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Media and culture
Defining ‘Culture’
• One of the slipperiest concepts in social theory
– A 1952 survey of the anthropology literature by
Kroeber and Kluckhorn identified 500 possible
definitions
• Most recognized definition, by Tylor:
– “Culture, or civilization, is that complex whole
which includes knowledge, belief, art, law,
morals, custom, and any other capabilities and
habits acquired by man as a member of
society.”
Historical definition
• Emphasizes social heritage or social tradition
• People have a social and biological heritage that
they get from a certain “group” with its own
history.
• Sapir: “culture, that is, . . . the socially inherited
assemblage of practices and beliefs that
determines the texture of our lives”
Normative definition
• Patterns, rules and customs that may be arbitrary
or artificial
• Titiev: “those objects or tools, attitudes, and forms
of behavior whose use is sanctioned under given
conditions by the members of a particular society”
• Bidney: “A culture consists of the acquired or
cultivated behavior and thought of individuals
within a society, as well as of the intellectual,
artistic, and social ideals which the members of
the society profess and to which they strive to
conform.”
Psychological definition
• Culture represents the result of responses to
physiological drives and needs or as the
learning of culture
• Davis: “all behavior learned by the
individual in conformity with a group”
Structural definition
• Definitions emphasizing the patterning or
organization of a culture.
– Relationships among elements
• Kluckhorn and Kelly: “a historically
derived system of explicit and implicit
designs for living, which tends to be shared
by all or specially designated members of a
group”
Kroeber and Parson
• “transmitted and created content and
patterns of values, ideas, and other
symbolic-meaningful systems as factors in
the shaping of human behavior and artifacts
produced through behavior”
Major theoretic concerns of
cultural study
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Kinship systems and relations
Religion
Nationalism
Race
Myths and rituals
Value systems
Conformity/deviance
Art/Literature
Economic System
Politics
Relation with media
• Clearly, there are close ties to the media of
communication
• Media industries produce a vast array of
cultural artifacts
• Many of the values, beliefs, etc. of society
influence the production of media content
which, in turn, may undermine or support
those same values and beliefs
Major concerns
• High v. low culture
– Uplifting of masses v. degradation of popular
morals, aesthetic tastes
• Free v. controlled culture
– Impact of structural power on nature of content
produced
• Critical theory
– Ideology, hegemony
• Avant-garde
Major concerns
• Presentation of values in mass content
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Morality
System support
Consensus
Portrayal of groups
Major concerns
• Community-building
– Chicago School of Sociology
– Community press
– Ethnic groups and media
• Racism, Sexism, etc.
Common division of ‘cultures’
• High culture
• Folk culture
• Mass or popular culture