Introduction To Cultural Sociology
Introduction To Cultural Sociology
Introduction To Cultural Sociology
Sociology
Response Paper I.
What is the Cultural Sociology?
To understand what or rather how is it different then sociology we must
look at how does it come to being and what influences and events occurred
during its journey. Cultural sociology as an empirical and theoretical approach is
linked to the cultural turn in Europe and to the US sociology of culture.
Cultural turn was an emphasis on culture as a dynamic process to define
individuals and groups as reflexive agents of cultural production thus that they
are not separable. The production of a culture is an interplay between global and
local and helps the individuals to define and construct their lifestyle. Critical was
also distinguishing itself from the high art such as music or paintings. Raymond
Williams in his essay Culture is Ordinary from 1958 stated that the culture in its
broadest sense needs to be acknowledged as integral to be analysed. Richard
Hoggart ideas together with those of Williams were instrumental to foundation of
cultural studies.
Cultural studies set to explore and investigate the class struggles,
characteristic for Britain. There they embraced the key tenets of cultural Marxist
Antonio Gramsci especially term hegemony as a mean of exerting power over
society. Cultural studies wanted to reinvestigate the patterns that many
sociologists such as Georg Simmel or Max Weber already touched on but through
the question of culture. A central figure for this re-emergence of culture in
sociology is French theorist Pierre Bourdieu. His study Distinction develops
ideas of Simmel and Weber and connects them to term habitus. Habitus means
how individuals field of cultural competence is linked to the five forms of capital,
namely cultural, social, educational, economic and politic.
This return to the culture and cultural turn itself explores David Chaney in
his book The Cultural Turn. It touches on subjects of media influences,
individuals and they ability to reflect the media on their lifestyle, similar to what
Nicholas Abercrombie observed. The process of individualization was approached
by Zygmunt Bauman as a weakening of social bonds of an individual to the
society but for Anthony Giddens it was more of a reflexive modernity, rather than
breaking bonds it gives new possibilities to interact. Here I have to agree with the
basic statement that of Giddens. Individualization, as it may seem for Beck, does
not bring any level of uncertainty. Yes, you can argue that in an open world where
everyone is an individual piece that does not fit into the machine of fate is
uncertainty inevitable but, is it? When you are an individual you have to decide a
lot of things on your own and one of those is how to deal with uncertainty.
Because you have been given the choice, rather than society, that gives you a lot
of freedom of choice and to create new bonds just with those social media and
other modern means that some sociologists even speak of as the end of ideology.
And in a way we also change the media itself to fit our personal way so in the end
it will be a society build by every single individual and not dictated by few.
From those dialogues the cultural sociology in UK was born.