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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. Crucially, the topic asks you to see that cultural categories are never neutral descriptions: deciding that opera is "high" culture and reality television is "low" culture is itself an exercise of social power, and one of your central tasks across this topic is to analyse who defines culture and whose interests those definitions serve.
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.
This lesson maps directly to the AQA A-Level Sociology specification (7192), Paper 2: Topics in Sociology, Section A — Culture and Identity. Within that option, the lesson addresses the bullet point "different conceptions of culture, including subculture, mass culture, folk and high culture, popular culture, global culture; the socially constructed nature of culture." It provides the conceptual foundation for the whole topic and feeds into the later sub-topics on the relationship of identity to production, consumption and globalisation, and on the role of socialisation. You are assessed across three Assessment Objectives: AO1 (knowledge and understanding of concepts and studies), AO2 (application of that material to the Item and to contemporary examples), and AO3 (analysis and evaluation). On Paper 2 the discriminating questions are the 10-mark "applying material from the Item, analyse" item-linked question and the 20-mark "evaluate" essay (note: Paper 2 essays are 20 marks, not 30 — the 30-mark essay belongs to Papers 1 and 3).
Culture is the spine that connects every part of the A-Level, so examiners reward candidates who consciously join the topic to the wider specification:
Before examining different types of culture, it is essential to understand the building blocks of any culture:
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:
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:
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.
Culture also allocates people to statuses (social positions, such as "teacher," "mother" or "student") and attaches roles (the expected behaviour that goes with each status) to them. Sociologists distinguish ascribed status (fixed at birth — e.g. being born into an aristocratic family or a particular caste) from achieved status (earned through effort — e.g. qualifying as a doctor). A major debate across the topic is whether modern, "meritocratic" societies have genuinely shifted from ascription to achievement, or whether ascribed factors such as class, gender and ethnicity continue to shape life chances behind a meritocratic façade.
A point the specification names explicitly is that culture is socially constructed. This is the sociological alternative to biological determinism — the common-sense idea that human behaviour is dictated by "human nature." The evidence for social construction is the sheer diversity of human cultures: practices regarded as natural and obvious in one society (how to greet, what to eat, how to grieve, how men and women should behave) are entirely different in another. If culture were biological it would be universal; the fact that it varies across societies and changes across history shows it is made by people, not given by nature. This argument runs through every sub-topic — class, gender, ethnic and age identities are all, on the sociological view, cultural constructions rather than facts of biology.
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 |
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:
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 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:
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.
The label "mass" is doing critical work here: it implies an undifferentiated mass of people receiving identical, mass-produced culture from above, in contrast to the active, locally produced quality of folk culture. The Frankfurt School were writing as refugees from Nazi Germany, and their fear was partly that a manipulable mass culture had helped fascism to flourish — a context worth remembering when you evaluate their pessimism.
Adorno and Horkheimer (1944), in Dialectic of Enlightenment, coined the term "culture industry" to describe the mass production of cultural goods. They argued that:
Evaluation (AO3):
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:
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):
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.
The specification names two further types you must be able to distinguish. Folk culture refers to culture that emerges organically "from below," from the lived experience of ordinary, usually pre-industrial, communities — traditional songs, folk tales, regional dress, seasonal festivals and craft skills passed down by word of mouth. Folk culture is typically active (people produce it themselves rather than consuming it), local and rooted in a specific place and history. The Marxist critic Strinati (1995) notes that folk culture is often romanticised as authentic and "pure" by those who dislike mass culture — but this nostalgia can itself be a class judgement.
Global culture refers to the way cultural products, images, brands and practices increasingly circulate across national boundaries, so that people in very different societies consume similar films, music, fashion and food. Sklair (2002) argues that a transnational capitalist class promotes a "culture-ideology of consumerism" worldwide. Whether this produces sameness or new local variation is the central globalisation debate examined below.
Building on Bourdieu, Sarah Thornton (1995), in her study Club Cultures, developed the concept of subcultural capital. Within club and dance-music scenes, status is earned not through high-cultural taste but through being "in the know" — possessing the right records, knowing the right clubs, having the correct trainers, and crucially not being seen as a "mainstream" or commercialised consumer. Subcultural capital can be objectified (the rare record, the haircut) or embodied (knowing how to behave, the right slang). Thornton's key insight is that subcultures define themselves against an imagined, derided "mainstream," and that media coverage — even negative coverage — actually helps to build subcultural capital by marking out the boundary between the "hip" and the ordinary. This shows that the high/low distinction is reproduced within popular culture, not only between high and popular culture.
Andy Bennett (1999), drawing on Maffesoli's idea of neo-tribes, argued that the rigid, class-based subculture model of the CCCS no longer fits contemporary youth culture. Studying the dance-music scene in Newcastle, Bennett found that young people moved fluidly between musical styles and social groupings rather than committing to a single fixed subcultural identity. He proposed the term "neo-tribe" to capture these loose, shifting, taste-based associations that people drift in and out of. Bennett's work is a crucial postmodern challenge to the idea that culture maps neatly onto class — but critics note that he may underplay the continuing influence of class and locality on who has access to which scenes.
The diagram below organises the main types of culture and the theorists associated with each, helping you see the field at a glance:
graph TD
A["Culture: shared way of life"] --> B["High culture (Bourdieu): elite, cultural capital"]
A --> C["Popular / low culture: mass-consumed"]
A --> D["Mass culture (Frankfurt School): standardised"]
A --> E["Folk culture (Strinati): organic, from below"]
A --> F["Global culture (Sklair): transnational consumerism"]
C --> G["Subculture (CCCS / Hall): symbolic resistance"]
G --> H["Subcultural capital (Thornton)"]
G --> I["Neo-tribes (Bennett / Maffesoli): fluid, taste-based"]
B --> J["Habitus & cultural reproduction"]
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:
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 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.
A strong essay treats "types of culture" as a set of contested claims, not a list to be memorised. The following spine gives you developed evaluative strands you can deploy:
Item A
Sociologists disagree about how to classify culture. Some draw a sharp line between "high culture", associated with the educated elite, and "popular" or "mass" culture, consumed by the majority. Others argue that this distinction is breaking down, and that the categories tell us more about power than about the quality of cultural products themselves.
Applying material from Item A, analyse two ways in which sociologists have explained the distinction between high culture and popular culture. (10 marks)
AO breakdown: this question is marked as 4 marks AO1, 4 marks AO2, 2 marks AO3. You must develop two clearly separated explanations, each hooked explicitly to a phrase in the Item ("more about power than about the quality"). Strong answers pick contrasting explanations (e.g. a Marxist/Bourdieusian power explanation and a postmodern collapse-of-the-boundary explanation) and analyse each rather than merely describing it.
Item B
Some sociologists argue that there is no longer any meaningful difference between "high" and "popular" culture. They point to the way cultural products are mixed together in a media-saturated society, and to the active, creative ways in which audiences use popular culture. Other sociologists insist that cultural distinctions remain powerful and continue to reflect — and reproduce — social inequalities.
Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that the distinction between high culture and popular culture is no longer meaningful. (20 marks)
AO breakdown: 6 marks AO1, 4 marks AO2, 10 marks AO3. The essay is evaluation-led: set up the postmodern "collapse" argument (Strinati, Baudrillard, Fiske's active audience) from the Item, then weigh it against the persistence of cultural hierarchy (Bourdieu, Thornton), reaching a reasoned conclusion.
(Illustrating the 20-mark essay above.)
Mid-band. High culture means things like opera, ballet and classical music, which are linked to rich and educated people. Popular culture means things like pop music, reality TV and football that ordinary people enjoy. Postmodernists like Strinati say the difference between them has broken down because nowadays you get high and low culture mixed together, for example opera singers doing adverts. Fiske says audiences are active and make their own meanings, so popular culture is just as good. Bourdieu disagreed and said high culture is cultural capital that helps the upper class stay on top. Marxists think mass culture keeps the working class passive. So there are arguments on both sides, but it does seem like the difference is breaking down today.
This answer would sit in the lower-middle bands. It shows accurate basic knowledge and names relevant sociologists, but the points are asserted rather than developed, the Item is not used, and the "arguments on both sides" conclusion is not earned through analysis.
Stronger. The view that the high/popular distinction is no longer meaningful is most strongly associated with postmodernism. Strinati argues that in a media-saturated society the boundaries between high and popular culture have dissolved, as styles are freely mixed in pastiche and "serious" and "trash" culture circulate side by side. The Item points to "the active, creative ways in which audiences use popular culture," and Fiske (1989) supports this: audiences are not passive consumers of standardised products but actively make meanings, which undermines the idea that popular culture is inferior. This challenges older Marxist accounts such as the Frankfurt School's claim that mass culture pacifies the working class. However, Bourdieu (1984) argues that the distinction remains powerful because "high" culture functions as cultural capital — a resource that the dominant class uses to secure educational and social advantage — so the distinction is not about quality but about power, exactly as the Item suggests. This means the categories may persist even if their content changes. Overall the distinction is changing rather than disappearing.
This is a clear upper-band answer: developed points, explicit Item use, a genuine argument between perspectives, and a reasoned (if slightly underdeveloped) conclusion.
Top-band. Whether the high/popular distinction is "no longer meaningful" depends on what we think the distinction does. The postmodern case in the Item is strong: Strinati argues that a media-saturated society dissolves cultural hierarchies through pastiche, while Baudrillard's "implosion" of high and low into a flow of signs means cultural value can no longer be anchored in any objective standard. Fiske (1989) reinforces this by relocating value to the audience: if meaning is made in reception, then dismissing popular culture as inferior is simply intellectual snobbery, and the Item's "active, creative" audiences become the producers of cultural worth. So at the level of content and reception, the distinction looks increasingly arbitrary. However, this conflates two different claims — that the distinction is aesthetically meaningless and that it is socially meaningless — and only the first survives scrutiny. Bourdieu (1984) shows that the high/popular boundary is not really about quality at all but about the reproduction of class power: "legitimate" taste operates as cultural capital, convertible into educational success and social closure, which is precisely the Item's point that the categories tell us "more about power than about quality." Crucially, Thornton (1995) demonstrates that hierarchies do not vanish in popular culture but migrate inside it: subcultural capital re-establishes a distinction between the "hip" and the derided "mainstream," reproducing exactly the logic of distinction Bourdieu identified. The boundary is therefore not erased but displaced and multiplied. A purely postmodern reading also struggles methodologically, since claims that "everything is mixed" rest on selective, impressionistic reading of media texts rather than systematic evidence of how taste maps onto class — and where such evidence exists (Savage's class research), it continues to show patterned cultural inequality. The most defensible conclusion is that the specific markers of high culture are unstable and increasingly blurred, but the social function of cultural distinction — drawing boundaries that track and reproduce inequality — remains very much alive. The distinction is thus better described as transformed than as meaningless.
This answer earns the top band through sustained, conceptually controlled evaluation: it distinguishes two senses of "meaningful," sets the strongest version of each side against the other, integrates the Item analytically, brings in a decisive empirical study (Thornton), raises a methodological limitation, and reaches a precise, well-supported judgement.
The Mid-band answer secures genuine AO1 marks — the sociologists are correctly named and the basic positions are accurate — but it reads as a list of one-sentence assertions ("Bourdieu disagreed and said...") with no development of why each point matters, makes no use of the Item (forfeiting AO2), and reaches an unearned conclusion. At A-Level this caps the response in the lower-middle bands. The Stronger answer is recognisably an essay: it develops each point with an explanation of its significance, uses an Item phrase explicitly, and stages a real argument between postmodernism and Bourdieu, which lifts it firmly into the upper bands. What still separates it from the top is that its evaluation runs as a sequence of points rather than as a controlled argument, and its conclusion ("changing rather than disappearing") is asserted rather than demonstrated. The Top-band answer is distinguished by analytical control over the concept itself: it reframes the question by distinguishing aesthetic from social meaning, weighs the strongest form of each perspective, deploys Thornton as a decisive turning point, integrates a methodological criticism, and arrives at a precise judgement that follows logically from the argument. That combination of conceptual sophistication, logical chaining and reasoned evaluation is the hallmark of the top band.
This content is aligned with the AQA A-Level Sociology (7192) specification.