Sociology of Culture and its related, Cultural Sociology, is the systematic analysis, often in symbolic codes, of culture as it manifests itself in society. Sociologists define culture as the way people think and describe, act, and what material objects shape their lives. A “sociology or culture” is a common term used by contemporary sociologists. However, the terms can be confusing. Sociology of culture is an older concept that considers certain topics and objects more “cultural” than other.
70 SOCIOLOGY of CULTURE TOPICS
– Adaptation to a different culture
– Art & Society
– Communities of Artists
– Author/Auteur
– Cultural sociology and the body
Famous people and the impact they have on society
– Censorship of expression and regulation
– Civilizing process
– Music consumption
– Practices associated with consuming goods or services
– Consumption. Mass consumption. Consumer culture.
– Awesome
– Cultural capital
– Cultural critique
The practice where one culture dominates the others, specifically through the spread of its beliefs and values.
The concept that the values, beliefs, and practices of a culture should be viewed in the context of that culture and not judged according to the standards of another culture.
– The process of passing on traditions and customs from one generation to the next.
– Opposition to cultural norms
– Cultural studies
– British Cultural Studies
– Cultural tourism
– Culture & economy
– Culture as a state
– Culture industries
– Culture jamming
– Culture: Conceptual clarifications
– Technology’s influence on culture and society
– Disneyization
– Elite culture
– Emotion: Cultural aspects
– Fans, fan culture
– Fantasy city
– Gender, culture
– Type
Original: Jazz
Paraphrased: Musical style
– Highbrow/lowbrow
– Ideological Hegemony
– Cultural behaviour that is seen as foolish
– An organization composed of people who rely upon technology and data in their daily lives.
The World Wide Web.
– Awareness
– Leisure
– Way of Living
– Art that exists on the fringes of the mainstream
– Mass culture, mass society
– The physical objects, such as tools and structures, that are used by a society to shape its environment.
– Diversity of cultures
– Museums
– The sound of music
– Mythogenesis
– Culture and Nature
– Culture and Organizations
– A magazine featuring photographs of scantily-clad women
– Popular trends in society
– Entertainment and popular culture
– Popular Culture Forms
– Icons of popular culture
Postmodernism in culture
– Culture production
– Science in all cultures
– Semiotics
Simulacra, simulation
– Virtuality and simulation
– Sociocultural relativism
Sociology and taste
Group of people who share one or more common interests, beliefs, or activities that are distinct from the larger society.
– Symbolic Classification
– Travel
Playing video games
Culture – What does it mean?
– Youth culture, consumption
DEFINITION DU CULTURE
One can either examine the concept abstractly, or explore it from different perspectives and justify the definition by using deductive logic to create a definition. You can also explore the use of the concept in practice. This is where sociologists individually and collectively define culture and then analyze how they inductively create a common definition. This essay is based on the collective-inductive method of defining culture. This approach is sociological in nature and does not attempt to create an independent definition of culture. Instead, it documents the success of participants in the field in creating a common definition. It is necessary to examine the sociology roots of culture in order to produce a working definition.
The American Sociological Association’s Culture Section has seen a significant increase in interest in culture over the past 20 years. It is also one of its largest and fastest-growing sections. It is evident that there have been many survey reviews and books published during this time, as well as articles and books about culture. Review after review shows that cultural analysis is gaining popularity. All spheres have increased their focus on culture. Cultural explanations are now easily accepted. Cultural activities and interests are not subordinated to economic explanations even in historically materialist research areas like stratification and Marxist Studies. Sociology has become a highly specialized field in cultural analysis and culture studies.
Some boundary issues have arisen from the rapid increase in cultural explanation and culture. In sociological research, the term culture is used to describe anything, including elite artistic activities (Becker 1982), and everyday conduct’s values, ideologies, and styles (Swidler 1986). Included in the “mixed bags” are art and everyday behavior.
Research in sociology of cultural is research that occurs under the auspices. This includes work on science (Latour87, Star 1989), religions (Neitz87), law(Katz 1988), medias (Schudson78. Gitlin 1985. Tuchman 1978), popular culture. (Peterson97.; Weinstein 1991. Chambers 1986; Fine 1996).
Many people in the field are concerned about how to make this diversity into a cohesive research field. Although this goal is not yet achieved, the field of sociology and culture continues to evolve and boundaries are constantly changing, it is possible for researchers to examine how different social scientists have approached the concept. This inventory will give us a better idea of what culture means to different people. It will also help us understand how we can distinguish between the various categories. This essay will cover the history and current context of the debates surrounding the proper focus and limits on the definition.
THE CULTURE – SOCIAL STRUCTURE DISCUSSION
From the start of the twentieth century, the discussion about culture involved a distinction between culture and social structure. This distinction was a key issue for social scientists, especially among anthropologists who were divided between the social and cultural traditions of anthropology. Researchers in the ethnological and cultural tradition, including Franz Boas (1896/1940), Bronislaw Molinowski (1927-1931), Margaret Mead, (1928, 1935), Alfred Kroeber, (1923/1948), 1952, 1953, and Ruth Benedict (1934), believed the central concept in sociology was culture. “Culturalists”maintained that culture is primary in guiding all patterns of behavior, including who interacts with whom, and should therefore be given priority in theories about the organization of society. A.R., a structural tradition researcher, challenged this view. Radcliffe-Brown ( 1961), and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (2037, 1940) came from the British school. Claude Levi-Strauss (1963) was French structuralism. “Structuralists believed that social structuring was the primary focus in social science. This is because it determines patterns of social interaction, thought and kinship. Both schools had large and influential adherents.
Culturalists embraced a holistic approach when it came to understanding culture. Culture was Edward Tylor’s original definition. . . This complex group includes knowledge and belief as well art, morals and law. The definition of culture is broad, but it leaves out some important aspects. However, this was the intent of late nineteenth century thought. Culture is what makes man a distinct species. Cultural productions include all human social life. This section focuses on the “nature-vs.-nurture” disputes that were prevalent during this period. Any distinction between man’s achievements and his evolutionary and biological origins is relevant to the concept culture. This includes religions, kinship relationships, language, and nation-states.
Boas concluded that culture study was used to investigate different types societies. Cultures are common in all societies. This helped to support the claim that culture was more important than nature in governing human behavior. Also, cultural differences between societies led to the demise of the nineteenth-century anthropological notions of “the spiritual unity of mankind, history, and culture.” Singer 1968, p. 527. The pluralistic, relativistic views of culture that came after them emphasized a limited, localized perspective. Culture was what gave rise to a society’s unique identity, allowing members to socialize more closely and identifying with outsiders. Cultural differences are recognized as a distinguishing concept that can be used to promote internal cohesion and discrimination.
This ethnographic tradition on culture research was largely internalized and localized. What is called an “emic”?
Cognitive anthropology: Goodenough 1956. There was a strong desire in the 1940s to create a comparative “etic”, that is, to construct a generalized theory about cultural patterns. A.L. was able to compare hundreds of ethnographies from this period. Clyde Kluckhohn & Kroeber attempted to define culture in a general way by comparing the hundreds of ethnographies written during this time. They wrote that Culture is the combination of patterns (explicit and implicit) of behavior and behaviour transmitted by symbols. This makes culture the unique achievement of human groups.
Milton Singer (1968), described the “pattern-theory” definition as a condensation of what most American anthropologists considered culture in the 1940s/50s. It also includes cognitive predispositions, cultural objects, behavior, and cultural objects as part of the concept. This emphasizes that culture is both a product and a guide for future actions. The pattern theory simply stated that behavior is governed by a stable routine. This can include simple patterns in diet and dress, as well as more complex organization in economic, religious, and political life. While the persistence of certain patterns can vary across societies and arenas, larger configurations are more likely to remain stable, with incremental changes unless they are redirected by outside forces. The theory also suggested that any culture can be formalized, that is it can be classified into different social life spheres to allow for comparison between them. It is possible to create universal patterns in culture.
Comparatively, the anthropological structuraists of this era view culture less holistically. A new concept of the social structure distinguishes the structuralists conception of culture. Radcliffe Brown’s efforts helped to develop a theory that suggests social structure is better represented as a network or system, rather than a collection of norms. The structuralist argument seeks to understand how social actors produce and are produced by cultural contexts. Structuralists try to find a reference for social structure which is analytically independent from the culture and artifacts it produces. A global framework defines the basis for culture production. Although norms for interaction are produced by interdependent participants, the question regarding causal primacy and culture/social structure can be treated separately. The goal of this initial effort is to not reify cultural origins.
The exact relationship of culture and social structure, however, becomes the central issue of the structuralist/culturalist debate. When a society isn’t an isolated entity, it can be difficult to figure out the boundaries. In identifying boundaries, structuralists tend give priority to social relations. Culturalists concentrate on specific types or cultural knowledge. Both elements operate interdependently so efforts to separate them are futile. Arguments for causal priority of one concept over the other end up in a predictable exchange. Structuralists claim that social interaction is an empirical prerequisite for the creation and application of cultural elements. Culturalists counter that interaction itself is at best partially a cultural phenomenon. They also claim that most societies have well-established cultural patterns before continuing to develop and apply cultural elements.
In the 1950s, sociologists began to value the concept of culture. A.L. was founded to end the long-running debate about precedence and cultural foci. Kroeber and Talcott Persons published a report, “The Concepts of Culture and Social System” (1958), in American Sociological Review. It sought to clarify the differences between the concepts. At least for sociologists, many of whom identify explicitly with the structural-functional theories of the anthropological structuralists, acknowledgement of a separate social system component that delimits the scope of culture is not difficult.
It is harder to find the right boundaries within the domain of culture. Kroeber (p. 533) suggests that culture only be used to transmit and create content, ideas, and other symbolic meaningful systems as factors shaping human behavior. This definition emphasizes the predispositional component of a culture referent. It limits the scope to a cognitive view of culture and focuses on a carefully crafted description of “symbolic meaningful systems” being the appropriate referent for cultural. This type of cultural analysis can be used in any social activity, even though it is not the Tylor-derived, omnibus approach to cultural analysis.
THE HIGH MASS CULTURE DISCUSSION
The idea of culture was at the center of a new debate in the 1950s and 1960s. Like the documented dialogue, it has significant influence and many participants. Sociologists play a more important role in this discussion. They support an anthropologically based interpretation of culture. However, they are opposed to a humanities-oriented view of culture that links cultural activity to a value statement. This debate seeks to identify different types and types of cultural activity.
It may be surprising that an axiological approach is possible by a “scientific enterprise” to culture. However, a key issue for many sociologists of this time was how to approach moral values. Leo Lowenthal (1950), a critic theorist, called this period social science “applied ascetism” stating that it was sociologically possible to evaluate cultural products and activities morally or artistically. This is a valuable tool in the sociological analysis cultural differentiation.
These evaluative question play a significant part in the analysis on “mass-culture,” a term Dwight McDonald describes as being used to identify cultural articles that are intended for mass consumption. Many commentators, both sociologists as well as humanists, have observed the rise in mass culture production after World War II with mixed distaste and alarm. McDonald’s and similar critics worry about cultural artifacts losing their intrinsic value. This could be due to, or at least partially attributed, a mix of economic and sociological factors. Mass culture critics say that capitalism’s unchecked growth has led to an increase in consumption patterns and a shift in production and distribution. A single corporate entity now dominates formerly localized, highly competitive, and differentiated markets. It monopolizes production and distribution outlets and merges various consumer sectors. These huge cultural industry organizations are driven to standardize their output by bureaucrats. Both these processes are designed to eradicate cultural differences and increase homogeneity of moral and aesthetic values.
Mass culture critics believe that it is a revolutionary force that can transform society’s values, regardless of its causes. One critic claims that mass cultural is a revolutionary, dynamic force that can break down traditional and cultural barriers. It mixes everything and creates homogenized culture. . . It destroys all value, as value judgements can be interpreted as discrimination.” McDonald 1953, page 62.
The mass culture opposition sees themselves as the “saviors” of a “true” and “high culture. They say that mass culture is a threat to legitimate high culture. This refers to elite arts and folk cultural. Consumers are unable to discern between increasingly blurred lines of culture production and turn to mass culture because it is easily accessible.
Mass culture, by its very nature, devalues elite art and folk culture. It borrows the elements and devices from different cultures and converts them into formulaic, mechanical systems (Greenberg 1946). It is crucial for society’s health to be able to distinguish between types and cultures, according to mass culture critics.
Mass culture advocates or those who are against the attack on culture in general respond that mass critics want to limit culture’s production and enjoyment to an elite group. They claim that elitist criticisms of culture are ethnocentric. They also argue that mass culture participation is far more beneficial than the limitations of a mass media distribution. (White 1956; Seldes57). America’s post-World War II boom led to a surge in cultural opportunities. While some might consider this “vulgar” activity, it was also accompanied by a huge increase in the number of people who are interested in the arts. Mass culture defenders claim that arguments over legitimacy of mass culture boil down to ideology. This is because it positions an elitist minority against growing democratization.
Many sociologists of cultural shifted from a morally-evaluative to a normative stance in an attempt to solve this axiological problem. Gertrude Jaeger (1964) presented the normative sociological perspective on culture. Although still evaluative, it seeks to integrate anthropological as well as humanist conceptions through a diagnostic analysis. This approach focuses on the definition of “symbolically meaningful” experiences, which is the same focus that Kroeber (1958) and Parsons (1958), have for their culture. Jager & Selznick take a pragmatic (Dewey 1958), which assigns symbolic status cultural objects and events through a social signalification process. By sharing meaningful experiences through interaction, symbols are created. Culture is created by individuals interacting with each other. Therefore, culture is “all that is produced by, is capable to sustaining, and is capable sustaining, shared symbol experience” (Jaeger und Selznick 1964: p. 663). Jaegers and Selznick established this sociological definition, emphasizing shared symbolic experiences. But they do not want to lose sight of the humanist-oriented ability that distinguishes high and high culture. According to Dewey’s argument, art can be experienced as a continuous cultural experience. It differs from other symbolic activities in terms of intensity, but it has the same basis for understanding meaning. High culture, or art, is simply more “effective”, as it combines “economy, statement, and richness in expression” (Jaeger und Selznick 1964. p. 664). Art, as with all cultures, can be identified by normative evaluations of experience.
The debate about high culture and mass culture has changed the way that culture is understood from an issue of its appropriate scope to one of its appropriate values. Functionalists understand that culture is more about how it serves a moral function and integrates with society. Mass culture criticism was often unable, however, to distinguish elite intellectuals’ cultural values from society’s effect. Modern sociologists are generally hesitant to evaluate culture in an attempt to get out of this ethnocentric trap.
THE CONTEMPORARY CULTURE APPROACH: MAPPING TERRAIN
The current approach to culture has many elements, as I have already mentioned. Despite its rich historical heritage, there isn’t a single, accepted current definition of culture.
Cultural definitions are still based on a wide variety of perspectives. This validates a wide range and historical validity of cultural options. The cultural anthropology tradition’s omnibus definition has been almost abandoned. An antiethnocentric, relativist approach to mass culture has been in place. But many of these elements still make up part of new cultural analyses.
Richard Peterson’s review of new studies on culture analysis at 1990s began to identify two types of culture in sociological research. One is as a “code, or constitutive, of social life” and the other as symbolic products of group activities (Peterson, 1990, p. 498). This perspective, which is clearly rooted in traditional cultural ethnology, is used to analyse and characterize social units of all sizes (e.g. Cerulo 1995 and Bellah (1995). 1985) to specific subcultures (e.g., Hebdige 1990, 1979; Willis 1977). These perspectives can be used to make empirical applications to social networks that are geographically dispersed and organize collective activities. The second approach is more concrete and focuses on the production and meanings of specific cultural expressions. These examples are most commonly found in the area collectively known “production” of culture (Peterson and Crane 1992). However there is a broad range of empirical focus that can be used for this perspective. This includes the moral discourse regarding abortion (Luker 1994), the politics, aesthetics, and reception of art (DeNora 1995), and the motivating and ideological contexts of organizational and professional cultures (e.g. Fine 1997; Martin 1992; Katz 1999, Fantasia 1998; Harper 1987 and Burawoy 2009).
The above mentioned activities show that sociology’s contemporary conception of culture does not exclude any empirical form of activity. However, the emphasis is on collective or shared practices and may be able to ignore individual foci. Sociology of culture can easily study any group activity because all social practices collectively are culturally expressive and can therefore be potentially symbolic. Participants in the sociology and culture have sometimes found it difficult to develop any type of cultural theory from this “open borders” perspective. There is no way to categorize culture because it is so diverse and complex. Participants in sociology have traditionally chosen to begin by mapping and surveying the terrain of research in sociology. This is in order to help define new theoretical perspectives. John Hall (1993, Mary Jo Neitz (1994) and Diana Crane (1992-1994) are two examples of particularly useful contributions.
Hall and Neitz, in Culture: Sociological Viewpoints (1993), provide a detailed overview of the theoretical as well as substantive developments in sociology. Five “analytic frameworks” are identified by Hall and Neitz (p. 17). These frames allow researchers to concentrate on certain aspects of culture, as well as the associated inquiry processes. The first frame focuses on “institutional structure”: This is research that is specific to culture and is linked to issues like the construction of personal identity and moral behavior (e.g. Bellah and al. Gilligan (1982) and Warner (1988) both published work on the topic in 1985. Hall and Neitz discuss “cultural history” as well as the impact of past cultural practices on today’s culture. This research includes an emphasis on rituals (e.g. Douglas 1973, Goffman 1968 and 1971; Neitz87), the effects that rationalization has on social processes, cultural consumption (e.g. Foucault 65; Mukerji 33; Born 1995), and on creating mass culture (e.g. Schudson 1986; Ewen 1976). Hall and Neitz’s third analytical framework focuses on “the production, distribution and use of culture” with an emphasis on power issues and stratification. This research covers socioeconomic differentiation of cultural strata (e.g. Gans 1975; Bourdieu 1984 and Lamont 1992), gender-ethnic cultural differentiation (e.g. Radway and Fournier 1992), inequality (e.g. Radway and Fournier 1992), and production of culture (e.g. Becker 1992; Gilmore 1987; Hirsch 72; Coser and Kadushin, Powell 1982; Faulkner83; Crane 1987). The fourth analytical frame, “audience effect”, is the fourth.
It examines the impact of cultural objects on the people who consume them as well as the exact patterns of shared interpretation and meaning that make certain cultural forms popular and successful. The fifth analytical frame, “meaning & social action,” examines the ways in which actors use culture to establish and guide their behavior. Participants employ visible expressive symbols and style to communicate the cultural and personal importance of cultural objects in a variety cultural, political and ideological contexts.
They serve different purposes. These frames are useful for non-sociologists and sociologists not in the field of culture. These frames, for the socioologist of culture, are more than a “division and labor in sociohistorical enquiry” in that they seem to be generating boundaries. . . Hall and Neitz (1993, p. 19) claim that “within the field” is a strategy to bring analytical coherence to a rapidly growing field. These frames could emerge as a result of collective activity within the field of culture. They will influence the methodological and empirical tendencies within specific research communities, and theoretical interaction, which is co-citation among scholars. However, the field’s exact impact remains to remain unknown.
Diana Crane’s book The Production of Culture (1992), as well as her work editing The Sociology of Culture. Emerging Theoretical perspectives (1994) offer a somewhat different mapping. Crane, like Hall or Neitz, seeks to codify research segmentation. However, she is not content with simply presenting a comprehensive review of all the current research in her field. She aims to provide a guideline to the reader on theoretical issues in sociology of cultural, including the role of culture in sociology as a discipline and the impact of culture’s centrality in mainstream sociological models.
Crane starts by arguing that culture has historically been considered peripheral to American sociology’s main concerns because of its relationship with classical theory, such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim. These theorists have placed a lot of emphasis on market forces and social organization. However, cultural elements have always been considered secondary to their effect on people’s behavior and attitudes. This may be due in part to the difficulties that classical and mainstream scholars have in conceptualizing, documenting and describing everyday cultural practices. Crane states that culture is not defined by some structuralists in America and Britain (Crane 1994). Archer (1988), p. 1, states that “the concept of culture is inordinately vague.” . . In every sense, “culture” can be considered the weakest relation to “structure.” Cultural features are defined as the values and norms of a group or population. . .” (Wuthnow & Witten 1988, P. 50-51). This is difficult to pinpoint and difficult to document using specific empirical references.
Crane asserts that culture is more than the sum of its implicit features. Crane says that culture today is expressed through explicit social constructions and products. The “recorded Culture” has been the dominant empirical reference point for many forms of contemporary culture and is therefore easily accessible by sociologists of Culture. It’s no surprise that the areas where the recorded culture is easily accessible have seen the greatest growth in the sociology and sociology of culture. These subfields in culture are the core substantive foci of the field’s efforts to create theoretical coherence.
However, the research from the 1990s has shown that culture is now relevant in mainstream areas that were previously dominated by macrostructuralist approaches. Ewa Mrawska (1994) and Willfried Spohn’s (1985) contributions to Crane’s The Sociology of Culture. Spohn and Morawska have a historical focus. Their research includes the effects of ideology in the macrostructural assessment of revolutions and social changes (e.g. Sewell 1995; Skocpol 1987; Goldstone 1991), working-class consciousness and capitalist developments (e.g. Aminzade 1980; Cal-houn 1982), along with examples from economic and organizational contexts. Future limitations on cultural analysis’s explanatory potential in sociology will likely not be empirical. The above research suggests there are many empirical possibilities.
Finally, the field of sociology has not been able to provide a substantial elaboration on the explanatory capabilities of cultural analyses. “Cultural study” is an interdisciplinary network that includes scholars from diverse fields, including the humanities, sociology, and the arts. This has led to many new types and applications of cultural analysis that could have implications for the sociology. But, cultural analysis often takes a different approach, both theoretically and empirically, to the standard sociologists use. Cultural studies can be categorized as a text-based approach that interprets cultural objects’ meanings and social influences (e.g. Hooks 1994; Giroux92; Fiske 1994) or complex interpretative decodings and interpretations of narratives about identity politics (e.g. Trinh 1989; Hall 1992), and postcolonial repression/resistance (e.g. Appadurai 1990; Grossberg et.1992). It is difficult to understand the relationship between sociology and cultural studies. Norman Denzin (1996) calls the potential association one of “colonization”: that is to say, the attempt to locate cultural studies within the boundaries and margins (Denzin 1996.p.XV). Others see more mutual exchange and the possibility for a “revitalization” of sociological cultural perspectives. Seidman 1996. No matter how the relationship develops it is clear to see the potential for more reciprocal exchange with the possibility of a “revitalization” of sociological cultural perspectives (Seidman 1996). These “culture battles” already have important implications for education policy (e.g. Hunter 1991, Nolan 1996). These external influences are not to be ruled out for sociology.
There is a renewed appreciation for the importance of culture in sociological research. It could be the norm-setting influence of the art worlds, moral authority of organizational culture, or facilitation of class privileges via habitus. The concept of cultural explanations are powerful and distinct. This perspective is very likely to be expanded in sociology.
