2 page--week 4

Culture

Jonathan R. Wynn, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Culture

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Culture J O N A T H A N R . W Y N N , U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A S S A C H U S E T T S A M H E R S T

WHAT IS CULTURE?

M aterial cu ltu re v s. sy m b olic cu ltu re

H igh cu ltu re v s. p op u lar cu ltu re

C u ltu re as v alu es vs. cu ltu re as a way of life

CULTURE IS A CYCLE

The rom antic im a ge of an a rtist

H ow is cu ltu re p rod u ced ?

C on su m in g c u ltu re

Su b cu ltu res

HOW CULTURE WORKS

H ow cu ltu re creates in eq u alities

H ow cu ltu re creates g rou p s an d b ou n d aries

THE CULTURE JAM

C u ltu re jam as a m ix

C u ltu re jam as a problem

C u ltu re jam as a solu tion

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INTRODUCTION

£ How does music help us understand the complexity of culture?

You close your eyes and feel the music. Your head bobs up and down. You see the color of the lights through your eyelids.

Are you close to the stage, with bodies and sweat pressed to your shoulders, or do you hang back? Do you feel a connection with the strangers around you? With the band? What kind of music is it? Do the lyrics reflect your experiences or do they transport you into another perspective? Where are you? A packed underground club? A stadium? Or a library cubicle, listening on Beats headphones?

Music is a powerful force in our lives. It is also a multibillion-dollar industry, with organizational and technological changes that shape how music is made and experienced. Music is just one kind of culture, shaping our views of the world, connecting people near and far.

What kind of music is this crowd listening to? (Source)

We humans produce far more than what we need for mere survival. Our intellect allows for expansive creativity, self-reflection, and communication. We transform our living environment. We share

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ideas and values. Culture, broadly, is everything we make and consume—including our ideas, attitudes, traditions, and practices—beyond that bare necessity. Music may very well be one of the earliest forms of culture humanity produced.

“Culture” is one of the most difficult words for a sociologist to use. Sociological research on culture varies, but most work is committed to the idea that the symbolic and expressive aspects to social life—the beliefs and values we hold, as well as the practices and activities we engage in—are worth examination. Thinking in this way, burritos and Beyoncé, athleisure and college athletics, juggalos and graffiti all uncover great sociological questions.

Opening this chapter with a few questions about how you experience music illustrates how we can begin to think about culture from a sociological perspective. Émile Durkheim allows us to think about how much of social life works via culture: he notes that symbols (material or immaterial objects that groups affix meaning to), deployed through rituals (routinized and highly important group activities), give a community its specific character. In my research on festivals, for example, I walked through the Country Music Association’s CMA Fest in Nashville, cataloging common references in song lyrics (dirt roads, pickup trucks, cigarettes, Red Solo Cups) performed on stage that resonated with audiences. The annual ritual of the country music festival creates collective meanings for festivalgoers—crystalizing shared sentiments about America (small towns, simple living, reckless but “honest” fun)—through this common set of symbols.

This chapter explores how to understand culture sociologically. The first section provides a set of key tensions for making sense out of the complexity of what we mean when we use the term “culture.” Then I discuss how sociologists analyze culture as an object: how culture is made and produced. A third section explains how culture shapes social life. The final section discusses some wider issues raised in studies of culture, from globalization to cultural appropriation.

WHAT IS CULTURE?

£ What is the difference between high culture and popular culture?

£ How has the idea of culture changed over time, and what are the tradeoffs?

£ Is culture a set of beliefs, and how are those beliefs put into practice?

£ What does it mean to say that culture is a way of life?

We start by differentiating between high and popular culture, material and symbolic culture, and ‘culture as values’ vs. ‘culture as activity.’ Later sections discuss how culture is produced and consumed and how tastes shape groups and boundaries.

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M aterial cu ltu re v s. sy m b olic cu ltu re Think about clothing and fashion, college fashion in particular. Humans produce clothing to stay

cool in the summer and warm in the winter. But if that were its only purpose, everyone would wear the same kind of clothes—perhaps a brown tunic or blue denim overalls. People don’t just use clothing for warmth. We communicate a lot through our fashion. There is a material component to what we wear (fabric, dye, the production of clothing) and a symbolic component (words, images, style). Sociologically, this is material culture—physical goods, often placed in an economic system—and symbolic culture—beliefs, values, language.

Published in 1912, Émile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life explains how symbolic culture shapes social life. He described how a set of images and words—a bundle he called collective representations—can represent a particular culture; the purpose, or function, is to create social order and cohesion. For Durkheim, religion separates symbols into categories of sacred and profane, constructing social boundaries between people who recognize a set of collective representations as worthy of reverence and those who do not. Although he makes the argument primarily through religion, his work points to the importance of culture in shaping social life.

We can certainly see how collective representations work in the U.S. American collective representations might be baseball, the “Stars and Stripes,” apple pie, and the like. Similarly, college fashion might be part of the collective representations for your college or university, which could also include a mascot or a motto, colors (e.g., “Spartan Green”), an iconic campus building, or statue, all of which were created, debated, and then shape the character of your college community.

No matter the school, students tend to wear college gear a lot. I have, however, noticed new fashion trends. On my campus, I used to see a lot of jeans, mixed with an assortment of sweatpants and sweatshirts, usually with our campus logo in maroon. Increasingly, I see skin-tight leggings. The material is light, stretchable, odor-resistant, and sweat-wicking. It’s useful for yoga and stretching at the gym and now, apparently, sitting in class. Athleisure, as it’s called, is a growing market trend; it combines the causal style of sweatpants with a more fitted look. My campus, apparently, is becoming a large (and rather expensive) yoga studio.

Trends in the relationship between symbolic and material culture can be quite telling. Symbolically, athleisure is part of a growing tendency toward the “casualization” of fashion, intersecting with health and fitness trends in a way that makes everyday clothes less formal. And then there is the material aspect: USA Today notes that yoga pants (like corduroy pants and khakis before them) are cutting into the jeans market.1 And what does it say about masculinity that men are unlikely to wear leggings, and companies sell them “luxury sweatpants” instead? For centuries, it was quite common for men to wear leggings—exemplified by the painting of Henry VIII, below—but today it’s unlikely one of your professors would wear yoga pants to class, regardless of their gender. Sometimes controversies highlight cultural change: what do you think of three women being kicked off a United Airlines flight in 2017 because an attendant deemed their leggings “improper dress”?

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Yoga pants with punk studs (Source); Portrait of Henry VIII by the workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger (Source).

Fashion can be profoundly meaningful, and unpacking the relationship between its symbolic and material elements produces insights into cultural change and even how groups cohere. More on this later.

Material culture vs. symbolic culture is only one of the tensions we can discuss, however.

H igh cu ltu re vs. p op u lar cu ltu re Most classical art was designed for the enjoyment of a few. When people used the term culture, the

term once denoted only high culture: cultural goods made for and enjoyed by elite groups. This included oil paintings, ballet, the opera, fancy cuisine, and the like. High culture was “fine art,” often hidden away from the masses.

The Industrial Revolution allowed for the mechanical reproduction of cultural goods for broader society. In contrast with high culture, industry manufactures popular culture: heavily produced and commercialized goods made for and consumed by a large audience. This could also be called mass culture or low culture. While high culture is attuned to elite and upper-middle class tastes, and has an aura that denotes its exceptional quality, popular culture is commonly associated with pleasure, the mundane, and the masses. Although you might hear of elites, well, being elitist about popular culture (e.g., dismissing superhero movies as frivolous and trivial) or working-class folks rejecting high culture (say, avoiding art museums), most sociological studies of culture start from the assumption that all culture has value, whether it’s Spiderman or the Mona Lisa.

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Figure 1: Family Income and Attendance at Select High Culture Events

Source: Data from “A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002-2015,” p. 4

Making clear distinctions between high and popular culture makes it easy to demonstrate how the lines can become quite blurred. For example: if you text “send me” and a keyword to 572-51, the San Francisco Museum of Art (SFMOMA) will text an image of a piece of “high art” back to you via the more “popular culture” of our cellphones. This probably started partly as self-promotion by the museum, but SFMOMA is also only able to exhibit a fraction of its collection and wanted to make its artworks more accessible. I texted “send me culture” and received a 1976 Andy Warhol portrait of crooner Paul Anka. I texted “send me high culture” and received a 1936 photograph of a circus high-wire act. Try it and see what you get!

Is tearing down the walls between high and popular culture a positive development? Culture theorist Walter Benjamin noted with some melancholy that, while allowing for greater accessibility, the mass reproduction of art destroys the aura—a glow of authentic and unique creative labor—of high culture.2 Benjamin would likely not have approved of a museum texting art. And yet, transformations in high and popular culture are complex tradeoffs. SFMOMA was designed by award-winning architect Mario Botta to showcase its works of art. The spaces and architecture—a combination of high material

A production of the opera Don Quixote. (Source)

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and symbolic culture—aim to produce an emotional experience. But only a fraction of the country’s population is able to travel to San Francisco and pay the $25 admission fee. Now, you can get the museum’s art delivered right to your phone while you’re sitting on the toilet!

Figure 2: Decline in Attendance at Select High Culture Events

Source: Data from “A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002-2015,” p. 5

What examples successfully bridge high and low? Here’s one: In 2016, Beyoncé released Lemonade, a chart-topping and award-winning visual art album with songs packaged along with a feature-length gritty, breathtaking, Instagram-filter-hued film. Lemonade is a concept album: a set of songs centered on a set of themes (infidelity, revenge, and the historical impact of race relations on intimate and community relationships in the African American community) that tell a story; the video is divided into chapters based on themes, from intuition and denial all the way to redemption. While Lemonade was a chart-topping and infectiously catchy example of pop culture, the idea of the concept album originated with classical German musical compositions by Beethoven and Brahms. (Pink Floyd’s The Wall is a famous example of a pop concept album.) Lemonade is high culture enough to be artistic, popular culture enough to bring down the house at the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show.

Such changes in high and popular culture spark much debate: Is high culture really high culture when it’s accessible to everyone? What is gained and lost? Does it matter and, if not, why not?

30%

33%

32%

34%

38%

37%

26%

33%

36%

37%

36%

37%

33%

21%

36%

40%

42%

46%

41%

35%

23%

18-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65-74

75+

Overall decline in Attending Ballet, Classical or Jazz Music, an Arts Museum, Opera, Musical or Play

2002 2008 2012

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C u ltu re as v alu es vs. cu ltu re as a w ay of life From Max Weber to 1950s American sociologist Talcott Parsons, social scientists learned to

approach culture as a unified system of values (moral beliefs) and norms (rules and expectations by which a group guides the behavior of its members).3 Culture, in this way, bends our beliefs into actions.

A well-known example is the conversation around the “culture of poverty.” In the 1960s, Oscar Lewis studied Mexico and Puerto Rico, finding that the conditions of poverty there created a set of widespread values and norms.4 In a report, U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan claimed that a “tangle of pathologies” resulted from the combined effects of slavery, economic marginalization, and racism.5 Although these studies argued that this culture is a result of poverty and inequality—that is, that individuals who are poor create pathological cultural values and norms—Lewis and Moynihan’s work was incorrectly interpreted as blaming the poor for their own marginalization. The debate transformed into the perception that poor folks are poor due to their own habits and preferences, their own culture.

Research has since shown that poor Americans hold values that are similar to the wider American population, even among the homeless.6 William Julius Wilson’s The Truly Disadvantaged sought to understand how culture helps those trapped in poverty to cope with and come to understand their circumstances.7 He found high social isolation among urban African Americans living in areas of extreme poverty; changes in urban economies had led to declining employment rates for Black men and rising female-headed households. But Wilson found the same values among this population as among wider American society, including a strong belief in marriage and a work ethic.

Studies of organizations illustrate how values and beliefs are rather stubborn. In the middle of the last century—with the rise of an affluent middle class after World War II—sociologists turned toward understanding how organizations create their own culture, nurturing the institution’s goals and developing a world of meaning that shapes how its members think and act.8 In order to explain the 1986 Challenger disaster—when the NASA space shuttle exploded due to a structural failure in one of its booster rockets— Diane Vaughan studied how NASA’s organizational culture shaped problem-solving among engineers and scientists in a way that allowed such an event to occur. She found widespread awareness that booster rockets were faulty before 1986, and yet, even in the face of a potential catastrophe, NASA’s practices were difficult to change because the organization’s culture made such risks a normal part of their calculations.9

It might appear that culture is external to us, that we are fully socialized into a culture’s ideas, language, and patterns of interaction. And yet, people also adopt and adapt culture from moment to moment. Our collective norms, values, and ideas are not as stable as they appear. Contrary to the “culture as values” approach, don’t we also think of culture as a set of practices, a way of life?

Take ethnographer Elijah Anderson’s Code of the Street, a detailed account of a primarily African American neighborhood in Philadelphia. He shows how kids were separated into groups based on cultural cues (how they dressed, the language they used, their mannerisms and gestures) that put them into two groups: “street” and “decent.” Some were successful in the contrasting spheres of the street and school

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because they were able to switch between those different norms, each suited to particular situations. Anderson called this skill code switching: adopting a set of informal rules and manners that are appropriate in a specific setting.10 For example, some kids would embrace the slang, manner, and clothing of the street to avoid ridicule on their blocks, and then adopt the norms of middle-class culture at school in order to succeed in the eyes of their teachers.

While responding to the “culture as values” perspective, Ann Swidler offered an alternative understanding of how we practice culture in real life. Swidler describes culture as a cultural toolkit: sets of beliefs, values, and attitudes that we learn to use in different situations.11 We use the cultural tools that solve particular problems or help us in the specific situation we’re facing. Culture isn’t a single system of beliefs and practices that we have all learned and accepted. It’s a strategic activity: people making decisions about what might work best in a given situation.

Culture is continually practiced and repurposed in every interaction. Those in Anderson’s study, for example, used culture strategically. Think about it: if culture wasn’t remade and repurposed, everyone would still be wearing corduroy pants from the 1970s! (Or is that back in fashion?) Furthermore, those with a wider cultural repertoire are equipped to handle a greater variety of conditions and those who hold a “cultural tool” well matched for a particular situation are more successful.12

In thinking about culture as both a set of values and a set of practices, it becomes a kind of paradox: Culture exists outside of us as individuals, shaping our understandings of the world, yet it is also constantly remade and repurposed through everyday interactions.13

Review Sheet: What is culture? Key Points • Culture can be understood in a variety of ways, from a division between high and popular

culture to analyzing the material and symbolic components of a cultural good. • Culture can be seen as a system of values and norms, whether at the macro-level of a

society or at the more middle (or ‘meso’) level of an organization. • Culture can also be seen as a set of practices people use strategically that can change over

time. Key People • Elijah Anderson • Émile Durkheim • Ann Swidler • Diane Vaughan

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Key Terms • Code switching – Adopting a set of informal rules and manners attuned to a particular

setting. • Collective representations – A set of images and words that represent a particular

culture • Cultural toolkit – Using a stash of beliefs, values, and attitudes that we learn how to

deploy based upon the situation at hand. • High culture – Cultural goods made for and enjoyed by elite groups. • Material culture – Physical goods, not necessarily essentials, often placed within an

economic system. • Norms – Rules for group behaviors, informed by values, specifying appropriate and

inappropriate activities. • Popular culture – Heavily produced and commercialized goods made for and

consumed by a large audience. • Rituals – Routinized and highly important group activities. • Symbolic culture – Aspect of culture that includes beliefs, values, norms, and language. • Symbols – Material or immaterial objects that groups affix meaning to. • Values –Moral beliefs.

CULTURE IS A CYCLE

£ How do sociologists study the way cultural and artistic goods are made?

£ What are the culture industries and how have they changed?

£ Is consuming culture an active or passive activity?

£ How do subcultures and fan cultures help us think about culture as a process?

The rom antic im a ge of an a rtist Author James Baldwin once wrote that “perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must

actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.”14

The image of a solitary creative artist, deep in thought, certainly sounds right. When you think of a cultural good—a song, say, or a novel—being made, do you imagine a musician and his favorite acoustic guitar, trying a new chord progression? A fiction writer in a cabin, slouched over her laptop tapping out her next novel?

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Baldwin’s image is quite romantic, and yet, even in their most isolated forms, artists are always part of a vast network of groups and institutions that shape every cultural object. Those guitars and laptops were all produced in places far away from where they were used, and yet the conditions of production are quite important to the overall artistic endeavor.15 The structures of chord progressions and fiction writing were established well before he strummed G, C, and D chords and before she made the decision to describe a murder scene for the opening chapter of her mystery novel. An author like Baldwin might write alone, but he was certainly influenced by the writers he socialized with in artistic neighborhoods like New York City’s Greenwich Village and Paris’s Left Bank. And what of all the audiences who listen and read those finished products?

The artist is one part of a cultural cycle. In this section, we look at that larger circuit, which includes production, consumption, and remaking of culture.

H ow is cu ltu re p rod u ced ? Where do cultural goods come from, and under what conditions have they been made?

If we maintained Baldwin’s romantic notion of the artist, we might believe that Elvis invented rock- and-roll. From a more sociological perspective, the rise of rock-and-roll music in the 1950s wasn’t due to his individual genius, or even to a White man copying the style of Black singers, but resulted from technological advances (the electric guitar, amplification), new market demands (young and Black radio audiences with money to spend), and music label business decisions.16 Music genres are made in the studio and through a wide social system, not by a single artist.

The mass production of cultural goods requires a vast system of people and organizations called the culture industries. In his study of country music from its early commercialization through radio and recorded music production, Richard Peterson outlined different systems through which music was created, distributed, evaluated, and preserved. This is called the “production of culture” perspective. Using country music as a case, Peterson showed how macro-level arrangements in the culture industries (e.g., laws, technology) shape innovations and standardize cultural production; over time, changes in these macro-level forces are critical factors in making the culture that we see and hear.17 Peterson describes country music as being “fabricated” to underscore how cultural goods are subjected to this industrial process. He noted, for example, that there was a great deal of diversity and innovation in country music when many record labels competed against each other for consumers, but that the genre became increasingly homogeneous as larger labels bought smaller ones, monopolizing the production of the majority of country music.

In the last few decades, a handful of companies have controlled an increasing share of the cultural industries. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted limits on how many U.S. media outlets can be owned by the same group or company. The resulting corporate consolidation—the acquisition of smaller corporations by larger ones—has created a more homogenous symbolic and material cultural landscape. In the 1980s, 50 corporations owned 90% of the media; now just six companies own over 90% of the U.S. media market: 20th Century Fox, Paramount, Disney, Universal, WB, and Sony.18 The music industry

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consolidated in the 1960s and again in the 1990s and 2000s as larger record labels purchased smaller ones. Even large live music events are in the hands of two companies: Live Nation and AEG own major music festivals like Bonnaroo and Coachella.19

Figure 3: Academy Award Nominations by Race, 2000-2015

Source: 2010 U.S. Census and Academy Awards Database

Who produces these cultural goods? Non-White and non-Hispanic individuals make up only 13% of writers and artists, 20% of designers, and 17% of fine artists.20 Women are just 2% of music producers, 12.3% of songwriters, and 22.4% of professional musicians.21 In 2015 and 2016 there was a major critique of the Oscars (the most prestigious U.S. film awards ceremony) for the lack of diversity among those nominated for awards, despite the release of well-received films like Creed, Selma, and Beasts of No Nation, which featured diverse casts and creators. The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag trended when no person of color was nominated for an acting award; in addition, no women were nominated for Best Director or Best Cinematographer in 2016. While much of this activism has focused on nominations of Black actors and film creators (such as directors), since 2000, the proportion of acting nominations received by African Americans has nearly matched their percentage of the overall U.S. population. Less attention has been paid to Latinos and Asian Americans in Hollywood, who remain underrepresented among Oscar nominees. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, which awards the Oscars, has recognized that more work is needed, including diversifying its membership: 94% of the Academy Awards voting members are White (and most are men), which may affect the types of films that are likely to win awards.

Just as technology changed access to SFMOMA’s art collection, technology can open greater access to cultural production. In 2015, Tangerine, a Do It Yourself (DIY) film about transgender sex workers in Los Angeles, made waves for being shot entirely on an iPhone 5s, edited with an $8 app, and accompanied by music found via a free streaming service called Soundcloud. It was a hit at the Sundance Film Festival.

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As an outgrowth of the production of culture approach, scholars have examined changes in work and occupations in the cultural realm. Sociologist Alexandre Frenette, for example, looks at the pivotal role of interns: the army of free and temporary labor that is essential to many cultural industries. He finds a very complex relationship between the cultural industries and higher education, demonstrating how internships limit employment opportunities in the culture industries and reproduce inequalities (for instance, only those who can afford to live in an expensive place like New York City and work for free can be music interns).22 New jobs emerge across the culture industries, too.

The rise of fast food created new youth labor markets,23 as fast food restaurants provided part-time work for teenagers. More recently, as markets for artisanal, organic, and hand-crafted foods have grown, individuals in the middle class have regained an interest in older types of food work like cocktail bartending, butchering meat, and distilling whiskey. All of these changes provide sociologists with opportunities to study how culture shapes labor markets.24

The production of cultural goods serves as one part of the cultural cycle. What about the people who listen to the music, read the books, and drink the cocktails?

C on su m in g c u ltu re With the publication of his book, A Theory of the Leisure Class, in 1899, Thorstein Veblen (pronounced

VEH-blen) became one of the first theorists of cultural consumption.25 He noted a major shift in the late 1800s. In colonial America (until the late 1700s), open displays of wealth were usually met with scorn, as they were considered vulgar. People profited economically, of course, but most people shunned the open appreciation of material possessions or leisure time. Instead, they valued the ability to delay gratification, putting off pleasure. But over time, excess wealth became something to display. Veblen called it conspicuous consumption: gaining prestige by exhibiting valuable cultural goods, which implies to others that you are wealthy. Sure, a $17,000 Hyundai Elantra can get you to the grocery store, but to display

Fancy cocktail bar, crafted to look authentic. (Source)

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wealth, a bright yellow $100,000 Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet would do the trick. Why wear $20 college sweatpants to class when you can wear $200 Kanye West-designed Calabasas trackpants?

Figure 4: Global Spending on Luxury Goods, 2016

Source: Bain & Company Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, 2016

Sociologists have broadened our understanding of how people consume culture, including the effects of fast food on children26 and how different consumption habits, from social media use to buying the newest fad in clothing, can create tensions within a family.27 Sharon Zukin examined how the spaces of consumption have changed over time, from small mom-and-pop businesses to megamalls and international corporations.28 And Elizabeth Currid-Halkett explains how elites today are more likely to conspicuously participate in services and activities (e.g., yoga, silent meditation retreats, listening to NPR, drinking almond milk) rather than displaying luxury goods.29 The way we consume music is rapidly changing, too.

But is cultural consumption simply a passive activity? You might believe that the women who join romance novel book clubs internalize what many see as their oppressive messages about women, sex, and relationships. Janice Radway, however, found that reading groups are a great example of how cultural consumption can be quite complex. When reading romance novels, some women in her study inverted even the most old fashioned stories—mysterious men and damsels in distress—into narratives of adventure, female empowerment, and freedom.30 By rejecting the regressive gender norms in the books they read, another scholar concluded that female readers “press books into service for the meanings that they transmit and the conversations they generate.”31

Are we mindless consumers, or do we bend the meanings and uses of the cultural goods to our own purposes? Sociology shows how audiences play a role in culture as much as producers do. As Radway’s research illustrates, the meaning of a cultural good is open to multiple interpretations by its varied users. Studying how people consume cultural goods illuminates another part of the cycle.

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71 49 42 35 19 7 2

Luxury Cars Personal Luxury Goods

Luxury Hospitality

Fine Wines & Spirits

Fine Food Fine Art Designer Furniture

Private Jets Yachts Luxury Cruises

2016 Worldwide Luxury Goods Expenditures, in billions (Total: over $1.1 trillion)

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Figure 5: Music Sales by Format, 2015-2016

Source: Data from Nielsen Mid-Year Music Report 2016

Su b cu ltu res What can goth culture teach us about the cycle of culture? While the production of culture allows us

to understand that culture is fabricated just like any other product, and consumption studies teach us how audiences are active and strategic interpreters of the culture they see and hear, subcultures like goths give us a sense for how culture is repurposed and remade.

A subculture is, generally, a group that holds values and engages in activities that separate members from the wider society. Based on his examination of British working class youth, professor of art and media studies Dick Hebdige differentiated subcultures based on their expressions of style: their particular forms of slang, dress, and music. Goths have their own jargon (‘babybat’ means a new or young goth), dress (dark clothes, boots, pale makeup), and music (Bauhaus, The Cure). Subcultures take and adapt existing cultural items and behaviors and reuse them. Goths, for example, repurpose British Victorian-era styles from the 1800s, blended with a more contemporary punk DIY sensibility.

From goths to skate punks to juggalos, it’s nearly impossible to think of a subculture without its characteristic style. Subcultures are not just about the symbolic content of style, however. Subcultures offer characteristic “ways of life” as well. In Amy Wilkins’s study of teen subcultures, Wannabes, Goths, and Christians, she points to how subcultural groups offer freedom of behavior. The groups she studied allow young girls to select various sexual strategies and break taboos in ways that the more dominant culture does not.32

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2016 U.S. Album Sales, by format

LP/Vinyl CD Digital

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-23.90%

Audio Streams

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Vinyl Album Sales

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Percent Change in Music Consumption from 2015 to 2016

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Punk or Goth? (Source)

There are also subcultural groups based upon reusing and sharing fictional and pop cultural worlds. More than merely interpreting cultural products, these fan cultures actively change and use fictional characters and settings to write their own stories. You might think that J.K. Rowling would be upset that tens of thousands of stories have been written and published online (at www.harrypotterfanfiction.com) using characters from her Harry Potter books. Rowling, however, sees these writers as fans of her books and a community that keeps her characters alive. Indeed, thousands of people have written, read, and reviewed each other’s work—over two million times.

Subcultures allow us to see how culture is remade, but there’s more to it. Subcultural activities may also be co-opted by popular culture. For example, goth was an explicit rejection of commercialization and popular culture, yet it was eventually repackaged into consumerist culture in the form of a popular mall chain, Hot Topic, and serves as a character style on primetime TV shows like 24: Live Another Day and NCIS. (Women in tech, apparently, have to be goth.) The ultra-popular Fifty Shades of Grey series began as Twilight fan fiction that was repackaged into a modern-day romance novel and a major movie series. Subcultures show us how systems of production and consumption are not discrete spheres but parts of a broader, more intertwined cultural circuit, as individuals consuming culture may then use it as the jumping-off point to produce something new.

Review Sheet: Culture is a cycle Key Points • Depending on whether you examine culture from the point of production or

consumption, different issues emerge. Each perspective answers significant questions.

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• The production of culture perspective shows how culture is made and distributed by a wide array of groups and organizations, not just individuals.

• Consuming culture is not necessarily a passive activity, but rather a thoughtful practice. • Subcultures and fan cultures engage in cultural refashioning, cobbling together symbolic

and material culture and assigning them new meanings. • Subcultures can be coopted by popular culture, refreshing the wider cultural landscape. Key People • Elizabeth Currid-Halkett • Alexandre Frenette • Dick Hebdige • Richard Peterson • Janice Radway • Thorstein Veblen • Sharon Zukin Key Terms • Conspicuous consumption – Gaining prestige by exhibiting valuable cultural goods. • Corporate consolidation – The acquisition of smaller corporations by larger ones. • Culture industries – A system of organizations that produce and distribute cultural

goods (e.g., music, food, art). • Subculture – A group that uses alternative symbolic and material cultural goods to

distinguish themselves from the wider society.

HOW CULTURE WORKS

£ How does culture shape our lived social worlds?

£ Why are cultural practices sometimes effective in one social sphere but not in another?

£ What are the purposes of “us vs. them” feelings? How is such boundary-making nurtured and reinforced?

£ What can “taste” tell us about how culture is used to distinguish different types of people, and how has this changed over time?

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H ow cu ltu re creates i n eq u alities Elijah Anderson’s account of code switching provides a story of culture as it is practiced. It also shows

how some beliefs and practices are useful in some contexts, but less helpful in others. Sociologists argue that no set of beliefs and practices is inherently better or more valuable than another. Rather, different kinds of culture lead to different outcomes depending upon the situation in which they are used. In Anderson’s study, there were two worlds—the school and the street—where two different kinds of culture exist and are considered appropriate. Digging deeper, sociologists have found that such cultural differences can create inequality and affect social mobility.

How? French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu proposed three interlinked concepts for understanding how culture makes differences seem fair or natural and reproduces social hierarchies.

Particular cultural goods—material and symbolic—are acquired and traded. Bourdieu called this cultural capital: non-economic resources (knowledge, skills, behaviors) that are useful in a particular sphere of social life.33 These can be institutional cultural capital (such as a degree from a particular university), embodied cultural capital (your manner, style, ways of acting), or objectified cultural capital (your clothes, material objects). For example, high school students participating in certain types of extracurricular activities (student government, chess club) have greater success getting into elite colleges, where admissions officers are likely to value that kind of cultural capital.34 However, not everyone has access to those resources. Not every school has the funding to support a Model United Nations club, and if a student has to work a job after school to help support their family, there’s no time to join the chess club. Similarly, not everyone has the same kinds of knowledge. Upper-class students are far more likely to have visited a museum like SFMOMA, listened to classical composers such as Brahms, or read Moby Dick. That kind of cultural knowledge can be used to improve their standing in school. Gathering cultural capital can bring tangible rewards, if it is deployed under the correct circumstances.

What does it mean to say “…if it is deployed under the correct circumstances?” Well, cultural goods aren’t necessarily valuable everywhere, or in the same way. Think of cultural capital like money. (That’s why Bourdieu called it ‘capital’!) If you go to Istanbul, it would be difficult to purchase something with five U.S. dollars; you need the local currency—Turkish Lira. Cultural capital works the same way. Cultural capital might function in one social sphere and not in another, just as a country’s money works perfectly well in that country but isn’t necessarily useful outside of it. Bourdieu called these social spheres fields: contexts where a particular kind of cultural capital is exchanged, like a profession, a community, or a class of people. People vary in how much control they have over who belongs and what kinds of culture are valued within the field. Bourdieu compared it to a field in a sport. Each sport has its own “rules of the game” through which players compete. The better a player learns the specific rules of the game, and how they work in the field, the better their chances for success.

Our ability to know how capital works is crucial. Using the right kind of knowledge in the right way leads to rewards. This introduces Bourdieu’s third major concept, habitus (pronounced HA-bi-tuss). Our habitus is our learned dispositions, a set of tendencies organizing how we see the world and act within it. For

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example, we don’t consciously think about how to cross the street. Without much thought we wait for traffic to stop, look both ways, and cross. It’s a kind of second nature that is really only apparent when something goes wrong (a distracted driver) or we travel to another country with different norms (traffic comes from the right at a crosswalk, not the left as in the U.S.). Applying the concept of the habitus to issues like education, class, and race allows us to explain how we learn, somewhat unconsciously, to think and carry ourselves in the social world—from crossing the street to how we eat a meal to what kinds of culture we appreciate.

With these three concepts—cultural capital, fields, and habitus—in mind, let’s look at schooling to understand how culture creates inequalities. Education is the field, with its particular rules of the game, from raising your hand in class to instilling a belief in meritocracy. And the education system teaches and rewards a particular kind of cultural capital: that of the dominant, White, and middle- to upper-class culture. Poorer and non-White students are disadvantaged in their attempts to gain educational credentials, such as good grades and degrees, that are forms of institutional cultural capital. Middle- and upper-class students have a habitus, or disposition, that corresponds to their social class, resonating with the teachers and education they receive. Success in education offers greater employment opportunities and better economic outcomes. By valuing and rewarding the culture of the dominant group, the educational system reproduces the existing class structure, allowing those with more economic and cultural resources to succeed more easily than their peers with fewer resources.

Code switching illustrates Bourdieu’s concepts nicely. The young African Americans in Anderson’s study were not being fake when they acted one way at school and another way in the street. They were being savvy cultural actors whose habitus allowed them to use the kinds of cultural capital that were valuable in the very different fields of school and the street. They had learned a set of behaviors and values that allowed them to easily move between these two worlds, using the cultural capital that was most helpful in each one— allowing them to succeed in school while fitting in, and staying safe, on the streets. This is not an inspiring story of how disadvantaged students can succeed in school, however. Those students had to learn different ways of acting, and mistakes could be costly. Anderson’s work proves how culture places severe obstacles in front of poorer and non-White students, while middle-class students have an easier path toward educational credentials and better life chances.

H ow cu ltu re m akes g rou p s an d b ou n d aries Would you be willing to go on a blind date with a country music fan? What about a goth? Does the

music someone listens to, or maybe a bit of extra eyeliner, say a lot about them? These seemingly superficial questions get at how culture can create groups and boundaries.

Pierre Bourdieu was influenced by classical social theorists like Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. As mentioned earlier, Durkheim showed how religion divides the symbolic world into the sacred and the profane, identifying the social origins of how we classify our world. One of Weber’s key contributions was to distinguish between a class (groups who share a similar position based on income, wealth, education, and occupation) and status (the social designation of honor).35 For Weber, there are classes and also status groups. A status group is a collection of people who share similar characteristics that a community has

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given a certain level of prestige—a greater or lesser value when compared to other groups. In your high school, for example, there may have been a high-status clique of popular kids who wore a certain style of clothes and makeup, and a lower-status clique that listened to a particular type of music. Music and eyeliner, of course, are not the only ways to determine such groups.

Contemporary sociologists like Michèle Lamont examine how we organize ourselves through culture. Lamont differentiates between social boundaries—inequalities in access to resources (e.g., race, class, gender)—and symbolic boundaries—the ways people separate each other into groups (through traditions, styles, tastes, classifications).36 These boundaries generate feelings of group membership, lend an emotion-fueled sense of belonging, and help us grasp the wild diversity of social life by placing other people into categories. Lamont looked at men in France and the U.S., showing how men create group identities by contrasting themselves with the poor. In France, the middle class sees the poor as temporarily out of work, disadvantaged by the economy, but otherwise similar to other social classes; in the U.S., middle-class people generally believe they hold different values (hard work and self-sufficiency) than the poor, explaining economic inequality as a result of these supposedly different values.37

So, on the one hand, culture shapes and binds groups. Recalling Durkheim’s contribution—that symbols, activated through rituals, foster shared meanings and create community—we know that culture “bridges”: We make friendships and social ties through our taste in music or clothes, and we are able to maintain those connections through continued cultural activities.38 If you like bands like The Cure, you might be more willing to go on a blind date with someone who dresses like a goth. In return, our social networks also affect our tastes, introducing us to new ideas, fashions, cultural items, and classifications, which are passed along to us through our social interactions with others.39 Bethany Bryson, for example, explains that people use others’ musical preferences—like goth vs. country music—as cues to help them decide whether to include them in or exclude them from a friendship group.

And yet, culture also creates fences. While Durkheim focused on how culture generates social cohesion, Max Weber saw that culture can also differentiate, pulling us apart.40 Sports, while generating warm feelings, can also create strong negative feelings: wearing a Yankees cap in Boston almost always compels someone to say, “Go Sox!” This phenomenon occurs everywhere, from American baseball to Spanish soccer.

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Culture, seen in this way, can be a bridge or a fence.41 It allows us to establish or cross boundaries, activate differences, and maintain social proximity or distance. Symbolic boundaries, nurturing a sense of “us vs. them,” shape everything from employment to politics to education: we define groups when we hire employees, when we decide who is welcome in a political movement and who isn’t, and when elite culture is valued more in higher education than the cultures of poor or working–class students.42 Creating and maintaining these distinctions— from defining a friendship group to classifying people as part of the working class—and thereby limiting membership and access to resources is called boundary work.

Somewhat paradoxically, boundary work—and even conflict—creates groups and solidifies group cohesion.43 Think about how passionate sports rivalries foster a strong sense of in- group belonging. NCAA schools are divided into athletic conferences that define which programs compete against each other. When Texas A&M University left the Big 12 for a more prestigious conference, Texas Tech football was left without a strong in- state rival; the loss of this competition that allowed Texans to divide themselves into groups of fans lowered enthusiasm for Texas Tech football (and ticket sales). In the case of cricket in South Asia, where a match between India and Pakistan reflects decades of political conflict, over 60 students were expelled from their Indian university—and even threatened with criminal sedition charges—for cheering for the Pakistani team.44 Boundary work in culture—even in sports—creates groups and hierarchies, limiting or distributing resources and opportunities. Let’s go us! Let’s beat them!

Lastly, sociological research shows how cultural tastes have changed dramatically, not just in people’s interests (corduroy pants vs. athleisure, disco vs. hip hop), but in how we think of taste itself. People used to gain status in their group by displaying an encyclopedic knowledge of a particular cultural genre. Think about a classical music aficionado or a wine connoisseur. The music snob is able to differentiate Mozart from Chopin and the wine connoisseur, as a song from British punk-pop band Blur goes, “knows his claret from a Beaujolais.” Both experts can use their knowledge to make claims of high status. Perhaps you know the type: Not always the person you want to be cornered by at a party. But sociologists note that today, many people differentiate themselves by knowing a lot about many different cultural spheres.45 These cultural omnivores might talk about wine or classical music, but can discuss Budweiser and Beyoncé, too. Omnivores speak of high culture and popular culture with equal ease.

Summarizing this section, you should now see how culture generates inequalities and creates symbolic boundaries. The two processes work in concert. The rise of cultural ‘omnivorousness’ as a form of

Fans at a Texas Tech football game; when Texas A&M left its athletic conference, Texas lost an in-state athletic rivalry. (Source)

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cultural consumption is hardly a democratization of taste, nor an indication that symbolic boundaries have been obliterated. Knowing Beyoncé and Mozart does not give someone equal footing in the eyes of the wider culture. Rather, people find new ways to distinguish themselves. A familiarity with a wide range of cultural goods is just another form of generating status.46

Review Sheet: How Culture Works Key Points • Cultural capital, fields, and habitus conceptualize culture as a kind of exchangeable good,

useful depending upon the context, and a kind of learned tendency towards seeing and acting in the world.

• Culture can work as a bridge and a fence. • Tastes help people to define groups based upon aesthetic or moral bases. • People distinguish themselves through a deep understanding of a particular facet of

culture, but nowadays people also gain status with knowledge of a wide palate of cultural goods.

• Culture can justify and reinforce inequalities. Key People • Pierre Bourdieu • Michèle Lamont • Max Weber Key Terms • Boundary work – Creating and maintaining symbolic boundaries to limit group

membership and access to resources. • Cultural capital –Non-economic cultural resources (e.g., knowledge, skills, behaviors)

attuned to a particular sphere of social life. • Cultural omnivores – People who differentiate themselves by knowing a lot about

many different cultural fields. • Field – A context of social relations (e.g., a profession, a community) where a particular

kind of cultural capital is exchanged. • Habitus – A learned disposition, based within the particular social world a person

inhabits. • Status – The social designation of honor, either positive or negative. • Status group – Collection of people who share similar characteristics that a community

has given a certain level of prestige. • Symbolic boundaries – Conceptual ways people separate each other into groups (e.g.,

traditions, styles, tastes, classifications).

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THE CULTURE JAM

£ What happens when culture moves across boundaries? Who benefits, and why should it matter?

£ What are the intended and unintended consequences of an increasingly globalized culture? How does global culture interact with local cultures?

£ Is there room for critique in popular culture?

The final section of this chapter uses the term “jam” in three different ways to discuss a few challenging and controversial ideas. These sections look at culture as a mixture, especially in the era of globalization; discuss debates around mixing goods from different cultures; and point to ways people use culture for political and social commentary.

C u ltu re jam as a m ix Culture moves, spreading beliefs and practices across groups. Anthropologists study the various ways

this diffusion occurs (often through conflict, war, migration, or trade), and as culture crosses boundaries— whether a national border or a music genre—it changes and adapts. Culture is always a combination, where the parts can harmonize and conflict with each other, often obscuring history in the process.47

Investigating cultural mixtures can illuminate a great deal about social life. We can look at three curious examples. While doing research on a country music festival, I found myself in a Nashville crowd, listening to an African American man named Cowboy Troy sing and rap a county/hip hop song called “I Play Chicken with the Train.” When visiting Las Vegas, I ordered duck tongue tacos at a Chinese/Mexican restaurant called China Poblano. And last year, I was excited to see a restaurant open in my town that sells Vietnamese bánh mì sandwiches: pickled veggies and roast pork on a French baguette.

These might seem like little more than odd cultural mashups. A successful African American singing in a predominantly White music genre? Chinese Mexican food? Vietnamese sandwiches on French bread? But these mixtures are hardly haphazard. African American music was part of early country music. When Beyoncé performed at the Country Music Association Awards in 2016 to promote Lemonade—an album that includes samples from country, R&B, Led Zeppelin, indie rockers Vampire Weekend, soul legend Isaac Hayes, and 1950s crooner Andy Williams—she was honoring that country tradition.48 Chinese Mexican food and bánh mì sandwiches have their own histories. In 1882, the U.S. passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. to work, barred those already here from becoming citizens, and made it difficult for them to re-enter the U.S. if they returned to China to visit family. This sparked a wave of Chinese immigration from the U.S. to northwestern Mexico (and there are still Chinese Mexican restaurants in that region). And the bánh mì sandwich is the product of France’s occupation of Vietnam, starting in the late 1800s; the mashup of Vietnamese and French cuisine has become one of Vietnam’s most recognizable cultural products worldwide.

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While examples like Chinese Mexican food and bánh mì sandwiches show that cultural mashups have happened for centuries, today’s exchange of culture across the world is at another magnitude. When intercultural communication and the exchange of ideas and values reaches such an international scale, integrating political and economic systems, we call it globalization.

As American culture becomes globalized, what is its relationship within other cultures? When U.S. corporations enter new markets, they don’t impose themselves completely. They often adapt. Whether in Tokyo, Mumbai, or Hong Kong, there will be a McDonald’s or Starbucks. However, globalizing corporations often “localize” themselves to regional tastes. In Japan and India, McDonald’s offers squid ink black burgers and Maharaja Macs, respectively, while the McDonald’s in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, serves a bánh mì. Hong Kong’s Starbucks, meanwhile, has a Red Bean Green Tea Frappuccino. The global becomes localized.

This moves us to seeing culture jams in a second, and more challenging, way.

A Starbucks in China (Source); tortillas warming on a grill (Source).

C u ltu re jam as a problem Certainly some people are relieved to find a McDonald’s everywhere. George Ritzer, however, called

the mass production of culture, resulting in similar cultural goods being found everywhere, McDonaldization. Ritzer drew from Max Weber, who noted capitalism’s tendency toward rationalization: increased calculability, efficiency, predictability, and control.49 While corporations do, undoubtedly, make some efforts to acclimate to local cultures, McDonaldization is the broader trend toward driving out local cultures,

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replacing them with standardized products. Entire places can fall under a similar process. Tourist zones, like New York City’s Times Square or Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, lose their distinctive qualities, making seemingly dissimilar places more alike than different.

Multinational corporations are increasingly universal and inescapable, drowning out local ideas, beliefs, and traditions. Cultural hybrids like Maharaja Macs should not distract us from the fact that the most recognizable worldwide brands tend to be owned by American and Western corporations. This imposition of a dominant group’s material and symbolic goods is called cultural imperialism. Recall the consolidation of the music industry? We see it on the wider global culture landscape, too: the same music companies that dominate the U.S. market—Sony BMG, EMI, Warner, and Universal Music Group—dominate the global market. The economic power of Western culture industries overwhelms competition from local culture. (At the same time, we are seeing a rise in the economic power of India’s “Bollywood” and China’s emerging movie production market.)

Figure 6: Global Box Office Revenue, 2014-2016

Source: Data from Motion Picture Association of America Theatrical Market Statistics 2016, p.6

On the flip side of cultural imperialism, there’s cultural appropriation, when members of a dominant culture adopt the cultural goods (ideas, symbols, skills, expressions, intellectual property) of other groups for profit. This disconnects the product from the history and community from which it emerged, and reduces the chances that those groups can benefit from the culture they produce.50

Can an ethnic group ‘own’ culture? Let’s talk about burritos. In 2017, two White chefs, operators of a food truck called Kooks Burritos, explained to a local alternative weekly newspaper in Portland, Oregon, that they went to Puerto Nuevo, Mexico, and asked local chefs to teach them how to make a flour tortilla for their breakfast burritos.51 Their story was intended to illustrate their hard work and desire to create an ‘authentic’

2.1 1.7 1.6 1.4 1.6 1.7 2.1 2.6 2.8 3 3 3.4 2.8

8.5 7.2 6.8 6.5 6.8 7.2 8.5 9

10.4 11.1 12.4 14.1 14.9

10.4 9.9 9.7 8.7 9.7

9.9 10.4 10.8

10.7 10.9 10.6

9.7 9.5 10.6

10.6 9.6 9.6 9.6 10.6

10.6 10.2 10.8 10.9

10.4 11.1 11.4

2 0 0 4 2 0 0 5 2 0 0 6 2 0 0 7 2 0 0 8 2 0 0 9 2 0 1 0 2 0 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3 2 0 1 4 2 0 1 5 2 0 1 6

GLOBAL BOX OFFICE REVENUE 2004-2016, BY REGION (IN BILLION U.S. DOLLARS)

Latin America Asia Pacific Europe, Middle East and Africa U.S. and Canada

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tortilla. However, it pulled them into a wider debate over how White folks use other people’s cultures for their own gain. Internet commentators called this cultural appropriation, and the two quickly closed their business.

Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco U.S.A.: How Mexican Food Conquered America, responded to the debate by saying that appropriation happens all the time in the food industry. He says it’s laughable” to think of Mexican food, comida mexicana, as a sacred and untouchable tradition, or that “cultural appropriation is a one- way street where the evil gabacho steals from the poor, pathetic Mexicans yet again.”52

Are burritos Mexican or Tex Mex? Are flour tortillas traditionally Mexican? Does it matter if, as some argue, they come from Jewish immigrants to Mexico who began to make tortillas out of wheat—a European grain introduced by the Spanish—instead of the corn that was native to Mexico?53 If, as Arellano points out, Mexicans mix and borrow from other cultures, why shouldn’t Anglos borrow too? Should it matter that these groups don’t have equal opportunities to profit from a cultural trend? If Mexican food, like Rock and Roll, is a mixture of many cultural traditions (for instance, the method of preparing pork for tacos al pastor originated in the Ottoman Empire, centered in modern-day Turkey), who is being appropriated? Who has the power to control the path of a culture? Who profits?

El Luchador restaurant, South Street Seaport, NYC (Source)

The owners of Kooks Burritos are rather insignificant when compared with multinational corporations adopting culture for profit. In 2016, Urban Outfitters and the Navajo Nation settled a lawsuit over the corporation using the Navajo name and symbolic culture on a line of products, from alcohol flasks to underwear. The use of Navajo imagery on a flask is culturally insensitive, even racist, when paired with the ugly stereotype of Native American peoples being prone to alcoholism. Such corporate appropriation also

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disconnects culture from history, from tradition, and from a community. The expansive systems of goods and ideas flowing across the world, particularly through large corporations, hides such discrimination and inequalities.

C u ltu re jam as a solu tion With these concerns, it is fair enough to feel frustrated. What can be done to address these issues?

People who participate in the culture industries are not completely unaware of the larger problems in culture. Take hip hop, for example. Rappers can be particularly self-aware and willing to critique the wider corporate and political systems they work within. Some have been doing it for a long time. Although it’s more common in today’s hip hop for MCs to flaunt status and engage in conspicuous consumption (such as boasting about cars and money), many rappers in the 1990s infused their lyrics with criticisms of the corporate music production system. De la Soul rapped about the power record labels wield in their 1993 song “I Am, I Be”: “I be the new generation of slaves / Here to make papes to buy a record exec rakes / The pile of revenue I create / But I guess I don’t get a cut cuz my rent’s a month late.” Similarly, A Tribe Called Quest’s “Check the Rhime” (1991) includes the lyrics, “Industry rule number four-thousand-and-eighty / Record company people are shady.” With more scope, Mos Def’s “Hip Hop,” from 1999, outlined how the genre was part of a long tradition of exploitation to gaining some class mobility: “We went from pickin’ cotton / To chain gang line chopping / To Be-Bopping, to Hip-Hopping / Blues people got the blue-chip stock option.” These insights serve as examples of what we call culture jamming.

In her book No Logo, Naomi Klein explains that culture jamming is the practice of raising awareness around issues of McDonaldization, corporate consolidation, and cultural imperialism through informal and often illegal guerilla (independent and unauthorized) marketing campaigns.54 These alternative or subversive media activities are a form of political communication, often using existing media to subvert a marketing strategy. Just as early hip hop illuminated the conditions under which African American culture was made and exploited, graffiti often engages with and critiques cultural industries.

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Art by Shepard Fairey, a well-known graffiti artist who critiques pop culture while adopting its familiar imagery.

(Source)

From another cultural realm, well-known graffiti artist Shepard Fairey uses imagery similar to Soviet and Chinese propaganda and other references (e.g., images from the 1980s anti-consumerist alien-invasion movie They Live) to critique consumerism, promote social justice causes, and puncture commonly-held beliefs through pop culture. At the same time, his use of imagery from African American and Latino social justice movements has led to others claiming that he is appropriating symbolic culture.

A sociological approach to culture can illuminate power, inequality, and the cycle of culture by tying together the ends of the production and consumption process. The international production, distribution, and marketing system of corporations, laborers, and consumers is called the global commodity chain (or global assembly line). This system is largely hidden: Few people have any idea where their products come from, leaving most consumers unperturbed by the gross inequalities between them and the laborers on the other side of the system.

To interrogate this global commodity chain, sociologist and filmmaker David Redmon made the documentary film Mardi Gras: Made in China, focusing on Mardi Gras beads. He unpacks the symbolic and material components of those colorful plastic beads (such as the meanings of Mardi Gras as a celebration and an escape from everyday values and norms) as well as the rituals associated with the exchange of beads (women showing their breasts, men throwing beads in return). Then he takes his camera far from New Orleans to Fuzhou, China, to uncover how those beads are produced and the working conditions the (mostly young women) workers endure at the factory. But the third component of his investigation is the

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documentary’s best: Using a handheld camera and projector, he shows Mardi Gras revelers images of the labor conditions that create the beads they casually toss around, and shows the young Chinese factory girls what happens to the beads after they leave the factory. Redmon manages to educate both groups, scandalizing the laborers and sobering the partygoers.

For viewers of the documentary, connecting the global commodity system is a powerful reminder of how cultural goods are made and consumed and what sociology brings to the study of culture.

Review Sheet: The culture jam Key Points • Culture is a mixture of various beliefs and practices, but a sociological perspective

requires thinking about how history and social dynamics play a powerful role. • There are obvious and hidden consequences of a globalized culture. While Western

culture “localizes” itself (e.g., McDonald’s Maharaja Mac), such examples can obscure deeper cultural imperialism and inequalities.

• Artists and activists can counter and critique mass culture at various stages of the cultural cycle.

Key People • Naomi Klein • George Ritzer Key Terms • Cultural appropriation – Members of a dominant culture adopting cultural goods

(e.g., ideas, symbols, skills, cultural expressions, intellectual property) of other cultural groups for profit.

• Cultural imperialism – Imposition of a dominant group’s material and symbolic culture onto another group.

• Culture jamming – Efforts to raise awareness around issues of hegemony through informal and often illegal guerilla marketing campaigns.

• Global commodity chain – International production, distribution, and marketing system of corporations, laborers, and consumers.

• Globalization – Integration of political and economic systems; has brought about intercultural communication and an exchange of ideas and values.

• McDonaldization – Ritzer’s term for the increased rationalization and globalization of culture.

• Rationalization – Weber’s term for capitalism’s trend toward increased calculability, efficiency, predictability, and control.

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