SOSYOLOJİYE GİRİŞ

"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).

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).

Marx noted that not only religious ideas, but also all cultural ideas are a reflection of the material production system and thus serve the interests of the dominant class.

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. Karl Marx was not one of the scholars of the Frankfurt School.

The concept of “culture industry” refers to rationally organized-bureaucratic structures that considerably control and supervise modern culture, such as TV networks.

The concept of cultural reproduction and habitus is produced by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), one of the most important theoreticians of the 20th century.

Ethnocentrism has a close relationship with heterophobia (fear/hatred of difference), xenophobia (fear/hatred of foreigners), islamophobia (fear/dislike of Islam), homophobia (hatred of homosexual people), chauvinism and more importantly racism. Therefore, the interpretation of other cultures as “bizarre”, then “abnormal,” sometimes “deviant” and occasionally a “threat” could easily lead to hatred and hostility towards the people of those cultures. Ethnorelativism, on the other hand, is diagonally opposite of ethnocentrism.

Despite many definitions of culture, it can be agreed that culture is something that can be learned. It includes many material and spiritual elements of human life and enables the adaptation of the person to the natural environment. Arts, rituals in daily life, songs, stories and literature are some of the components of culture. Finally, culture is seen as a dynamic process used by different social and political actors in different ways. The correct answer is E.