The sociology of culture, and the related field of cultural sociology, concern the systematic analysis of culture, usually understood as the ensemble of symbolic codes used by members of a society, as they are expressed within the context of that society. According to Georg Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". In the sociological field, culture is defined as the ways in which individuals think, communicate, and behave, as well as the tangible artifacts that collectively influence a community's way of life.
Contemporary sociologists' approach to culture is often divided between a "sociology of culture" and "cultural sociology". The terms are similar, though not interchangeable. The sociology of culture is an older concept, and it considers some topics and objects as more or less "cultural" than others. In contrast, Jeffrey C. Alexander introduced the term cultural sociology, an approach that sees all, or most, social phenomena as inherently cultural at some level. For instance, a leading proponent of the "strong program" in cultural sociology, Alexander argues: "To believe in the possibility of cultural sociology is to subscribe to the idea that every action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive, or coerced [compared to] its external environment, is embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and meaning." In terms of analysis, sociology of culture often attempts to explain some discretely cultural phenomena as a product of social processes, while cultural sociology sees culture as a component of explanations of social phenomena. As opposed to the field of cultural studies, cultural sociology does not reduce all human matters to a problem of cultural encoding and decoding. For instance, Pierre Bourdieu's cultural sociology has a "clear recognition of the social and the economic as categories which are interlinked with, but not reducible to, the cultural."Rojek, Chris, and Bryan Turner. "Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn." The Sociological Review 48.4 (2000): 629-648.
Development
Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar, Germany, where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie (cultural sociology). Cultural sociology was then "reinvented" in the English-speaking world as a product of the "cultural turn" of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may loosely be regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory. In the beginning of the cultural turn, sociologists tended to use qualitative methods and hermeneutic approaches to research, focusing on meanings, words, artifacts and symbols. "Culture" has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including historically quantitative and model-based subfields, such as social stratification and social network analysis.
Early researchers The sociology of culture grew from the intersection between sociology, as shaped by early theorists like Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, and anthropology where researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field is still felt in the methods (much of cultural sociological research is qualitative) in the theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities) and substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field.
Karl Marx
As a major contributor to conflict theory, Marx argued that culture served to justify inequality. The ruling class, or the bourgeoisie, produce a culture that promotes their interests, while repressing the interests of the proletariat. His most famous line to this effect is that "Religion is the opium of the people". Marx believed that the "engine of history" was the struggle between groups of people with diverging economic interests and thus the economy determined the cultural superstructure of values and ideologies. For this reason, Marx is a considered a materialist as he believes that the economic (material) produces the cultural (ideal), which "stands Hegel on his head," who argued the ideal produced the material.
Émile Durkheim
Durkheim held the belief that culture has many relationships to society which include: Logical – Power over individuals belongs to certain cultural categories, and beliefs such as in God. Functional – Certain rites and myths create and build up social order by having more people create strong beliefs. The greater the number of people who believe strongly in these myths more will the social order be strengthened. Historical – Culture had its origins in society, and from those experiences came evolution into things such as classification systems.
Max Weber
Weber innovated the idea of a status group as a certain type of subculture. Status groups are based on things such as: race, ethnicity, religion, region, occupation, gender, sexual preference, etc. These groups live a certain lifestyle based on different values and norms. They are a culture within a culture, hence the label subculture. Weber also purported the idea that people were motivated by their material and ideal interests, which include things such as preventing one from going to hell. Weber also explains that people use symbols to express their spirituality, that symbols are used to express the spiritual side of real events, and that ideal interests are derived from symbols.
Georg Simmel
For Simmel, culture refers to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history."Levine, Donald (ed) 'Simmel: On individuality and social forms' Chicago University Press, 1971. pxix. Simmel presented his analyses within a context of "form" and "content". Sociological concept and analysis can be viewed.
The elements of a culture As no two cultures are exactly alike they do all have common characteristics.
A culture contains:
1. Social Organization: Structured by organizing its members into smaller numbers to meet the culture's specific requirements. Social classes ranked in order of importance (status) based on the culture's core values. For example: money, job, education, family, etc.
2. Customs and Traditions: Rules of behavior enforced by the cultures ideas of right and wrong such as customs, traditions, rules, or written laws.
3. Symbols: Anything that carries a particular meaning recognized by people who share the same culture.
4. Norms: Rules and expectations by which a society guides the behavior of its members. The two types of norms are mores and folkways. Mores are norms that are widely observed and have a great moral significance. Folkways are norms for routine, casual interaction.
5. Religion: The answers to their basic meanings of life and values.
6. Language: A system of symbols that allows people to communicate with one another.
7. Arts and Literature: Products of human imagination expressed through art, music, literature, stories, and dance.
8. Forms of Government: How the culture distributes power. Who keeps order within the society, who protects them from danger, and who provides for their needs. Can fall into categories such as Democracy, Republic, or Dictatorship.
9. Economic Systems: What to produce, how to produce it, and for whom. How people use their limited resources to satisfy their wants and needs. Can fall into the categories such as Traditional Economy, Market Economy, Command Economy, Mixed Economy.
10. Artifacts: Distinct material objects, such as architecture, technologies, and artistic creations.
11. Social institutions: Patterns of organization and relationships regarding governance, production, socializing, education, knowledge creation, arts, and relating to other cultures.
Anthropology In an anthropological sense, culture is society based on the values and ideas without influence of the material world.Radcliffe-Brown
Culture is like the shell of a lobster. Human nature is the organism living inside of that shell. The shell, culture, identifies the organism, or human nature. Culture is what sets human nature apart, and helps direct the life of human nature.
Anthropologists lay claim to the establishment of modern uses of the culture concept as defined by Edward Burnett Tylor in the mid-19th century.
Bronisław Malinowski
Malinowski collected data from the Trobriand Islands. Descent groups across the island claim parts of the land, and to back up those claims, they tell myths of how an ancestress started a clan and how the clan descends from that ancestress. Malinowski's observations followed the research of that found by Durkheim.
Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown
Radcliffe-Brown put himself in the culture of the Andaman Islanders. His research showed that group solidification among the islanders is based on music and kinship, and the rituals that involve the use of those activities. In the words of Radcliffe-Brown, "Ritual fortifies Society".
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss made many comparative studies on religion, magic, law and morality of occidental and non-occidental societies, and developed the concept of total social fact, and argued that the reciprocity is the universal logic of the cultural interaction.
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Lévi-Strauss, based, at the same time, on the sociological and anthropological positivism of Durkheim, Mauss, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, on the economic and sociological Marxism, on Freudian and Gestalt psychology and on structural linguistics of Saussure and Jakobson, realized great studies on areas myth, kinship, religion, ritual, symbolism, magic, ideology (), knowledge, art and aesthetics, applying the methodological structuralism on his investigations. He searched the universal principals of human thought as a form of explaining social behaviors and structures.
Mary Douglas
Mary Douglas is widely known for her contributions to social anthropology, particularly in her analysis of ritual purity, pollution, and the symbolic structures that shape cultural classifications of dirt and disorder. She examined how societies construct and maintain order through these classifications. Her research also focused on the concepts of risk, blame, and misfortune in both traditional and modern contexts, arguing that notions such as witchcraft, sin, and risk serve similar functions in assigning responsibility and preserving social order. Additionally, she developed a theoretical model for understanding how social structures and individual roles influence cultural beliefs and practices.
Major areas of research
Theoretical constructs in Bourdieu's sociology of culture French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's influential model of society and social relations has its roots in Marxist theories of class and conflict. Bourdieu characterizes social relations in the context of what he calls the field, defined as a competitive system of social relations functioning according to its own specific logic or rules. The field is the site of struggle for power between the dominant and subordinate classes. It is within the field that legitimacy—a key aspect defining the dominant class—is conferred or withdrawn.