Culture And Identity

 From its beginnings in the early 19th century, sociology sought to examine not only the institutions and systems that created social order, but also the factors that maintained social cohesion.

Traditionally, this had come from the shared values, beliefs, and experiences of communities, but with the advent of “modernity” in the form of industrialization and secularization, the structure of society was radically transformed. Although it was recognized that modernity had changed the way people associated with one another, it was not until the 20th century that culture—the ways that people think and behave as a group, and how they identify themselves as members of a society—became an object of study in its own right.

The emergence of sociology—the systematic study of how society shapes human interaction and identity—had coincided with the establishment of anthropology and psychology, and there was a degree of overlap between the three disciplines. It is unsurprising, then, that one of the first cultural sociologists was also a pioneering social psychologist, G.H. Mead. He set the scene for a sociological study of culture by highlighting the connection between the individual and society, and especially the notion of a social identity. An individual, he argued, can only develop a true sense of identity in the context of a social group, through interaction with others.

The connections with social psychology continued throughout the 20th century, notably in the work of Erich Fromm in the 1950s, who argued that many psychological problems have social origins. In the process of connecting with wider society and identifying with a particular culture, individuals are expected to conform with society, and this stifles our individualism so that we lose a true sense of self. Around the same time, Erving Goffman began discussing the problems of establishing a sense of identity, and in the 1960s, he focused on the stigma attached to those who do not conform or are “different.”

Culture and social order

Norbert Elias, in the 1930s, had described the imposition of social norms and conventions as a “civilizing process,” directly regulating individual behavior. There is clearly a connection between the regulating power of culture and the maintenance of social order, and some saw it

as more than merely a process of socialization. Antonio Gramsci recognized the potential for culture to be used as a means of social control. Through subtle coercion, a dominant culture imposes a “cultural hegemony” in which social norms become so ingrained that anything else is unthinkable.

Michel Foucault developed this idea further in his study of power relations, and others, including Herbert Marcuse, examined the ways in which culture could be used to quell social unrest. Later, another French sociologist, Jean Baudrillard, argued that in the postmodern world, with its explosion of availability of information, culture had become so far removed from the society in which it exists that it bears little relation to reality.

Cultural identity

A distinct branch of culturally oriented sociology emerged in the UK from the latter part of the 20th century: cultural studies. The starting point was Raymond Williams’ extensive research into the idea of culture. His work transformed the concept, opening up entirely new areas of study to sociological investigation.

Williams explained that culture is expressed by material production and consumption, and by the creations and leisure pursuits of social groups of a specific time and place—their food, sports, fashion, languages, beliefs, ideas, and customs, as well as their literature, art, and music. Also at the forefront of this British school of cultural studies was Stuart Hall, who suggested that notions of cultural identity are no longer fixed. With significantly improved communications and increased mobility, traditional national, ethnic, class, and even gender identities have all but disappeared—and another British sociologist, Benedict Anderson, goes so far as to suggest that the concept of belonging to any community is illusory.

However, the US sociologist Jeffrey Alexander considered culture to be an independent variable in the structure of society. His cultural sociology examines how culture shapes society through the creation of shared meaning.

THE “I” AND THE “ME”

George Herbert Mead was a social psychologist and a philosopher, and he looked to both disciplines in trying to work out what exactly we mean when we talk about the “self.” Traditional philosophers and sociologists saw societies as growing from the coming together of individual, autonomous selves, but Mead said the opposite was true—selves emerge from social interactions; they are formed within society.

This concept is prevalent now in psychology and psychotherapy, but when Mead first presented his ideas in 1913 in The Social Self, it was a revolutionary point of view. Mead disagreed with the idea that individual, experiencing selves exist in any recognizable way before they are part of the social process. The social process of experience or behavior is “logically prior to the individuals and their individual experiencing which are involved in it.”

By this, Mead is suggesting that an individual’s consciousness, with all its intentions, desires, and so on, is formed within the context of social relationships, one or more particular languages, and a set of cultural norms. From birth, babies begin to sense communication through gestures, which function as symbols and build “a universe of discourse.” Over time, they learn to mimic and “import” the practices, gestures, and eventually words of those around them, so that they can make their own response and receive further gestures and words from others.