'High', 'Popular' and 'Low' Cultures and everyday life

Thèmes abordés

Low culture, high culture, popular culture, mass culture, art, bourdieu, hierarchy, dominant culture, hegemony, society, ideology, naturalization, cultural studies, classes, cultural power, cultural capital, social and power relations

Résumé du document

In this excerpt from Culture and Everyday Life (2005), D. Inglis intends to clarify the notions of high/low and popular cultures and their impact on everyday life and conversely, argue that the social and cultural spheres cannot be separated. He also tries to explain the way art is defined as such.

He talks about the opposition and even hierarchy between high and popular culture and how this opposition has emerged. High culture refers to the culture of elites whereas popular culture is the one of the working class. High culture is deemed to be superior to popular culture. It is more ‘noble', has greater value for it is produced to induce reflection when popular culture is only produced to be consumed. Popular culture embodies the consumption society.

Extraits

[...] In society, some people have cultural capital; they have the power to define what is art and what is not. So class defines culture. The dominant class, the elite, defines high culture and imposes its norms. The dominant culture, the ‘high' culture, has a ‘sacred' aspect whereas popular culture is seen as ‘profane'. It is important to keep in mind this notion of the definition of dominant culture because it is at the core of the issue of social and power relations. [...]

[...] “Popular” and Cultures in Everyday Life by D. Inglis In this excerpt from Culture and Everyday Life (2005), D. Inglis intends to clarify the notions of high/low and popular cultures and their impact on everyday life and conversely, arguing that the social and cultural spheres cannot be separated. He also tries to explain the way art is defined as such. He talks about the opposition and even hierarchy between high and popular culture and how this opposition has emerged. High culture refers to the culture of elites whereas popular culture is the one of the working class. [...]

[...] He has a MA in social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a PhD from the University of York. He is interested in sociology of culture and art, cultural theory and social theory. His main research focuses are the concepts of culture and aesthetics within certain historical and social theory contexts. He has written on sociological accounts of ‘nature' and their limits, but also on social theory and culture in ancient Greece and Rome, on phenomena of globalization and their effects on cultures, and on accounts of ‘high culture' and ‘art' and the limits of such accounts. [...]

[...] By contrast, Inglis points out that even if the dominant class imposes its cultural norms as superior, lower classes, working classes are not powerless. Low culture is not just what elites exclude of high, valuable culture. Low culture emerges and defines itself as a way of contesting the dominant values. It is a means of resistance. It purposefully breaks the rules of high culture, turns it into ridicule. It is a means through which working class affirms its social identity. This excerpt is interesting to communication and cultural studies because it stresses that culture shapes social relations as social relations shape culture. [...]