What is Culture? Types and Concepts

Culture is a foundational concept in sociology. It refers to the shared meanings, values, norms, beliefs, and practices that characterise a particular group or society. Understanding different types of culture — and the debates surrounding them — is essential for the AQA A-Level Sociology specification on Culture and Identity. This lesson examines key concepts, distinguishes between types of culture, and explores how globalisation is transforming cultural life.

Key Definition: Culture refers to the whole way of life of a group of people — the shared norms, values, beliefs, language, knowledge, customs, and material objects that members of a society use to make sense of their world and interact with one another.

Norms, Values, and Customs

Before examining different types of culture, it is essential to understand the building blocks of any culture:

Values

Values are the general principles or beliefs that a society or group considers important and desirable. They provide broad guidelines for behaviour and judgement. For example, British society broadly values democracy, individual freedom, fairness, and the rule of law.

Values are:

Shared by most members of a society (though not unanimously).
Relatively abstract and general.
Slow to change, though they do evolve over time.

Norms

Norms are specific rules or expectations about how people should behave in particular situations. They translate values into practical guides for conduct. For example, the value of respect for others is expressed through norms such as queuing, saying "please" and "thank you," and not interrupting when someone is speaking.

Norms can be:

Formal norms (codified in law or institutional rules): e.g., speed limits, prohibitions on theft.
Informal norms (unwritten expectations): e.g., standing on the right on escalators, not talking loudly on public transport.

Customs

Customs are traditional practices associated with a particular culture or community — patterns of behaviour that are handed down through generations and become established ways of doing things. Examples include Christmas celebrations, wedding traditions, and funeral rites.

Sanctions

Norms are maintained through sanctions — rewards and punishments that encourage conformity and discourage deviance.

Type	Positive Sanction	Negative Sanction
Formal	Awards, promotions, certificates	Fines, imprisonment, expulsion
Informal	Praise, approval, popularity	Gossip, ridicule, social exclusion

Types of Culture

High Culture

High culture refers to cultural products, activities, and tastes that are associated with the social elite and are considered to have the highest artistic, intellectual, or aesthetic value. Examples include opera, ballet, classical music, fine art, literary fiction, and theatre.

Key features:

Associated with educated, wealthy, and socially privileged groups.
Often requires training or education to appreciate.
Funded by public subsidy, patronage, or exclusive institutions.
Presented as universal and timeless — above the concerns of everyday life.

Marxist perspective: Bourdieu (1984) argued that the distinction between "high" and "low" culture is not based on objective quality but on class power. The dominant class defines its own cultural preferences as "superior" and uses them as a form of cultural capital — a resource that provides social advantages, including educational success and social prestige. The ability to discuss opera, appreciate fine art, or display "refined" tastes signals membership of the dominant class and excludes those who lack this cultural knowledge.

Low Culture / Popular Culture

Low culture or popular culture refers to cultural products, activities, and tastes associated with ordinary people and mass consumption. Examples include pop music, soap operas, reality TV, tabloid newspapers, fast food, football, and social media.

Key features:

Accessible to and enjoyed by large numbers of people.
Commercially produced and distributed for profit.
Often dismissed by cultural elites as trivial, vulgar, or undemanding.

Mass Culture

The concept of mass culture was developed by theorists of the Frankfurt School (Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse) in the mid-twentieth century. They argued that the rise of mass media and mass production had created a standardised, commercialised culture that served to pacify the working class and prevent critical thought.

Adorno and Horkheimer (1944), in Dialectic of Enlightenment, coined the term "culture industry" to describe the mass production of cultural goods. They argued that:

Mass culture is standardised and formulaic — pop songs, Hollywood films, and television programmes follow predictable formulas designed to maximise sales.
Mass culture creates false needs — encouraging consumers to desire products they do not genuinely need.
Mass culture promotes passivity — it provides easy entertainment that discourages critical thinking and political engagement.
Mass culture serves the interests of capitalism — it generates profits for media corporations and distracts the working class from their exploitation.

Evaluation (AO3):

The Frankfurt School's critique is powerful and highlights genuine concerns about commercialisation and consumerism.
However, it is elitist — it assumes that ordinary people are passive dupes of the culture industry, incapable of critical thought or creative engagement.
Pluralists argue that popular culture is genuinely enjoyed and valued by the people who consume it, and that dismissing it as "mass culture" reflects intellectual snobbery rather than sociological analysis.
Fiske (1989) argued that audiences are active — they use popular culture for their own purposes, creating their own meanings and pleasures from commercial products.

Subculture

A subculture is a group within a larger culture whose members share distinctive norms, values, beliefs, or lifestyle practices that differ from, and may challenge, the mainstream. Subcultures are typically associated with particular social groups — defined by age, class, ethnicity, or shared interests.

Key examples:

Youth subcultures: punks, mods, rockers, goths, emo, grime.
Ethnic subcultures: distinct cultural practices maintained by minority ethnic communities.
Religious subcultures: Amish, ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.
Digital subcultures: gaming communities, Reddit communities, hacker culture.

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham, led by Stuart Hall, produced influential analyses of youth subcultures in the 1970s. They argued that subcultures were symbolic forms of resistance to dominant culture — working-class youth used distinctive styles (clothing, music, language) to express opposition to their class position, even if this resistance was symbolic rather than political.

Evaluation (AO3):

The CCCS approach is influential but has been criticised for over-interpreting subcultural style as political resistance. Many young people may adopt subcultural styles for pleasure, identity, or belonging rather than as a form of class resistance.
Post-subcultural theorists (Muggleton, Bennett, Maffesoli) argue that contemporary youth cultures are more fluid, fragmented, and consumer-driven than the CCCS model suggests. Maffesoli's concept of neo-tribes describes temporary, fluid groupings based on shared tastes and lifestyles rather than fixed class-based identities.

Consumer Culture

Consumer culture describes a society in which personal identity, social status, and cultural participation are primarily defined through the purchase and consumption of goods and services. In a consumer culture, "you are what you buy."

Bauman (2007) argued that we have moved from a "producer society" (in which identity was defined by work and production) to a "consumer society" (in which identity is defined by consumption). This shift has profound implications for how people understand themselves, relate to others, and participate in social life.

Cultural Hybridity

Cultural hybridity refers to the mixing, blending, and fusion of different cultural traditions to create new, hybrid cultural forms. In an increasingly globalised world, cultures do not exist in isolation — they interact, borrow from each other, and produce new combinations.

Examples:

British curry — adapted from South Asian cuisine to suit British tastes.
Hip-hop — originating in African American communities but drawing on Jamaican, Puerto Rican, and West African cultural traditions.
K-pop — blending Korean, American, and Japanese musical and visual styles.
"Spanglish" — a hybrid language combining English and Spanish elements.

Gilroy (1993) used the concept of the "Black Atlantic" to describe the hybrid cultural forms produced through the historical interaction of African, Caribbean, and European cultures across the Atlantic. Gilroy argued against essentialist notions of culture — the idea that cultures are pure, fixed, and bounded. Instead, all cultures are the product of historical mixing and exchange.

Globalisation and Culture

The Globalisation Debate

Globalisation has intensified cultural contact and exchange, raising fundamental questions about the future of cultural diversity:

Position	Key Argument	Key Thinker
Cultural homogenisation	Globalisation is producing a single, Americanised global culture, destroying local traditions	Ritzer (McDonaldisation)
Cultural hybridity	Globalisation produces new, hybrid cultural forms through mixing and exchange	Tomlinson, Gilroy
Cultural resistance	Globalisation provokes defensive reassertion of local, national, or religious identities	Castells (resistance identity)
Glocalization	Global cultural products are adapted to local contexts, producing distinctive local variations	Robertson

Robertson (1992) coined the term "glocalization" to describe the process by which global cultural products are adapted and reinterpreted in local contexts. For example, McDonald's adapts its menu to local tastes in different countries (the McAloo Tikki in India, the Teriyaki McBurger in Japan), and television formats like Big Brother or The X Factor are adapted to local cultural norms.

Summary

Culture encompasses the shared norms, values, beliefs, customs, and practices of a group or society.
Norms are specific behavioural expectations; values are general principles; customs are traditional practices.
Key types of culture include high culture, popular/low culture, mass culture, subculture, and consumer culture.
The Frankfurt School (Adorno) critiqued mass culture as standardised and pacifying; pluralists and Fiske argue audiences are active.
Subcultures (CCCS) may represent symbolic resistance, but post-subcultural theorists emphasise fluidity.
Cultural hybridity (Gilroy) describes the mixing of cultural traditions in a globalised world.
Globalisation produces homogenisation, hybridity, resistance, and glocalization simultaneously.

Exam Tip: AQA questions on types of culture require you to define key terms precisely, illustrate with examples, and evaluate different perspectives. Do not simply list types — analyse the power relations behind cultural distinctions (Bourdieu) and consider how globalisation is transforming cultural categories.