Sociology Of Culture Class Notes PDF

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Complete lecture notes from 2015-2016 school year separated by date and topics....

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Sociology of Culture 

Intro to Sociology of Culture

09/03/2015 09/01

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What is culture? 

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Colere: in the 14th-15th century; to grow or cultivate but also to honor or worship Growth and cultivation but also something honorable is still used today

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Cultura: In the 16th century; associated with personal growth; cultivation through education;

associated with improvement of human mind  

Improvement of the mind or society; those that have culture are civilized.

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Culture is then a synonym for civilization. Is it a civilized culture?

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Cultivation

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Synonymous with high culture: things associated with the upper class and educated

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Culture often gets contrasted with nature

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If someone is uncultured, that means that they are savages, animalistic, not fully human, and

primitive.  

In the culture nature binary, nature becomes a raw material that must be cultivated.

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The value is not inherited in the art form but it placed on it by the people so why does one

form jump out more than another?  

Jazz went from a high cultural form to a lower one because you have to look at the person

who legitimated that art form.  

Culture: a system of meaningful symbols. A people’s established beliefs, values, language and

practices transmitted through social institutions. 

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Sociologists argue that our entire existence is mediated by symbols because it tells us how to

feel about things.  

Social institutions fulfill a person’s need;

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Culture as Everything created by people

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Or a shared way of life that tells you who you are in relation to others.

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Culture is the expressive activities and practices of human communities. The name of

distinctive achievements of human groups.  

Culture is symbolic- meaning is not inherited to things

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What sets humans apart from other species is our use and dependence on culture and use of

symbols.  

Human’s cant rely on instinct and culture took it is place.

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The introduction of cultures allowed us to give up instinct. If we don’t have instinct we have

culture to tell us what to do.  

We are instinctually underdetermined.

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Culture is socially constructed.

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All those symbols that we use were created by us with our interactions with our environment.

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Culture has to be embodied. 1) In to an object of some kind or 2) for us to embody culture

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The sociology of culture is the study of cultural objects or the shared meaning that becomes

embodied in something.  

What are the meaningful symbols that you interact with on an everyday basis?

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Hand gestures, gender

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Sociology of emotion based on culture. Emotion of love that everyone expects to feel

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Can we not identify our feelings without naming them?

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Democrat= donkey Republican= elephant

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Accumulations of complex symbols that we try to decode every day

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There is no such thing as human nature independent of culture. We are incomplete without

culture. Humans are dependent on the learning concepts and symbols and applying them in every day life.  

Genie and the wild child LOOK UP

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Culture as Collective Action

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Howard Becker: The core problem of sociology is “tee problem of collective action”

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Culture is one of the way sociologists explain concerted activity (people working together)

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Culture as a resource: Swidler: culture is a tool kit (tools and resources we can draw upon

depending on the social access we have to them)

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Culture doesn’t have to be traditional, nor must it be American culture at large but rather

there are many subcultures.  

Becker advocated for a simple definition “the shared understandings that people use to

coordinate their activities.” Therefore he envisions culture as a process. 1) In which people act taking into account shared understandings  

Where does culture come from? In most cases it preexists your appearance on earth.

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What historical and culture changes led to the culture we had today? We are often confronted

with new situations that haven’t happened before and in that context we have to invent culture. New situations provoke new behavior; therefore we are continuously creating culture.  

“Given new conditions, people invent culture”.

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Culture is product of society whereas society is the movement of people together

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Culture must be shared, can’t just be within the individual.

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We are strictly involved in changing and creating our culture.

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It is being refined by us coming together

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Where is rob video

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Culture of occupation

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Musical subcultures with their own cultural context

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Because shared cultural understandings make it easy to do things in certain way there is a

favor of doing things that way.  

Culture allows us to plan our lives: it is a guideline

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These cultural understandings don’t always last and can actually make planning our lives more

difficult.  

Culture is something that’s created and is a product of human action that has to learned and

widely shared and is always remade and something that we take for granted.  

Is there anything that is not cultural? No. Bodily functions (biological processes). But we

apprehend them culturally (like where you can or cannot go to the bathroom) 

Dying is not cultural but always has a cultural significance.

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How do you differentiate between the object and the interpretation of that object? You cant.

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How would you characterize American culture? Individualistic, the nuclear family, diverse,

freedom, capitalism, time orientated, working really hard, American popular culture is everywhere, homogeneous…To whom do these characteristics apply?  Recorded culture vs. lived culture: going about your every day life or what gets recorded; what culture gets recorded? Does everyone have the same ability to record culture? People in power usually construct publicly recorded culture. Knowledge of reported culture is important in the maintenance of culture. Reported culture often portrays the concerns of the powerful and the elite.

If you look to the beginning of sociology culture wasn’t really a concern and it wasn’t of interest. Now it is one of the largest sub disciplines. How does culture work? How does it influence us? What roles does it have in our lives and what do the different elements meant to people? How does this culture enable human interaction?

Three main areas in the Sociology of Culture:

1) Production of culture: the creation of culture. Under what circumstances and by who is it created? Exam the perimeter around the production of culture like film art music. Look at how those decisions impact the social creators. How is the film industry created and what are the constraints and limitations put on filmmakers? What are the conditions where one aspect of culture gets produced over the other? The way the industry is structured allows a voice to be given to people. One of the critics of cultural production is that it doesn’t pay a lot of attention to meaning, rather than just history. Not what does this culture mean to people. See culture as socially constructed on the interactional level and the macro level. Early studies of culture thought it was ambiguous.

2) Meaning: Now we know that there is a lot of manipulation and meaning is now made out of culture a.

How do we see and construct ourselves?

b.

Many people join subcultures, which become an important part of your identity

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3) Reproduction of power and inequality

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Cultural Capital and Symbolic Boundaries

09/03

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URAP cooks and chefs under haas school of business research opportunity

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1. Cultural Capital 

Pierre Bourdieu was interested in topics of power and social status.

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In the book Distinction, Bourdieu talks about capital as accumulated labor. Because of that labor that is capital. It could be something tangible like money or stocks or it could be embodied. You put in that work and it becomes a part of you. The labor you put in into studied for your classes allows you to gain knowledge. He says lets not pretend we live in a world of perfect equality, and we don’t live in a world of perfect competition either. We don’t live in a relationship of equal footing with each other but equal opportunity is a belief that we have thinking that it is possible to achieve. That belief doesn’t take into account all the ways we are unequal from the very beginning. We aren’t different from the outset because of the accumulation of money. Wealth getting passed down to generations.

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The structure and distribution of capitals mirrors that of the social world and contributes to inequality. Capital is not distructed equally and not everyone has the same opportunity to accumulate it. Capital is one of the ways we can explain inequality.

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Structure and distribution of capital mirrors structure of the social world

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How do you get capital? It takes time to accumulate but if you have it you can get more of it. It reproduces itself. Ex. Investments.

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He wants an expanded notion of the economy beyond it is exchange. To limit capital is to ignore all of the mechanisms of power that work to sustain themselves. The dominant class wield a lot more than economic capital

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Various forms of capital: o

Economic: financial assets, property rights, money, this is the root of all other forms of capital

o

Social: social obligations and connections. Social capital can be transformed to economic capital. Ex. Connections can help you get a job that turns into economic capital.

o

Cultural: specialized skills and knowledge. How do you institutionalize cultural capital? Getting a degree would turn cultural capital into something. 

Cultural Capital: class-based knowledge, skills and cultural competencies; worldview passed on via family 

Embodied cultural capital: long lasting dispositions of the mind and body. That cultural capital becomes a part of you. Accumulation of culture. Culture, cultivation, self-improvement. Requires an investment of time; cant be done secondhand, you have to do it yourself even if it means sacrificing something else. External wealth can be turned into an embodied form of capital but can only be acquired through direct learning.

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Economic classes have class cultures.

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Children socialized into dominany culture have advantages because schools rebord the knowledges of the lower class.

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Language proficiency= cultural capital

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Habitus: unconsciously enacted, socially learned dispositions. We don’t need to think about it, we just access it. We display the cultural capital we gained through our family. We put on cultural performances that are a reflectment of cultural capital. It is produced by the social organization of class inequality. Deeply engraved experiences that impact how we act in the world (internalization of class distinctions). Habitus is the enactment of embodied. Each economic class has it is own class culture and own way of seeing the world and acting within that world.

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Example: Being in a restaurant and knowing what utensils to use.

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Habitus helps us explain the lack of social class mobility. You don’t have to think about it. o

It is a way of taking into account a huge range of different influences that can lead to social advantages. Unlike economic, it recognizes various cultural influences that perpetuate inequality.

o

Socially valued, confers prestige.

o

Bourdieu- wanted to stand cultural inequality in academic achievement. He asks why we see educational achievement gaps between the classes. He connects academic success to the distribution of cultural capital. Rather than assuming educational achievement and success are based on monetary expendatures, he looked for cultural explanations for it. The transmission of cultural capital is the best hidden investment. It is not about how much you spend but that cultural capital transmission. When you have wealth you can transmit it down generations, like Donald trump who got money from his dad. The family is the primary vehicle for it.

o

Academic ability is the product of cultural capital is not simply innate in the individual. It is the product of investing time and cultural capital. He concludes that achievement in the education system is based on the cultural capital invested by that family.

o

Educational system reproduces social structure. The education system reproduces that social structure and rewards those with the cultural capital.

o

Socializing your kids in a way that will make them successful. Cultural capital isn’t deadly but is difficult to overcome. There’s a huge knowledge gap between SES.

o

If you were born without money, you can still take advantage of school to overcome it. Education can allow for social mobility. Enrollment at these universities were mostly the upper class. Why is this? 1. Upper class kids were more likely to take the exam (cultural capital) 2. Upper class kids were more likely to use the words and analytic system that the test saw as intellectual ability. Cultural capital explains this. Economical capital alone cant make sense of this.

o

Social institutions look to maintain the status quo and therefore maintain social inequality.

o

Children socialized into the dominant culture appear to teachers to be more gifted than other students.

o

While in theory, everyone has equal opportunity to succeed in school, opportunity is actually predicated on the cultural capital of the individual. We don’t start from an equal place. Does the cultural capital match that of the dominant culture? Cultural capital can be turned into wealth, social status, etc.

o

Cultural capital mainly transmitted by family. Most socially determinent factor. Because of that it is acquired unconsciously. It combines “the prestige of innate property with the merits of acquisition”. Necause the transmission is hidden it often feels symbolic. In order for cultural capital to be most effective it is economic roots need to be conceiled. Economics don’t explain everything. Cultural capital explains why we don’t see more social class mobility.

o

The more scarce a particular talent, knowledge is, the more highly regarded and valued it is

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Not all parents have economic or cultural means of transmitting cultural capital because cultural capital takes time to accumulate. It often requires economic capital. The earlier you are exposed the more benefit you receive because you have time to accumulate it.

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Children who start out with cultural capital have more benefits than those who didn’t.

o

Habitus is the embodied cultural capital. You can have multiple habitus.

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Objectified Cultural Capital: cultural goods; can be appropriated both materially and symbolically. You can own the machinery to make computer chips but if you don’t have the cultural capital to run the machines, you will have to hire people who do. Material= to obtain Symbolic= to appreciate

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Institutionalized Cultural Capital: qualifiations and certificiations . the one with the degree will have a guaranteed qualifications and has this capital they can spend out in the marketplace. When you have qualifications you can rank others.

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Cultural capital is not limited to education. How is knowledge itself produced?

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What constitutes knowledge? How is knowledge achieved? What makes some form sof knowledge more valued than others?

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Powerful groups are able to define knowledge and it is value and thus confer advantage to their own children.

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2. Social and Symbolic Boundaries 

The way symbolic boundaries create, reproduce or contest institutionalized social differences like gender, race, class, sexuality, etc.

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Symbolic Boundaries: conceptual distinctions used to categorize objects, people, practices. o

Separate people into groups

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Part of the process of defining one’s self

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Help enforce collective norms; develop a sense of group membership. It is a system of rules that guide us.

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Social Boundaries: objectified forms of social differences that lead to unequal access to resources and opportunities. o

Widely agreed upon symbolic boundaries become social boundaries; lead to inequality

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Social and Symbolic Boundaries: o

Social and collective identity

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Class inequality

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Direct exclusion of peoeple based on social class

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Taste culture: different cultural classes have different tastes, indicating social class

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You set yourself apart form others based on what you consume.

o

Ethnic/ Racial inequality

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Gender/ Sexual Inequality

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Lamont and Molnar Conclude: “symbolic boundaries are used to enforce, maintain, normaize, or rationalize social boundaries” 

If were going to accept inequality, we need a symbolic boundary to back it up (example: tells us that men and women are different)

o

“symbolic boundaries…are also employed to contest and reframe the meaning of social boundaries”

o 

We can use culture to understand power relations between groups.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) French Sociologist: looked at social role religion plays in society. Social life revolved around those religions. Religion uses signs and symbols as symbolic boundaries to separate sacred and profane. o

The sacred are the things that shouldn’t be touched or messed with and what brings the group together.

o

The profane are the mundane aspects of every day life.

o

The purpose of this symbo...