SOSYOLOJİYE GİRİŞ - Deneme Sınavı - 18

Value: The thoughts or principles that are thought to be true and necessary by the majority of its members in order to sustain the existence of a society or a social group. Values are the criteria that tell us what is right, what is wrong, what is wanted and what is not wanted in determining our behavior within society. Values contain norms, but they are more general and abstract than norms. For example, hospitality is an important asset or value of Turkish society. However, there is no absolute consensus on all values in today’s ethnically and culturally differentiated class societies.

The main interest of functional sociology has been culture as norms, values and a way of lifestyle rather than culture as high culture. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), one of the founders of the functional approach, addressed some basic questions about how culture came into being in his work, Primitive Classification (1903), written with Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), his nephew and the most important student. According to them, culture only became possible when human communities began to separate and classify things in their environment. Humankind cannot classify what they see when they are born and therefore cannot separate one from the other.

The Social Research Institute, founded at the University of Frankfurt in 1923, is known as the Frankfurt School, in short, in the social science literature. The Frankfurt School is also commonly referred to as Critical Theory. Especially, the analyses of Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), Max Horkheimer (1895- 1973), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940), Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993) and Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) on culture, ideology and the media are very important. Representatives of this school conducted important studies in the period after World War II, mostly on fascism, authority, bureaucracy, technology, mass communication, culture industry, and art.

Initially the term ‘Cultural Studies’ referred to the tradition that was started in Britain by Richard Hoggart, Edward Palmer Thompson and Raymond Williams in the late 1950’s, which more recently has been carried on by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University by 1964, also known as the ‘Birmingham School’ since it was established. However, since these early years, the concept has evolved into a more generic term referring to a cross-disciplinary field.

Collective Subjectivity is way of life or outlook adopted by a community or a social class.

Postmodernization

In modern societies, culture is differentiated from other areas of social life and high culture is differentiated from popular culture. However, postmodernization reverses these trends. According to Crook et al., an intensification of some of the processes at work in modernity leads to postmodernization. Differentiation, rationalization and commodification are superseded by hyperdifferentiation, hypercommodification and hyper-rationalization...This leads to a new type of culture: Crook et al. call this new culture postculture.

Hypercommodification: Hypercommodification involves all areas of social life becoming commodified... Consumption increasingly takes place within the home, and members of the same family become inclined to consume different things... Instead of a uniform family culture, each family member chooses their own lifestyle.

Hyper-rationalization: Hyper-rationalization involves the use of rationalized technology to spread cultural consumption more widely and to privatize it. Technology such as the satellite TV allows greater individuals choice about what do watch... Again, this allows individuals to choose their own lifestyle... Media images come to dominate society. Media copies and reproductions begin to replace the authentic, real thing they present. Eventually, images and signs lose their connections with reality and become what Baudrillard calls simulacra.

Hyperdifferentiation: Crook et al., argue: ‘In postmodernization a thousand flowers bloom.’ A fantastic variety of cultural forms develop with no particular type being dominant... The increased fragmentation of culture -hyperdifferentation- leads ultimately to dedifferentiation, in which distinction between different types of culture break down. In particular, the distinction between high culture and popular culture is undermined in postmodernizing societies.

Modern Culture

According to Crook et al., there are three main characteristics of modern culture: differentiation, rationalization and commodification.

Differentiation: Differentiation involves the separating out of different parts of society. Economic, political, social and cultural spheres become increasingly distinct from one another... Culture was therefore separated or differentiated from other aspects of life. It was produced by specialists, trained in particular institutions, and it was consumed in specific places...

Rationalization: According to Crook et al., rationalization also shaped modern culture, but not as completely as differentiation...Technology was used to make it possible to recreate or copy culture... Radios and record players allowed broadcasts and copies of original music to be consumed widely... Nevertheless, in modernity the rationalization of culture can only proceed so far, since the individual creativity of the great artist is still valued.

Commodification: The commodification of culture involves turning cultural products into commodities that can be readily bought and sold...

"Culture is a system of meanings and significance created historically, or, in other words, culture is a system of beliefs and customs that a group of people use in order to understand, organize, and structure their individual and collective lives. It is a way of understanding and organizing human life.” (Parekh, 2002: 184). The correct option is E.

When we look at the historical development of the term culture in the light of Williams (1982), we face a very interesting situation. Up until the eighteenth century, the term culture had a meaning mostly related to agriculture like land reclamation and cropping/planting. The correct option is C.

The meaning universe that culture gained as of the eighteenth century, is the classical, aesthetic definition of culture or culture as high culture- as we shall see below. Again in this period with the development of anthropology, culture started to be widely used as “whole way of life” of a certain group. The correct option is D.

In aesthetic definitions of culture, culture can be used as a name for the best, the most beautiful, or the most magnificent products of a society or civilization. Classical music, art, and literature can be articulated as examples of this group. And this kind of definition is considered as the narrow one. The correct option is B.

The main interest of functional sociology has been culture as norms, values and a way of lifestyle rather than culture as high culture. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), one of the founders of the functional approach, addressed some basic questions about how culture came into being in his work, Primitive Classification (1903), written with Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), his nephew and the most important student.

Adorno and Horkheimer analyze the place of post-industrial modernization in the 20th century, and the cultural transformation they witnessed as a result of cultural industries. According to the theorists, culture produced by cultural industries does not develop spontaneously, and it is a standardized and commodified culture aiming at reaching the widest masses. e consumers of this culture, which is far from being natural, and is quite artificial, are modern individuals who are the most loyal consumers of cultural industries. This situation, which can be defined as the simplification of the culture, is also called mass culture. Mass culture is a culture that belongs mainly to industrial capitalism, and is largely produced by mass media. The correct option is E.

Walter Benjamin showed an optimistic view of current technological innovations and the potential of popular arts in his important essay e Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936). Benjamin’s work is very important in terms of demonstrating how photographic and cinematographic technology changes perception. The correct option is B.

Collective Subjectivity is defined as "a way of life or outlook adopted by a community or a social class". The correct option is C.

Cultural Lag belongs to William Ogburn (1886-1959). Ogburn wanted to draw attention to the incompatibility that arises in the process of change in the reciprocal relationship of the material and spiritual culture in a social system. According to him, there forms a gap when the changes in material culture are followed with a certain delay by spiritual culture. It is also an example of cultural lag when people who did not own mobile phones until recently talk on the phone in a way that annoys people in their surroundings after receiving a mobile phone. The above example can be considered as cultural lag. The correct option is A.

The commodification of culture involves turning cultural products into commodities that can be readily bought and sold. Therefore, the correct option is E.

Culture critic Matthew Arnold (1822- 1888) identified culture with “aesthetic excellence” when he defined culture as the best of what is said and thought in the world in all matters that most concern us, or the best that has been thought and known.

Peter Berger (1969) defines culture as the totality of man’s products, both material and immaterial.

Anthropologists like Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) described culture as a system of shared symbols and/or meanings: “an historically transmitted pattern of meaning is embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geerts, 1973:89).