culture essay sociology

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3.2 The Elements of Culture

Learning objectives.

• Distinguish material culture and nonmaterial culture.
• List and define the several elements of culture.
• Describe certain values that distinguish the United States from other nations.

Culture was defined earlier as the symbols, language, beliefs, values, and artifacts that are part of any society. As this definition suggests, there are two basic components of culture: ideas and symbols on the one hand and artifacts (material objects) on the other. The first type, called nonmaterial culture , includes the values, beliefs, symbols, and language that define a society. The second type, called material culture , includes all the society’s physical objects, such as its tools and technology, clothing, eating utensils, and means of transportation. These elements of culture are discussed next.

Every culture is filled with symbols , or things that stand for something else and that often evoke various reactions and emotions. Some symbols are actually types of nonverbal communication, while other symbols are in fact material objects. As the symbolic interactionist perspective discussed in Chapter 1 “Sociology and the Sociological Perspective” emphasizes, shared symbols make social interaction possible.

Let’s look at nonverbal symbols first. A common one is shaking hands, which is done in some societies but not in others. It commonly conveys friendship and is used as a sign of both greeting and departure. Probably all societies have nonverbal symbols we call gestures , movements of the hands, arms, or other parts of the body that are meant to convey certain ideas or emotions. However, the same gesture can mean one thing in one society and something quite different in another society (Axtell, 1998). In the United States, for example, if we nod our head up and down, we mean yes, and if we shake it back and forth, we mean no. In Bulgaria, however, nodding means no, while shaking our head back and forth means yes! In the United States, if we make an “O” by putting our thumb and forefinger together, we mean “OK,” but the same gesture in certain parts of Europe signifies an obscenity. “Thumbs up” in the United States means “great” or “wonderful,” but in Australia it means the same thing as extending the middle finger in the United States. Certain parts of the Middle East and Asia would be offended if they saw you using your left hand to eat, because they use their left hand for bathroom hygiene.

The meaning of a gesture may differ from one society to another. This familiar gesture means “OK” in the United States, but in certain parts of Europe it signifies an obscenity. An American using this gesture might very well be greeted with an angry look.

d Wang – ok – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Some of our most important symbols are objects. Here the U.S. flag is a prime example. For most Americans, the flag is not just a piece of cloth with red and white stripes and white stars against a field of blue. Instead, it is a symbol of freedom, democracy, and other American values and, accordingly, inspires pride and patriotism. During the Vietnam War, however, the flag became to many Americans a symbol of war and imperialism. Some burned the flag in protest, prompting angry attacks by bystanders and negative coverage by the news media.

Other objects have symbolic value for religious reasons. Three of the most familiar religious symbols in many nations are the cross, the Star of David, and the crescent moon, which are widely understood to represent Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, respectively. Whereas many cultures attach no religious significance to these shapes, for many people across the world they evoke very strong feelings of religious faith. Recognizing this, hate groups have often desecrated these symbols.

As these examples indicate, shared symbols, both nonverbal communication and tangible objects, are an important part of any culture but also can lead to misunderstandings and even hostility. These problems underscore the significance of symbols for social interaction and meaning.

Perhaps our most important set of symbols is language. In English, the word chair means something we sit on. In Spanish, the word silla means the same thing. As long as we agree how to interpret these words, a shared language and thus society are possible. By the same token, differences in languages can make it quite difficult to communicate. For example, imagine you are in a foreign country where you do not know the language and the country’s citizens do not know yours. Worse yet, you forgot to bring your dictionary that translates their language into yours, and vice versa, and your iPhone battery has died. You become lost. How will you get help? What will you do? Is there any way to communicate your plight?

As this scenario suggests, language is crucial to communication and thus to any society’s culture. Children learn language from their culture just as they learn about shaking hands, about gestures, and about the significance of the flag and other symbols. Humans have a capacity for language that no other animal species possesses. Our capacity for language in turn helps make our complex culture possible.

Language is a key symbol of any culture. Humans have a capacity for language that no other animal species has, and children learn the language of their society just as they learn other aspects of their culture.

Bill Benzon – IMGP3639 – talk – CC BY-SA 2.0.

In the United States, some people consider a common language so important that they advocate making English the official language of certain cities or states or even the whole country and banning bilingual education in the public schools (Ray, 2007). Critics acknowledge the importance of English but allege that this movement smacks of anti-immigrant prejudice and would help destroy ethnic subcultures. In 2009, voters in Nashville, Tennessee, rejected a proposal that would have made English the city’s official language and required all city workers to speak in English rather than their native language (R. Brown, 2009).

Language, of course, can be spoken or written. One of the most important developments in the evolution of society was the creation of written language. Some of the preindustrial societies that anthropologists have studied have written language, while others do not, and in the remaining societies the “written” language consists mainly of pictures, not words. Figure 3.1 “The Presence of Written Language (Percentage of Societies)” illustrates this variation with data from 186 preindustrial societies called the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), a famous data set compiled several decades ago by anthropologist George Murdock and colleagues from information that had been gathered on hundreds of preindustrial societies around the world (Murdock & White, 1969). In Figure 3.1 “The Presence of Written Language (Percentage of Societies)” , we see that only about one-fourth of the SCCS societies have a written language, while about equal proportions have no language at all or only pictures.

Figure 3.1 The Presence of Written Language (Percentage of Societies)

Source: Data from Standard Cross-Cultural Sample.

To what extent does language influence how we think and how we perceive the social and physical worlds? The famous but controversial Sapir-Whorf hypothesis , named after two linguistic anthropologists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, argues that people cannot easily understand concepts and objects unless their language contains words for these items (Whorf, 1956). Language thus influences how we understand the world around us. For example, people in a country such as the United States that has many terms for different types of kisses (e.g. buss, peck, smack, smooch, and soul) are better able to appreciate these different types than people in a country such as Japan, which, as we saw earlier, only fairly recently developed the word kissu for kiss.

Another illustration of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is seen in sexist language, in which the use of male nouns and pronouns shapes how we think about the world (Miles, 2008). In older children’s books, words like fire man and mail man are common, along with pictures of men in these jobs, and critics say they send a message to children that these are male jobs, not female jobs. If a teacher tells a second-grade class, “Every student should put his books under his desk,” the teacher obviously means students of both sexes but may be sending a subtle message that boys matter more than girls. For these reasons, several guidebooks promote the use of nonsexist language (Maggio, 1998). Table 3.1 “Examples of Sexist Terms and Nonsexist Alternatives” provides examples of sexist language and nonsexist alternatives.

Table 3.1 Examples of Sexist Terms and Nonsexist Alternatives

The use of racist language also illustrates the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. An old saying goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” That may be true in theory but not in reality. Names can hurt, especially names that are racial slurs, which African Americans growing up before the era of the civil rights movement routinely heard. According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the use of these words would have affected how whites perceived African Americans. More generally, the use of racist terms may reinforce racial prejudice and racial stereotypes.

Sociology Making a Difference

Overcoming Cultural and Ethnic Differences

People from many different racial and ethnic backgrounds live in large countries such as the United States. Because of cultural differences and various prejudices, it can be difficult for individuals from one background to interact with individuals from another background. Fortunately, a line of research, grounded in contact theory and conducted by sociologists and social psychologists, suggests that interaction among individuals from different backgrounds can indeed help overcome tensions arising from their different cultures and any prejudices they may hold. This happens because such contact helps disconfirm stereotypes that people may hold of those from different backgrounds (Dixon, 2006; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2005).

Recent studies of college students provide additional evidence that social contact can help overcome cultural differences and prejudices. Because many students are randomly assigned to their roommates when they enter college, interracial roommates provide a “natural” experiment for studying the effects of social interaction on racial prejudice. Studies of such roommates find that whites with black roommates report lowered racial prejudice and greater numbers of interracial friendships with other students (Laar, Levin, Sinclair, & Sidanius, 2005; Shook & Fazio, 2008).

It is not easy to overcome cultural differences and prejudices, and studies also find that interracial college roommates often have to face many difficulties in overcoming the cultural differences and prejudices that existed before they started living together (Shook & Fazio, 2008). Yet the body of work supporting contact theory suggests that efforts that increase social interaction among people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds in the long run will reduce racial and ethnic tensions.

Cultures differ widely in their norms , or standards and expectations for behaving. We already saw that the nature of drunken behavior depends on society’s expectations of how people should behave when drunk. Norms of drunken behavior influence how we behave when we drink too much.

Norms are often divided into two types, formal norms and informal norms . Formal norms, also called mores (MOOR-ayz) and laws , refer to the standards of behavior considered the most important in any society. Examples in the United States include traffic laws, criminal codes, and, in a college context, student behavior codes addressing such things as cheating and hate speech. Informal norms, also called folkways and customs , refer to standards of behavior that are considered less important but still influence how we behave. Table manners are a common example of informal norms, as are such everyday behaviors as how we interact with a cashier and how we ride in an elevator.

Many norms differ dramatically from one culture to the next. Some of the best evidence for cultural variation in norms comes from the study of sexual behavior (Edgerton, 1976). Among the Pokot of East Africa, for example, women are expected to enjoy sex, while among the Gusii a few hundred miles away, women who enjoy sex are considered deviant. In Inis Beag, a small island off the coast of Ireland, sex is considered embarrassing and even disgusting; men feel that intercourse drains their strength, while women consider it a burden. Even nudity is considered terrible, and people on Inis Beag keep their clothes on while they bathe. The situation is quite different in Mangaia, a small island in the South Pacific. Here sex is considered very enjoyable, and it is the major subject of songs and stories.

While many societies frown on homosexuality, others accept it. Among the Azande of East Africa, for example, young warriors live with each other and are not allowed to marry. During this time, they often have sex with younger boys, and this homosexuality is approved by their culture. Among the Sambia of New Guinea, young males live separately from females and engage in homosexual behavior for at least a decade. It is felt that the boys would be less masculine if they continued to live with their mothers and that the semen of older males helps young boys become strong and fierce (Edgerton, 1976).

Although many societies disapprove of homosexuality, other societies accept it. This difference illustrates the importance of culture for people’s attitudes.

philippe leroyer – Lesbian & Gay Pride – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Other evidence for cultural variation in norms comes from the study of how men and women are expected to behave in various societies. For example, many traditional societies are simple hunting-and-gathering societies. In most of these, men tend to hunt and women tend to gather. Many observers attribute this gender difference to at least two biological differences between the sexes. First, men tend to be bigger and stronger than women and are thus better suited for hunting. Second, women become pregnant and bear children and are less able to hunt. Yet a different pattern emerges in some hunting-and-gathering societies. Among a group of Australian aborigines called the Tiwi and a tribal society in the Philippines called the Agta, both sexes hunt. After becoming pregnant, Agta women continue to hunt for most of their pregnancy and resume hunting after their child is born (Brettell & Sargent, 2009).

Some of the most interesting norms that differ by culture govern how people stand apart when they talk with each other (Hall & Hall, 2007). In the United States, people who are not intimates usually stand about three to four feet apart when they talk. If someone stands more closely to us, especially if we are of northern European heritage, we feel uncomfortable. Yet people in other countries—especially Italy, France, Spain, and many of the nations of Latin America and the Middle East—would feel uncomfortable if they were standing three to four feet apart. To them, this distance is too great and indicates that the people talking dislike each other. If a U.S. native of British or Scandinavian heritage were talking with a member of one of these societies, they might well have trouble interacting, because at least one of them will be uncomfortable with the physical distance separating them.

Different cultures also have different rituals , or established procedures and ceremonies that often mark transitions in the life course. As such, rituals both reflect and transmit a culture’s norms and other elements from one generation to the next. Graduation ceremonies in colleges and universities are familiar examples of time-honored rituals. In many societies, rituals help signify one’s gender identity. For example, girls around the world undergo various types of initiation ceremonies to mark their transition to adulthood. Among the Bemba of Zambia, girls undergo a month-long initiation ceremony called the chisungu , in which girls learn songs, dances, and secret terms that only women know (Maybury-Lewis, 1998). In some cultures, special ceremonies also mark a girl’s first menstrual period. Such ceremonies are largely absent in the United States, where a girl’s first period is a private matter. But in other cultures the first period is a cause for celebration involving gifts, music, and food (Hathaway, 1997).

Boys have their own initiation ceremonies, some of them involving circumcision. That said, the ways in which circumcisions are done and the ceremonies accompanying them differ widely. In the United States, boys who are circumcised usually undergo a quick procedure in the hospital. If their parents are observant Jews, circumcision will be part of a religious ceremony, and a religious figure called a moyel will perform the circumcision. In contrast, circumcision among the Maasai of East Africa is used as a test of manhood. If a boy being circumcised shows signs of fear, he might well be ridiculed (Maybury-Lewis, 1998).

Are rituals more common in traditional societies than in industrial ones such as the United States? Consider the Nacirema, studied by anthropologist Horace Miner more than 50 years ago (Miner, 1956). In this society, many rituals have been developed to deal with the culture’s fundamental belief that the human body is ugly and in danger of suffering many diseases. Reflecting this belief, every household has at least one shrine in which various rituals are performed to cleanse the body. Often these shrines contain magic potions acquired from medicine men. The Nacirema are especially concerned about diseases of the mouth. Miner writes, “Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them” (p. 505). Many Nacirema engage in “mouth-rites” and see a “holy-mouth-man” once or twice yearly.

Spell Nacirema backward and you will see that Miner was describing American culture. As his satire suggests, rituals are not limited to preindustrial societies. Instead, they function in many kinds of societies to mark transitions in the life course and to transmit the norms of the culture from one generation to the next.

Changing Norms and Beliefs

Our examples show that different cultures have different norms, even if they share other types of practices and beliefs. It is also true that norms change over time within a given culture. Two obvious examples here are hairstyles and clothing styles. When the Beatles first became popular in the early 1960s, their hair barely covered their ears, but parents of teenagers back then were aghast at how they looked. If anything, clothing styles change even more often than hairstyles. Hemlines go up, hemlines go down. Lapels become wider, lapels become narrower. This color is in, that color is out. Hold on to your out-of-style clothes long enough, and eventually they may well end up back in style.

Some norms may change over time within a given culture. In the early 1960s, the hair of the four members of the Beatles barely covered their ears, but many parents of U.S. teenagers were very critical of the length of their hair.

U.S. Library of Congress – public domain.

A more important topic on which norms have changed is abortion and birth control (Bullough & Bullough, 1977). Despite the controversy surrounding abortion today, it was very common in the ancient world. Much later, medieval theologians generally felt that abortion was not murder if it occurred within the first several weeks after conception. This distinction was eliminated in 1869, when Pope Pius IX declared abortion at any time to be murder. In the United States, abortion was not illegal until 1828, when New York state banned it to protect women from unskilled abortionists, and most other states followed suit by the end of the century. However, the sheer number of unsafe, illegal abortions over the next several decades helped fuel a demand for repeal of abortion laws that in turn helped lead to the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision in 1973 that generally legalized abortion during the first two trimesters.

Contraception was also practiced in ancient times, only to be opposed by early Christianity. Over the centuries, scientific discoveries of the nature of the reproductive process led to more effective means of contraception and to greater calls for its use, despite legal bans on the distribution of information about contraception. In the early 1900s, Margaret Sanger, an American nurse, spearheaded the growing birth-control movement and helped open a birth-control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916. She and two other women were arrested within 10 days, and Sanger and one other defendant were sentenced to 30 days in jail. Efforts by Sanger and other activists helped to change views on contraception over time, and finally, in 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut that contraception information could not be banned. As this brief summary illustrates, norms about contraception changed dramatically during the last century.

Other types of cultural beliefs also change over time ( Figure 3.2 “Percentage of People Who Say They Would Vote for a Qualified African American for President” and Figure 3.3 “Percentage of People Who Agree Women Should Take Care of Running Their Homes” ). Since the 1960s, the U.S. public has changed its views about some important racial and gender issues. Figure 3.2 “Percentage of People Who Say They Would Vote for a Qualified African American for President” , taken from several years of the General Social Survey (GSS), shows that the percentage of Americans who would vote for a qualified black person as president rose almost 20 points from the early 1970s to the middle of 1996, when the GSS stopped asking the question. If beliefs about voting for an African American had not changed, Barack Obama would almost certainly not have been elected in 2008. Figure 3.3 “Percentage of People Who Agree Women Should Take Care of Running Their Homes” , also taken from several years of the GSS, shows that the percentage saying that women should take care of running their homes and leave running the country to men declined from almost 36% in the early 1970s to only about 15% in 1998, again, when the GSS stopped asking the question. These two figures depict declining racial and gender prejudice in the United States during the past quarter-century.

Figure 3.2 Percentage of People Who Say They Would Vote for a Qualified African American for President

Source: Data from General Social Surveys, 1972–1996.

Figure 3.3 Percentage of People Who Agree Women Should Take Care of Running Their Homes

Source: Data from General Social Surveys, 1974–1998.

Values are another important element of culture and involve judgments of what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. A culture’s values shape its norms. In Japan, for example, a central value is group harmony. The Japanese place great emphasis on harmonious social relationships and dislike interpersonal conflict. Individuals are fairly unassertive by American standards, lest they be perceived as trying to force their will on others (Schneider & Silverman, 2010). When interpersonal disputes do arise, Japanese do their best to minimize conflict by trying to resolve the disputes amicably. Lawsuits are thus uncommon; in one case involving disease and death from a mercury-polluted river, some Japanese who dared to sue the company responsible for the mercury poisoning were considered bad citizens (Upham, 1976).

Individualism in the United States

American culture promotes competition and an emphasis on winning in the sports and business worlds and in other spheres of life. Accordingly, lawsuits over frivolous reasons are common and even expected.

Clyde Robinson – Courtroom – CC BY 2.0.

In the United States, of course, the situation is quite different. The American culture extols the rights of the individual and promotes competition in the business and sports worlds and in other areas of life. Lawsuits over the most frivolous of issues are quite common and even expected. Phrases like “Look out for number one!” abound. If the Japanese value harmony and group feeling, Americans value competition and individualism. Because the Japanese value harmony, their norms frown on self-assertion in interpersonal relationships and on lawsuits to correct perceived wrongs. Because Americans value and even thrive on competition, our norms promote assertion in relationships and certainly promote the use of the law to address all kinds of problems.

Figure 3.4 “Percentage of People Who Think Competition Is Very Beneficial” illustrates this difference between the two nations’ cultures with data from the 2002 World Values Survey (WVS), which was administered to random samples of the adult populations of more than 80 nations around the world. One question asked in these nations was, “On a scale of one (‘competition is good; it stimulates people to work hard and develop new ideas’) to ten (‘competition is harmful; it brings out the worst in people’), please indicate your views on competition.” Figure 3.4 “Percentage of People Who Think Competition Is Very Beneficial” shows the percentages of Americans and Japanese who responded with a “one” or “two” to this question, indicating they think competition is very beneficial. Americans are about three times as likely as Japanese to favor competition.

Figure 3.4 Percentage of People Who Think Competition Is Very Beneficial

Source: Data from World Values Survey, 2002.

The Japanese value system is a bit of an anomaly, because Japan is an industrial nation with very traditional influences. Its emphasis on group harmony and community is more usually thought of as a value found in traditional societies, while the U.S. emphasis on individuality is more usually thought of as a value found in industrial cultures. Anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis (1998, p. 8) describes this difference as follows: “The heart of the difference between the modern world and the traditional one is that in traditional societies people are a valuable resource and the interrelations between them are carefully tended; in modern society things are the valuables and people are all too often treated as disposable.” In industrial societies, continues Maybury-Lewis, individualism and the rights of the individual are celebrated and any one person’s obligations to the larger community are weakened. Individual achievement becomes more important than values such as kindness, compassion, and generosity.

Other scholars take a less bleak view of industrial society, where they say the spirit of community still lives even as individualism is extolled (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 1985). In American society, these two simultaneous values sometimes create tension. In Appalachia, for example, people view themselves as rugged individuals who want to control their own fate. At the same time, they have strong ties to families, relatives, and their neighbors. Thus their sense of independence conflicts with their need for dependence on others (Erikson, 1976).

The Work Ethic

Another important value in the American culture is the work ethic. By the 19th century, Americans had come to view hard work not just as something that had to be done but as something that was morally good to do (Gini, 2000). The commitment to the work ethic remains strong today: in the 2008 General Social Survey, 72% of respondents said they would continue to work even if they got enough money to live as comfortably as they would like for the rest of their lives.

Cross-cultural evidence supports the importance of the work ethic in the United States. Using earlier World Values Survey data, Figure 3.5 “Percentage of People Who Take a Great Deal of Pride in Their Work” presents the percentage of people in United States and three other nations from different parts of the world—Mexico, Poland, and Japan—who take “a great deal of pride” in their work. More than 85% of Americans feel this way, compared to much lower proportions of people in the other three nations.

Figure 3.5 Percentage of People Who Take a Great Deal of Pride in Their Work

Source: Data from World Values Survey, 1993.

Closely related to the work ethic is the belief that if people work hard enough, they will be successful. Here again the American culture is especially thought to promote the idea that people can pull themselves up by their “bootstraps” if they work hard enough. The WVS asked whether success results from hard work or from luck and connections. Figure 3.6 “Percentage of People Who Think Hard Work Brings Success” presents the proportions of people in the four nations just examined who most strongly thought that hard work brings success. Once again we see evidence of an important aspect of the American culture, as U.S. residents were especially likely to think that hard work brings success.

Figure 3.6 Percentage of People Who Think Hard Work Brings Success

Source: Data from World Values Survey, 1997.

If Americans believe hard work brings success, then they should be more likely than people in most other nations to believe that poverty stems from not working hard enough. True or false, this belief is an example of the blaming-the-victim ideology introduced in Chapter 1 “Sociology and the Sociological Perspective” . Figure 3.7 “Percentage of People Who Attribute Poverty to Laziness and Lack of Willpower” presents WVS percentages of respondents who said the most important reason people are poor is “laziness and lack of willpower.” As expected, Americans are much more likely to attribute poverty to not working hard enough.

Figure 3.7 Percentage of People Who Attribute Poverty to Laziness and Lack of Willpower

We could discuss many other values, but an important one concerns how much a society values women’s employment outside the home. The WVS asked respondents whether they agree that “when jobs are scarce men should have more right to a job than women.” Figure 3.8 “Percentage of People Who Disagree That Men Have More Right to a Job Than Women When Jobs Are Scarce” shows that U.S. residents are more likely than those in nations with more traditional views of women to disagree with this statement.

Figure 3.8 Percentage of People Who Disagree That Men Have More Right to a Job Than Women When Jobs Are Scarce

The last element of culture is the artifacts , or material objects, that constitute a society’s material culture. In the most simple societies, artifacts are largely limited to a few tools, the huts people live in, and the clothing they wear. One of the most important inventions in the evolution of society was the wheel. Figure 3.9 “Primary Means of Moving Heavy Loads” shows that very few of the societies in the SCCS use wheels to move heavy loads over land, while the majority use human power and about one-third use pack animals.

Figure 3.9 Primary Means of Moving Heavy Loads

Although the wheel was a great invention, artifacts are much more numerous and complex in industrial societies. Because of technological advances during the past two decades, many such societies today may be said to have a wireless culture, as smartphones, netbooks and laptops, and GPS devices now dominate so much of modern life. The artifacts associated with this culture were unknown a generation ago. Technological development created these artifacts and new language to describe them and the functions they perform. Today’s wireless artifacts in turn help reinforce our own commitment to wireless technology as a way of life, if only because children are now growing up with them, often even before they can read and write.

The iPhone is just one of the many notable cultural artifacts in today’s wireless world. Technological development created these artifacts and new language to describe them and their functions—for example, “There’s an app for that!”

Philip Brooks – iPhone – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Sometimes people in one society may find it difficult to understand the artifacts that are an important part of another society’s culture. If a member of a tribal society who had never seen a cell phone, or who had never even used batteries or electricity, were somehow to visit the United States, she or he would obviously have no idea of what a cell phone was or of its importance in almost everything we do these days. Conversely, if we were to visit that person’s society, we might not appreciate the importance of some of its artifacts.

In this regard, consider once again India’s cows, discussed in the news article that began this chapter. As the article mentioned, people from India consider cows holy, and they let cows roam the streets of many cities. In a nation where hunger is so rampant, such cow worship is difficult to understand, at least to Americans, because a ready source of meat is being ignored.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris (1974) advanced a practical explanation for India’s cow worship. Millions of Indians are peasants who rely on their farms for their food and thus their existence. Oxen and water buffalo, not tractors, are the way they plow their fields. If their ox falls sick or dies, farmers may lose their farms. Because, as Harris observes, oxen are made by cows, it thus becomes essential to preserve cows at all costs. In India, cows also act as an essential source of fertilizer, to the tune of 700 million tons of manure annually, about half of which is used for fertilizer and the other half of which is used as fuel for cooking. Cow manure is also mixed with water and used as flooring material over dirt floors in Indian households. For all of these reasons, cow worship is not so puzzling after all, because it helps preserve animals that are very important for India’s economy and other aspects of its way of life.

According to anthropologist Marvin Harris, cows are worshipped in India because they are such an important part of India’s agricultural economy.

Francisco Martins – Cow in Mumbai – CC BY-NC 2.0.

If Indians exalt cows, many Jews and Muslims feel the opposite about pigs: they refuse to eat any product made from pigs and so obey an injunction from the Old Testament of the Bible and from the Koran. Harris thinks this injunction existed because pig farming in ancient times would have threatened the ecology of the Middle East. Sheep and cattle eat primarily grass, while pigs eat foods that people eat, such as nuts, fruits, and especially grains. In another problem, pigs do not provide milk and are much more difficult to herd than sheep or cattle. Next, pigs do not thrive well in the hot, dry climate in which the people of the Old Testament and Koran lived. Finally, sheep and cattle were a source of food back then because beyond their own meat they provided milk, cheese, and manure, and cattle were also used for plowing. In contrast, pigs would have provided only their own meat. Because sheep and cattle were more “versatile” in all of these ways, and because of the other problems pigs would have posed, it made sense for the eating of pork to be prohibited.

In contrast to Jews and Muslims, at least one society, the Maring of the mountains of New Guinea, is characterized by “pig love.” Here pigs are held in the highest regard. The Maring sleep next to pigs, give them names and talk to them, feed them table scraps, and once or twice every generation have a mass pig sacrifice that is intended to ensure the future health and welfare of Maring society. Harris explains their love of pigs by noting that their climate is ideally suited to raising pigs, which are an important source of meat for the Maring. Because too many pigs would overrun the Maring, their periodic pig sacrifices help keep the pig population to manageable levels. Pig love thus makes as much sense for the Maring as pig hatred did for people in the time of the Old Testament and the Koran.

Key Takeaways

• The major elements of culture are symbols, language, norms, values, and artifacts.
• Language makes effective social interaction possible and influences how people conceive of concepts and objects.
• Major values that distinguish the United States include individualism, competition, and a commitment to the work ethic.

For Your Review

• How and why does the development of language illustrate the importance of culture and provide evidence for the sociological perspective?
• Some people say the United States is too individualistic and competitive, while other people say these values are part of what makes America great. What do you think? Why?

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Sociology of Culture

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Sociology of Culture by Brian Steensland LAST REVIEWED: 27 July 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 27 July 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0055

Culture is the symbolic-expressive dimension of social life. In common usage, the term “culture” can mean the cultivation associated with “civilized” habits of mind, the creative products associated with the arts, or the entire way of life associated with a group. Among sociologists, “culture” just as often refers to the beliefs that people hold about reality, the norms that guide their behavior, the values that orient their moral commitments, or the symbols through which these beliefs, norms, and values are communicated. The sociological study of culture encompasses all these diverse meanings of “culture.” Amid this diversity, what unifies the sociology of culture are two core commitments: that the symbolic-expressive dimension of social life is worthy of examination, both for its own sake and because of its impact on other aspects of social life; and that culture can be studied using the methods and analytic tools of sociology. Within the discipline, the sociology of culture emerged as a bounded subfield during the 1980s. Prior to this period, sociological analyses of culture were found mainly in theoretical treatises and in empirical studies of religion, the arts, and the “sociology of knowledge.” Throughout, the sociological study of culture has been oriented by a common set of broad questions: What are the social origins of culture? What cultural patterns are found in various groups and institutions? And what influence does culture have on important aspects of society? Scholarship in the sociology of culture ranges from highly general conceptual arguments to closely observed empirical studies. The readings included here reflect this breadth.

Overviews of the sociology of culture take a variety of forms. Griswold 2008 is a popular introduction to key concepts and debates. It also gives sustained attention to the arts and cultural industries. Battani, et al. 2003 provides broad coverage, with special attention to politics and power dynamics. Smith and Riley 2009 contains the best introduction to general theories of culture and their relations to one another. A recent special volume on cultural sociology, Binder, et al. 2008 , provides an introduction of a different sort. It collects review articles on the intersection between cultural analysis and other topical areas within sociology.

Battani, Marshall, John R. Hall, and Mary Jo Neitz. 2003. Sociology on culture . New York: Routledge.

A broad overview of the sociology of culture with particular emphasis on stratification, modernity, power dynamics, and social change.

Binder, Amy, Mary Blair-Loy, John H. Evans, Kwai Ng, and Michael Schudson, eds. 2008. Cultural sociology and its diversity . Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science 619. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

A recent collection of papers describing how cultural approaches have been incorporated into a wide range of topical areas in sociology, including the law, education, science, sexuality, economic markets, formal organizations, social movements, popular culture, and race and ethnicity.

Griswold, Wendy. 2008. Cultures and societies in a changing world . 3d ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.

A clear and concise introduction to the sociological study of culture. Particularly strong on outlining the multiple meanings of “culture” and showing the value of conceptualizing cultural processes using Griswold’s “cultural diamond” analytic framework.

Smith, Philip, and Alexander Riley. 2009. Cultural theory: An introduction . Malden, MA: Blackwell.

An exhaustive yet accessible introduction to cultural theory in its many manifestations. An indispensable guide to complex conceptual terrain.

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Karl Mannheim was one of the leading sociologists of the twentieth century. Essays on the Sociology of Culture , originally published in 1956, was one of his most important books. In it he sets out his ideas of intellectuals as producers of culture and explores the possibilities of a democratization of culture. This new edition includes a superb new preface by Bryan Turner which sets Mannheim's study in the appropriate historical and intellectual context and explains why his thought on culture remains essential for students engaged in debates about mass culture, the politics of culture and postmodernity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 13  pages, introduction, part | 75  pages, towards the sociology of the mind, chapter | 11  pages, first approach to the subject, chapter | 34  pages, the false and the proper concepts of history and society, chapter | 23  pages, the proper and improper concept of the mind, chapter | 6  pages, an outline of the sociology of the mind, chapter | 1  pages, recapitulation: the sociology of the mind as an area of inquiry, part | 80  pages, the problem of the intelligentsia, part | 76  pages, the democratization of culture 1, chapter | 4  pages, some problems of political democracy at the stage of its full development, chapter | 72  pages, the problem of democratization as a general cultural phenomenon.

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Culture in Sociology (Definition, Types and Features)

Sourabh Yadav (MA)

Sourabh Yadav is a freelance writer & filmmaker. He studied English literature at the University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University. You can find his work on The Print, Live Wire, and YouTube.

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Chris Drew (PhD)

This article was peer-reviewed and edited by Chris Drew (PhD). The review process on Helpful Professor involves having a PhD level expert fact check, edit, and contribute to articles. Reviewers ensure all content reflects expert academic consensus and is backed up with reference to academic studies. Dr. Drew has published over 20 academic articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education and holds a PhD in Education from ACU.

Culture, as used in sociology, is the “way of life” of a particular group of people: their values, beliefs, norms, etc.

Think of a typical day in your life. You wake up, get ready, and then leave for school or work. Once the day is over, you probably spend your time with family/friends or pursue your hobbies. 

Almost every aspect of this—your means of travel, how you behave among your colleagues, or what kind of recreation you prefer—comes under culture. It is something that we acquire socially and plays a huge role in shaping who we are.

Sociologists have come up with various theories about culture (why it exists, how it functions, etc.), which we will discuss later. But before that, let us learn about the concept in more detail and look at some examples.

Sociological Definition of Culture

Edward Tylor defined culture as 

“that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” (1871)

Another definition comes from Scott, who sees culture as “all that in human society which is socially rather than biologically transmitted” (2014). 

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have lived together in communities and developed common ways of dealing with life (acquiring food, raising children, etc.). These common ways are what make culture. 

Culture consists of both intangible and tangible things. The former is known as nonmaterial culture, which includes things like ideas or values of a society. In contrast, material culture has a physical existence, such as a clothing item. 

Both nonmaterial and material are linked because physical items often symbolize cultural ideas (Little, 2016). For example, you wear a suit (not a pair of shorts) to a business meeting, which is linked to the workplace values of formality & decorum.

Two of the most important elements of culture are its values & beliefs. Values refer to what a society considers good and just: individuality, for example, is a key value in most Western countries. Beliefs are the convictions that people hold to be true, such as the American belief that hard work can make anybody successful.

Values and beliefs are deeply entrenched in a culture, and going against them can have consequences. These can range from minor cultural sanctions (say being frowned upon) to major legal actions. In contrast, upholding values & beliefs leads to social approval. 

Cultural values differ across cultures. The individualism of Western cultures seems solipsistic & arrogant to many Non-Western cultures, who instead value collectivism. Besides such variations, values also evolve with time.

Culture vs Society

The terms “culture” and “society” are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, but they refer to different things.

Society refers to a group of people who live together in a common territory & share a culture. This common territory can be any definable region, say a small neighborhood or a large country. 

When we use the term “society”, we are referring to social structures & their organization.

Culture, in contrast, is the “way of life” of a group of people; it consists of values, beliefs, and artifacts. 

For example, in the United States, African-Americans have historically been oppressed, and even today, they often do not get equal opportunities. Here, we are talking about social structures, which include race and class. 

African-American culture has—such as the literary works of Zora Neale Hurston or the jazz music of Duke Ellington—developed in response to these (unfair) social structures. So, both society & culture are mutually connected; neither can exist without the other.

Features of Cultures

The following are 10 key features of culture that we explore in sociology:

• Symbols: Symbols can be words, gestures, or objects that carry particular meanings recognized by those who share the same culture. For instance, the bald eagle functions as a symbol of freedom and authority in American culture .
• Language: Language is a key aspect of culture, as it is the means of communication that conveys cultural heritage and values. For example, the French language, rich in literature and philosophy, reveals much about French culture’s emphasis on art, intellect, and romance.
• Rituals and Traditions: These are practices or ceremonies that are regularly performed in a culture and bear symbolic meaning. An example of a ritual would be Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, symbolizes the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil.
• Norms: Norms are behavioral standards and expectations that culture sets. In British culture, for instance, queueing is a significant societal norm, signifying order and fairness. See: cultural norms .
• Values: These are the learned beliefs that guide individual and collective behavior and decisions, such as respect for human rights evident in many democratic societies. See: cultural values .
• Social Structures: Social structures are the arranged relationships and patterned interactions between members of a culture, like the extended family system prevalent in many Latin American cultures.
• Artifacts: Physical objects or architectural structures that represent cultural accomplishments, such as the Pyramids in Egypt representing ancient Egyptian civilization. See: cultural artifacts .
• Rules and Laws: Codified principles that guide societal behavior. For example, the constitution in the U.S. reflects its cultural emphasis on democracy and individual freedom.
• Religion and Spirituality: Beliefs about a higher power, rituals related to this belief, and moral codes derived from these beliefs. Buddhism, for instance, is a significant part of East Asian cultures.
• Food and Diet: Specific to each culture, these are dietary habits and special cuisines, like the Mediterranean diet filled with seafood, olives, and vegetables, reflecting coastal cultures of Greece and Italy.

Types of Culture in Sociology

• National Culture: This represents the shared customs, behaviors, and artifacts that characterize a nation, for instance, the Brazilian culture marked by energetic music and vibrant festivals.
• Subculture : A cultural group existing within larger cultures distinguished by their unique practices and beliefs. For example, The Amish in the United States have a distinct lifestyle centered around simplicity and community.
• Counterculture : This represents groups that reject mainstream norms and values, seeking to challenge the status quo. The Punk movement of the 1970s in the UK, known for its rebellious attitudes and alternative fashion, is a clear example. Countercultures often cause widespread moral panic among the dominant culture in a society .
• Folk Culture : Traditional, community-based customs representing the shared cultural heritage, such as folk music and folklore of Irish culture.
• Pop Culture : Mainstream trends influenced by mass media, fashion, and celebrities, like K-Pop’s influence on global music and fashion trends.
• High Culture : Artifacts and activities considered ‘refined’ or ‘sophisticated’ by elite society, such as opera and ballet in European cultures (Bourdieu, 2010). This is contrasted to low culture , which represents the culture of the working-class.
• Material Culture : Tangible artifacts of human society like architecture, fashion, or food. The medieval castles peppered throughout France offer insight into its material culture. This is of great concern, for example, to archaeologists.
• Non-Material Culture : Intangible aspects of a culture, such as values and norms. The continued emphasis on politeness in British culture is an example of this. This is of great concern, for example, to sociocultural anthropologists.
• Professional Culture: Standards and behaviors specific to a particular profession. The Hippocratic Oath and an emphasis on patient care are integral to medical culture.
• Organizational Culture: Refers to the shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that form the unique social and psychological environment of an organization. Google’s culture of innovation and employee freedom reflects this.

For More, Read: 17 Types of Culture

Theoretical Approaches to Culture in Sociology

Sociologists have come up with various theories of culture, explaining why and how they exist. 

1. Functionalism

Functionalism sees society as a group of elements that function together to maintain a stable whole.

Émile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology, used an organic analogy to explain this. In a biological creature, all the constituent body parts work together to maintain an organic whole; in the same way, the parts of a society work together to ensure its stability. 

Under such a view, culture is something that helps society to exist as a stable entity: cultural norms, for example, guide people’s behavior and ensure that they appropriately. Talcott Parsons said that culture performs “latent pattern maintenance”, meaning that it maintains social patterns of behavior and allows orderly change (Little).

To put it in one sentence, culture ensures that our “way of life” remains stable. Functionalism can provide excellent insights into all cultural expressions, even ones that seem quite irrational. For example, sports in themselves may seem quite “useless”.

What exactly is the point of trying to hit a ball far or kicking one into a net? Functionalists would explain that sports brings people together and creates a collective experience. It provides an outlet for aggressive energies, teaches us the value of teamwork, and of course, makes us physically fit.

Real culture allows a given society to see how far its aspirations lie from its achievements, allowing it to take redressal steps.

Read More about Functionalism in Sociology Here

2. Conflict Theory

Conflict theory focuses on the power relations that exist in society and believes that culture is entrenched in this power play.

These sociologists emphasize the unequal nature of social structures, and how they are related to factors of class, race, gender, etc. For them, culture is another tool for reinforcing and perpetuating these differences.

A key focus of conflict theory is on critiquing “ideology”, which is seen as a set of ideas that support or conceal the existing power relations in society. For example, as we discussed earlier, one of the key beliefs in the United States is the “American Dream”: anyone can work hard to achieve success.

But this belief hardly takes into account larger social factors (historical oppression, generational wealth, etc.). For a white, middle-class man, it may certainly be possible to work hard and achieve incredible success. But for a poor black woman, the American dream is mostly a myth. 

Case Study: Conflict Theory and Culture

Conflict Theorists (and some functionalists) argue that there are two types of culture: ideal and real. The ideal culture is the culture that society strives toward – it’s the standard that maintains a goal of society. This is contrasted to real culture , which sociologist Max Weber says is the real-life manifestation of culture. This includes the elements of oppression and inequalities, which ideal culture does not consider. For example, if ideal culture talks about democracy, real culture points out how politics is biased toward privileged people.

3. Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism focuses on face-to-face interactions of individuals and sees culture as an outcome of these. 

Such sociologists believe that human interactions are a continuous process of finding meaning from the actions of others and the objects in the environment (Little). All these actions & objects have a “symbolic meaning”.

Culture is how this symbolic meaning is shared and interpreted. Symbolic interactions also believe that our social world is quite dynamic: instead of obsessing over rigid structures, they emphasize how situations and meanings are constantly changing.

For a symbolic interactionist, something as simple as a t-shirt communicates a symbolic meaning. They would argue that clothes do not simply play a “functional” role (protection) but also express something about the wearer. 

See Also: Examples of Symbolic Interactionism

Culture includes the values, practices, and artifacts of a group of people; it is our shared “way of life”.

Most human behavior —from what we eat at breakfast to when we go back to sleep—is socially acquired through culture. It gives us a shared sense of “meaning” and guides human behavior, helping to maintain a stable society. However, it is also entrenched in power relations and can both enforce/challenge those relations. 

Little, William. (2016). Introduction to Sociology – 1st Canadian Edition . OpenEd.

Murdock, George P. (1949). Social Structure . Macmillan.

Scott, Taylor. (2014). A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford.

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. J. Murray.

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3.4 Theoretical Perspectives on Culture

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section you should be able to:

• Discuss the major theoretical approaches to cultural interpretation

Music, fashion, technology, and values—all are products of culture. But what do they mean? How do sociologists perceive and interpret culture based on these material and nonmaterial items? Let’s finish our analysis of culture by reviewing them in the context of three theoretical perspectives: functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalists view society as a system in which all parts work—or function—together to create society as a whole. They often use the human body as an analogy. Looking at life in this way, societies need culture to exist . Cultural norms function to support the fluid operation of society, and cultural values guide people in making choices. Just as members of a society work together to fulfill a society’s needs, culture exists to meet its members’ social and personal needs.

Functionalists also study culture in terms of values. For example, education is highly valued in the U.S. The culture of education—including material culture such as classrooms, textbooks, libraries, educational technology, dormitories and non-material culture such as specific teaching approaches—demonstrates how much emphasis is placed on the value of educating a society’s members. In contrast, if education consisted of only providing guidelines and some study material without the other elements, that would demonstrate that the culture places a lower value on education.

Functionalists view the different categories of culture as serving many functions. Having membership in a culture, a subculture, or a counterculture brings camaraderie and social cohesion and benefits the larger society by providing places for people who share similar ideas.

Conflict theorists, however, view social structure as inherently unequal, based on power differentials related to issues like class, gender, race, and age. For a conflict theorist, established educational methods are seen as reinforcing the dominant societal culture and issues of privilege. The historical experiences of certain groups— those based upon race, sex, or class, for instance, or those that portray a negative narrative about the dominant culture—are excluded from history books. For a long time, U.S. History education omitted the assaults on Native American people and society that were part of the colonization of the land that became the United States. A more recent example is the recognition of historical events like race riots and racially based massacres like the Tulsa Massacre, which was widely reported when it occurred in 1921 but was omitted from many national historical accounts of that period of time. When an episode of HBO’s Watchmen showcased the event in stunning and horrific detail, many people expressed surprise that it had occurred and it hadn’t been taught or discussed (Ware 2019).

Historical omission is not restricted to the U.S. North Korean students learn of their benevolent leader without information about his mistreatment of large portions of the population. According to defectors and North Korea experts, while famines and dire economic conditions are obvious, state media and educational agencies work to ensure that North Koreans do not understand how different their country is from others (Jacobs 2019).

Inequities exist within a culture’s value system and become embedded in laws, policies, and procedures. This inclusion leads to the oppression of the powerless by the powerful. A society’s cultural norms benefit some people but hurt others. Women were not allowed to vote in the U.S. until 1920, making it hard for them to get laws passed that protected their rights in the home and in the workplace. Same-sex couples were denied the right to marry in the U.S. until 2015. Elsewhere around the world, same-sex marriage is only legal in 31 of the planet’s 195 countries.

At the core of conflict theory is the effect of economic production and materialism. Dependence on technology in rich nations versus a lack of technology and education in poor nations. Conflict theorists believe that a society’s system of material production has an effect on the rest of culture. People who have less power also have fewer opportunities to adapt to cultural change. This view contrasts with the perspective of functionalism. Where functionalists would see the purpose of culture—traditions, folkways, values—as helping individuals navigate through life and societies run smoothly, conflict theorists examine socio-cultural struggles, including the power and privilege created for some by using and reinforcing a dominant culture that sustains their position in society.

Symbolic interactionism is the sociological perspective that is most concerned with the face-to-face interactions and cultural meanings between members of society. It is considered a micro-level analysis. Instead of looking how access is different between the rich and poor, interactionists see culture as being created and maintained by the ways people interact and in how individuals interpret each other’s actions. In this perspective, people perpetuate cultural ways. Proponents of this theory conceptualize human interaction as a continuous process of deriving meaning from both objects in the environment and the actions of others. Every object and action has a symbolic meaning, and language serves as a means for people to represent and communicate interpretations of these meanings to others. Symbolic interactionists perceive culture as highly dynamic and fluid, as it is dependent on how meaning is interpreted and how individuals interact when conveying these meanings. Interactionists research changes in language. They study additions and deletions of words, the changing meaning of words, and the transmission of words in an original language into different ones.

We began this chapter by asking, “What is culture?” Culture is comprised of values, beliefs, norms, language, practices, and artifacts of a society. Because culture is learned, it includes how people think and express themselves. While we may like to consider ourselves individuals, we must acknowledge the impact of culture on us and our way of life. We inherit language that shapes our perceptions and patterned behavior, including those of family, friends, faith, and politics.

To an extent, culture is a social comfort. After all, sharing a similar culture with others is precisely what defines societies. Nations would not exist if people did not coexist culturally. There could be no societies if people did not share heritage and language, and civilization would cease to function if people did not agree on similar values and systems of social control.

Culture is preserved through transmission from one generation to the next, but it also evolves through processes of innovation, discovery, and cultural diffusion. As such, cultures are social constructions. The society approves or disapproves of items or ideas, which are therefore included or not in the culture. We may be restricted by the confines of our own culture, but as humans we have the ability to question values and make conscious decisions. No better evidence of this freedom exists than the amount of cultural diversity around the world. The more we study another culture, the better we become at understanding our own.

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• Authors: Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang
• Publisher/website: OpenStax
• Book title: Introduction to Sociology 3e
• Publication date: Jun 3, 2021
• Location: Houston, Texas
• Book URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/1-introduction
• Section URL: https://openstax.org/books/introduction-sociology-3e/pages/3-4-theoretical-perspectives-on-culture

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Sociology 101

This lesson introduces how sociologists think about culture. Culture is one of the fundamental elements of social life and, thus, an essential topic in sociology. Many of the concepts presented here will come up again in almost every subsequent lesson. Because culture is learned so slowly and incrementally, we are often unaware of how it becomes ingrained in our ways of thinking. Applying the sociological perspective to culture requires us to recognize the strangeness in our own culture. This lesson outlines the basics of studying culture and allows you to test potential relationships between television depictions of families and marriage rates. Although culture is familiar to us, you should be seeing it in a new and different way by the time you finish this lesson.

Learning Objectives ¶

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Describe how sociologists define the components of culture.

Identify variation in culture and cultural change.

Analyze the relationship between culture and family.

Deadlines ¶

Be sure to hand these in before the deadline

Inquizitive Chapter 3 (Thursday at 9:30am)

Obesity case study (Sunday at 10:00pm)

Disclosure reflection (Sunday at 10:00pm)

Class Lecture Recorded 2/9. Slides

Cultures, Subcultures, & Countercultures

Symbols, Values, & Norms

Discuss (Thursday during class): ¶

Disclosure ¶.

is an unprecedented, eye-opening look at transgender depictions in film and television, revealing how Hollywood simultaneously reflects and manufactures our deepest anxieties about gender. Leading trans thinkers and creatives, including Laverne Cox, Lilly Wachowski, Yance Ford, Mj Rodriguez, Jamie Clayton, and Chaz Bono, share their reactions and resistance to some of Hollywood’s most beloved moments. Grappling with films like A Florida Enchantment (1914), Dog Day Afternoon, The Crying Game, and Boys Don’t Cry, and with shows like The Jeffersons, The L-Word, and Pose, they trace a history that is at once dehumanizing, yet also evolving, complex, and sometimes humorous. What emerges is a fascinating story of dynamic interplay between trans representation on screen, society’s beliefs, and the reality of trans lives. Reframing familiar scenes and iconic characters in a new light, director Sam Feder invites viewers to confront unexamined assumptions, and shows how what once captured the American imagination now elicit new feelings. Disclosure provokes a startling revolution in how we see and understand trans people.. Official Description

We will be applying our sociological tools to the film Disclosure on Netflix. We will watch it together starting Thursday during class.

Be sure to have the movie ready to roll at the start of class.

Login to the course Slack at 9:30am and say hi to your group!

Case Study: Obesity ¶

In this assignment, you will read about a sociological study that examined whether obesity spreads like a contagion through social networks. You will then be asked five questions about the research. These case studies help you develop your ability to understand and evaluate social science research and make connections between research and our theoretical toolkit.

Note: Once you start, you only have 30 minutes to complete this assignment. Students with ARS accomodations may have additional time.

You can find the case study on Sakai under Tests and Quizzes. It is only available during this lesson week.

Questions ¶

If you have any questions at all about what you are supposed to do on this assignment, please remember I am here to help. Reach out any time so I can support your success.

Post it in the Slack #questions channel!

Signup for virtual office hours !

Email me or your TA.

Lesson Keywords ¶

ethnocentrism

cultural relativism

material culture

symbolic culture

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

social control

Dominant culture

counterculture

ideal culture

real culture

cultural diffusion

cultural imperialism

The least you need to know ¶

Theoretical perspectives and culture

Extra Resources ¶

Teaching videos ¶.

Overview of culture (Khan Academy)

Culture and society (Khan Academy)

Subculture vs counterculture (Khan Academy)

Culture lag and culture shock (Khan Academy)

Diffusion (Khan Academy)

What is normal? Exploring folkways, mores, and taboos (Khan Academy)

Other Resources ¶

To Code Switch or Not to Code Switch? (8 minute TEDx Talk by Katelynn Duggins)

Tropes vs. Women in Video Games (Anita Sarkeesian’s series of video essays on gender and the gamer community)

The Story of Stuff (Annie Leonard on where our stuff comes from.]

1st Edition

Essays on the Sociology of Culture

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Description

Karl Mannheim was one of the leading sociologists of the twentieth century. Essays on the Sociology of Culture , originally published in 1956, was one of his most important books. In it he sets out his ideas of intellectuals as producers of culture and explores the possibilities of a democratization of culture. This new edition includes a superb new preface by Bryan Turner which sets Mannheim's study in the appropriate historical and intellectual context and explains why his thought on culture remains essential for students engaged in debates about mass culture, the politics of culture and postmodernity.

Table of Contents

Karl Mannheim

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InVisible Culture

A journal for visual culture, cultural studies and the sociology of culture.

Issue 01: The Worlding of Cultural Studies (Winter 1998)

Janet Wolff

It is almost exactly ten years since I came to the United States from Britain, and exactly seven since I came to Rochester as Director of the Program in Visual and Cultural Studies. It is time to reflect on my complicated relationship to the discipline of sociology. And when I say that it is time, I don’t mean this biographically, but more in relation to recent intellectual developments within both sociology and cultural studies, as well as to the (mostly) antagonistic relationship between the two, at least in this country. In my opinion, cultural studies at its best is sociological. And yet, in the continuing cross-disciplinary dialogue that has characterized the field of cultural studies in the decade or so of its progress in the United States, the discipline of sociology has been notably absent. At the same time, within the field of sociology, the study of culture has expanded enormously in the last twenty years among sociologists of culture, and among those who have more recently been calling themselves ‘cultural sociologists,’ which is not the same thing. Some of these sociologists have themselves adopted the term “cultural studies” to describe their work, thereby both claiming (mistakenly, as I shall suggest) to have pre-empted the newer field, and ignoring the possibility of a productive encounter with cultural studies in general and with related developments in the study of culture in the humanities. Within the past couple of years, this has begun to change, and I will be reviewing some of the newer work that begins to bridge the hitherto radical divide between sociology and cultural studies. My primary intention here is to point to the advantages that will ensue if sociologists enter into the interdisciplinary dialogue that constitutes the ever-changing field of cultural studies.

Sociologists in the Humanities 

Before I came to the United States, I taught for thirteen years in a department of sociology in Britain. My geographical move also entailed an apparent change of disciplines and,given the nature of the academy in Britain and the United States, also a change of academic divisions, from the social sciences to the humanities. But the change  was  only apparent, except in the material sense of my institutional location. My work didn’t change radically (though I hope it has developed in the past decade). I did not re-train, or take another Ph.D. Again, this biographical fact is interesting, I think, not for its own sake, but because of what it says about the organization of disciplines in Britain and the United States, and about the study of culture in the late twentieth century. There are a number of issues here. First, given my background and training in European sociology and my involvement in interdisciplinary work, I don’t think many departments of sociology in this country would have been prepared to give me a home. The discipline here has remained resolutely  intra disciplinary as a collective project; moreover, it has manifested a strong attachment (in some cases a growing one) to positivistic scholarship, including quantitative and mathematical methods. For the most part, this has also been largely true of that sub-specialization called the sociology of culture, most of whose practitioners continue to operate with untheorized and unexamined categories of social analysis. Second, new emphases have emerged in the humanities, which have invited certain sociological perspectives: new historicism, the new art history, post-colonial and feminist approaches to literature and culture, and so on. And thirdly, the success and proliferation of cultural studies in the U.S., in academic programs and in publishing has provided new opportunities for such cross-departmental moves. Given my alienation from American sociology, my life-long interest in the study of culture, and the hospitality of the humanities, my current situation makes plenty of sense. Nor is my own change of disciplinary home unique. Simon Frith, delivering his inaugural lecture as Professor of English at the University of Strathclyde, opened his talk in this way:

I ought to begin by saying that I am honoured to be giving this lecture, and indeed I am, but I have to confess that my dominant emotion is surprise. I haven’t studied English formally since I did O levels, and I still find it a peculiar turn of events that I should now be a professor of English. My academic training was in sociology, and I’m tempted to treat this lecture as a sociological case study: what does it tell us about the present state of English studies that a sociologist can chair an English department? 1

Nevertheless, I suppose I have felt since coming to Rochester that my “mission” was to encourage a “sociological imagination” 2  among students in the graduate program in Rochester, a program, after all, initially founded by the collaboration of colleagues in art history, film studies, and comparative literature, only more recently including the participation of colleagues from anthropology and history. (There is no longer a department of sociology at the University.) I have wanted to direct them to the texts and methods of sociology and social history, and to urge them to supplement their interpretative and critical readings of visual texts with attention to the institutional and social processes of cultural production and consumption. It was a very pleasant moment for me recently when a graduate student, who came to discuss his search for a useful concept of “style,” told me that he had been reading Max Weber, and said (without any prompting) before he left my office “I suppose I should look at Simmel’s work.” Earlier, I was delighted when a graduate student (now a faculty member at the University of Virginia) completely switched his dissertation topic and ended up writing a social and institutional (and, of course, critical) history of art education in the United States–a dissertation, by the way, that will be published next year by the University of California Press. 3  Actually this last case was particularly interesting because a year earlier (my first year in Rochester) this student had taken a class with me on the sociology of culture in which I had devoted quite a bit of time to the work of American sociologists. Despite my strong reservations about this work, I wanted students to recognize the importance of paying attention to institutional processes and structures in the study of culture. Some members of the class (including him) complained that this work was boring (which, actually, much of it is). Moreover, given my own criticisms of the work, which I explained, they wondered why we were spending time on it. I did not have a very good answer, except to say that nobody else was doing this kind of work well, and that I had hoped that we could read it critically in order to consider how we might indeed investigate what sociologists call “the production of culture.” As it turned out, that is indeed what that graduate student did, incorporating what he found most useful in that tradition into a fine study whose intellectual influences were at the same time more wide-ranging and sophisticated.

Sociology in Cultural Studies

In this essay, I want to suggest that cultural studies can benefit from a stronger connection with sociology. A good deal of what I have to say consists of a critical review of recent developments in sociology, a discipline which for the most part has still not come to terms with the fact that, as Avery Gordon has put it, “the real itself and its ethnographic or sociological representations are . . . fictions, albeit powerful ones that we do not experience as fictions but as true.” 4  I review this work not so that I can simply dismiss it, but because, first, it retains a very high profile in the study of culture within the discipline of sociology and, second, because, as I shall show, it makes claims either to supersede or to displace cultural studies. (I should point out here, though, that there are other branches of sociology, less visible and less influential, that offer more promising approaches to the field, especially work influenced by the Frankfurt School.) 5  My critique of trends in sociology is entirely motivated by my hope for a productive encounter between cultural studies and sociology. The benefit to both fields will be the mutual recognition that–again to quote Avery Gordon Ò”the increasingly sophisticated understandings of representation and of how the social world is textually or discursively constructed still require an engagement with the social structuring practices that have long been the province of sociological inquiry.” 6  What sociologists can contribute to the project of cultural analysis is a focus on institutions and social relations, as well as on the broader perspective of structured axes of social differentiation and their historical transformations–axes of class, status, gender, nationality, and ethnicity. You don’t, of course, have to be a sociologist to pay attention to these analytic dimensions, and there are certainly cultural studies scholars who do just this kind of work. (Stuart Hall, Tony Bennett and Angela McRobbie come to mind.) My suggestion, rather, is that the fact that such questions constitute the  raison d’être  of sociology is enough reason to want sociologists to contribute to the debate about the study of culture.

Let me give an example from my own work that illustrates how it has happened that I have been led back to my old discipline, sometimes against my own expectations. This relates to an exhibition I had planned to curate a couple of years ago. The fact that the exhibition didn’t take place in the end was, for me, as interesting as the material I explored in researching my proposal. I was invited by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to propose an exhibition for the series “Collection in Context.” These small, one-room shows have had very varied themes, and have in common only the fact that their focus is a work, or works, from the collection. Examples of exhibitions in the series include Edward Hopper in Paris, Gorky’s Betrothals paintings, works from the year 1952, and the history of the Museum itself, in its various architectural homes. My proposal was to show the work of women who were active in the circle around Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in the twenty years leading up to the founding of the Museum in 1931, women who, though for the most part their names are now not well-known, were rather high-profile in that period and indeed up to about 1950. They had several group and one-person shows in the Whitney Studio Club, which preceded the Museum, and much of their work was owned by the Whitney on its opening, was shown in the 1931 opening exhibition, and was still prominent in a 1949 exhibition which served as a memorial to Juliana Force, Gertrude Whitney’s assistant and the first director of the Museum. My first assumption was that I was engaged in the familiar feminist project of retrieval–of the re-presentation of work by women that had been “hidden from history,” as a result of the by now well-known joint effects of selective art criticism, art history, and museum practices. It turned out that a sociology of cultural production served me much better than this 1970s feminist model in understanding both the contemporary success and the consequent disappearance from view of these women artists. About a third of all the work shown and bought by Force and Whitney was by women, and there is little evidence that women artists fared worse than men in terms of exhibition. Access to this exposure was, above all else, a function of a particular (realist and figurative) aesthetic, and membership of particular social groups and networks. These two factors were related, most of the artists having trained with the same teachers at the Art Students League in New York, and being products of some version of Ashcan-style training. Of the twenty or so women artists I considered, Katharine Schmidt, Dorothy Varian, Nan Watson, Marguerite Zorach, Peggy Bacon, and Mabel Dwight were among the founder members of the Whitney Studio Club. Varian, Bacon, Schmidt, Rosella Hartman, and Lucile Blanch, among others, lived at least part of the time, as did Juliana Force, in the artists’ community in Woodstock, New York. Schmidt, Bacon, Varian, Molly Luce, and Isabel Bishop trained at the Art Students League. Schmidt worked as assistant to Juliana Force for several years. Peggy Bacon was married to the artist, Alexander Brook, who was also assistant for a while to Force. And Nan Watson was married to the critic Forbes Watson, who was Juliana Force’s lover for twelve years; she also had the largest number of one-person exhibitions at the Whitney (four), and the largest number of works owned by the Museum at its opening (eight). Although there is, of course, a lot more to say about the social relations of production and exhibition, the point is that I was inevitably led to explore those social relations as I considered the incidence of work by women, and the preference for a particular aesthetic.

The ultimate demise of that aesthetic, and the eventual decision (mine and the Whitney’s) not to proceed with the show, were also best understood in terms of a sociology of aesthetics. By the 1950s, the Whitney’s long-standing commitment to realist art had been definitively superseded by what we might call the MoMA orthodoxy–the preference for European modernism. (The consequences for realist artists affected men as well as women; the work of Alexander Brook, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Guy Pène du Bois is as little known as that of their female counterparts in the Whitney circle.) As is well known, for example from debates and confrontations in the 1970s, the Whitney since then has operated centrally within a modernist aesthetic (and, more recently, a postmodernist one). It was, finally, an “aesthetic” judgement that undermined the possibility of the exhibition, since it was deemed that the work I planned to exhibit was not “good” enough to show. Looking back on that decision, I can now see that my acquiescence in that assessment was as much a product of my own modernist prejudices as anything. (An interesting double coda to the story is that, first, the Whitney did mount a version of that show–works on paper by the same women artists, but shown in their more marginal gallery at Champion, Connecticut–and, second, that since last year the Whitney has shown signs of taking its own figurative tradition and holdings more seriously, particularly after a major show there last year of American art as seen and curated by British curators from the Tate Gallery–as The New Yorker put it, “American art viewed through eyes used to looking at Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.” 7 )

“Sociologically Impoverished” Cultural Studies

My summary of this historical movement has been necessarily rather sketchy, but I hope that the point is clear. In the case of the Whitney, the rise and decline (and possible revival) of a particular aesthetic has everything to do with institutional practices and social relations. (It also has everything to do with how one might read competing visual representations, which I have not addressed in this brief summary.) I am suggesting that the sociological perspective is invaluable in directing attention to certain critical aspects in the production of culture. As I said earlier, I am well aware that it is not only sociologists who are equipped to undertake this kind of work. For example, the focus on the ideology and practices of the museum has been prominent in some important work in recent years in what is usually called “museology” or “museum studies,” most of it done by people who are not trained in sociology. But my concern to see sociology figure more centrally in visual studies, and in cultural studies more generally, is expressed in a context in which institutional and social issues are too often ignored, and in which, as Steven Seidman has put it, the social is often “textualized.” 8  A lot has been written about the “Americanization of cultural studies,” much of this writing critical of the trend. 9  Some writers object to what they perceive as a depoliticization of the project in its move from Britain (and originally, of course, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham) to the United States–its detachment from social movements and its increasingly professionalized and rarefied life in the academy. Others, noting that the proliferation of cultural studies scholarship and teaching through the 1980s and 1990s has been largely (though not solely) in humanities departments, especially departments of English and Comparative Literature, identify an abandonment of the more sociological approach that understands culture in terms of axes of stratification and inequality (primarily class relations in the early years of the Birmingham Centre, but later also relations of gender and race). Cary Nelson, in one of the more impassioned critiques of this trend, describes American cultural studies as a kind of textualism–a set of ingenious, and perhaps politically-informed, new readings of texts, but readings that are ultimately ungrounded, arbitrary, and shallow. 10  In a recent article, the sociologist Michael Schudson makes a similar point through a careful and serious analysis of what he takes as a paradigmatic text in American cultural studies–Donna Haraway’s “Teddy Bear Patriarchy.” 11  Haraway’s paper, which, as Schudson says, has been much admired, and reprinted more than once, is a study of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and specifically its African Hall. She “reads” the African Hall, its taxidermy and its dioramas, in terms of its genesis in the 1930s, focusing on the key role of its designer, the taxidermist Carl Akeley, whose activities as explorer, hunter, and designer of museum “habitat groups” are discussed at some length. She also notes that the Second International Congress of Eugenics was held at the Museum in 1921 (though Akeley was not present at the time). Her interpretation of the African Hall, and of the Museum itself, is in terms of race, sex and class in New York City. (Of course I cannot do justice to her long and complex discussion here.) Schudson attacks the piece on a number of grounds. 12  First, he challenges key factual points in her argument (arguing, for example, that the 1921 eugenics conference was not indicative of anything significant, either at the Museum or in New York in general, since, as he points out, the following conference, in 1932, attracted less than 100 people, and the Museum is, in any case, more closely associated with the anthropologist Franz Boas, who opposed the eugenics movement). Second, he takes issue with the logic of her paper, especially her use of conversion by synecdoche to link display, ideology, and politics. (The logic, briefly, is that African Hall stands for the Museum; the meaning of the Hall lies in the original plans for it; and the African Hall in 1921 or 1926 represents the unaltered meaning of the Hall.) These links, he argues, are ultimately quite arbitrary. And this is related to his third objection, which is that Haraway’s essay is a study in interpretation whose superficial use of sociology allows her to ignore “how real people read museums” and “what meaning actual visitors take from African Hall or the museum generally.” 13  Here, I think, he is not insisting on ethnographic studies of visitors, but rather on the careful historical and social placement of the moments and artifacts she selects for analysis. (He offers a parodic equivalent to this kind of reasoning, in which New York University is essentially fascist–a logic which works through synecdoche whereby the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library stands for the University, and its architect, Philip Johnson, at one time a fascist sympathizer, stands for the Library) 14 .

Poststructuralist Sociology

Schudson’s general point is that contemporary cultural studies is “sociologically impoverished,” to its detriment. Although he is not himself particularly devoted to the Birmingham tradition in his own work, which is in the field of media studies, he concludes with the prediction that “the works of cultural studies that will last will be the sort that follow Williams and Hoggart and Thompson, in close attention to lived experience.” 15  This invocation of the “founding fathers” of British cultural studies reminds us that, despite the particular disciplinary affiliations of these writers (literature and history), Birmingham cultural studies was firmly grounded in sociology–in the texts of Weber, Marx, Mannheim, the symbolic interactionists and other sociological and ethnographic traditions. 16  Throughout its theoretical transformations–its continuing revisions of neo-Marxist thought through the work of Althusser, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, its radical re-thinking of its critical and conceptual framework in response to feminism and ethnic studies, and its rapprochement with poststructuralism–”Birmingham” work retained its primary focus on the structures of social life. Let me be clear, though, that I am emphatically  not  recommending a return to origins, or an uncritical resumption of a pre-critical sociology. The critique of the early Birmingham model from the point of view of poststructuralist theory, first made, famously, by Rosalind Coward in an article in  Screen  in 1977, has been definitive. 17  In short, a sociological model that takes categories of “class” and “gender” as unproblematically  given , and that reads cultural activities and products as  expressions  of class (and other) positions, is revealed as fundamentally determinist and theoretically naïve. As Coward shows, cultural studies must address questions of representation, signification, and the nature of the subject if it is to deal adequately with its chosen field. 18  But this poststructuralist turn in cultural studies, which renders at least problematic any talk of ‘real’ social relations, can be taken as opening the way to exactly that kind of cultural studies rejected by Nelson, Schudson and others–namely the interpretation of cultural practices undertaken without a grounding in identifiable social categories. Once we acknowledge that those social categories (class, race, gender, and so on) are themselves discursive constructs, historically changing articulations, and, ultimately, no more than heuristic devices in analysis (and, of course, in political mobilization) then where is that solidity of the social world on which a cultural studies that is  not  “purely textual” can depend?

In my view, this necessary re-thinking of the sociological project does not translate into license for “wild interpretation.” Indeed, in the past few years there have been encouraging signs within the discipline of a determination to engage with critical theory in the humanities and in cultural studies. Two sociology journals have devoted special issues to the subject of “postmodernism”– Sociological Theory  in 1991 and  Theory and Society  in 1992. 19  A 1995 conference at the University of California in Davis, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the journal  Theory and Society , whose theme was “Interpreting Historical Change at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Challenges of the Present Age to Historical Thought and Social Theory,” was notable for an interdisciplinary group of speakers, though mostly from within the social sciences. Some of the papers were informed by contemporary cultural and poststructuralist theory, and although this inevitably meant a dialogue of incomprehension (sometimes hostility) from time to time the very possibility of such a debate at a sociology conference was something new. 20 One speaker, the historian John Toews, had published an important article on the practice of intellectual history after the linguistic turn, which has already provoked debate about the nature of social science in the light of poststructuralism. 21 Another participant, historian William Sewell, is the author of an equally important essay, which, as he summarizes it, “attempts to develop a theory of structure that restores human agency to social actors, builds the possibility of change into the concept of structure, and overcomes the divide between the semiotic and materialist visions of structure.” 22  This 1992 article, published in the mainstream  American Journal of Sociology , together with his more recent work (for example, a paper on the concept of “culture” delivered at last year’s ASA meetings), while not itself an example of a poststructuralist sociology, nevertheless begins the task of reconceptualizing such key sociological terms as “structure” and “culture” in ways partly informed by, and hence hospitable to, poststructuralist theory.

A conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara, organized in February 1997 by two sociologists, was designed explicitly to address the impact of cultural studies and theory in the humanities on “cultural sociology.” Although not all the papers took on this particular invitation, the conference’s two-paragraph rationale foregrounded the need for sociologists to take account of “new interpretive approaches in the humanities,”referring to deconstruction, anti-foundational thinking, and “sites of representation and discourse.” 23  The conference was entitled “The Cultural Turn Conference,” and although, as I will show in a moment, we find this term used by sociologists to mean simply a switch of focus from institutional and structural features of society to the study of culture, in this case it has the additional meaning, indicated in its published rationale, of what we might call “taking poststructuralism seriously.” In this, it is used more or less synonymously with “the linguistic turn” and the “semiotic turn.”

A few months ago, Blackwell published a book edited by the sociologist Elizabeth Long, and sponsored by the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association, under the title  From Sociology to Cultural Studies.  Contributors include cultural studies scholars–Richard Johnson, Andrew Goodwin, Tricia Rose, George Lipsitz–as well as sociologists and anthropologists whose work is based in cultural studies–Herman Gray, George Marcus, Jon Cruz. The editor’s introduction reviews developments in British and American cultural studies and in critical theory in the humanities, as well as in the sociology of culture, and asserts her intention, with this volume, of facilitating the dialogue across these fields. Sociologist Steven Seidman proposes the “relativization” of sociology by its encounter with cultural studies (for him, primarily the Birmingham tradition, and including its own “semiotic turn” and its turn to psychoanalysis). Such a relativized sociology would, in his opinion, have a theory of the subject and of subjectivity, a critical-moral role that rejects the traditional sociological standpoint of value-neutrality, and, as a result, “more productive ways of handling problems or concerns which are considered important by some American sociologists, e.g. relating social structure and culture, meaning and power, agency and constraint, or articulating a stronger notion of culture.” 24  Other contributors take Elizabeth Long’s invitation to contribute to the book as the opportunity to stress the other side of the relationship–cultural studies’ need for a firmer sociological grounding. (Michael Schudson’s critique of Haraway, which I referred to earlier, and which appears in the book, is one example of this. Richard Johnson makes the same point, in his article on “reinventing cultural studies.”) 25  But of the seventeen contributors, almost all of them have, as Long points out in her introduction, “minimized territorial bickering” and have engaged seriously in the work at the intersection of sociology, the humanities, and cultural studies. 26

The Sociology of Culture

These developments, though, are occurring on the margins of the discipline of sociology (Long’s book remains atypical in the field,) and I am not especially optimistic about either a more extensive re-evaluation of the field or a more widespread enthusiasm among sociologists to engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue. I want to consider in particular two branches of sociology, both relevant to the study of culture, and each indifferent or hostile to cultural studies. Since between them these two fields account for most of the sociological work on culture, I believe it is important to look closely at their practices and assumptions. The first is the sociology of culture, or the sociology of the arts. This sub-specialization has gone from strength to strength in the past two decades, now constituting one of the largest sections in the American Sociological Association. At last year’s annual meetings, the Culture section merited five sessions and fifteen roundtables, on the basis of membership numbers. It has a quarterly newsletter, which publishes short but often important articles, and it has embarked on a series of volumes, published by Blackwell, of which the book edited by Elizabeth Long is the second. This work is represented most strongly by the study of arts organizations and institutions, known since the mid-l970s as “the production-of-culture approach.” Two special issues of journals appeared with that title in 1976 and 1978 ( American Behavioral Scientist  and  Social Research .) 27 Although this is not the only model for the sociology of culture, I have chosen to discuss it since it continues to be prominent in the field. 28  Moreover, its limitations are shared by most other work within the sub-discipline. A typical study, for example, investigates publishers’ decision-making criteria in two commercial publishing houses. Another looks at the role of the radio and record industries in relation to changes in the world of country music. A third studies the “gate-keeper” role of two commercial galleries in the New York art world in the 1950s. 29  These examples are all taken from the 1978 volume. But a quick review of more recent publications, and of conference presentations, confirms that twenty years later much of the work follows exactly this model. Other work has taken its departure from Howard Becker’s classic essay, “Art As Collective Action,” first published in 1974, and is devoted, like that essay, to the investigation of the social relations of cultural production, though in this case not necessarily within one institution–the roles of composer, performer, instrument-maker, bureaucrat, fund-raiser, and so on. 30

As I said earlier, most sociologists of culture and the arts base their work on pre-critical, sometimes positivistic, premises. The typical methodology is to select for analysis a specific arts organization (an opera company, an art school, a gallery), identifying its social hierarchies, its decision-making processes, and, often, the aesthetic outcomes of these extra-aesthetic factors (though it is rare that questions of  aesthetics  are permitted in this discourse, or indeed any discussion of works themselves). 31  But usually the institution is detached from both its social and its historical context, since the sociologist is dealing with the micro-social sphere. Ironically, the result is that this work is often both ahistorical and unsociological. The tenacious social-scientific commitment to “objectivity,” even in qualitative (rather than quantitative) work, blocks such scholarship from addressing certain questions of interpretation, representation and subjectivity. It is instructive to compare contemporary work in museology, much of it founded on these very questions, with a recent special issue of a social science journal on the theme of “Museum Research.” 32  Here are a couple of titles from the volume: “Art Museum Membership and Cultural Distinction: Relating Members’ Perceptions of Prestige to Benefit Usage;” “The Effect of School-based Arts Instruction on Attendance at Museums and the Performing Arts;” and “The Impact of Experiential Variables on Patterns of Museum Attendance.” (It is striking, by the way, that even Bourdieu, whose influence may be detected in a couple of these titles, can be turned into a tool for empiricism–as if he is represented simply by the tables and correlations in  Distinction . 33  The complex analysis of cultural taste, in terms of class, habitus, and cultural capital, and the social critique of the Kantian aesthetic, which underlie Bourdieu’s empirical work, take second place to the enthusiasm for surveys, number-crunching, and what C. Wright Mills once denounced as “abstracted empiricism.”) One of the more quantitative studies in the volume considers museum-goers’ responses to ninety-four questions about their social, cultural, and political values and attitudes, using multiple classification analysis to explore the implications. 34  Here it is not so much that the statistical model seems inappropriate to the subject-matter–after all, interesting correlations can be found that way–but rather that the categories of analysis are themselves untheorized.

It is true that some sociologists of culture have begun to address issues previously ignored as “humanities” issues, and at least to consider the impact of poststructuralism. The first Blackwell volume, edited by Diana Crane and published in 1994, starts with an editor’s introduction that at least mentions such theoretical perspectives. And yet Crane’s very formulations make it clear that she has not got the point. For instance:

French theories, such as semiotics and poststructuralism, have inspired a greater interest in explicit or recorded culture. These theories are concerned with the ways in which texts can shape human behavior and can be used as a source of power by elites. 35

The change in worldview of which postmodernism is a symptom has increased the salience of cultural issues throughout the discipline. Specifically, the emphasis on predictability, coherence, and consistency which underlies the sociological method in most fields is being undermined by a new perspective which views culture as unpredictable, incoherent, and inconsistent. 36

One can find other examples of such awkward, and fundamentally misunderstood, references to theory in the work of several of the contributors to the volume. The fact that the editor and three of the contributors cite a famous article by Ann Swidler, which has had the status of a classic theoretical statement of the sociology of culture since its publication in 1986, and which recommends conceptualizing culture as a “tool kit,” used by people in constructing “strategies for action,” is another indication of the lingering positivism of the field. 37  Interesting, and also relevant, here is a survey of sociology of culture syllabi undertaken by Diana Crane for the ASA in 1995, which concluded that, though postmodernism and structuralism/semiotics do appear as categories on some syllabi, the British cultural studies tradition “remains peripheral in the Sociology of Culture in the United States.” 38  The second Blackwell volume, then,  From Sociology to Cultural Studies , appears a rather radical intervention into the sub-specialization of the sociology of culture, and it will be interesting to see whether it makes a difference to on-going work in the field. The program for the 1998 ASA annual meetings, which arrived as I was writing this lecture, does not indicate much of a change in orientation. There is, in fact, a panel devoted to “Postmodern Social Theory” (there are 518 panels offered), but it is not connected to the Sociology of Culture Section, whose own panels appear, as far as one can tell from a list of titles, to be much the same as usual.

Sociological Theory and “Cultural sociology” 

The second area of sociology which foregrounds culture is sociological theory itself–that is, the theory, or theories, of society. Here in the past couple of years the term “cultural sociology” has become prominent. But this term, and its associated reference to “the cultural turn,” has nothing at all to do with language, semiotics, or poststructuralism. It describes a sociological theory whose central focus is culture–here with the broader meaning of values, beliefs, ideas, and so on, and not (as in the sociology of culture) the arts in particular. Cultural sociology, then, might be the approach employed in other sub-fileds–the sociology of law, the sociology of education, industrial sociology–that have nothing to do with culture in the narrower sense. 39  The objective of these sociological theories is to emphasize the centrality of cultural aspects of everyday life, which they consider have been rendered secondary to economic, material, structural factors within the discipline. Several of these authors are fully aware of the tradition of cultural studies, but they either consider it intellectually inadequate, or maintain that anything worthwhile to be found in cultural studies was done earlier (and usually better) by sociologists. 40 Note the not-so-subtle adverbs and other indicators of priority in these examples. A short article in the ASA Culture Newsletter by Michele Lamont, past Chair of the ASA section on Culture, states:

Of course, the relationship we have with cultural theory, and with theory more generally, is very different from that of academics working in Comparative Literature, English, or History departments. While sociological theory has  always  been at the center of our common enterprise, the interest of those scholars in ‘theory’–to say nothing of their interest in power, class, etc.–has developed from their  relatively recent  encounter with European texts (Foucault, Ricoeur, Derrida, and others). 41

We need to painstakingly explain the place of theory in our field, and how issues that are  being appropriated  by New Historicism, New Cultural History, Cultural Studies, and ‘Race Theory’ have been conceptualized and studied empirically by sociologists. 42

Jeffrey Alexander, a prominent sociological theorist, employs the term “cultural studies,” though not in a way we might recognize, in order to claim, using the same rhetorical device, that this is nothing new to sociology, but dates from the classical sociological tradition, and particularly the work of Emile Durkheim and his followers: “Both as theory and empirical investigation, poststructuralism and semiotic investigations more generally can be seen as  elaborating  one of the pathways that Durkheim’s later sociology opens up.” 43  And another example is to be found in a collection of essays on the sociological tradition known as Symbolic Interactionism, an American tradition related to Pragmatism, and deriving from the work of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, which emphasizes, and studies, the construction of meaning and of the “self” in social interaction. The book, incidentally, is entitled Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies , though nothing in it really has anything to do with either the Birmingham tradition or cultural studies work being done within the humanities in the United States. In their introduction, the editors say:

We use the term  cultural studies  to refer to the classically humanistic disciplines which have  lately  come to use their philosophical, literary, and historical approaches to study the social construction of meaning, and other topics  traditionally  of interest to symbolic interactionists. 44

The sociological focus on the social construction of identity and of meaning does sound something like the project of a poststructuralist cultural studies. But the interest in social constructionism, as in work in the symbolic interactionist tradition, does not amount to the embrace of the radical re-thinking mandated by poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theory, which exposes the constitutive role of culture and representation in the social world, as well as the discursive nature of social categories themselves. In addition, the “identity” understood in the Meadian tradition of symbolic interactionism is a socially variable, but psychically fixed entity, whose coordinates are the traditional sociological ones of social position and social role.

Although Jeffrey Alexander appropriates the term “cultural studies” for sociology, his views on Birmingham cultural studies are clear–and totally dismissive–in a review he co-wrote in 1993 of the  Cultural Studies  reader which came out of the 1990 Illinois conference; actually, they are  immediately  clear in the title of the review, which is “The British are Coming . . . Again! The Hidden Agenda of ‘Cultural Studies.” 45  Like the symbolic interactionists, Alexander uses the term “cultural studies” to identify the type of sociological theory and sociological analysis he proposes. 46  In 1988, he edited a book entitled  Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies . The book is premised on an argument spelled out in his introduction, namely that the later work of Durkheim–especially his work on religion–provides an excellent model for contemporary sociology, given its primary focus on symbolic process. (Durkheim is, of course, primarily perceived as the sociologist who stressed “social facts,” and those features of social life that are “external” to social actors; in the usual schematic history of classical sociology, he is contrasted in this with Max Weber, the begetter of “interpretative” sociology, with its focus on meaning and its methodology of  Verstehen .) Alexander claims that Durkheim turned to the study of religion “because he wanted to give cultural processes more theoretical autonomy.” 47  He suggests that there are parallels with the work of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, and Foucault, and that in some cases this is more than coincidence, but rather the unacknowledged influence of Durkheim. He goes on to review the work of certain sociologists, and some anthropologists, who have pursued Durkheim’s later theory (Edward Shils, Robert Bellah, Victor Turner, Mary Douglas,) and he outlines a project for a late-Durkheimian sociology, which he calls “cultural studies.” But, despite the names of structuralist and poststructuralist writers, this project is innocent of some of central theoretical insights of those writers. This is Alexander’s formulation of such a sociology:

[T]he major point of departure is  The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life , which functions as a model for explaining central processes in secular social life. The other shared emphases follow naturally from this. They concentrate, first, on what might be called motivated expressive behavior as compared with conscious strategic action. This emotionally charged action, moreover, is not seen psychologistically, but instead as the basis for ritualization. It is conceived as action organized by reference to symbolic patterns that actors–even if they have a hand in changing them–did not intentionally create. 48

His own chapter in the book is on Watergate and Durkheimian sociology, and he summarizes it thus:

Using Weber and Parsons, I try to connect Durkheim’s later ideas to a broader theory of social structure. Rituals, I suggest, are simultaneously effects and causes of social crises; they open these liminal periods to symbolic and moral issues of the most profound kind. 49

The vocabulary here–”motivated expressive behavior,” “the basis for ritualization,” “action organized by reference to symbolic patterns,” “effects and causes”–reveals, I think, a fundamental conception of culture and society that is at the same time humanist, potentially mechanistic, and grounded in the sort of “layered” model of the social world which the crudest notions of base and superstructure once gave rise to (though I should add that Alexander’s hostility to Marxism is at least as energetic as his hostility to cultural studies and poststructuralist theory). In fact, some of the essays in the book are both interesting and quite sophisticated. 50  But Alexander’s theoretical formulae, and his conception of sociology as cultural studies, continues to operate with an understanding of discrete layers–the social/institutional, and the cultural/symbolic. This is not quite culture-as-tool kit (and in fact, in the Durkheim book, he briefly criticizes Swidler’s article) but it is not far removed from it in the end.

Sociology and Cultural Studies

I have spent some time discussing what has been called ‘the cultural turn’ in sociology to try to identify the grounds for a possible rapprochement with cultural studies, which, as I argued earlier, needs to work within a sociological perspective. I have pointed out that the sociology of culture (the study of the arts) has, for the most part, little interest in the critical revision of its categories of analysis. Cultural sociology, or sociological theory which foregrounds culture, on the other hand, claims both to preempt cultural studies and to improve on it. This applies to both symbolic interactionism and late-Durkheimianism. But in doing so, it retains the fatal weaknesses produced by ignoring a central aspect of cultural studies, namely a theory of representation. As Steven Seidman has put it, “American sociology, even today, has not made a semiotic turn.” 51  And, in the words of Roger Silverstone, a British media studies scholar, “the sociology of culture still finds comfort in the modernist securities of classification both of approach and subject matter.” 52  This means, amongst other things, that sociologists, while understanding the social construction of meaning and even of the social self, retain a concept of the subject as coherent, unified and stable. It also means (and this is a point made by Seidman) that they renounce the moral-critical role of cultural studies, maintaining the traditional social-scientific conception of the scholar as objective and value-neutral. And, of course, it means that sociologists cannot (yet) grasp the discursive nature of social relations and institutions. Obviously sociology, even after the “cultural turn,” will not do as a model for cultural studies.

In the context of this disciplinary intransigence, I base my hope for a growing dialogue between sociology and cultural studies (and between sociology and visual studies) on two things: first, what seems to me to be an increasing acknowledgement within cultural studies of the importance of ethnography, of the study of social processes and institutions, and of the understanding of those structural features of cultural life that the sociological imagination has the ability to illuminate; and second, the work of some sociologists, small in number and marginalized though they might be, who have extended their view and their conceptual frameworks into new engagements with critical theory. I am not asking literary critics or art historians to become sociologists, nor, for that matter, sociologists to become cultural studies scholars. We will continue to have discipline-based interests and discipline-based training. But cultural studies, after all, has always been the cross-disciplinary collaboration of interested scholars, and the body of work produced within that field is the product of those intellectual exchanges and influences. By now it is a cliché to say that cultural studies is not one thing–even that it cannot be defined. Stuart Hall, director of the Birmingham Centre throughout the decade of the 1970s, and still a major figure in the field, has said this, 53  as have the editors of various volumes of essays on cultural studies. 54 t is probably impossible to agree on any essential definition or unique narrative of cultural studies.” Grossberg et al., 3.] The major reason for this is that it is in the nature of cultural studies to proceed in symbiotic relationship with other disciplines. (I leave aside the question of whether or not cultural studies can itself be called a discipline.) And that relationship is, and has always been, an ad hoc affair. The particular configuration of scholars involved and, hence, disciplines represented in the multiple sites of cultural studies work has never, as far as I know, been a matter of planning, designing, and hiring. Rather, just as was the case in Birmingham in 1964, it is the product of a group of people, with a shared interest in culture (though not necessarily a shared idea of what they  mean  by ‘culture’) beginning to meet, to discuss each other’s work, to mount seminars and conferences and then, with any luck, to achieve the institutionalization of their collaborative practice in centers, programs, and teaching. Throughout the 1970s, as cultural studies programs were started in the United Kingdom (usually in polytechnics rather than universities), what was really striking was the great variety of intellectual combinations that emerged: literary criticism and sociology; psychology, linguistics and communication theory; literature, history and media studies. I know rather less about the 1980s spread of cultural studies in this country, though it seems to me that a good deal of American cultural studies has been a more intra-disciplinary, literary-studies affair. Here too, though, there have been new initiatives in which cross-disciplinary collaborations have become common.

This serendipitous nature of cultural studies, which I see as nothing but a great advantage, means it continues to be an open venture. My hope, then, is that sociologists will increasingly participate in its conversations. Historians and anthropologists are already part of the collective project (including here at Rochester), but to date sociologists have, for the most part, refrained from taking part. 55  At the risk of sounding as though I  am , after all, recommending a return to origins, I would point out the productive collaborations in Birmingham, which in the early years and still now have included sociologists. (In fact, the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies a few years ago merged with the Department of Sociology at that University.) In the United States, such conversations would both guarantee the re-sociologizing of cultural studies and ensure the long-overdue theoretical development of sociology.

Thanks to Douglas Crimp, Michael Holly, Paul Jones, Keith Moxey and Tony King for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

© Journal of InVisible Culture, 1998

•  Simon Frith, “Literary Studies as Cultural Studies–Whose Literature? Whose Culture?”  Critical Quarterly  43 (Spring 1998): 3-26. In England, O-level exams were taken at age sixteen. ↩
•  The phrase was originally C. Wright Mills’s. See his  The Sociological Imagination  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959). ↩
•  Howard Singerman. The book is  Art Subjects: Making Artists in the American University  (Berkeley: University of California Press: 1999). ↩
•  Avery Gordon,  Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination  (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 11. ↩
•  Paul Jones made this point to me, as an important corrective to what might seem to be a too generalized account of American sociology. ↩
•  Gordon, 11. ↩
•  Listings,  The New Yorker , 15 September 1997. ↩
•  The term is used, for example, by Steven Seidman, “Relativizing Sociology: The Challenge of Cultural Studies,” in  From Sociology to Cultural Studies: New Perspectives,  ed. Elizabeth Long (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 37-61. Quotation from p. 41. ↩
•  See, for example, Mike Budd, Robert M. Entman and Clay Steinman: “The Affirmative Character of U.S. Cultural Studies,”  Critical Studies in Mass Communication  7 (1990): 169-184; Joel Pfister, “The Americanization of Cultural Studies,” reprinted in  What is Cultural Studies? , ed. John Storey (London: Arnold, 1996), 287-299. ↩
•  Cary Nelson, “Always Already Cultural Studies: Two Conferences and a Manifesto,”  The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association  14 (Spring 1991): 24-38. Nelson describes this work as a “recycled” semiotics, which he equates with textualism; however, as Keith Moxey has pointed out, however, semiotics at its best is not merely a “textual” enterprise: “Semiotics and the Social History of Art,”  New Literary History  22 (Autumn 1991): 985-999. ↩
•  Donna Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936,” reprinted in  Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science  (New York: Routledge, 1989), 26-58. ↩
•  Michael Schudson, “Cultural Studies and the Social Construction of ‘Social Construction:’ Notes on ‘Teddy Bear Patriarchy,'” in Long, 379-398. ↩
•  Schudson, 386. ↩
•  Ibid., 388. ↩
•  Ibid., 395. ↩
•  Stuart Hall reviews this intellectual trajectory in his essay “Cultural Studies and the Centre: Some Problematics and Problems,” in  Culture, Media, Language , ed. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe and Paul Willis (London: Hutchinson, 1980), 15-47. ↩
•  Rosalind Coward, “Class, ‘Culture’ and the Social Formation,”  Screen  18, (Spring 1977): 75-105. ↩
•  See also Victor Burgin’s introduction to  In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 1-36. Burgin reviews the development of cultural studies in Britain, and addresses in particular the turn to semiotics and psychoanalysis by those in the field. ↩
•   Sociological Theory  9 (Fall 1991), “Symposium on Postmodernism” and  Theory and Society  21 (August 1991), “A Forum on Postmodernism.” ↩
•  Two examples of such an exchange were Michael Kennedy’s response to a paper by Russell Jacoby, and Judith Stacey’s response to a paper by Michèle Lamont, the respondent in each case challenging more traditional models of social analysis. ↩
•  John E. Toews, “Intellectual History after the Linguistic Turn: The Autonomy of Meaning and the Irreducibility of Experience,”  The American Historical Review  92 (October 1987): 879-907. Although the article was published some time ago, Toews’s invited participation at the conference indicated a new openness among some social scientists to a certain rapprochement with critical trends in the humanities. ↩
•  William H. Sewell, Jr., “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation,”  American Journal of Sociology  98 (July 1992): 1-29. Quotation from p. 1. ↩
•  Taken from the Web site for the conference at the time: culture.html at www.sscf.ucsb.edu. I should say that I didn’t attend the conference, and am guessing the nature of the papers given on the basis of their titles and of the speakers’ published works. ↩
•  Seidman, 55. ↩
•  Richard Johnson, “Reinventing Cultural Studies: Remembering for the Best Version,” in Long, 451-488. ↩
•  Long, 1. ↩
•  “The Production of Culture” special issue of  American Behavioral Scientist  19 (July/August 1976) (re-published that year by Sage Publications Ltd., edited by Richard A. Peterseon) and “The Production of Culture” special issue of  Social Research , 45 (Summer 1978). ↩
•  See for example Richard A. Peterson, “Culture Studies through the Production Perspective: Progress and Prospects,” in  The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical Perspectives , ed. Diana Crane (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1994), 163-189. ↩
•  Essays by Walter W. Powell, Richard A. Peterson, and Marcia Bystryn in  Social Research  45 (Summer 1978). ↩
•  Howard S. Becker, “Art as Collective Action,”  American Sociological Review  39 (1974). The article was later expanded in his book,  Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). ↩
•  I have written at greater length about these characteristics of U.S. sociology of culture. See for example  The Social Production of Art  (London: Macmillan, 1993), Chapter 2. ↩
•  “Museum Research,” special issue of  Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Literature, the Media and the Arts  24 (November 1996). ↩
•  Pierre Bourdieu,  Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste  (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984). ↩
•   Paul DiMaggio, “Are Art-museum Visitors Different from Other People? The Relationship between Attendance and Social and Political Attitudes in the United States,” in  Poetics  24 (November 1996), 161. ↩
•  Diane Crane, “Introduction: The Challenge of the Sociology of Culture to Sociology as a Discipline,” in Crane, 1-20. Quotation from p. 5. ↩
•  Ibid. ↩
•  Ann Swidler, :Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,”  American Sociological Review  15 (April 1986): 273-286. I should note that sociologists like Crane and Swidler, and others committed to versions of “qualitative” sociology, would certainly object to accusations of positivism. But my point is that scientistic methodologies can prevail  whatever  is being studied, meanings as much as observed behavior. ↩
•  Diana Crane, “Culture Syllabi and the Sociology of Culture: What Do Syllabi Tell Us?”  Newletter of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association  10 (Winter 1996): 1, 6-8. Quotation from p. 7. ↩
•   Indeed, one session at the 1997 ASA meetings was devoted to reviews of the “return to culture” in a number of sub-specializations, under the general panel heading “The Return to Culture in American Sociology.” ↩
•  Herman Gray also makes this point, in passing: “Professional mainstream theorists strongly identified with specialties like social theory and the sociology of culture hold fast to the claim that sociology long ago dealt with the issues and questions that now appear under the sign of cultural studies.” Herman Gray: “Is Cultural Studies Inflated? The Cultural Economy of Cultural Studies in the United States,” in  Disciplinarity and Dissent in Cultural Studies , ed. Cary Nelson and Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 203-216. Quotation is from p. 210. ↩
•  Michele Lamont, “Crisis or No Crisis: Culture and Theory in Sociology–The Humanities and Elsewhere,”  Newsletter of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association  6 (Spring 1992): 8-9. Quotation on p. 8, my italics. ↩
•  Lamont, 9, my italics. ↩
•  Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Introduction: Durkheimian Sociology and Cultural Studies Today,” in  Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies , ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1-21, my italics. Quotation from p. 6. See also Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith, “The Discourse of American Civil Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies,”  Theory and Society  22 (April 1993): 151-207. ↩
•  Howard S. Becker and Michal M. McCall’s introduction to  Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies , ed. Howard S. Becker and Michal M. McCall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 1-15. Quotation from p. 4. I have italicized “lately” and “traditionally.” ↩
•  Steven Jay Sherwood, Philip Smith and Jeffrey Alexander, “The British are Coming . . . Again! The Hidden Agenda of ‘Cultural studies,'” Contemporary Sociology  22 (May 1993): 370-375. ↩
•  He uses the term interchangeably, and therefore confusingly, with the term “cultural sociology.” See Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Cultural Sociology or Sociology of Culture? Towards a Strong Program,”  Newsletter of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association  10 (Spring-Summer 1996): 1, 3-5. ↩
•  Alexander,  Durkheimian Sociology , 2. ↩
•  Ibid., 11. ↩
•  Ibid., 14. ↩
•  For example, Eric Rothenbulher’s study of mass strikes as ritual and interpretation, whose discussion of the symbolic meaning of such conflict has quite a bit in common with Birmingham work on subculture. Eric Rothenbulher, “The Liminal Fight: Mass Strikes as Ritual and Interpretation,” in Alexander , Durkheimian Sociology , 66-90. ↩
•  Seidman, 43. ↩
•  Roger Silverstone, “The Power of the Ordinary: On Cultural Studies and the Sociology of Culture,”  Sociology  28, (November 1994): 991-1001. Quotation on p.993. ↩
•  “Cultural studies has multiple discourses; it has a number of different histories. . . . It included many different kinds of work.” Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies,” in  Cultural Studies , ed. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (New York: Routledge, 1992), 277-286. Quotation from p. 278. Also: “Cultural studies is not one thing; it has never been one thing.” Stuart Hall, “The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities,”  October  53, (1990): 11-90. Quotation from p. 11. ↩
•  For example: “[I ↩
•  The University of California, Santa Barbara, is one exception to this generalization. ↩

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So What Is Culture, Exactly?

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• Archaeology
• Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• M.A., Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara
• B.A., Sociology, Pomona College

Culture is a term that refers to a large and diverse set of mostly intangible aspects of social life. According to sociologists, culture consists of the values, beliefs, systems of language, communication, and practices that people share in common and that can be used to define them as a collective.

Culture also includes the material objects that are common to that group or society. Culture is distinct from social structure and economic aspects of society, but it is connected to them—both continuously informing them and being informed by them. Common cultures include those shaped by regional traditions, religious beliefs, and historical experiences.

How Do Sociologists Define Culture?

Culture is one of the most important concepts within sociology because sociologists recognize that it plays a crucial role in our social lives. It is important for shaping social relationships , maintaining and challenging social order, determining how we make sense of the world and our place in it, and shaping our everyday actions and experiences in society. It is composed of both non-material and material things.

In brief, sociologists define the non-material aspects of culture as the values and beliefs, language, communication, and practices that are shared in common by a group of people. Expanding on these categories, culture is made up of our knowledge, common sense, assumptions, and expectations. It is also the rules, norms, laws, and morals that govern society; the words we use as well as how we speak and write them (what sociologists call " discourse "); and the symbols we use to express meaning, ideas, and concepts (like traffic signs and emojis, for example). Culture is also what we do and how we behave and perform (for example, theater and dance). It informs and is encapsulated in how we walk, sit, carry our bodies, and interact with others; how we behave depending on the place, time, and audience; and how we express identities of race, class, gender, and sexuality, among others. Culture also includes the collective practices we participate in, such as religious ceremonies, the celebration of secular holidays, and attending sporting events.

What Is Material Culture?

Material culture is composed of the things that humans make and use. This aspect of culture includes a wide variety of things, from buildings, technological gadgets, and clothing, to film, music, literature, and art, among others. Aspects of material culture are more commonly referred to as cultural products.

Sociologists see the two sides of culture—the material and non-material—as intimately connected. Material culture emerges from and is shaped by the non-material aspects of culture. In other words, what we value, believe, and know (and what we do together in everyday life) influences the things that we make. However, it is not a one-way relationship between material and non-material culture.

Material culture can also influence the non-material aspects of culture. For example, a powerful documentary film (an aspect of material culture) might change people’s attitudes and beliefs (i.e. non-material culture). This is why cultural products tend to follow patterns. What has come before in terms of music, film, television, and art, for example, influences the values, beliefs, and expectations of those who interact with them, which then, in turn, influence the creation of additional cultural products.

Why Culture Matters to Sociologists

Culture is important to sociologists because it plays a significant role in the production of social order . The social order refers to the stability of society based on the collective agreement to rules and norms that allow us to cooperate, function as a society, and live together (ideally) in peace and harmony. For sociologists, there are both good and bad aspects of social order.

History of Culture

Rooted in the theory of classical French sociologist Émile Durkheim , both material and non-material aspects of culture are valuable in that they hold society together. The values, beliefs, morals, communication, and practices that we share in common provide us with a shared sense of purpose and a valuable collective identity. Durkheim revealed through his research that when people come together to participate in rituals, they reaffirm the culture they hold in common, and in doing so, strengthen the social ties that bind them together. Today, sociologists see this important social phenomenon happening not only in religious rituals and celebrations like (some) weddings and the Indian festival of Holi but also in secular ones—such as high school dances and widely attended, televised sporting events (for example, the Super Bowl and March Madness, both of which one could consider part of American culture).

Famous Prussian social theorist and activist Karl Marx established the critical approach to culture in the social sciences. According to Marx, it is in the realm of non-material culture that a minority can maintain unjust power over the majority. He reasoned that subscribing to mainstream values, norms, and beliefs keeps people invested in unequal social systems that do not work in their best interests, but rather, benefit the powerful minority. Sociologists today see Marx's theory in action in the way that most people in capitalist societies buy into the belief that success comes from hard work and dedication and that anyone can live a good life if they do these things—despite the reality that a job which pays a living wage is increasingly hard to come by.

Both theorists were right about the role that culture plays in society, but neither was exclusively right. Culture can be a force for oppression and domination, but it can also be a force for creativity, resistance, and liberation. It is also a deeply important aspect of human social life and social organization. Without it, we would not have relationships or society.

What Is Culture?

• Culture is a dynamic and integral aspect of society that encompasses both non-material aspects like values and beliefs, and material aspects such as objects and technology, all of which shape and are being shaped by society.
• Sociologists value culture for its role in maintaining social order and collective identity, as well as its influence on everyday actions and societal norms.
• Influential sociologists like Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx highlighted culture's dual role in fostering social cohesion and perpetuating power dynamics.

Luce, Stephanie. " Living wages: a US perspective ." Employee Relations , vol. 39, no. 6, 2017, pp. 863-874. doi:10.1108/ER-07-2017-0153

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How to Write a Sociological Essay: Explained with Examples

This article will discuss “How to Write a Sociological Essay” with insider pro tips and give you a map that is tried and tested. An essay writing is done in three phases: a) preparing for the essay, b) writing the essay, and c) editing the essay. We will take it step-by-step so that nothing is left behind because the devil, as well as good grades and presentation, lies in the details.

Those who belong to the world of academia know that writing is something that they cannot escape. No writing is the same when it comes to different disciplines of academia. Similarly, the discipline of sociology demands a particular style of formal academic writing. If you’re a new student of sociology, it can be an overwhelming subject, and writing assignments don’t make the course easier. Having some tips handy can surely help you write and articulate your thoughts better. 

[Let us take a running example throughout the article so that every point becomes crystal clear. Let us assume that the topic we have with us is to “Explore Culinary Discourse among the Indian Diasporic Communities” .]

Phase I: Preparing for the Essay  

Step 1: make an outline.

[Explanation through example, assumed topic: “Explore Culinary Discourse among the Indian Diasporic Communities” . Your outline will look something like this:

Step 2: Start Reading 

Once you have prepared an outline for your essay, the next step is to start your RESEARCH . You cannot write a sociological essay out of thin air. The essay needs to be thoroughly researched and based on facts. Sociology is the subject of social science that is based on facts and evidence. Therefore, start reading as soon as you have your outline determined. The more you read, the more factual data you will collect. But the question which now emerges is “what to read” . You cannot do a basic Google search to write an academic essay. Your research has to be narrow and concept-based. For writing a sociological essay, make sure that the sources from where you read are academically acclaimed and accepted.  

Step 3: Make Notes 

This is a step that a lot of people miss when they are preparing to write their essays. It is important to read, but how you read is also a very vital part. When you are reading from multiple sources then all that you read becomes a big jumble of information in your mind. It is not possible to remember who said what at all times. Therefore, what you need to do while reading is to maintain an ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY . Whenever you’re reading for writing an academic essay then have a notebook handy, or if you prefer electronic notes then prepare a Word Document, Google Docs, Notes, or any tool of your choice to make notes. 

As you begin reading, note down the title of the article, its author, and the year of publication. As you read, keep writing down all the significant points that you find. You can either copy whole sentences or make shorthand notes, whatever suits you best. Once you’ve read the article and made your notes, write a summary of what you just read in 8 to 10 lines. Also, write keywords, these are the words that are most used in the article and reflect its essence. Having keywords and a summary makes it easier for you to revisit the article. A sociological essay needs a good amount of research, which means that you have to read plenty, thus maintaining an annotated bibliography helps you in the greater picture.  

Annotate and divide your notes based on the outline you made. Having organized notes will help you directly apply the concepts where they are needed rather than you going and searching for them again.] 

Phase II: Write a Sociological Essay

Step 4: writing a title, subtitle, abstract, and keywords .

The title of any document is the first thing that a reader comes across. Therefore, the title should be provocative, specific, and the most well-thought part of any essay. Your title should reflect what your essay will discuss further. There has to be a sync between the title and the rest of your content. The title should be the biggest font size you use in your essay. 

[Explanation through example, assumed topic: “Explore Culinary Discourse among the Indian Diasporic Communities” . 

Keywords are an extension of your abstract. Whereas in your abstract you will use a paragraph to tell the reader what to expect ahead, by stating keywords, you point out the essence of your essay by using only individual words. These words are mostly concepts of social sciences. At first, glance, looking at your keywords, the reader should get informed about all the concepts and themes you will explain in detail later. 

Your keywords could be: Food, Diaspora, Migration, and so on. Build on these as you continue to write your essay.]   

Step 5: Writing the Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion 

Your introduction should talk about the subject on which you are writing at the broadest level. In an introduction, you make your readers aware of what you are going to argue later in the essay. An introduction can discuss a little about the history of the topic, how it was understood till now, and a framework of what you are going to talk about ahead. You can think of your introduction as an extended form of the abstract. Since it is the first portion of your essay, it should paint a picture where the readers know exactly what’s ahead of them. 

Since your focus is on “food” and “diaspora”, your introductory paragraph can dwell into a little history of the relationship between the two and the importance of food in community building.] 

The main body is mostly around 4 to 6 paragraphs long. A sociological essay is filled with debates, theories, theorists, and examples. When writing the main body it is best to target making one or two paragraphs about the same revolving theme. When you shift to the other theme, it is best to connect it with the theme you discussed in the paragraph right above it to form a connection between the two. If you are dividing your essay into various sub-themes then the best way to correlate them is starting each new subtheme by reflecting on the last main arguments presented in the theme before it. To make a sociological essay even more enriching, include examples that exemplify the theoretical concepts better. 

The main body can here be divided into the categories which you formed during the first step of making the rough outline. Therefore, your essay could have 3 to 4 sub-sections discussing different themes such as: Food and Media, Caste and Class influence food practices, Politics of Food, Gendered Lens, etc.] 

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: As the introduction, the conclusion is smaller compared to the main body. Keep your conclusion within the range of 1 to 2 paragraphs. 

Step 6: Citation and Referencing 

This is the most academic part of your sociological essay. Any academic essay should be free of plagiarism. But how can one avoid plagiarism when their essay is based on research which was originally done by others. The solution for this is to give credit to the original author for their work. In the world of academia, this is done through the processes of Citation and Referencing (sometimes also called Bibliography). Citation is done within/in-between the text, where you directly or indirectly quote the original text. Whereas, Referencing or Bibliography is done at the end of an essay where you give resources of the books or articles which you have quoted in your essay at various points. Both these processes are done so that the reader can search beyond your essay to get a better grasp of the topic. 

How to add citations in Word Document: References → Insert Citations 

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: Always make sure that your Bibliography/References are alphabetically ordered based on the first alphabet of the surname of the author and NOT numbered or bulleted. 

Phase III: Editing 

Step 7: edit/review your essay.

Hello! Eiti is a budding sociologist whose passion lies in reading, researching, and writing. She thrives on coffee, to-do lists, deadlines, and organization. Eiti’s primary interest areas encompass food, gender, and academia.

Culture and Identity

Table of Contents

Last Updated on March 15, 2024 by Karl Thompson

Culture and Identity is an module on the AQA’s A-level Sociology specification. It is usually taught in the first year of study.

In sociology culture refers to the shared norms and values of a group of people.

In A-level sociology (AQA) students are required to understand different conceptions of culture, including subculture, mass culture, folk culture, high and low culture, popular culture and global culture.

Culture: Functionalist Perspectives – Durkheim and Mauss’ views of culture. They had an evolutionary view of culture. Culture reflects divisions among social groups. ‘Primitive’ societies have simply social structures, hence simple cultures. industrial societies with complex structures have more complex cultural systems.

Dominic Strinati: A Critique of Mass Culture Theory – The two main criticisms are that it is not homogenous and consumers are not entirely passive.

John Berger’s Was of Seeing – Berger developed a Marxist analysis of art. He argued that historically the ruling classes were portrayed positively in art. On the other hand the working classes were portrayed as immoral and lazy. This justified the social class order. However he did not argue art was merely a tool of elite, some artists acted autonomously.

Postmodernism and Popular Culture – In postmodern society the distinction between society and culture breaks down. Style becomes more important than substance and there is a decline of metanarratives.

Global Culture – Where large numbers of people across the world come to share common values. This post explores evidence for the emergence of a global culture such as the establishment of global institutions.

Socialisation

Socialisation is learning the norms and values of a society. It is how individuals learn culture.

Socialisation – Another quite introductory post. This once focuses on how institutions socialise individuals through the life course.

Feminist Perspectives on Socialisation – a summary of Anne Oakley’s work on how children are socialised into gendered identities through the processes of canalisation, manipulation, verbal appellations and gendered activities.

Gender Socialisation in Schools – An examination of how gender segregation in schools shapes traditional gender identities. Peer groups can reinforce this through ‘borderwork’.

Social Interactionism and Socialisation – Handel argued that without socialisation brain-development did not happen. He argued that socialisation enabled children to develop the ability to communicate, empathise and a self-concept, which fed into the process of biological maturation. Crucial to this process is not just parents but also peer groups.

Herbert Blumer’s Theory of Society – Blumer argued that meanings emerged out of human interaction and that society emerged out of individuals co-ordinating their actions based on their shared meanings. He thus saw society as very fluid and open to change as interpretations and meanings changed.

The Presentation of the Self in EveryDay Life – A summary of Ervin Goffman’s classic about how we act out our identities in social life as if we were on a stage.

Social Identity

the relationship of identity to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexuality and social class in contemporary society.

Social class

The Great British Class Survey –

Social Class and Identity –

The Precariat –

Gender and Sexuality

Ethnicity in the 2021 UK National Census – The breakdown of the UK population according to the 2021 National Census. There are more ethnic minorities than in 2011.

Defining Youth – The United Nations defines youth as between the ages 15-24. However the age range can vary, as do conceptions of what youth means.

Ageing in the UK – An overview of some of the statistics related to ageing. Includes stats on the relationship between health, poverty and old age and some social policy implications.

Generational Inequality Keeps on Growing – a summary of how disadvantaged young people are today compared to their parents and grandparents.

The Myth of the Generational Divide – The idea that there is a ‘war’ between the older and younger generations may well be a media construction.

Globalistion and Identity

National identity.

Nationalism and Modernity – Ernst Gellner argued nations emerged out the industrial revolution and modernity. They are not ‘primal’ or natural sources of identity, but historical social constructions.

The relationship of identity to production, consumption and globalisation

Globalisation, Nations and National Identity – Globalisation has resulted in more global identities, but also more people retreating into more local, nationally based identities.

Sarah Thornton Club Cultures – An ethnographic study of club cultures in the 1990s. Best characterised as neo-tribes.

Exam questions

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• DOI: 10.4324/9780203205594
• Corpus ID: 144810099

Essays on the Sociology of Culture

• K. Mannheim
• Published 1992

102 Citations

The sociology of knowledge: a preliminary analysis on the sociological approach to the development of islamic religious scıences, criticism of marxism as a proto-theory of cultural capital and the “new class”: j. w. machajski’s theory of intelligentsia, the new sociology, from political to social generations, authoritative knowledge and heteronomy in classical sociological theory*, reflections on the theatrical nature of a human being: suggestion and its hidden potential, from political to social generations: a critical reappraisal of mannheim’s classical approach, remarks on technology and culture, the protestant ethic and the spirit of political power: sociopolitical conditions underlying the development of calvinism, on the civilising of objectification. language use, discursive patterns and the psychological expertise of work planning, related papers.

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Immigration: An Overview

Table of Contents

Historical context, causes of immigration, types of immigration, the process of immigration, consequences of immigration, integration and assimilation.

• Future Trends in Immigration

Immigration is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that has shaped human societies for centuries. It involves the movement of people from one country to another, often driven by a combination of factors including economic opportunities, political stability, social networks, and personal aspirations. This overview seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of immigration from a sociological perspective, examining its causes, processes, and consequences. By exploring these aspects, we can better appreciate the intricate dynamics that influence migration and its impact on both sending and receiving societies.

Early Human Migrations

Human history is characterized by a series of migrations. Early human migrations were often driven by the search for food, safety, and more hospitable climates. As hunter-gatherer societies transitioned to agrarian economies, the patterns of migration changed, leading to the establishment of permanent settlements and the rise of civilizations.

Colonialism and Industrialization

The era of colonialism marked a significant phase in global migration patterns. European powers expanded their territories, resulting in the forced migration of millions through the transatlantic slave trade and the voluntary migration of settlers seeking new opportunities. The Industrial Revolution further accelerated migration, as people moved from rural areas to urban centers in search of employment. This period also saw significant international migration, with individuals moving across continents in pursuit of better economic prospects.

Economic Factors

Economic motivations are among the most prominent drivers of immigration. Individuals often migrate to improve their living standards and secure better job opportunities. Economic disparities between countries create a pull factor, attracting migrants to wealthier nations with higher wages and better employment prospects. Conversely, economic instability , unemployment, and poverty in the home country act as push factors, prompting individuals to seek opportunities abroad.

Political Factors

Political instability , conflict, and persecution are critical factors influencing migration. Refugees and asylum seekers flee their home countries to escape violence, human rights abuses, and political oppression. Political factors can also include changes in immigration policies and international relations, which may either facilitate or restrict the movement of people across borders.

Social and Environmental Factors

Social networks and family reunification play a significant role in migration decisions. Individuals are more likely to migrate to countries where they have family or community connections, providing social support and easing the integration process. Environmental factors, such as natural disasters, climate change , and resource scarcity, also drive migration. These conditions can render regions uninhabitable, forcing people to relocate in search of safer and more sustainable living conditions.

Voluntary vs. Involuntary Migration

Immigration can be classified into voluntary and involuntary migration. Voluntary migrants move to another country by choice, often driven by economic, educational, or personal reasons. In contrast, involuntary migrants, such as refugees and asylum seekers, are compelled to leave their home countries due to conflict, persecution, or natural disasters.

Legal vs. Undocumented Immigration

Legal immigration refers to the movement of individuals who enter and reside in a country through official channels and with proper documentation. Undocumented immigration involves individuals who enter or remain in a country without legal authorization. Undocumented migrants often face precarious living conditions and limited access to services and protections, making them vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

Pre-Migration Phase

The decision to migrate is influenced by a combination of push and pull factors, as well as personal circumstances. During the pre-migration phase, individuals gather information about potential destination countries, weigh the risks and benefits, and make plans for their journey. Social networks and technology play crucial roles in this phase, providing migrants with information and support.

Migration Journey

The migration journey can be fraught with challenges and uncertainties. Migrants may face physical and legal obstacles, such as border controls, restrictive immigration policies, and hazardous travel conditions. The journey can also be emotionally and psychologically taxing, as individuals leave behind familiar environments and face the unknown.

Post-Migration Phase

Upon arrival in the destination country, migrants undergo a process of adaptation and integration. This phase involves navigating new social, cultural, and economic landscapes, learning the language, finding employment, and establishing social connections. The degree of integration varies among migrants, influenced by factors such as legal status, social networks, and the receptiveness of the host society.

Economic Impact

Immigration has significant economic implications for both sending and receiving countries. In receiving countries, migrants often fill labor shortages, contribute to economic growth , and bring diverse skills and perspectives. However, concerns about job competition and wage suppression can lead to tension and conflict. In sending countries, remittances from migrants can provide vital financial support to families and communities, but the loss of skilled labor can hinder economic development.

Social and Cultural Impact

Immigration contributes to the cultural diversity and dynamism of societies. Migrants bring their traditions, languages, and cultural practices, enriching the social fabric of the host country. This cultural exchange can lead to greater tolerance, innovation, and creativity. However, it can also pose challenges to social cohesion and identity, particularly when cultural differences are perceived as threats to national values and norms .

Political Impact

Immigration can influence political landscapes in both sending and receiving countries. In receiving countries, immigration often becomes a contentious political issue, shaping public opinion and policy debates. Political parties and movements may emerge in response to perceived threats or opportunities associated with immigration. In sending countries, diaspora communities can play significant roles in political and social movements, influencing governance and development.

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