Cultural History of Britain
Some definitions
“Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning ‘to cultivate’) generally
refers to patterns (mód) of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity
significance (jelentőség). Different definitions of “culture” reflect different theoretical bases
(elméleti alap) for understanding, or criteria for evaluating (értékel) human activity. In
general, the term culture denotes (jelöl) the whole product of an individual, group or society
of intelligent beings. It includes technology, art, science, as well as moral systems and the
characteristic behaviors and habits of the selected intelligent entities.”
/Wikipedia.com/
“Culture is the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon
the capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.”
/Marriam Webster Dictionary/
“Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving,
interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them” (9).
/Lederach, J.P. (1995). Preparing for peace: Conflict transformation across cultures.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. /
“Culture: learned and shared human patterns or models for living; day- to-day living patterns.
these patterns and models pervade (beleivódik) all aspects of human social interaction.
Culture is mankind's primary adaptive mechanism” (367).
/Damen, L. (1987). Culture Learning: The Fifth Dimension on the Language Classroom.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley./
“A culture is a configuration (alakzat) of learned behaviors and results of behavior whose
component elements (alkotóelem) are shared and transmitted by the members of a particular
society” (32).
/Linton, R. (1945). The Cultural Background of Personality. New York./
“Culture is the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and
all other products of human work and thought.”
/The Free Dictionary/
As the above definitions suggest culture stands for the cumulative deposit of knowledge,
experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion acquired and shared by a
group of people in the course of generations through the individuals and institutions. Culture
consists of patterns of and behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols. It is constituted
upon the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artefacts.
The essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values.
Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand,
as conditioning influences upon further action.
Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people and is transmitted
from generation to generation. It is thus a collective programming of the mind that
differentiates (megkülönböztet) the members of one group or category of people from
another.
Manifestations of Culture
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Symbols are words, gestures, pictures, or objects that carry a particular meaning which
is only recognized by those who share a particular culture. New symbols easily
develop, old ones disappear. Symbols from one particular group are regularly copied
by others. This is why symbols represent the outermost layer of a culture.
Heroes are persons, past or present, real or fictitious, who possess characteristics that
are highly prized in a culture. They also serve as models for behavior.
Rituals are collective activities, sometimes superfluous in reaching desired objectives,
but are considered as socially essential. They are therefore carried out most of the
times for their own sake (ways of greetings, paying respect to others, religious and
social ceremonies, etc.).
The core of a culture is formed by values. They are broad tendencies for preferences
of certain state of affairs to others (good-evil, right-wrong, natural-unnatural). Many
values remain unconscious to those who hold them. Therefore they often cannot be
discussed, nor they can be directly observed by others. Values can only be inferred
from the way people act under different circumstances.
Symbols, heroes, and rituals are the tangible or visual aspects of the practices of a
culture. The true cultural meaning of the practices is intangible (meg nem fogható);
this is revealed only when the practices are interpreted by the insiders.
(from http://www.tamu.edu/classes/cosc/choudhury/culture.html)
Figure 1. Manifestation of Culture at Different
Levels of Depth
Layers of culture
People even within the same culture carry several layers of mental programming within
themselves. Different layers of culture exist at the following levels:
 The national level: Associated with the nation as a whole.
 The regional level: Associated with ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences that
exist within a nation.
 The gender level: Associated with gender differences (female vs. male)
 The generation level: Associated with the differences between grandparents and
parents, parents and children.
 The social class level: Associated with educational opportunities and differences in
occupation.
 The corporate level: Associated with the particular culture of an organization.
Applicable to those who are employed.
(http://www.tamu.edu/classes/cosc/choudhury/culture.html)
Origins of Theories of Culture
In the next section I will overview early theoretical reflections on culture, with special
attention to Anglo-Saxon authors.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was a preeminent poet of the Victorian era, a lifelong
educator, a pioneer in the field of literary criticism, a government official (Inspector of
Schools), and an influential public figure. But one of his most enduring legacies is his
extensive body of writing on the topic of culture. Arnold saw culture – “contact with the best
which has been thought and said in the world" (basically as high culture) – as the crucial
component of a healthy democratic state.
Arnold’s view of culture as involving such characteristics as beauty, intelligence, and
perfection is a Neoplatonic one – that is, it tends to assume that these values exist in the
abstract and are the same for all human societies. His argument, then, is openly political: he
feels that if more people will share and pursue his notions of beauty, truth, and perfection – of
culture – that the world will be a better place.
Quote from Culture and Anarchy, 1869:
“The disparagers (becsmérlő) of culture make its motive curiosity; sometimes, indeed, they
make its motive mere exclusiveness and vanity(hiúság). The culture which is supposed to
plume itself on (büszkélkedik) a smattering (felszínes ismeret) of Greek and Latin is a culture
which is begotten by nothing so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued either out of sheer vanity
and ignorance (tudatlanság) or else as an engine of social and class distinction, separating its
holder, like a badge or title, from other people who have not got it. No serious man would
consider all this culture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at all.
But there is of culture another view, in which not solely the scientific passion, the sheer desire
to see things as they are, natural and proper in an intelligent being, appears as the ground of it.
There is a view in which all the love of our neighbour, the impulses towards action, help, and
beneficence (jótékonyság), the desire for removing human error, clearing human confusion,
and diminishing human misery (szenvedés), the noble aspiration (törekvés) to leave the world
better and happier than we found it, come in as part of the grounds of culture, and the main
and pre-eminent (kimagasló) part. Culture is then properly described not as having its origin
in curiosity, but as having its origin in the love of perfection; it is a study of perfection. It
moves by the force, not merely or primarily of the scientific passion for pure knowledge, but
also of the moral and social passion for doing good.
***
The Greek idea of “a finely tempered nature” gives exactly the notion of perfection as culture
brings us to conceive it: a harmonious perfection, a perfection in which the characters of
beauty and intelligence are both present, which […] “the two noblest of things, sweetness and
light.” The man with a finely tempered nature is the man who tends toward sweetness and
light.”
(http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture/culture-index.html)
It was at the era of Arnold that the modern academic discipline of anthropology was born. The
birth occurred when the British founder of anthropology, E. B. Tylor, transformed the
concepts of civilization and culture. Tylor was concerned with the general question of how
“the conditions of culture” developed in various societies. Like most social theorists of his
time, he accepted a developmental model of change, which has its own suppositions and
logic. In our present context, this means that Tylor understood the task of anthropology (or as
he preferred to say, ethnography) in terms of a single linear sequence from less to more
complexity.
Quote from Tylor’s Primitive Culture, 1873/1958:
“Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which
includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities (képességek)
and habits acquired (elsajátít) by man as a member of society. The condition of culture among
the various societies of mankind, in so far as it is capable of being investigated on general
principles, is a subject apt (alkalmas) for the study of laws of human thought and action … By
simply placing nations at one end of the social series and savage (primitív) tribes at the other,
arranging the rest of mankind between these limits ... ethnographers are able to set up a rough
scale of civilization — a transition from the savage state to our own.” (1).
Raymond Williams was an early pioneer in the field of “cultural studies” – in fact, he was
doing cultural studies before the term was even coined (megalkot). The following excerpt is
from an essay Williams wrote in 1958, entitled Culture is Ordinary. According to one of his
editors, Williams he “forced the first important shift into a new way of thinking about the
symbolic dimensions of our lives. Thus, ‘culture’ is wrested from that privileged space of
artistic production and specialist knowledge [eg. high culture], into the lived experience of the
everyday” (Gray and McGuigan 1).
Quote from Moving from High Culture to Ordinary Culture, 1958:
“Culture is ordinary: that is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own
purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts
and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and
its growth is an active debate and amendment (módosítás) under the pressures of experience,
contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land. The growing society is there, yet it is
also made and remade in every individual mind. The making of a mind is, first, the slow
learning of shapes, purposes, and meanings, so that work, observation (megfigyelés) and
communication are possible. Then, second, but equal in importance, is the testing of these in
experience, the making of new observations, comparisons (összehasonlítás), and meanings. A
culture has two aspects: the known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to;
the new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested. These are the ordinary
processes of human societies and human minds, and we see through them the nature of a
culture: that it is always both traditional and creative; that it is both the most ordinary
common meanings and the finest individual meanings. We use the word culture in these two
senses: to mean a whole way of life – the common meanings; to mean the arts and learning –
the special processes of discovery and creative effort. Some writers reserve the word for one
or other of these senses; I insist on both, and on the significance (jelentőség) of their
conjunction (kapcsolat). The questions I ask about our culture are questions about deep
personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.” (6)
(http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture/culture-index.html)
Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) is best known for his ethnographic studies of Javanese culture
(Java is an Indonesian island south of Borneo) and for his writings about the interpretation of
culture. The most influential aspect of Geertz’s work has been his emphasis on the importance
of the symbolic – of systems of meaning – as it relates to culture, cultural change, and the
study of culture. The function of culture is to impose (megszab) meaning on the world and
make it understandable. The role of anthropologists is to try (though complete success is not
possible) to interpret the guiding symbols of each culture. Geertz is an example of the great
transition (átmenet) which has taken place regarding the concept “culture” in Western thought
over the past century; Raymond Williams’ perspective might be taken as a middle ground in
this transition.
In attempting to lay out the various meanings attached to the word culture, Clifford Geertz
refers to Clyde Kluckhohn’s Mirror for Man, actually hopes to understand culture that
possesses all of the following characteristics suggested by Kluckhohn:
1.
the total way of life of a people
2.
the social legacy (örökség) the individual acquires from
his group
3.
a way of thinking, feeling, and believing
4.
an abstraction from behaviour
5.
a theory on the part of the anthropologist about the way
in which a group of people in fact behave
6.
A “storehouse of pooled learning
7.
a set of standardized orientations (tájékozódás) to
recurrent (ismétlődő) problems
8.
learned behaviour
9.
a mechanism for the normative regulation of behavior
10.
a set of techniques for adjusting both to the external
environment and to other men
11. a precipitate (üledék)of history
12. a behavioral map, sieve (szita), or matrix
Quotes from The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973:
“The concept of culture I espouse (felkarol) … is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with
Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended (függ) in webs of significance (jelentésháló) he
himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an
experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is
explication (magyarázat) I am after”. (4-5)
Geertz compares the methods of an anthropologist analyzing culture to those of a literary
critic analyzing a text: “sorting out the structures of signification ... and determining their
social ground and import…Doing etnography is like trying to read (in the sense of ‘construct
a reading of’) a manuscript…”
“Once human behavior is seen as … symbolic action – action which, like phonation
(hangképzés) in speech, pigment in painting, line in writing, or sonance (hangzó) in music,
signifies – the question as to whether culture is patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or even
the two somehow mixed together, loses sense. The thing to ask [of actions] is what their
import (jelentés, jelentőség) is” (9-10).
Geertz argues that culture is public because systems of meaning are necessarily the collective
property of a group. When we say we do not understand the actions of people from a culture
other than our own, we are acknowledging our “lack of familiarity with the imaginative
universe within which their acts are signs” (12-13).
(http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture/culture-index.html)
John H. Bodley is Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Washington State University.
In this excerpt from his textbook on cultural anthropology entitled Cultural Anthropology:
Tribes, States, and the Global System (1994) Bodley discusses the history of anthropological
conceptions of culture and argues that contemporary views about culture are descriptive,
inclusive, and relativistic. He furthermore discusses the theoretical debate among
anthropologists over the most useful attributes that a technical concept of culture should
stress. He refers to the work of Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, American
anthropologists, who in 1952 published a list of 160 different definitions of culture. In the
table below you will find a list indicating the diversity of the anthropological concept of
culture. The specific culture concept that particular anthropologists work with is an important
matter because it may influence the research problems they investigate, their methods and
interpretations, and the positions they take on public policy issues.
TABLE:
Diverse
Definitions of Culture:
Topical:
Culture consists of everything on a list of topics, or
categories, such as social organization, religion, or
economy
Historical:
Culture is social heritage, or tradition, that is passed on
to future generations
Behavioral:
Culture is shared, learned human behavior, a way of life
Normative:
Culture is ideals, values, or rules for living
Functional:
Culture is the way humans solve problems of adapting
to the environment or living together
Mental:
Culture is a complex of ideas, or learned habits, that
inhibit impulses and distinguish people from animals
Structural:
Culture consists of patterned and interrelated ideas,
symbols, or behaviors
Symbolic:
Culture is based on arbitrarily assigned meanings that
are shared by a society
For an overview of how the concept of culture was understood in the past two centuries see:
The Strange Career of the Concept of Culture by Thomas Wren at:
http://www.luc.edu/faculty/twren/phil389&elps423/wren1.htm
As the above definitions and (anthropological) approaches suggest culture is present in almost
every aspect of life. It is undoubtedly an important factor in the establishment and
maintenance of individual and collective identities. The following theories, concepts and
models hopefully contribute to the better understanding of identity-formation and the
problems/solutions inherent cross-cultural understanding and communication.
Theory of Cultural Determinism
The position that the ideas, meanings, beliefs and values people learn as members of society
determines human nature. People are what they learn. Optimistic version of cultural
determinism place no limits on the abilities of human beings to do or to be whatever they
want. Some anthropologists suggest that there is no universal “right way” of being human.
“Right way” is almost always “our way”; that “our way” in one society almost never
corresponds (egybeesik) to “our way” in any other society. Proper attitude of an informed
human being could only be that of tolerance.
 The optimistic version of this theory postulates (feltételez) that human nature being
infinitely malleable (alakítható), human being can choose the ways of life they prefer.
 The pessimistic version maintains that people are what they are conditioned to be; this
is something over which they have no control. Human beings are passive creatures and
do whatever their culture tells them to do. This explanation leads to behaviorism that
locates the causes of human behavior in a realm that is totally beyond human control.
Cultural Relativism
Different cultural groups think, feel, and act differently. There is no scientific standards for
considering one group as intrinsically (lényegét tekintve) superior or inferior to another.
Studying differences in culture among groups and societies presupposes (előfeltételez) a
position of cultural relativism. It does not imply normalcy for oneself, nor for one’s society.
It, however, calls for judgment when dealing with groups or societies different from one’s
own. Information about the nature of cultural differences between societies, their roots, and
their consequences should precede judgment and action. Negotiation is more likely to succeed
when the parties concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints.
Cultural Ethnocentrism
Ethnocentrism is the belief that one’s own culture is superior to that of other cultures. It is a
form of reductionism that reduces the “other way” of life to a distorted version of one’s own.
This is particularly important in case of global dealings when a company or an individual
believes that methods, materials, or ideas that worked in the home country will also work
abroad. Environmental differences are, therefore, ignored.
(http://www.tamu.edu/classes/cosc/choudhury/culture.html)
Cultural imperialism is closely connected to cultural ethnocentrism and refers to the practice
of promoting, distinguishing, separating, or artificially injecting the culture or language of one
nation into another. It is usually the case that the former is a large, economically or militarily
powerful nation and the latter is a smaller, less important one. Cultural imperialism can take
the form of an active, formal policy or a general attitude. The term is usually used in a
pejorative (elítélő) sense, usually in call with a call to reject foreign influence.
‘Cultural imperialism’ can refer to either the forced acculturation of a subject population, or to
the voluntary embracing of a foreign culture by individuals who do so of their own free will.
Since these are two very different referents, the validity of the term has been called into
question. The term cultural imperialism is understood differently in particular discourses.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism)
MODELS:
The Monocultural Nation-state (Europe)
Especially in the 19th century, the ideology of nationalism transformed the way Europeans
thought about the state. Existing states were broken up and new ones created; the new nationstates were founded on the principle that each nation is entitled to its own sovereign state and
to engender (megteremt), protect, and preserve its own unique culture and history. Unity,
under this ideology, is seen as an essential feature of the nation and the nation-state – unity of
descent (leszármazás), unity of culture, unity of language, and often unity of religion. The
nation-state constitutes a culturally homogeneous society, although some national movements
recognised regional differences. None, however, accepted foreign elements in culture and
society. Multilingual and multi-ethnic empires, such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
Ottoman Empire, were considered oppressive, and most Europeans did not accept that such a
state could be legitimate.
Where cultural unity was insufficient, it was encouraged and enforced (rákényszerít) by the
state. The 19th-century nation-states developed a range of policies – the most important was
compulsory primary education in the national language. The language itself was often
standardized by a linguistic academy, and regional languages were ignored or suppressed
(elnyom). Some nation-states pursued violent policies of cultural assimilation and even ethnic
cleansing (etnikai tisztogatás).
The 'Melting Pot' ideal (USA)
In the United States, continuous mass immigration had been a feature of economy and society
since the first half of the 19th century. The absorption of the stream of immigrants became, in
itself, a prominent (kiemelkedő) feature of America’s national myth. The idea of the Melting
pot is a metaphor that implies that all the immigrant cultures are mixed and amalgamated
(egybeolvad) without state intervention. The Melting Pot implied that each individual
immigrant, and each group of immigrants, assimilated into American society at their own
pace. An Americanized (and often stereotypical) version of the original nation’s cuisine, and
its holidays, survived. Note that the Melting Pot tradition co-exists with a belief in national
unity, dating from the American founding fathers.
Multiculturalism
The term multiculturalism generally refers to a state of both cultural and ethnic diversity
(sokféleség) within the demographics of a particular social space. Some countries have
official, or de jure (törvényszerinti) multiculturalism policies aimed at preserving the cultures
or cultural identities – usually those of immigrant groups – within a unified society. In this
context, multiculturalism supports a society that extends fair status to distinct cultural and
religious groups, no one culture predominating (túlsúlyban van). However, the term is more
commonly used to describe a society consisting of minority immigrant cultures existing
alongside a predominant, indigenous (őshonos) culture.
Adoption of multiculturalism as national policy
Multiculturalism was adopted as official policy, in several Western nations from the 1970s
onward, for reasons that varied from country to country.
Government multicultural policies included:
 recognition of multiple citizenship (the multiple citizenship itself usually results from
the nationality laws of another country)
 government support for newspapers, television, and radio in minority languages
 support for minority festivals, holidays, and celebrations
 acceptance of traditional and religious dress in schools, the military, and society in
general
 support for music and arts from minority cultures
 programs to encourage minority representation in politics, SET (Science, Engineering
and Technology), Mathematics, education, and the work force in general.
Cultural Pluralism
Closely connected to the idea of multiculturalism is the concept of cultural pluralism a
situation in which small groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural
identities. In a pluralist culture, unique groups not only coexist side by side, but also consider
qualities of other groups as traits worth having in the dominant culture. The current
contemporary art world in the 21st century is an example of cultural pluralism. For another
example, a community center in the United States may offer classes in Indian yoga, Chinese
calligraphy, and Latin salsa dancing. That community may also have one or more synagogues,
mosques, mandirs, gurudwaras, and/or Buddhist temples, as well as several churches of
various Christian denominations (felekezet). The existence of such institutions and practices
are possible if the cultural communities responsible for them are protected by law and/or
accepted by the larger society in a pluralist culture. Cultural pluralism is a necessary
consequence of a flourishing and peaceful democratic society, because of its tolerance and
respect for cultural and ethnic diversity.
Post-multiculturalism
Following the collapse of the consensus on multiculturalism, several European Union
countries have introduced policies for ‘social cohesion’, ‘integration’, and (sometimes)
‘assimilation’. They are sometimes a direct reversal of earlier multiculturalist policies, and
seek to assimilate immigrant minorities and restore a de facto (tényleges) monocultural
society. The policies include or propose:
 compulsory language courses in the national language, accompanied by a compulsory
language test for immigrants
 compulsory courses and/or tests on national history, on the constitution and the legal
system, see Life in the United Kingdom test
 official campaigns to promote national unity, and individual identification with the
nation
 official lists of national values, and tests of acceptance of these values
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restriction on spouses (házastárs) or children joining immigrants already in the
country, and age and income restrictions on non-western marriage partners, sometimes
with language tests for potential spouses, in their country of origin
official declarations specifying that only the national language may be spoken in
certain areas
language prohibitions (tilalom) in schools, universities, and public buildings.
Language bans have also been proposed for public transport and hospitals
prohibitions on Islamic dress
introduction of an oath of allegiance or loyalty oath for immigrants, usually following
naturalisation and during a compulsory ceremony.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoculturalism)
FURTHER CONCEPTS
High Culture
Thomas Inge in the introduction to The Handbook of Popular Culture puts it well:
“The function of high culture is to validate the experience of the individual.
Creation is a purely aesthetic act in pursuit (törekszik vlmire) of truth and
beauty, and, that being so, therefore self-justifying (önigazoló). ‘Art for art’s
sake’ is a phrase generally applied to allow for creations that are nonrepresentational and totally without use or even meaning … The art piece is
designed aggressively to confront us, to challenge our assumptions and beliefs
about art and life, and to identify the unanswered questions about existence.”
Theoretically, creators of high culture create not for financial success but rather for the
timeless recognition of their having introduced to the world a new way of seeing, hearing,
feeling, or experiencing life. The high culture audience is small, hence the creator is usually
easily associated with their work.
(http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/popculture/Phome1.html)
Folklore/Folk Culture
The creations of folk culture are communal and anticipated. They are communal because the
creator and their audience belong to the same small societal (társadalmi) division – the social
distance between them is negligible (elhanyagolható) if even present. They are anticipated
because the creator draws from the traditional knowledge and the everyday experience of their
societal group. Those who create folk culture work with and within the tried and true patterns
of experience, and those who are its audience expect that their experiences will reflect the
conventions of what has gone before and served them well in the past. Folk culture,
accordingly, is a culture of continuity, governed by traditions and the expectation that the
experience of daily life, lived as most people do most of the time, will continue largely as it
has gone before. Like high culture, folk culture audiences are small, limited to the group in
which the folk creation is made. Folk culture of course consists of folk music, folk art,
folktales, folkdance, folk costumes, but also localised jokes, oral literature and history, home
remedies, old wives’ tales, and superstitions, among others.
In this respect folklore is closely connected to popular culture. In pre-industrial times, mass
culture equaled folk culture. This earlier layer of culture still persists today, sometimes in the
form of jokes or slang, which spread through the population by word of mouth and via the
Internet. By providing a new channel for transmission, cyberspace has renewed the strength of
this folk culture.
(http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/popculture/Phome1.html)
Popular Culture
Popular culture (earlier called mass culture) can be deemed simply as what is popular within
the social context – that of which is most strongly represented by what is percieved to be
popularly accepted among society. Otherwise, popular culture is also suggested to be the
widespread cultural elements in any given society that are perpetuated through that society’s
vernacular language or lingua franca. It comprises the daily interactions, needs and desires
and cultural ‘moments’ that make up the everyday lives of the mainstream. It can include any
number of practices, including those pertaining to cooking, clothing, consumption, mass
media and the many facets of entertainment such as sports and literature. Popular culture often
contrasts with a more exclusive, even elitist “high culture”. The earliest use of “popular” in
English was during the fifteenth century in law and politics, meaning “low”, “base”, “vulgar”,
and “of the common people” till the late eighteenth century by which time it began to mean
“widespread” and gain in positive connotation (értelem).
There are numerous examples of crossovers between the three cultures to confound the issue.
The music of Mozart is classified as high culture for all the reasons it should be, but also
because of the socio-economic class that patronised him in eighteenth-century Vienna. But his
audience was not limited to that class; if a tune caught on, it was whistled in the streets,
thereby becoming ‘popular’. How should Mozart’s music’s appearance on a “Greatest
Classical Hits” mass produced CD be classified? Likewise, how do we define the use of
Mozart's music on a film soundtrack? Is the medium the means for classification?
Questions of similar importance could be posed in relation to Shakespeare, who did not only
play to the elite; he was widely popular and wrote to a popular audience. Many of his plays
seek to capture popular currents of the day. The sixteenth-century English were very
interested in the Italian Renaissance. Likewise, there was a renewed sense of nationalism, if
we can call it that, following the defeat of the Spanish Armada, consequently Shakespeare
wrote a number of plays that dealt with English history, particularly focussing on great kings.
Today, the difficulty of the early-modern English may alone relegate Shakespeare to high
culture, but his audience is vast. Again we are faced with such problems as mass-production,
of his plays in print as well as his plays on stage, of film versions, and film adaptations, as
well as the fact that some lines from his plays – like “Something’s rotten in the state of
Denmark”, and of course, “To be or not to be” –have become so common that their origins are
sometimes forgotten.
In short, popular culture
 POPULAR CULTURE IS WHATEVER IS WIDELY POPULAR
 POPULAR CULTURE IS MASS COMMERCIAL CULTURE
 POPULAR CULTURE IS CREATED BY THE PEOPLE
 POPULAR CULTURE AS A CULTURAL BATTLEFIELD
 ALL CULTURE IS COMMERCIAL CULTURE
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_culture)
and
(http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/popculture/Phome1.html)
Subculture
In cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture (whether distinct or
hidden) which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong. If a particular
subculture is characterized by a systematic opposition to the dominant culture, it may be
described as a counterculture. Subcultures can be distinctive because of the age, race,
ethnicity, class, and/or gender of the members. The qualities that determine a subculture as
distinct may be aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, or a combination of factors. Members of
a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style.
The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing, music
and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also the ways in which these
same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture.
The neologism urban tribe was coined in 2001 by Ethan Watters in a New York Times
Magazine article. Watters defines urban tribes as groups of never-married's between the ages
of 25 and 45 who gather in common-interest groups and enjoy the urban lifestyle, which
offers an alternative to traditional family structures.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subculture)