Culture as a social system

A project submitted to Hidayatullah national law university, Nava-Raipur

In partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of the degree of
B.A.LLB(HONOURS)

Supervised by: Submitted by:

Dr Uttam Kumar Panda Rupesh D Sanghvi
Assistant professor Roll No. - 126
HNLU, Nava-Raipur Section – C

Hidayatullah National Law University

Nava Raipur, Atal Nagar, District - Raipur
(Chhattisgarh)

Date of submission – 15th October 2019

 Declaration

This is to declare that this project has been submitted by me to Hidayatullah national
Law university, Nava – Raipur in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award
of degree of B.A LLB(HONOURS).The matter embodied in this project is original and
is the record of my own research work, it is hereby declared that it has not been submitted
for the award of any other degree in any other university.

Date: Mr Rupesh D Sanghvi

Roll no. - 126
Place: Hidayatullah national law university
Nava – Raipur, October 2019

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 Certificate

This is to certify that Mr Rupesh D Sanghvi, Roll no. 126 has submitted his project titled
“CULTURE AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM” in partial fulfilment of the award of degree of B.A
LLB(HONOURS) to Hidayatullah national law university, Nava – Raipur under my guidance
and supervision. It is also affirmed that the project submitted by him is bona-fide and genuine
research.

DATE: Dr Uttam Kumar Panda

Assistant professor
PLACE: Hidayatullah national law university
Nava – Raipur, October 2019

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 Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who supported me throughout the

completion of project. I am thankful for their aspiring guidance, invaluable constructive
criticism and friendly advice during the project work. I am sincerely grateful to them for
sharing for sharing their truthful and illuminating views on number of issues relating to the
project.

I express warm thanks to Dr Uttam K Panda for his kind and important guidance and for
providing me a great topic to work on. I would like to extend my gratitude towards the staff
and administration of HNLU for providing facilities in the form of library and IT department.
lastly I would like to thanks all my seniors and friends for contributing valuable thoughts and
ideas conducive for the completion of the project.

Rupesh D Sanghvi
Semester – I
Section – C
Roll no. – 126

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 Table of contents

DECLARATION …………………………………………………………………………... I
CERTIFICATE …………………………………………………………………………….. II
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………………………………………………………………. III
INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………………….. 5
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ……………………………………………………………6
RESEARCH PROBLEM & RATIONALE ………………………………………………….6
OBJECTIVES …………………………………………………………………………….... .7
RESEARCH QUESTION ……………………………………………………………………7
MODE OF CITATION ……………………………………....................................................8
REVIEW OF LITERATURE…………………………………………………………………8
CONCEPTS AND VARIABLES & HYPOTHESIS………………………………………....9
RESEARCH DESIGN ……………………………………………………………………….10
CHAPTERIZATION AT A GLANCE ……………………………………………………... 11
LIMITATION OF STUDY ………………………………………………………………….12
CHAPTER 1: CULTURE – MEANING, ORIGINS AND GROWTH……………………...13
CHAPTER 2: SOCIAL SYSTEMS THEORY………………………………………………16
CHAPTER3: CULTURE AND EVERYDAY LIFE………………………………………...18
CHAPTER 4: RISE OF POP-CULTURE……………………………………………………20
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………23
REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………25

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 Introduction

Culture is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behaviour and norms found in
human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits
of the individuals in these groups. We acquire culture through the learning processes of
enculturation and socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies
country or group.

In simple terms culture is the way people behave and live in their everyday life. A cultural
norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as guideline for behaviour, dress,
language, and demeanour in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social
group. Accepting only a monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species
can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change.
Thus in military culture, valour is counted an ideal behaviour for an individual, as are duty,
honour, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues, or functional responses in the
continuum of conflict. In the practice of religion, analogous virtues can be identified in a social
group.

The concept of social systems is central to the study of sociology. They exist throughout human
society by their very definition. Social systems, also called human systems, begin in simple
form and can become progressively more complex. The family is a basic unit that extends to
the community, municipality, region and nation. Social systems can exist to serve a specific
purpose, such as a corporation or industry or educational institution. A college campus is its
own social system. Any individual can belong to a number of social systems simultaneously.

Social systems are characterized by a shared sense of purpose however that may be expressed.
The result is a unique and shared set of features, behaviours, norms and standards. For example,
the form of government of a particular country produces a social system with its own set of
standards. The Soviet social system of the first half of the 20th century, for example, was quite
different culturally and socially from its United States counterpart.

Thus through the definitions of both culture and social system we now know that both the terms
even though might seem same but are fundamentally different. We will see further in project
the differences between them. Social system is much bigger term than culture and culture is
part of it.

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 Research methodology

The project work has been carried out following the descriptive analytical approach. The
purpose of the project is to provide facts and information to further focus, study and critically
analyse the topic CULTURE AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM. This topic for the project is selected
due to the complexities of topics such as culture and social system and the relationship it shared
under the scope of sociology. A number of secondary sources such as books, articles,
government projects and carious websites have been used and adequate citations and references
have been mentioned for the same in the form of footnotes.

Rationale
Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviours, objects, and other characteristics common to the
members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define
themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society. Thus, culture
includes many societal aspects: language, customs, values, norms.

Nietzsche believed that culture should replace the religion and scriptures. He believed that
culture will bring people together and harmonize the world. Since the beginning of society
culture has been a part of it. Thus it’s important to study culture as part of the social system
which exist around us. Especially in modern world where there is so much chaos, uncertainty
culture is what keeps us together thus as far as social system goes culture is important to study
and understand what culture was and how it’s been developed into the important tool or
mechanism for the existance of human beinghs in this world.

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 OBJECTIVES
 To study the meaning of culture and social system.
 To understand the importance of culture with reference to sociology.
 To understand the growth and modernisation of culture.
 To study the rise of pop-culture and its significance in society.

Research Question

 What does culture mean?

 What led to the rise of popular culture?

 How culture impacts the social institutions in everyday life?

 What is the future of culture in modern world?

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 Mode of citation

A uniform mode of citation i.e. 19th bluebook citation format is used throughout the project.

Review of literature
 The Cambridge companion to modern culture in India
Edited by – Rashmi sadana, Vasudha Dalmia

India is changing at a rapid pace as it continues to move from its colonial past to its globalized
future. This Companion offers aframe work for understanding that change, and how modern
cultural forms have emerged out of very different histories and traditions. The book provides
accounts of literature, theatre, film, modern and popular art, music, television and food; it also
explores in detail social divisions, customs, communications and daily life. In a series of
engaging, erudite and occasionally moving essays, the contributors, drawn from a variety of
disciplines, examine not merely what constitutes modern Indian culture, but also just how wide-
ranging are the cultures that persist in the regions of India. This book has helped us to
incorporate the modern culture that exist in our country in my project.

 The psychological foundations of culture

Edited by – Christian Crandall, mark schaller

This book is intended to address question related to specific cultures and culture in
general. The primary question being addressed by book being how culture came into
existence? How do some cultures have particular characteristics and customs rather

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 than other? How do cultures persist and change over time? It is in this book that we find
the central role of psychological processes: individual’s thoughts, motives and other
cognitions, these interpersonal consequence in turn govern the emergence, persistence
and change in culture.

 THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY.

Edited by – Bryan s. turner

Providing an authoritative and comprehensive overview of the classical and thecontemporary,

this volume is an indispensable guide to the vibrant and expanding field of sociology. Featuring
over 600 entries, from concise definitions to discursive essays, written by leading international
academics, the Dictionary offers a truly global perspective, examining both American and
European traditions and approaches. Entries cover schools, theories, theorists, and debates,
with substantial articles on all key topics in the field. While recognizing the richness of
historical sociological traditions, the Dictionary also looks forward to new and evolving
influences such as cultural change, genetics, globalization, information technologies, new
wars, and terrorism. Most entries incorporate references for further reading, and a cross-
referencing system enables easy access to related areas. This Dictionary is an invaluable
reference work for students and academics alike and will help to define the field of sociology
in years to come.

 CIVILIZATIONS – CULTURE AMBITION AND CHANGE OF NATURE

Author - FELIPE FERNNDEZ-ARMES

This book studies the largish topic of civilizations by the way in which environmental
conditions shape its processes. Since in large part civilization is basically a reshaping of nature
"in our own image," as the author says, this approach is able to draw interesting comparisons
and contrasts between cultures in different times and places which more chronologically or
ideologically focused studies are unable to do.

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 Concepts and variables

 Culture - Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics
common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and
groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society.
Thus, culture includes many societal aspects: language, customs, values, norms.

 Social system - In sociology, social system is the patterned network of relationships

constituting a coherent whole that exist between individuals, groups, and institutions.
It is the formal structure of role and status that can form in a small, stable group. An
individual may belong to multiple social systems at once; examples of social systems
include nuclear family units, communities, cities, nations, college campuses,
corporations, and industries. The organization and definition of groups within a social
system depend on various shared characteristics such as location, socioeconomic status,
race, religion, societal function, or other distinguishable features.

 Popular culture (pop-culture) - Popular culture (also called mass culture and
pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of the practices,
beliefs and objects that are dominant or ubiquitous in a society at a given point in time.
Popular culture also encompasses the activities and feelings produced as a result of
interaction with these dominant objects. Heavily influenced in modern times by mass
media, this collection of ideas permeates the everyday lives of people in a given society.
Therefore, popular culture has a way of influencing an individual's attitudes towards
certain topics.

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 Hypothesis
Culture is the basic root of any community which gives them the ways of life. The culture
provides solution to the critical problem that is faced to community. Culture teach us to think
for the whole nation not individually, it provide the concept of family, nation etc.

Our culture should be upheld as our heritage. Nothing and no one should be allowed to attack
or destroy our cultural traditions. It is always wise to remember that our cultures define our
existence and make us who we are. It should be passed on generations after generation, like it
has been done until now. Our cultural background should never fade into oblivion and we have
to make sure of that. A world without diverse cultural will not be as colourful as it is now.

Research design

Nature of study –
This Research Project is critical and analytical in nature.

Sources of data –
Accumulation of information on the topic includes wide use of secondary sources like books,
newspapers, e-articles etc.

The matter from these sources have been compiled and analysed to form a greater and clear
understanding of the topic.

Method of data collection –

The data has been collected by non-doctrinal way of research.

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LIMITATION OF STUDY:
This study is limited to culture as a social system and hence the major focus of this study is
how culture is different from social system and how it as a part of social system affects the
lives of human beings. There hasn’t been any geographical limits in this project since it has
covered the cultures and social systems that exist across the globe.

TIME LIMIT OF STUDY:

This study has been conducted for academic purpose and has been analysed, recorded and

compiled in a time period of 10 days.

CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY:

This project will help other students and researchers to gain knowledge about culture as a social
system and the impact culture has on the lives of human beings. It will also help them to
understand how moving forward into future the culture, popular culture will lead and impact
our lives.

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 Chapter 1: culture – its meaning origins and
growth
Traditionally the province of either anthropology or the humanities, culture has become
increasingly central to sociology, both as a subject of study, and as a theoretical challenge to
sociology’s self-conception. The sociological definition of and approach to culture, which
refers to the form, content, and effects of the symbolic aspect of social life, has emerged out of
a critical encounter with the two more traditional definitions. In the definition of the
humanities, culture refers to intellectual and artistic activity and the artifacts produced thereby,
to what Matthew Arnold (1822–88) called “the best that has been thought and said.” Culture is
taken as the highest moral and aesthetic achievements of civilization.1

The sociology of culture has always provided critical distance from the pretensions of culture
so understood and its ensuing enshrinement in the literary, dramatic, and musical canon. By
showing the links between social status maintenance and taste, but also by carefully examining
the aesthetics of both popular cultural artifacts, and the creative cultural activities of social
classes, races, and genders traditionally excluded from the realm of high arts production, the
sociology of culture has been essential to the deconstruction of the high/middle/lowbrow
culture typology. In approaching culture as a social object of study, the sociology of culture
forms a subfield alongside the sociology of religion and the sociology of science, and takes
within its purview both high literature and pulp fiction, Fellini films and Hollywood schlock,
art music and rock ’n’ roll. With the advent of the production of culture per-spective in the
1970s, centered around the work of Richard Peterson, and the concepts of field and cultural
capital, drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this subfield has gained both empirical
purchase and theoretical sophistication.

In the anthropological definition, culture is expected to do the comparative work of

differentiating the peoples of the world, and thus also to unify their study; it forms the
counterpoint to physical anthropology’s theories of human nature. Historical sociology,

 1
THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY, 111 (Bryan s. turner eds, 1st ed, 2006)

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however, has shown the connections between the anthropological imagination and various
nationalist and colonialist projects of nineteenth-century Europe, whereby the totalizing
concept of culture was complicit in the exoticization and simultaneous subordination and
colonization (and sometimes extermination) of native populations. Extensive debates about the
political valences and historical guilt of the concept of culture have ensued. But perhaps more
importantly for ongoing empirical research, sociologists have found the anthropological
concept of culture to be underspecified; for sociology, differentiating culture from nature is not
enough. Rather, culture must be defined in relation to society, history, and individual
psychology, and, furthermore, the differentiation between culture and nature must itself be
examined historically with an eye towards its varying social effects (many anthropologists have
also come to this conclusion). Thus, while sociology has drawn extensively on symbolic,
structuralist, and linguistic anthropology for its own studies of culture, it has resisted the
temptation to conflate culture directly with the social as such, and the culture/ society
distinction has been a productively unstable one. And it would be fair to say that social
constructionist forms of cultural research have distanced themselves significantly from the
“essentializing” concepts of an earlier era.

However, both the sociology of culture and the critique of culture inside and outside of
anthropology beg fundamental questions. Why are social actors so interested in cultural
artifacts in the first place, as opposed to other, functionally equivalent, status markers? If
cultural difference cannot be grasped inside scientific anthropological theory, does that mean
that it cannot be grasped at all? What is the role of meaning and symbolic structures in modern
and late capitalist societies? To answer these questions outside of the confines of the humanist
tradition and postcolonial anthropology has been the central task for cultural sociologists, who
since the 1960s have developed a set of increasingly subtle and nuanced approaches to this
contested term of culture.

For sociology, then, culture refers to the symbolic element of social life, which has been
variously conceptualized, identified, and studied: signifiers and their signified, gestures and
their interpretation, intended and unintended meanings, written discourse and effective speech,
situational framing and scientific paradigms, andmoral and political ideals. Concretely, culture
refers to those social objects and activities which are primarily or exclusively symbolic in their

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intent or social function, such as art, music, and sports. Analytically, culture refers to the
symbolic and ideational element of any social action, social relationship, or historical pattern.
In modern and postmodern societies, these two senses of culture are increasingly intertwined
in ways that must be studied empirically: people may learn how to conduct intimate
relationships from poetry or romantic movies, and rock stars may endorse politicians. 2

The methodologies for studying culture so conceived range widely, and include surveys of
attitudes and beliefs, participant observation, ethnography, structured and unstructured inter-
views, textual analysis of written and visual media, and conversational analysis. Ultimately,
however, all of these methods involve the interpretation of meaning, and thus cannot be
mapped directly from the methods of the natural sciences, though the extent to which scientific
methods can be adapted to the study of culture is a matter of significant dispute. Furthermore,
culture not only requires interpretation, but the meanings of symbols have to be understood in
a holistic manner, which is to say that any given sign or symbol takes its meaning in relation
to those with which it is contrasted and figuratively related. The meaning of the term culture is
not an exception to this, and as culture has become central to sociology, its meaning has
emerged in relation to three central concepts, namely social structure, action theory, and critical
theory. After discussing these, we will briefly discuss the ways in which the consideration of
culture has affected other aspects of the sociological field.

Difference between culture and society:

The distinction between culture and society is, like culture itself, contested and controversial,
and, since it often conflates the analytic and concrete dimensions of culture, it is perhaps better
to discuss the relationship of culture to social structure. Talcott Parsons distinguished the
cultural from the social system in a strictly analytic fashion (his student Niklas Luhmann would
later claim that this should in fact be a concrete distinction). And Parsons suggested that the
study of culture in all its symbolic elaborations could be left to anthropology, and that sociology
could focus on the place where culture and social structure met, namely, on the
institutionalization of values and norms. Structural-functionalism suggested that culture,

2
The psychological foundations of culture, 4-13 (schaller mark and Christian s. Crandall eds, 2nd ed, 2004)

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through the normative interpenetration of society, could perform an integrative function in the
service of social equilibrium, and thus that social change came with a breakdown in value
consensus (as in Chalmers Johnson’s (1931– ) theory of social revolution). These assertions
were then subjected to relentless ideological attack for suppressing the role of strife and
domination in society (and in the use of culture). However, it is perhaps more instructive, now,
to notice a deeper problem with structural functionalism, namely its interpretive deafness.3

By approaching culture as “norms and values,” structural-functionalism not only projected

certain liberal ideals onto its model of society, but more significantly, evacuated meaning from
culture, robbing its analysis of nuance and empirical specificity. For an engagement with the
multiple layers of the symbolic immediately reveals that culture in modern societies is neither
homogenous nor consensual. Rather, the size and makeup of collectivities that share certain
symbolic articulations vary significantly (from small religious cults to large voting
populations), and these symbolic articulations are contested both within and without
collectivises.

CHAPTER 2: social systems theory

The theory of social systems was strongly influenced by systems theory in other fields,
especially cybernetics, engineering, and biology. General system theory was particularly
influential in the 1950s and 1960s. It was proposed by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy
(1901–72) as the basis of a unified science, avoiding the older mechanistic view of physical
science under which it had proven difficult to include the human sciences. The basic postulate
of any systems theory is that the particular phenomenon under investigation is made up of
elements and parts that are organized and interdependent. This organized interdependence is
what constitutes a system, and it operates as a relatively bounded entity in interaction with an
environment. System theorists are interested both in the organization of the system and in the
organization of its relations with its environment. Emphasis is upon self-regulation and the
processing of information and learning via feedback mechanisms.

3
“Culture and Society Defined.” Cliffsnotes.Com, 2015, www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/culture-
and-societies/culture-and-society-defined. Accessed 20 Oct. 2019.

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The functionalist sociologist, Talcott Parsons, developed a theory of the social system in the
1950s; from the 1960s onwards, he increasingly used the language of cybernetics and
biological systems theory. In “Some Problems of General Theory in Sociology,” in Edward
Tiryakian (ed.), Theoretical Sociology (1970: 230), Parsons describes the social system as a
structurally differentiated system of social roles and expectations that is maintained by four
functional imperatives (adaptation, goal-attainment, integration, and latency)
as it operates in its environment(s), writing that, “the concept function is central to the under-
standing of all living systems . . . [and] is simply the corollary of the concept living system,
delineating certain features in the first instance of the system–environment relation and in the
second, of the internal differentiation of the system itself.” The social system operates in an
environment of other systems, including the system of the organism, the personality system,and
the cultural system. Parsons outlines a “cybernetic hierarchy,” ordered with the cultural system,
highest in information, at the top and the system of the organism at the bottom. In that sense,
Parsons declares himself to be a “cultural determinist.”

Parsons analyzes social systems in terms of an analytical postulate of perfect integration,

arguing that this is to be distinguished from concrete social systems as such, which are to be
analysed in terms of their tendencies towards integration, and not in terms of integration as a
fully realized state. This has been restated by Jeffrey Alexander in his “Introduction” to
Neofunctionalism (1985) as the basis of a neofunctionalist paradigm of social systems, where
“equilibrium is taken as a reference point for functionalist systems analysis, though not for
participants in actual social systems as such.”4

Nonetheless, critics argued that this analytic emphasis on integration neglects conflict, and
overemphasizes equilibrium theoretically, if not concretely. For some systems theorists, the
problem is the overgeneralized nature of Parsons’s theory. According to Walter Buckley
(1921– ), systems theory could be applied directly to concrete systems without any assumption
of the priority of equilibrium over “chaotic complexity,” or of consensus over conflict, and
without the artificial constraint of just four functions with which to account for differentiation.
Parsons developed his theory of the social system on an action frame of reference; his aim was
to integrate the analysis of systems of action with that of the agency of individuals. Critics such
as Anthony Giddens and Ju¨rgen Habermas argue that he came to neglect action and over-
emphasized systems. Nonetheless, each comes to offer a very similar account of social systems

4
PARSONS, TALCOTT. “CULTURE AND SOCIAL SYSTEM REVISITED.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2,
1972, pp. 253–266. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/42858956.

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to that of Parsons. Giddens’s theory of structuration sets out a level of social interaction whose
internal differentiation is organized by four structural principles, those of allocation,
authorization, legitimation, and signification. Habermas, for his part, sets out a level of society
and a division between the system and the lifeworld, where each operates in terms of two
functions defined similarly to those of Parsons and Giddens.

Chapter 3 : culture and everyday life

Humans are social creatures. Since the dawn of Homo sapiens nearly 250,000 years ago, people
have grouped together into communities in order to survive. Living together, people form
common habits and behaviours—from specific methods of childrearing to preferred techniques
for obtaining food. In modern-day Paris, many people shop daily at outdoor markets to pick up
what they need for their evening meal, buying cheese, meat, and vegetables from different
specialty stalls. In the Canada, the majority of people shop once a week at supermarkets, filling
large carts to the brim. The Parisian Roland Barthes disdainfully referred to this as “the hasty
stocking up” of a “more mechanical civilization” (Barthes 1977).

Almost every human behaviour, from shopping to marriage to expressions of feelings, is

learned. In Canada, people tend to view marriage as a choice between two people, based on
mutual feelings of love. In other nations and in other times, marriages have been arranged
through an intricate process of interviews and negotiations between entire families, or in other
cases, through a direct system such as a “mail order bride.” To someone raised in Winnipeg,
the marriage customs of a family from Nigeria may seem strange, or even wrong. Conversely,
someone from a traditional Kolkata family might be perplexed with the idea of romantic love
as the foundation for the lifelong commitment of marriage. In other words, the way in which
people view marriage depends largely on what they have been taught.

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Behaviour based on learned customs is not a bad thing. Being familiar with unwritten rules
helps people feel secure and “normal.” Most people want to live their daily lives confident that
their behaviours will not be challenged or disrupted. But even an action as seemingly simple
as commuting to work evidences a great deal of cultural propriety.

Take the case of going to work on public transportation. Whether commuting in Dublin, Cairo,
Mumbai, or Vancouver, many behaviours will be the same in all locations, but significant
differences also arise between cultures. Typically, a passenger would find a marked bus stop
or station, wait for the bus or train, pay an agent before or after boarding, and quietly take a
seat if one is available. But when boarding a bus in Cairo, passengers might have to run,
because buses there often do not come to a full stop to take on patrons. Dublin bus riders would
be expected to extend an arm to indicate that they want the bus to stop for them. And when
boarding a commuter train in Mumbai, passengers must squeeze into overstuffed cars amid a
lot of pushing and shoving on the crowded platforms. That kind of behaviour would be
considered the height of rudeness in Canada, but in Mumbai it reflects the daily challenges of
getting around on a train system that is taxed to capacity.

In this example of commuting, culture consists of thoughts (expectations about personal space,
for example) and tangible things (bus stops, trains, and seating capacity). Material culture refers
to the objects or belongings of a group of people. Metro passes and bus tokens are part of
material culture, as are automobiles, stores, and the physical structures where people worship.
Nonmaterial culture, in contrast, consists of the ideas, attitudes, and beliefs of a society.
Material and nonmaterial aspects of culture are linked, and physical objects often symbolize
cultural ideas. A metro pass is a material object, but it represents a form of nonmaterial culture,
namely, capitalism, and the acceptance of paying for transportation. Clothing, hairstyles, and
jewellery are part of material culture, but the appropriateness of wearing certain clothing for
specific events reflects nonmaterial culture. A school building belongs to material culture, but
the teaching methods and educational standards are part of education’s nonmaterial culture.
These material and nonmaterial aspects of culture can vary subtly from region to region. As
people travel farther afield, moving from different regions to entirely different parts of the
world, certain material and nonmaterial aspects of culture become dramatically unfamiliar.
What happens when we encounter different cultures? As we interact with cultures other than

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our own, we become more aware of the differences and commonalities between others’ worlds
and our own.

Chapter 4: Rise of pop-culture and future of

culture in modern world

The term ‘popular culture’ holds different meanings depending on who’s defining it and the
context of use. It is generally recognized as the vernacular or people’s culture that
predominates in a society at a point in time. As Brummett explains in Rhetorical Dimensions
of Popular Culture, pop culture involves the aspects of social life most actively involved in by
the public. As the ‘culture of the people’, popular culture is determined by the interactions
between people in their everyday activities: styles of dress, the use of slang, greeting rituals
and the foods that people eat are all examples of popular culture. Popular culture is also
informed by the mass media.

There are a number of generally agreed elements comprising popular culture. For example,
popular culture encompasses the most immediate and contemporary aspects of our lives. These
aspects are often subject to rapid change, especially in a highly technological world in which
people are brought closer and closer by omnipresent media. Certain standards and commonly
held beliefs are reflected in pop culture. Because of its commonality, pop culture both reflects
and influences people’s everyday life (see eg Petracca and Sorapure, Common Culture).
Furthermore, brands can attain pop iconic status (eg the Nike swoosh or McDonald’s golden
arches). However, iconic brands, as other aspects of popular culture, may rise and fall.

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With these fundamental aspects in mind, popular culture may be defined as the products and
forms of expression and identity that are frequently encountered or widely accepted, commonly
liked or approved, and characteristic of a particular society at a given time. Ray Browne in
his essay ‘Folklore to Populore’ offers a similar definition: “Popular culture consists of the
aspects of attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, customs, and tastes that define the people of any society.
Popular culture is, in the historic use of term, the culture of the people.”

Popular culture allows large heterogeneous masses of people to identify collectively. It serves
an inclusionary role in society as it unites the masses on ideals of acceptable forms of behavior.
Along with forging a sense of identity which binds individuals to the greater society,
consuming pop culture items often enhances an individual’s prestige in their peer group.
Further, popular culture, unlike folk or high culture, provides individuals with a chance to
change the prevailing sentiments and norms of behavior, as we shall see. So popular culture
appeals to people because it provides opportunities for both individual happiness and
communal bonding.

A Brief History of Popular Culture

The homecoming of American Army men and women from war in 1945 set the stage for a new
generation of children, as well as a significant change in the American way of life. Known as
the baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, this generation saw the rise of a massive
industry in America that sustained teen culture, and was largely responsible for the rise of
popular culture in America. Think drive-ins and the classic American diner and Leave It to
Beaver.

This generation came of age in the turbulent 1960s, a decade that featured the civil rights
movement, Woodstock, the counterculture movement, and the Vietnam War. The massive size
of the teen generation of baby boomers contributed to the strength of popular culture and the
special character of American culture at large, with consumer markets and television
programming--and other media outlets--gearing up to cater to the new demographic.

The latter part of the 20th century also saw the rise of globalization, a concept that arose in
political and economic contexts in reference to the growing power of corporations and the
linking of nationalities to operate on a planetary scale. Globalization implies the rise of global

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consumer markets: McDonald's restaurants in India, Coca Cola on sale in Taiwan, Disney
memorabilia collected in Moscow.

When applied to the study of popular culture, globalization can refer to the new importance
placed on mass culture to foster a sense of unity and the growing importance of non-western
cultural perspectives. The global scale of popular culture is a careful balance between the sense
of global unity, multiculturalism, and the acknowledgement of differences and diversity

Ultimately, we believe that challenging short-termism will involve reauthoring some of the
deeper narratives that animate our society, the collective beliefs that shape our direction of
travel – from narratives about our place in the natural order of things to those which drive our
economic paradigms. The stories we live in justify the status quo, make institutions feel
inevitable, legitimise certain kinds of solutions, and make our world feel preordained. These
cultural narratives are often foundational to the structures that incentivise short-termism,
whether at the individual, political, corporate or financial level. For examples of this kind of
narrative shift work, see recent work on poverty by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the
oceans by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and The Pop Culture Collaborative, which is
underpinned by the belief that “activists, artists, and philanthropists can encourage mass
audiences to reckon with the past and rewrite the story of our nation’s future.”

Culture is foundational. It is the soil from which our civilisations grow. If we want to ensure
that humans have a long, thriving future on this planet, then we need to work at the level of
culture as well as politics, science, technology, finance and infrastructure. If we can work with
art and culture to stretch our time frames so that we care about the long-term future, then
hopefully as a species, we will have a future in the long term.

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 Conclusion
In the modern world, two people living in the same section of a city may belong to different
cultures, even presuming that they both grew up to similar backgrounds. In the modern,
globalizing world the idea of "culture" is shifting. A culture can no longer be defined "these
people live here so they are of this culture", as the shared experiences no longer exist. In this
society people from the United States may communicate in a meaningful fashion with those
from very different cultures, or even adopt traits, traditions, manners and habits from other
cultures which they see on television, online or in other places. If an American spends more
time speaking to friends they have in Japan, watches nothing other than anime, acts humble,
self defacing, selfless and polite, and eats primarily Japanese food, can their culture be called
American? In modern society in an apartment building filled with white people, one may find
hundreds of modern "cultures"; otaku, hard core strategy gamers, RPG players, etc., each with
their own traditions, customs and values. Geographic culture is a thing of the past in the
globalizing world, and is steadily being replaced by cultures based on personal interests.

Culture seems to be getting weaker and weaker in today's modern world, and this is down to
globalization. Large and major influential countries like Britain and America are both
multicultural countries. Meaning that the two most influential countries in the world, don't have
a strong culture, unlike hundreds of years ago, they have a mix.
Also, globalization has a massive impact on culture. For example, coca-cola, Pepsi, Levi's,
McDonalds and American TV (just to name a few) you can find even in the poorest of
countries, so it seems to be becoming a one world culture.

In modern culture, the elders tend to think of traditional culture as “primitive,” “backward,”
somehow “childlike.” In traditional culture, on the other hand, the elders tend to think of
modern culture as “hollow,” “ignorant,” somehow “childlike.” But modern culture tends to
take over traditional culture because modern culture is powerful: it is mechanized, it moves
mountains, it digs canals and drains swamps, it overwhelms, and it is seductive — it glitters, it
tastes sweet, it goes fast. And it advertises.

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There is a hole in modern culture, where the truly important spiritual and humane parts of life
used to be. Put another way, I think that inside modern man there is a traditional man
somewhere — who wants the security of feeling connected to an extended family and a clan
of other humans — who longs for the pleasure of hearing stories told around the hearth —
who resonates to the steady drum rhythm or the haunting bagpipe wail — who plods through
his anxious dreams grasping at bits of knowledge, thirsting, perhaps unknowingly, for the cool,
delicious harmony of understanding. I believe the shift from traditional to modern culture was
one of man’s greatest falls from grace.

Culture is still important, even in the modern world. The effects may be less visible than 100
years ago, as people are interested in fitting in. Culture, however, is still evident in music,
dance, dress, and in family activities and traditions.

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 References

 The Cambridge companion to modern culture in India, 99 (Vasudha Dalmia And

Rashmi Sadana eds, 1st ed, 2012)

 THE CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY, 111 (Bryan s. turner eds, 1st

ed, 2006)

 The psychological foundations of culture, 4-13 (schaller mark and Christian s.

Crandall eds, 2nd ed, 2004)

 PARSONS, TALCOTT. “CULTURE AND SOCIAL SYSTEM REVISITED.” Social

Science Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2, 1972, pp. 253–266. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/42858956.

 “Culture and Society Defined.” Cliffsnotes.Com, 2015, www.cliffsnotes.com/study-

guides/sociology/culture-and-societies/culture-and-society-defined. Accessed 20 Oct.
2019.

 “The Spread of Popular Culture | Study.Com.” Study.Com, 2019,

study.com/academy/lesson/the-spread-of-popular-culture.html. Accessed 18 Oct.
2019.

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