Culture 101

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• Language and Culture
• Subculture
  1. Use of Symbolism
  2. Sexual Subcultures
  3. Immigrants
• Cultural Change
• Counterculture
• Cultural Imperialism
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Culture is the set of patterns of human activity within a society or social group and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance.  Customs, laws, popular styles, social standards, and traditions are all examples of cultural elements.

The dominant culture in a society refers to the established language, religion, behavior, values, rituals, and social customs.  These traits are often the norm for the society as a whole.  The dominant culture is usually but not always in the majority and achieves its dominance by controlling social institutions such as communication, educational institutions, artistic expression, law, political process, and business.  In a multicultural society, various cultures are celebrated and respected equally.  Dominant culture can be promoted with deliberation and by the suppression of other cultures or subcultures.

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings.  However, the word "culture" is most commonly used in three basic senses:

• Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group

When the concept first emerged in 18th- and 19th-century Europe, it connoted a process of cultivation or improvement, as in agriculture or horticulture.  In the 19th century, it came to refer first to the betterment or refinement of the individual, especially through education, and then to the fulfillment of national aspirations or ideals.  In the mid-19th century, some scientists used the term "culture" to refer to a universal human capacity.

In the 20th century, "culture" emerged as a concept central to anthropology, encompassing all human phenomena that are not purely results of human genetics.  Specifically, the term "culture" in American anthropology had two meanings: (1) the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and (2) the distinct ways that people living in different parts of the world classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.

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Language and Culture:

The connection between culture and language has been noted as far back as the classical period and probably long before.  The shared language of a community is the most essential carrier of their common culture.  Franz Boas, founder of American anthropology, was the first anthropologist who considered it unimaginable to study the culture of a foreign people without also becoming acquainted with their language.  For Boas, the fact that the intellectual culture of a people was largely constructed, shared and maintained through the use of language, meant that understanding the language of a cultural group was the key to understanding its culture.  At the same time, though, Boas and his students were aware that culture and language are not directly dependent on one another.  That is, groups with widely different cultures may share a common language, and speakers of completely unrelated languages may share the same fundamental cultural traits.

However languages, now understood as the particular set of speech norms of a particular community, are also a part of the larger culture of the community that speak them.  Humans use language as a way of signalling identity with one cultural group and difference from others.  Even among speakers of one language several different ways of using the language exist, and each is used to signal affiliation with particular subgroups within a larger culture.  For example, the English language is spoken differently in the USA, the UK and Australia, and even within English-speaking countries there are hundreds of dialects of English that each signal a belonging to a particular region and/or subculture.  For example, in the UK the cockney dialect signals its speakers' belonging to the group of lower class workers of east London.

Differences between varieties of the same language often consist in different pronunciations and vocabulary, but also sometimes of different grammatical systems and very often in using different styles (e.g.  cockney Rhyming slang or Lawyers' jargon).  Linguists and anthropologists, particularly sociolinguists, ethnolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have specialized in studying how ways of speaking vary between speech communities.

A community's ways of speaking or signing are a part of the community's culture, just as other shared practices are.  Language use is a way of establishing and displaying group identity.  Ways of speaking function not only to facilitate communication, but also to identify the social position of the speaker.  The differences between languages does not consist only in differences in pronunciation, vocabulary or grammar, but also in different "cultures of speaking".  Some cultures for example have elaborate systems of "social deixis", systems of signalling social distance through linguistic means.

In English, social deixis is shown mostly though distinguishing between addressing some people by first name and others by surname, but also in titles such as "Mrs.", "boy", "Doctor" or "Your Honor", but in other languages such systems may be highly complex and codified in the entire grammar and vocabulary of the language.  In several languages of east Asia, for example Thai, Burmese and Javanese, different words are used according to whether a speaker is addressing someone of higher or lower rank than oneself in a ranking system with animals and children ranking the lowest and gods and members of royalty as the highest.  Other languages may use different forms of address when speaking to speakers of the opposite gender or in-law relatives and many languages have special ways of speaking to infants and children.  Among other groups, the culture of speaking may entail not speaking to particular people, for example many indigenous cultures of Australia have a taboo against talking to one's in-law relative.

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Subculture:

A subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or hidden) which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.  In his 1979 book Subculture the Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy.  He wrote that subcultures can be perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to the dominant societal standard.  Hebdige argued that subcultures bring together like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and allow them to develop a sense of identity.

Use of Symbolism:

The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also the ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture.  According to Dick Hebdige, members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions, mannerisms, and argot.

Subcultures can exist at all levels of organizations, highlighting the fact that there are multiple cultures or value combinations usually evident in any one organization that can complement but also compete with the overall organisational culture.  In some cases, subcultures have been legislated against, and their activities regulated or curtailed.

It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style (particularly clothing and music) may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes.  Businesses often seek to capitalize on the subversive allure of subcultures in search of Cool, which remains valuable in the selling of any product.  This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society.  This process provides a constant stream of styles which may be commercially adopted.

Music-based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process, and so what may be considered a subculture at one stage in its history—such as jazz, goth, punk, hip hop and rave cultures—may represent mainstream taste within a short period of time.  Some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through the adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation.

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Sexual Subcultures:

The sexual revolution of the 1960s led to a countercultural rejection of the established sexual and gender norms, particularly in the urban areas of Europe, North and South America, Australia, and white South Africa.  A more permissive social environment in these areas led to a proliferation of sexual subcultures—cultural expressions of non-normative sexuality.  As with other subcultures, sexual subcultures adopted certain styles of fashion and gestures to distinguish them from the mainstream.

Homosexuals expressed themselves through the gay culture, considered the largest sexual subculture of the 20th century.  With the ever increasing acceptance of homosexuality in the early 21st century, including its expressions in fashion, music, and design, the gay culture can no longer be considered a subculture in many parts of the world, although some aspects of gay culture like leathermen, bears, and feeders are considered subcultures within the gay movement itself.  The butch and femme identities or roles among some lesbians also engender their own subculture with stereotypical attire, for instance drag kings.  Aspects of sexual subcultures can vary along other cultural lines.  For instance, in the United States, the term down-low is used to refer to African-American men who do not identify themselves with the gay or queer cultures, but who practice gay cruising, and adopt a specific hip-hop attire during this activity.

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Immigrants:

Another important kind of subculture is that formed by an immigrant community.  In dealing with immigrant groups and their cultures, there are various approaches.  Leitkultur (core culture) is the idea is that minorities can have an identity of their own, but they should at least support the core concepts of the culture on which the society is based.  In the United States, the traditional view has been one of a melting pot where all the immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated without state intervention.  

In some European states, culture is very closely linked to nationalism, thus government policy is to assimilate immigrants, although recent increases in migration have led many European states to experiment with forms of multiculturalism—a policy that immigrants and others should preserve their cultures with the different cultures interacting peacefully within one nation.

The way nation states treat immigrant cultures rarely falls neatly into one or another of the above approaches.  The degree of difference with the host culture (i.e., "foreignness"), the number of immigrants, attitudes of the resident population, the type of government policies that are enacted, and the effectiveness of those policies all make it difficult to generalize about the effects.  Similarly with other subcultures within a society, attitudes of the mainstream population and communications between various cultural groups play a major role in determining outcomes.

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Cultural Change:

Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to a group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object.  Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period", driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors.

Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change.  These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in the perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures, which themselves are subject to change.

Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models, and spurring or enabling generative action.  These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change.  For example, the U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures.  Environmental conditions may also enter as factors.  For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age, plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture, which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics.

Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices.  War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics.  Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation.  In diffusion, the form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another.  For example, hamburgers, mundane in the United States, seemed exotic when introduced into China.  "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another.  "Direct Borrowing" on the other hand tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another.  Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products.

Acculturation has different meanings, but in this context refers to replacement of the traits of one culture with those of another, such has happened to certain Native American tribes and to many indigenous peoples across the globe during the process of colonization.  Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation.

Cultural dissonance is an uncomfortable sense of discord, disharmony, confusion, or conflict experienced by people in the midst of change in their cultural environment.  The changes are often unexpected, unexplained or not understandable due to various types of cultural dynamics

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Counterculture:

Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition.  Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior deviates from the societal norm.  

Although distinct countercultural undercurrents have existed in many societies, here the term refers to a more significant, visible phenomenon that reaches critical mass and persists for a period of time.  A countercultural movement expresses the ethos, aspirations, and dreams of a specific population during an era—a social manifestation of zeitgeist. It is important to distinguish between "counterculture," "subculture," and "fringe culture".

The term came to prominence in the news media, as it was used to refer to the social revolution that swept North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Countercultural milieux in 19th-century Europe included Romanticism, Bohemianism, and the Dandy.  Another movement existed in a more fragmentary form in the 1950s, both in Europe and the United States, in the form of the Beat generation.  In the United Kingdom, the counterculture of the 1960s was mainly a reaction against the social norms of the 1940s and 1950s, although "Ban the Bomb" protests centered around opposition to nuclear weaponry.  In the United States, the counterculture of the 1960s became identified with the rejection of conventional social norms of the 1950s.  Counterculture youth rejected the cultural standards of their parents, especially with respect to racial segregation and initial widespread support for the Vietnam War.

As the 1960s progressed, widespread tensions developed in American society that tended to flow along generational lines regarding the war in Vietnam, race relations, sexual mores, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, and a materialist interpretation of the American Dream.  White, middle-class youth—who made up the bulk of the counterculture—had sufficient leisure time to turn their attention to social issues.  These social issues included support for civil rights, women's rights, and gay rights movements, and a rejection of the Vietnam War.  Hippies became the largest countercultural group in the United States.  The counterculture also had access to a media eager to present their concerns to a wider public.  Demonstrations for social justice created far-reaching changes affecting many aspects of society.

Rejection of mainstream culture was best embodied in the new genres of psychedelic rock music, pop-art and new explorations in spirituality.  Musicians who exemplified this era include The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Cream, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, and Bob Marley & the Wailers.  Sentiments were expressed in song lyrics and popular sayings of the period, such as "do your own thing," "turn on, tune in, drop out", "whatever turns you on," "Eight miles high", and "light my fire." Spiritually, the counterculture included interest in astrology, the term "Age of Aquarius" and knowing people's signs.

Unconventional appearance, music, drugs, communitarian experiments, and sexual liberation were hallmarks of the sixties counterculture, most of whose members were white, middle-class young Americans.  To some Americans, these attributes reflected American ideals of free speech, equality, and pursuit of happiness.  Other people saw the counterculture as self-indulgent, pointlessly rebellious, unpatriotic, and destructive of America's moral order.  

Authorities banned the psychedelic drug LSD, restricted political gatherings, and tried to enforce bans on what they considered obscenity in books, music, theater, and other media.  Parents argued with their children and worried about their safety.  Some adults accepted elements of the counterculture, while others became estranged from sons and daughters.

The counterculture in the United States reached its peak between 1966 and the early 1970s.  It eventually waned for several reasons: mainstream America's disdain for unrepentant hedonism and conspicuous drug use, and the troubles caused by these excesses; the death of many notable countercultural figures; the end of the Vietnam War; and the end of Civil Rights protests following passage of remedial legislation.

The counterculture continues to influence social movements, art and society in general.  A notable example includes the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender community (commonly abbreviated as the "LGBT" community), mostly evident in North America, Southern Cone, Western Europe, Australasia and South Africa, which has adopted many of the militant protest tactics used by anti-war and black power radicals to confront anti-gay ideology.

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Cultural Imperialism:

Cultural imperialism is the domination of one culture over another.  Cultural imperialism can take the form of a general attitude or an active, formal and deliberate policy, including (or resulting from) military action.  Economic or technological factors may also play a role.  A metaphor from colonialism can be employed: the cultural products of the first world "invade" the third-world and "conquer" local culture.  In the stronger variants of the term, world domination (in a cultural sense) is the explicit goal of the nation-states or multinational corporations that export the culture.  The term is usually used in a pejorative sense, often in conjunction with a call to reject such influence.

Terms such as "media imperialism", "structural imperialism", "cultural dependency and domination", "cultural synchronization", "electronic colonialism", "ideological imperialism", and "economic imperialism" have all been used to describe the same basic notion of cultural imperialism.

American media critic Herbert Schiller wrote: "The concept of cultural imperialism today [1975] best describes the sum of the processes by which a society is brought into the modern world system and how its dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre of the system.  The public media are the foremost example of operating enterprises that are used in the penetrative process.  For penetration on a significant scale the media themselves must be captured by the dominating/penetrating power.  This occurs largely through the commercialization of broadcasting."

David Rothkopf, managing director of Kissinger Associates and an adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University (who also served as a senior US Commerce Department official in the Clinton Administration), wrote about cultural imperialism in his provocatively titled In Praise of Cultural Imperialism? in the summer 1997 issue of Foreign Policy magazine.  Rothkopf says that the US should embrace "cultural imperialism" as in its self interest.  But his definition of cultural imperialism stresses spreading the values of tolerance and openness to cultural change in order to avoid war and conflict between cultures as well as expanding accepted technological and legal standards to provide free traders with enough security to do business with more countries.  Rothkopf's definition almost exclusively involves allowing individuals in other nations to accept or reject foreign cultural influences.  He also mentions, but only in passing, the use of the English language and consumption of news and popular music and film as cultural dominance that he supports.  Rothkopf additionally makes the point that globalization and the Internet are accelerating the process of cultural influence.

Culture is sometimes used by the organizers of society—politicians, theologians, academics, and families—to impose and ensure order, the rudiments of which change over time as need dictates.  One need only look at the 20th century's genocides.  In each one, leaders used culture as a political front to fuel the passions of their armies and other minions and to justify their actions among their people.The most important way to deal with cultural influence in any nation, according to Rothkopf, is to promote tolerance and allow, or even promote, cultural diversities that are compatible with tolerance and to eliminate those cultural differences that cause violent conflict:

"Multicultural societies, be they nations, federations, or other conglomerations of closely interrelated states, discern those aspects of culture that do not threaten union, stability, or prosperity (such as food, holidays, rituals, and music) and allow them to flourish.  But they counteract or eradicate the more subversive elements of culture (exclusionary aspects of religion, language, and political/ideological beliefs).  History shows that bridging cultural gaps successfully and serving as a home to diverse peoples requires certain social structures, laws, and institutions that transcend culture.  Furthermore, the history of a number of ongoing experiments in multiculturalism, such as in the European Union, India, South Africa, Canada and the United States, suggests that workable, if not perfected, integrative models exist.  Each is built on the idea that tolerance is crucial to social well-being, and each at times has been threatened by both intolerance and a heightened emphasis on cultural distinctions.  The greater public good warrants eliminating those cultural characteristics that promote conflict or prevent harmony, even as less-divisive, more personally observed cultural distinctions are celebrated and preserved."