloons were part of a bigger movement that the working class had been pushing through.

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  2. Many of the songs discussed in the presentations have been bottom up approaches, starting as work songs and working their way up in American culture. An example of top down would be central park and the shift to consumerism, as it was designed by upper class citizens and propagated its way down though American culture.

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  3. I see a lot of the "bottom-up" culture in things like sports and casual leisure, as seen in Middletown. With football starting in colleges, and then slowly gaining popularity with townspeople on up until it became a full-blown spectator sport. I feel like in reading Middletown I also got a sense that out of the home leisure was considered something lower classes did first, but that may be more an opinion from my own reading. I definitely see "top-down" in things like Central Park, and then with the Sears catalog making upper class styles and amenities more affordable and accessible to the every day worker.

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  4. I think our discussion of the beginning of saloons is a pretty good example of an attempt at a bottom-up piece of culture. The saloon was created out of the lower, working classes when the work places started having greater regulations. At the beginning, saloons were created by and intended for only these working-class men, but as is evident in today's culture, saloons and subsequently bars became acceptable for different classes and sexes. I think a good example of a top-down attempt at culture was Central Park. The creators of the park created rules that were often targeting working class social norms that encouraged the Park to only be used by higher class peoples. Of course, this didn't work for long, as soon the Park was being used by anyone and everyone within NYC. I cite both of these examples at 'attempts' of either top-down or bottom-up pieces of culture because I am unsure as to whether any kind of culture can simply be defined as either.

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  5. Culture may not be truly be “top-down” or “bottom up” as it may skip though a few classes before getting from the bottom to the top and vice versa. For example the Sears catalog went to people in more rural areas who tend to be poorer than their counterparts in more devolved areas. So in this example it would have started at the top, those who propagated the catalogue, to those who are poorer before making it to the more middle classes.

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  6. I don't think culture can be purely "top-down" or "bottom-up" necessarily, because it takes more than one player to make something popular or prominent in culture. While an idea may have started either from the citizens or elites, it essentially needed the support or received the support from the opposite end. Some culture can lean more heavily to one side, but it is clear that while saloons started from the bottom and Central Park started from the top, they made their way to the other classes at some point in time. It is hard to pin culture to these terms, because players from both ends of the spectrum are essential to the success of an idea.

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  7. I agree that some examples of "bottom-up" culture are things like saloons and the popularization of songs that originated in the work place. These aspects of culture began as a way for the working class to relax and enjoy themselves, not in a true attempt to formalize some type of culture. In contrast, I think a "top-down" example can be seen through the Colombian Exposition. An elite group designed the exposition to be very classical and structured, and it ended up being almost too rigid and structured for people to really enjoy. As the Columbian Exposition example shows, I don't think that a purely "top-down" culture can exist successfully because in order for culture to spread, it must be accepted by the masses. Similarly, a purely "bottom-up" culture would isolate specific groups and never truly catch on. For this reason, I believe that popular culture must be a combination of the two, as can be seen by the addition of the Midway outside of the Columbian Exposition.

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  8. The definition of popular culture is culture that is enjoyed and consumed by the masses. Therefore, I don't think a piece of pop culture can exist solely as a bottom-up or top-down example. Sure, the idea of Central Park was originally mean for the high-class culture, but in order for it to become popular it had to be reformed and made desirable by the lower classes as well. It did not become a popular culture piece until it blurred the lines between classes. Saloons provide the opposite 'bottom-up' attempt of culture, starting out as small disorganized places that only working class people were involved in. However, saloons did not become popular until stricter rules and regulations that appealed to the upper classes were put in place, making them a more popular piece of culture.

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  9. I don't believe a piece of popular culture can exist SOLELY as a "top-down" or "bottom-up" concept, strictly due to the fact that different classes and groups add their own unpredictable flair to each piece of culture. This can be seen in things like work songs, which could be considered bottom-up in that several work songs originated in the lower and lowest classes, but experienced a transformation into high culture by being sung by popular music ensembles and musicians (an example would be "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, a slave song that was widely distributed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers professional performances of the song, a very high class means of distribution). I do believe that certain pop culture trends can find their roots in a "top-down" or "bottom-up" origin, however they cannot solely exist in that sphere due to the fact that as a piece of culture spreads it is exposed and interpreted by all classes in a unique way.

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  10. I believe that a piece of popular culture can be purely "top-down" or "bottom-up". The whole concept of the term "bottom-up" is that the piece of culture was started from the lower classes (the bottom) and then was spread upwards through the class, while changing and becoming the final piece of popular culture. So, while saloons have been influenced by laws and the upper class, their conception was with the lower classes before they made their way into mainstream popular culture. The same exists with Central Park. The park was planned and developed by the elites (the top), but the lower classes shaped it into their own.

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