Culture

• The importance of culture

  • The whole way of life of a society
  • Culture is passed on from one generation to the next through the process of socialisation
  • It is through this process of socialisation that individuals are fitted into the society in which they live
  • Culture therefore acts as a link between the individual and society
• Dominant culture

  • The main culture in a society
  • Shared or accepted without opposition
  • Britain’s dominant culture is white patriarchal and uneven
  • Views of what is valuable and worthwhile of people with these traits in culture are regarded and more important and given higher status
• Subculture

  • A subculture is a group of people within a culture that distinguish themselves from the primary culture to which they belong

  Subcultures of resistance are in active opposition to the dominant culture
• Willis and anti-school subcultures

  • Willis (1997) found an anti-school subculture in his study of a group of working-class lads, in which resistance to schooling and the culture of the school was highly valued
• Hall & Jefferson and anti-school subcultures


  Hall and Jefferson (1976) saw particular youth subcultural styles such as Skinheads and Punks as forms of resistance to dominant culture
• Folk culture


  The culture created by local communities 

  Rooted in the experiences, customs, and beliefs of the everyday life of ordinary people

  It is ‘authentic’ rather than ‘manufactured’ as it is created by ordinary people themselves

  Active participation and involvement of people 

  Passed on through socialisation
• High culture


  Seen as being superior to other forms of culture

  Lasting artistic or literary value

  Aimed at small, intellectual, upper-class and middle-class groups

  Seen as something set apart from everyday life

  Seen as special and to be treated with respect

   
• Mass culture


  • Sometimes referred to as popular or low culture
  • It is a product of industrial societies
  • Aimed at mass of ordinary people, but lacks roots in their experiences
  • Commercially produced by businesses for profit 
  • Often produced for passive consumption rather than active involvement
  • Regarded by many as inferior to high culture
  • Dumbed down, wide-scale, trivial, mindless/uncritical
  • Little artistic value
• Frank and Queenie Leavis on mass culture?

  Processed, trivial, mindless escapist fantasy which ruins language

  Exploits people’s emotional needs
• Bourdieu - Marxist on mass culture


  • High culture is allegedly superior because dominant class has the power to impose its own cultural ideas on what is good or bad taste on the rest of society 
• Marcuse - Marxist on mass culture


  Profit-driven, manipulated into wanting it by advertising

  Undermines people’s ability to think critically about the world

  Form of social repression and social control

  Given illusion of choice between dumbed-down products

  Lulls consumers into mindless conformity

  Prevents revolution
• Strinati - Postmodernist on mass culture


  Mass culture has value and is worthy of study

  Diversity and choice within popular culture which people select from and critically respond to

  There isn’t one mass culture which people respond uncritically to
• Livingstone on mass culture

  • Soap Operas educate and inform the public about important social issues
  • This sparks critical debate
  • Critics of mass culture are seen as elitist snobs who rank on a ‘slob-to-snob’ scale
• Strinati - Postmodernist on the distinction between high and popular culture


  The distinction is weakening

  Mass-communication technology make a huge range of cultural products available 

  High culture is no longer the preserve of cultural elites as people can now pick n mix due to wider range of cultural products

  No longer any agreement on what distinguishes high culture from popular culture

  More difficult for one set of cultural ideas on what is good taste

   
• Marxists on the distinction between high and popular culture


  High culture has become popularised and commercialised as it is forced to earn its keep by mass consumption and attracting tourists

  Forced into becoming fun and inclusive for everyone, not just upper and middle 

  High culture is now also a commodity and is for sale like popular culture

  Expansion of media-based cultural industries like magazines and books made the distinction meaningless

  Elements of high and popular culture have become part of each other
• Storey on the distinction between high and popular culture

  Members of the dominant class are beginning to consume what was dismissed as mass culture and vice versa
• Giddings - Postmodernist on distinction between high and popular culture


  High culture art forms are now for sale in the mass popular culture market 

  Incorporated into daily life, e.g., art and music in video games

  Technology means anyone can experience high culture products

  Lines between high culture and mass culture are like borders between countries in that they are only there because we are told they are there and people will always disagree on where those borders lie’

  Becomes harder to draw distinctions as mass culture becomes more globalised and cultures intertwine

   
• Consequences of globalisation

  • Undermines national and local cultures
  • Emergence of a global culture where cultural products, norms, values etc. have become more alike
  • International tourism, internet and international division of labour has interconnected the world further, socially and economically
• Flew – Media and digitalisation


  • Developed a global popular culture
  • Cultural industries must now operate globally
  • Breaks down cultural distance 
  • Popular culture is spread between countries
  • Advertising and promotion of lifestyles has become global, becoming part of different cultures
  • The same cultural and consumer products have become way of life of many societies
  • People now have access to many different cultural products from different cultures
• Ritzer – Global Brands


  Companies and brands now operate on a global scale

  Promotes a global standardised culture and consumer lifestyle

  Weakens local cultures

  McDonalds spans over 119 countries, local food places must close

  Companies use transnational media to promote on a global stage

  TV companies sell programmes globally, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire was distributed to 120 countries in 2012
• Global media

  • Contributed to English becoming internationally dominant 
  • Movie stars are known across the world
  • Cultures are becoming more similar with same shows, clothes, food etc.
  • The process of cultures becoming more uniform and merging into one is called cultural homogenisation
  • Homogenised global culture may be more accurate than local or national cultures
• Identity


  How individuals or groups see and define themselves and how others see them

  Personality is psychological and fixed

  Identity is more fluid

  Helps us identify and form social connections and establish solidarity 
• Lawler – Similarities and differences

  • Identity involves marking out similarities and differences with others
  • We have identities which make us similar 
  • There are personal aspects to identity
  • None of us are identical 
  • Identity helps us recognise and identify with each other
  • Identity fits us into society
• Mead – I and Self


  • The ‘I’ is the personal bit of identity that sets us apart from others, or the ‘inner core’
  • This is said to exist beyond social influences
  • The ‘self’ arises in the process of social experience – not present at birth
  • No-one has the same experiences in life
• Identity choice

  • We are limited to what we can adopt by factors such as social class
  • These factors influence how others see us
  • The identity someone wants to assert may not match what others recognise
• Becker- master status


  A master status is a dominant identity that overrides all other aspects of that person’s identity
• Giddens and Sutton

  Identities are a combination of individual, personal and social factors

  Primary Identities are formed in primary socialisation and include factors such as gender and ethnicity

  Secondary Identities build on primary identities but establish new roles depending on roles people achieve and adopt 

  Secondary Identities are more fluid and people often alter them
• Lawler - social stories


  Formation of identity is a social and collective process

  Identities are rooted in society and are formed as we interact with others in our daily lives

  Formation of identities is like storytelling 

  People tell themselves stories to interpret what happens to them in social lives

  This forms a ‘plot’ we call identity
• Bauman - postmodernist


  • Growing insecurity around identities
  • Formerly stable identities forming from social class, gender, ethnicity etc. have become more fluid, fragmented and changeable
• Personal identity


  • Mead called it the ‘inner me’/’I’
  • Woodward said its concerned with ‘Who am I?’
  • How people are different from others
• Social identity

  • Little choice
  • Defines individuals with their social groups
  • Formation may come from behaviours exhibited in social roles
• Collective identity


  An identity shared by a social group

  Incorporates choice in that we can choose to identify with these groups

  E.g., feminist, Goth, gang member

   
• Multiple identities 


  People may have several identities 

  Drawing on more than one sense of identity

  Asserting different identities in different social scenarios
• Goffman - stigmatised identities

  A stigmatised identity is in some way undesirable or demeaning, excluding people from full acceptance in society

  Social consequences for stigmatised identity such as ridicule or refusing employment

  Attempts to present a normal identity will fail, leading to a ‘failed’/’Spoiled’ identity

   
• Socialisation

  • The process by which we learn culture
  • Enables us to operate in society
  • Life-long process
  • Helps us communicate and understand meaning
  • Teaches us how to behave and what to expect in social scenarios
  • Builds predictability in social life
  • Avoids chaos and confusion from if we had to guess social rules and norms

   
• Resocialisation


  When people are removed from everyday situations and encounter new social environments

  Learning of new norms and values

  E.g., In prison, those who don’t learn the norms and values get punished
• Goffman on resocialisation


  Found resocialisation in psychiatric hospitals with the hospital seeking to impose new values and norms that met the needs of the hospital rather than patient
• Jenkins on identity

  Identities are formed in the socialisation process 

  Through learning culture and through interactions people understand what makes them similar and different to others

  Learning a culture of a society involved learning what is expected of people in different positions

  These roles include social identities such as mother or employee

  Through meeting other people individuals come to learn what is expected of them
• Primary socialisation

  • Early years of childhood
  • Socialised by the family
  • Children begin to acquire a sense of who they are as individuals and who they are in a society
  • These identities formed in childhood will often remain throughout people’s lives and are much more difficult to change in adulthood
• Parsons- functionalist on primary socialisation


  • Crucial for turning children into social beings
  • Learning culture to adapt to live in society
  • Done through imitating behavior, learning language, learning rules etc.
  • Feral children show where primary socialisation has failed