TYPES OF CULTURE – Part 1

High culture

The term high culture, is usually used to refer to cultural creations that have a particularly high status. They are regarded by arbiters of cultural taste as the epitome of the highest levels of human creativity. The product of long established art forms are usually seen as examples of high culture. They include opera, the work of highly regarded classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart, the paintings of artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, and critically acclaimed literature such as the works of Shakespeare and Milton. For many you use the term, high culture is seen as aesthetically superior to lesser forms of culture, such as the next three types we will consider.

Kidd (2002), for example, identified the highest intellectual achievement of a group in the fields of science, art, literature, theatre, music, etc. As a vital component of culture. Kidd is referring to high culture – this controversial and sometimes elitist concept suggests that some cultural creations should have the greatest status because they represent the highest levels of human creativity and aesthetically superior to other cultural product and leisure activities.

(Meanings
Epitome: a person or thing that is typical of or possesses to a high degree the features of a whole class: He is the epitome of goodness.
Arbiters: Someone chosen or appointed to judge or decide a disputed issue; an arbitrator. )

Link to EDUCATION:

Cultural capital.

Neo- Marxist theorist Pierre Bordieu, in his analysis of educational achievement in France in the 1960s, suggested that middle-class success in education is not just a result of economic advantage but also of cultural advantage. Bordieu argues that through the process of socialisation and the children of the wealthy learn to understand and appreciate high culture as this is the type of culture that their parents appreciate. The school curriculum tends to be based on cultural forms that are seen as rare and worthy and a child who is familiar with this culture is more likely to succeed low culture is the counterpart of high culture and is seen as inferior to it. Low culture is associated with the taste of lower socio-economic groups. Low culture is sometimes called mass culture. The definition of this can be seen below.

Folk Culture

Folk Culture refers to the culture of ordinary people, particularly those living in pre-industrial societies. Dominic Strinati (1995) says that ‘folk culture is often taken to arise from the grass roots, is self-created and autonomous and directly reflects the lives and experiences of the people.’

Examples of folk culture include traditional folk songs and traditional stories which have been handed down from generation to generation. Folk culture has been seen by some theorists as being less worthwhile than high culture, but nevertheless as worthy of some respect. Strinati describes this view in the following way: ‘folk culture can never aspire to be art, but its distinctiveness is accepted and respected.’ It is at least an authentic culture and not one that is artificially created.

Mass culture

For its critics, mass culture is seen as less worthy than folk culture. If our culture is seen as characteristic of pre-modern, preindustrial societies, mass culture is a product of industrial societies. Mass culture is essentially a product of the mass media, and examples include popular feature films, television soap operas and recorded pop music. While folk culture was created by ordinary people, mass culture is only consumed by them. From this viewpoint of the audience become passive members of a mass society, unable to think for themselves.

Concerns about the negative effects of the mass media on culture were raised by something called the Frankfurt School of sociologists. This was after the Second World War. Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer were dismissive of the content of the mass media and its effects on society.

Writing from a Marxist perspective, the Frankfurt School claimed that a mass economic production had led to the development of mass society. This was caused by the breakdown of neighborhoods as people moved from their traditional communities in search of work. Where the breakdown of these working class communities traditional folk culture was disappearing. The mass media then became very important in these people’s lives in helping isolated individuals make sense of their world. This can be seen today we live in a very isolated world in that many of us live far away from our families and we do not even know our neighbours. Therefore the media have become like our friends and provide company. This Frankfurt School argued that because we sit and watch or listen to this trash we have become passive in society and do not challenge media output.

Theodore Adorno was a trained classical musician and was one of the members of the Frankfurt School of sociologists. Adorno criticised popular music for offering the working class easy pleasure by producing a simplified type of music in order to make a profit. Although there appears to be a diversity of popular music available to consumers, all popular music is simple in structure and just variations of the same theme. So because it is simple it is shallow in some way, shape or form…

The Frankfurt School saw the culture industry is as bad for the working classes as they actually stopped them thinking about important political issues i.e their low status in society. They also believed that the media is a source of vast profits for owners but they also create false needs in the working class through advertising. E.g Most people want to look rich, keep up with their neighbours, wear what appears to be designer clothes, drive expensive cars; this need is created by the capitalists through the media. The super fat cats who profit from us. We are being brainwashed to buy….we are getting poorer and the fat cats are becoming morbidly obese!!!

Popular culture
The term popular culture is often used in a similar way to the turn mass culture. Popular culture includes any cultural product appreciated by large numbers of ordinary people with no great pretensions to cultural expertise; the example, TV programs, pop music, mass-market films such as Star Wars and the Harry Potter series, and popular fiction such as detective stories. Popular culture is commercially produced and includes objects, images, artifacts, literature and the music of ‘ordinary’ people.

However, while the mass culture is usually used as a pejorative term ie a term of abuse -this is by no means always the case with the term popular culture. For some people do see popular culture are shallow or even harmful, others, including argue that it is just as valid and as worthwhile as high culture.

Stuart Hall and other writers working at the Centre for contemporary cultural studies in Birmingham (CCCS) led the way in trying to understand popular culture. The CCCS analysed the lives and cultures of ordinary people and how class, gender and ethnicity influenced youth and the development of youth subcultures.

Global culture

The idea of global culture implies that we are all becoming part of one, all embracing culture that affect all parts of the world.

It can be argued that we are becoming a very small world. For example we can communicate instantly with somebody in a completely different part of the world through e-mail, phone or fax. We can be in another country in a matter of hours. We can have staff that lived in another part of the world. Cultural commodities like clothes, music and films become more and more globally produced, people in countries around the world increasingly share a set of symbols that are used to create their identity. This is also known as globalisation. Meaning that the world is getting smaller. It has been argued by some that we share a global culture identity and that our identity now is increasingly based on what we consume; for example people all around the world express themselves and their identity through fashion music and all the other cultural commodities they buy.

Bilton et al (1996) suggest that this speed of change may result in us losing our sense of what is important to us and our identity in our own society. It has been said by some sociologists that our identity is increasingly unstable as a consequence of this globalisation.

Politicians in many countries are concerned about the effects of globalisation on culture; in Britain, Gordon Brown has called for a debate on ‘Britishness’ and what this means.
The war on Terror is another example of how people are becoming increasingly concerned about what makes up our identity and how we perceive ourselves and the society in which we live.

The mass media communicate ideas, images and identities to people around the world. People in different countries are likely to be watching similar things on their TV and in the cinema as the same products are marketed around the world.

One could argue that cultural imperialism is something that can be seen at work through the media. Cultural imperialism is a process in which an economically powerful nation is able to impose its own culture on another smaller less powerful nation. This can easily be done through the media. For example the West and Western civilisation is often seen as the ideal in developing countries and this is communicated through various media forms like music and television.

Mike Featherstone (1990) believes it is clear that people throughout the world do not share a similar lifestyle – I mean how much exactly do you guys have in common with a Indian from the American plains? However, he does believe that it is reasonable to talk of the globalisation of culture, as a process in which some aspects of culture cross state boundaries and become widely dispersed across most areas of the world – not everything!

Subculture

Subculture is a term widely used in sociology to refer to ‘groups of people that have something in common with each other (ie they share a problem, an interest, a practice) which distinguishes them in a significant way from other social groups.’ the term has been applied to a wide range of groups, including communities who live close together and have a shared lifestyle, user groups who share a common musical tastes and enjoy the same leisure activities (for example, ravers), ethnic groups, people who share the same religious beliefs, members of the same gang, and so on.

Albert Cohen (1955) developed an explanation of delinquent youth subculture is. Cohen tried to explain why young working class men were more likely to commit crime than other social classes but these crimes are seen to be committed for ‘kicks’ or fun. Cohen claimed that young working class men are a group who statistically are least likely to succeed in education and therefore find it more difficult than most to get well-paid jobs. In areas where there were many young working class men that suffered from status frustration (ie they were frustrated by their position in society), there was a strong possibility of a subculture developing.

In this subculture some of the norms and values of mainstream society were inverted or turned upside down. This became a way of getting back at a society in which they could not succeed.
Some of the norms that might be acted out by a delinquent subculture in school might be rudeness to teachers, outside school the members of the subculture might be violent and commit petty crime and vandalism.

Research study: James Patrick 1973 ‘A Glasgow gang observed’
In the late 1950’s James Patrick (not his real name) joined a violent Glaswegian gang for four months. One incident he observed illustrated Cohen’s ideas well. One day the gang went to a public library and made lots of noise, they then set a waste paper thin on fire before running away.