Cultural Meaning
Jennifer L. Adams, M.A.
Introduction
We sense that culture is “beyond us, yet ourselves.” What is meant by this?
And we look for simple relationships between cultural objects and “things exactly as they are.”
But no simple relationship exists; when something becomes a cultural object that something changes and change involves meaning.
What is a cultural object?
A cultural object has shared significance; it has been given meaning by a culture.
Ex: Sound of a Fire Alarm – What does it mean?
Ex: A on an Exam – What does it mean?
2 Types of Meaning
Simple vs. Complex
Simple – denotes a single meaning
Ex: Algebra where a2 + b2 =c2 and each of those corresponds to something specific
Ex: Flashing Traffic Light = ?
Complex – doesn’t stand for a single referent but connotes (suggests or implies) a variety of meanings
Can evoke powerful emotions.
Can both unite and disrupt social groups.
Examples?
To understand culture we must be able to unravel all of these social meanings.
Which do you think sociologists are more interested in? Why?
Why do we need meaning?
Humans are not born with the ability to live; they must learn it.
And learning is a social process of interaction and socialization whereby culture is transmitted.
Human beings created culture as a defense against chaos.
So the sociological analysis of culture begins at the premise that culture provides orientation, wards off chaos, and directs behavior toward some things and away from others.
And that culture provides meaning and order through the use of symbols that are endowed with significance.
Both material objects and non-material ideas and behaviors.
Culture and Meaning
Two Basic Questions:
Where does meaning come from?
What difference do meanings make?
Answers are provided through:
Marxism (aka Conflict Theory)
Functionalism
Weberian Analysis
Culture as Mirror
Culture mirrors social reality. What is meant by this? (s c)
So the meaning of an object lies in the social structures and social patterns it reflects.
Thus analysts of culture should look for direct one-to-one correspondence between culture and society.
Ex: Violence in Media mirrors Violence in Real World
Testing this would require a measurement of TV violence and real violence at Time 1 and Time 2. We would expect to see rises and falls in TV violence after a certain lag that mirror rises and falls in real violence.
But some believe social reality mirrors culture. (c s)
Ex: Violence in Real World mirrors Violence in Media
Which do you think is more accurate? Why? Can you provide an example?
Culture and Meaning in Marxian Sociology
Engaged the philosophical debate between idealism and materialism.
Idealism – we can best understand culture as the embodiment of ideas, spirit, beauty, and universal truth; it is separate and autonomous from material or earthly existence (heavenearth) (c s)
Materialism – material conditions produce the spirit of the age; culture is a product of material reality (earthheaven) (s c)
Marx argued that culture and social structures are all superstructures resting on a base of the material forces of production and their economic foundations.
Changes to Base Changes to Superstructure
As such economic conditions heavily influence cultural practices.
So examining class distinctions and class antagonism is crucial.
Marx also asserted that a society’s ruling ideas equal the ideas of its ruling class.
Idealism – the entire content of the human mind is determined by the structures of our thought rather than an external reality, and that reality itself is a form of thought which human thought participates in
Materialism – the opposite of idealism, any theory that treats matter as dependent on mind or spirit or mind or spirit as capable of existing independently of matter
7
Culture and Meaning in Functionalism
Accepts both tenets of reflection theory: s c and c s but leans towards the former.
This allows for culture to be used as social evidence.
And provides a direction of influence for the connection between society and culture.
Essence of Functionalism: Human societies, to maintain themselves, have concrete needs and social institutions arise to meet these needs.
In other words, they serve a function.
A healthy society exists in a state of balance – or equilibrium – in which institutions adapt to one another and operate in a system of mutual interdependence to meet the needs of the society.
Culture and Meaning in Functionalism
Critiques:
Assumes that human beings are passive and without interests of their own.
Does not have a place for the independent influence of the organizations of cultural production (like symphonies and TV studios).
And there are obvious flaws with using cultural objects as evidence.
Ex: The idealized family life shown on 1950s sitcoms.
Ex: The shenanigans in “reality TV” shows.
Can you think of other examples of cultural objects that don’t reflect society?
Max Baxandall’s Expansion of Functionalism
Cultural objects reflect:
Commercial Transactions
Changing Values
The “Period Eye” – the cognitive capacity and style of an era or the zeitgeist
His argument is that cultural objects are not a direct reflection of the social world but rather is mediated through the minds of human beings.
Critiques:
Why do we still appreciate older objects though the “period eye” has changed?
Why are some realities reflected and not others?
Possible Solution: Culture is a reflection ON rather than a reflect OF society.
Culture and Meaning in Weberian Sociology
Both Marxism and functionalism recognize that culture and social structure exert mutual influence on one another, but both tend to emphasize that s c.
But if humans require meaning – which they do – then culture as a bearer of meanings must also make things happen in the social world (c s).
Max Weber is most well known for emphasizing this causal direction.
Culture and Meaning in Weberian Sociology
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirt of Capitalism (1905)
Did not assert that religion capitalism but rather that religious beliefs participated in some ways in the formation and expansion of the spirit of capitalism.
He looked for correlations between religious beliefs and practical behaviors.
Found that religious ideas influenced the way people worked, spent their money, and ordered their economic lives.
Ultimately made a powerful case for the influence of cultural meanings (like religious beliefs) on the social world (via economic life).
Details on pages 36-38.
Culture and Meaning in Weberian Sociology
The Cultural Switchman
“Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images’ that have been created by the ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest.” Let’s unpack this: What does it mean?
Ex: Calvinists
Material Interests = Earning a Living
Ideal Interests = Salvation
Religious World Image = Predestination Action in Pursuing These Interests
Later research has shown this is true at both the societal and individual level.
Meaning Systems or a Tool Kit?
Many sociologists now argue that culture/social world connections are far looser than reflection theory asserts and that all cultures are more fragmented than coherent such that the Weberian image of culture as a clear guide is misleading.
Critiques of Weberian Culture-and-Meaning:
It is too subjective (Wuthnow 1987).
Culture should be seen as observable behavior rather than a subjective system of meaning generation.
The idea of cultural rules is too formal and rigid (Sewell 1992).
People behave in ways contradictory to what culture suggests. Examples?
The notion of cultural schemas – informal presuppositions that lie behind formal rules – is more useful and accurate. Examples?
Culture ≠ Switchman, but Tool Kit (Swidler 1986)
Culture contains rationales underlying lines of action that can be drawn upon in different contexts, but these rationales are not internally coherent and can even be contradictory.
Ex: Love as Commitment vs. Love as Meeting My Needs (see p. 40)
Meaning, Modernity, and the Clash of Cultures
Cultural Differences Conflict (Huntington 1995)
Several civilizations rooted in different religious cultures interpret the world very differently.
These different interpretations inevitably produce fundamental conflicts over meanings.
Ex: 9/11 and “Islamic culture”
There was (and still is) a problematic gap between the beliefs, goals, and values of the fundamentalist Islamic world and the West.
Early sociologists believed that the bases of cultural clashes were disappearing but this has not happened.
Modernity has failed to realize its goal of enlightened humanism and has even created two opposing cultural reactions: postmodernism and fundamentalism.
Meaning, Modernity, and the Clash of Cultures
Postmodernism – the culture of contemporary society
a post-industrial stage dominated by media images in which people connect with other place and times through channels of information
postmodern people are cynical
Characterized by a declining belief in foundational narratives.
Ex: Middle Ages = Christian History
Ex: Industrial Age = Drama of Social Progress
Today: Growing sense that life is without meaning and that culture is only a play of images without reference to some underlying reality.
There is even a celebration of meaninglessness – making anomie a virtue – that can lead to empty nihilism.
Led to an exceedingly strong countermovement – religious fundamentalism.
Anomie is a social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of the norms and values that were previously common
Nihilism – the belief that life is meaningless
16
Meaning, Modernity, and the Clash of Cultures
Fundamentalism – vehement rejection of modernity
Social changes impinge on their most sacred values.
Reject secularization and embrace the older claims of religion and traditional social patterns.
Some retreat from the world while others go on the attack.
Offer a fixed set of meanings and interpretations that provide stability in a chaotic world.
In other words, they offer a culture with clear meanings rather than the murky ones offered by today’s postmodern culture.
Ironically, by adhering to a fundamentalist meaning system in an attempt to ward off chaos, religious radicals end up unleashing that very chaos.
Ex: The Post 9/11 Wars
Anomie is a social condition in which there is a disintegration or disappearance of the norms and values that were previously common
Nihilism – the belief that life is meaningless
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Summary
We looked at the relationship between culture and meaning.
Human beings require meaning orientation for their lives and culture provides that orientation.
Reflection Theory
Society Culture (Marxism and Functionalism)
Culture reflects social structure like a mirror.
Culture Society (Weberianism)
Social structures response to cultural meanings.
Major Critique: All these theories ignore cultural creation and cultural reception and ignore the role of human agency.
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