sociology of culture: unit 2
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CultureasSocialCreationCreatedSp22.pptx
Culture as a Social Creation
Jennifer L. Adams, M.A.
Introduction
As we learned during the last chapter:
Cultural objects are meaningful to human beings living in a social world.
The social world, otherwise random and chaotic, is meaningful because of the cultural lens through which people view it.
But questions remain:
Who makes specific cultural objects?
How are they endowed with meaning?
Where does culture come from?
At first glance it seems to be “from the efforts of individual geniuses.”
This seems to explain individual cultural objects like a song or a book.
But what about culture in the broader sense of a pattern of meaning?
It seems as if it has always been there (because it is so taken for granted).
The sociological approach finds a middle way by asserting that culture and cultural works are collective, not individual, creations.
Even individual works of genius are social in their genesis.
Durkheim and the Social Production of Culture
Introduction
Social chaos – essentially anarchy – felt as if it was always on the horizon to early social thinkers (who lived during rapidly changing and often unstable times in the 18th and 19th centuries).
So, this begged the question: what will hold society together?
Durkheim studied everything from suicide to religion to systems of education to science with this question in mind.
Aside: Durkheim’s Suicide Study – Anyone know the basics?
The Problem of Modern Social Life
In modern life people can be sorted in many different ways.
Occupation Fields of Expertise
Beliefs Life Experiences
What are some other ways we sort people today?
He argued that this is different from the traditional world where people were joined together because of their sameness (mechanical solidarity).
The shared beliefs and understandings of a people during earlier times represented their collective consciousness, and this governed thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors.
The Problem of Modern Social Life
Change came when societies grew in both size and density.
People began to specialize in the type of work they do (division of labor).
Institutions became more specialized, too.
Ex: Family’s Role Diminished Replaced by Medicine, Education, Etc.
see p. 50 for details
With such differentiation, how can a society hold together?
Durkheim’s Possible Answers
Organic Solidarity – mutual interdependence based on the necessity of the exchange of goods and services in the modern world
Professional Associations
Social Bonds: The Role of Religion
Ultimately Durkheim believed that every society must have some form of collective representation – clearly demonstrating to members of a society their connection to one another – to bind it together.
As he was a functionalist, he believed that all human institutions are responses to a profound human need of some kind.
Which need(s) does religion fulfill?
And it is one source of this essential collective representation.
Collective Representation
All categories of thought and essential ideas – religion included – are social.
Ex: Time – 7 Day Week (see p. 51 for details)
Human beings are made of two parts:
An individual biological component
And a shared social component
Collective Representation
Culture (religion included) is a collective representation in 2 ways:
The cultural objects are created by social individuals.
In their cultural products, people represent their social experiences such as work, joy, pain, love, and so on.
As such studying human creations like religion can tell us something about culture/society.
Culture as Collective Representation
The implication of Durkheim’s work is that to understand a certain group of people, you must study the expressive forms through which they represent themselves to themselves (and less importantly to others).
Durkheim’s approach tries to take away the mystery about the creation of cultural objects and culture in general by revealing the many social activities – such as interaction, cooperation, and organization – involved in their creation.
In other words, he made it clear that the individual and the social are innately and inextricably connected. ( of Sociology in many ways!)
The Collective Production of Culture
Symbolic Interactionism
Most branches of social theory and even the sociological paradigms assume certain things – like norms and roles – are givens.
But interactionism concerns itself with how people actively construct, learn, and maintain these things via interaction.
The self is seen not as pre-existing but as the result of social interaction.
Interactionists are interested in the micro-settings through which culture is transmitted via the socialization process.
Ex: Pot Smoking (see pages 56-7 for details)
Looking-Glass Self (Cooley 1902)
Per Cooley, interaction is comprised of 3 phases:
1. the self imagines another’s response to his or her behavior or appearance
2. the self imagines he other person’s judgment
3. the self has an emotional reaction (such as pride or joy or shame) to that imagined judgment
Examples?
Example: Bump Into Someone Imagine They Are Hurt and Angry Imagine Person Thinks You’re Clumsy and Thoughtless Feel Embarrassed or Ashamed Apologize
This helps establish the norm of apologizing for bumping into someone because the apology is the start of a new interaction designed to restore the disrupted social harmony.
Taking the Role of the Other (Mead 1934)
Developing humans gradually learn to take the role of the other through 4 stages:
Imitation – no taking on of any roles, simply mimicking
Play – taking the role of a specific other person
Game – taking on the role of multiple other people in a specific context
Generalized Other – taking on the role of multiple other people
in multiple contexts (the internalization of society, especially
social norms including morals)
Dramaturgical Analysis (Goffman 1959)
Identity is developed through interactions with others and requires confirmation from others.
The self tries to project a certain set of meanings onto those with whom it interacts and in return tries to interpret the meanings constructed by others.
Essentially, the self is an actor performing a role before an audience.
If the performance succeeds, we confirm our identity to others and ourselves.
If the performance fails, we feel embarrassed because our identity is in question.
Impression Management (Goffman 1959)
This act for others is all about impression management, attempting to influence the way you are perceived by others.
Snow and Anderson (1993) studied homeless people in a Texas city.
Found that they try to do “identity work” in that they manage their interactions in such a way as to foster a specific set if impressions.
Distancing: Stressing that they are “not like” the others.
Embrace: Emphasizing their identity as homeless people.
Fantasizing
Details can be found on pages 57-59.
Subcultures
Subcultures
People belong not simply to a single group or community but to a variety of them.
Mead (1934) Identified 2 Types of Social Groups:
Abstract – function only indirectly as social groups
Ex: Debtors
Concrete – functioning social units in which members are directly related to one another
Ex: Democrats
If social groups deviate from mainstream culture enough, they become subcultures, or a culture within a culture.
Many social movements start out as subcultures.
Subcultures
Within a subculture operates a powerful set of unique symbols, meanings, and norms that bind the group together.
Subcultures make meaning, producing cultural objects significant to insiders ad mystifying to outsiders, and help people construct symbolic boundaries (ways we distinguish “people like me” from “others”).
Examples?
Sociologists have long been interested in subcultures, early on posing the question of when they would assimilate but now more often focusing on permanent subcultures.
Ex: Detectives at NYPD and Little League Teams (see p. 59-61)
20
Cultural Innovation and Social Change
Cultural Lags and Leads
Societies change. Culture changes. And changes in one realm influence changes in the other.
But we are back to the same old question: Is it that cultural innovation leads to societal change (c s) or that societal change leads to cultural innovation (s c)?
The reflection model we discussed mostly seems to suggest that the social world changes and then culture shifts to mirror that change.
This is known as the cultural lag hypothesis (Ogburn 1922) in which material conditions change and then culture changes afterwards.
Cultural Lags and Leads
But there are obvious examples in which non-material culture leads, not lags, behind material conditions. Such as?
Ex: Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (beliefs [c] economic model [s])
Ex: Decline of Smoking (see p. 64 for details)
Ex: Influence of Genius/Prophet/Innovator
Ex: Popularity of Reality TV (and other new forms of expression)
So we must look to cultural innovation where culture seems to lead, rather than lag behind, social change.
Cultural Innovations
Cultural innovations may occur randomly and unpredictably, but:
1. certain periods prove more likely to generate innovations than others
2. even the innovations follow some conventions
3. certain innovations prove more likely than others to become established
Let’s examine each of these in turn.
Certain Periods Innovation
Cultural innovation seems to show dramatic peaks and valleys.
What causes a sudden burst of cultural innovation?
Explanations Posited:
“Unsettled times” (Swidler 1986)
“Disturbance in the moral order” (Wuthnow 1987)
Loosening up of the dominant ideology (Williams 1973)
Commonality? Under certain conditions – massive demographic shifts, war, sudden economic change – the old rules no longer apply and a moral vacuum appears in which people look for new guidelines and meaning.
Should they not fill this vacuum, it results in anomie – an unpleasant disorientated state that occurs during rapid social change.
Cultural innovation – the production of new objects and meanings – emerges as a response to anomie.
Innovations Follow Some Conventions
Although cultural innovations may seem dramatic, cultural creators typically respond to conventions rather than ignore them.
Ex: Becker’s (1982) Typology of Artists (see p. 66 for details)
Establishment of Innovations
Cultural creators may produce something new, but not all such innovations will become established.
Established – happens when conditions allow something to become known, used, functional, apt, and repeatedly triggered
Sometimes these conditions include the hospitality or receptiveness of the state, luck, coincidence, and so on.
Conclusion
Summary
We looked at several sociological theories of the creation of culture.
Functionalism: Durkheim and Culture as a Collective Product
Symbolic Interactionism: Interaction Cultural Objects
We discussed subcultures and what sets them apart.
And we examined cultural lag and cultural innovation.
Next, we will begin to turn our attention to the audience or recipients of culture and the organizations of production and distribution of culture.
Any questions?
