Thesis About Culture

[Kristee Summerford]

Iwould like to start off with the definition of Culture, which is an organized system of learned behavior and thought patterns. Always make manifest by a group making that group distinctive from other groups. It is non-instinctive but rests on a biological base of: binocular, stereoscopic, color, vision/ habitual, upright bipedal locomotion/ generalized forelimb with opposable thumb and the symbolic capacity of (750-950cc). It is transmitted through language is cumulative and embracing both artifacts and attitudes is human kinds chief adaptive mechanism.

Culture is an organized system because it ties many parts together that are interconnected to all function as one. These are traits which are the simplest part, to complexes which are all the traits combined, then you build on that to get patterns which are many complexes, and finally institutions which are needed to answer problems that are crucial to basic human needs. If any of those characteristics are taken out of the system then it would not work properly, so they are all of necessity. What you get from this is cultural integration, which can be high or low. In the case of the Yanomamo the level of integration is very high which makes their culture or society very simple because they do not have options on how they do things.

Five major ways that humans learn their culture are through child raising practices or how they think the child should be raised in the particular environment, Imitation or role modeling when a child pretends to be someone the would like to be if they were grown up, learning from friends in peer group play, oral traditions which may be from stories past on, and rights, rituals and ceremonies for example weddings.

The third part of culture is manifest by a group or the shared behaviors of a group. Culture is a shared social behavior by everyone in a specific place making a society. All the people in a society create and maintain a culture, and then the society preserves or keeps the culture alive. An example using the Yanomamo would be how they all dress the same wearing pretty much nothing and eat the same types of food like plantains. This is then carried on generation after generation through their process of enculturation.

The fifth part of the definition of culture would be how it rests on a biological base. This means that before humans could start to develop different cultures they had to first have specific biological characteristics that came through evolution. These consist of binocular stereoscopic color vision which was the ability to see in color while focusing both eyes to make one image and being able to judge the distance of the image instantly. Also humans needed habitual upright bipedal locomotion which gave us the ability to see better with elevated eyesight and also gave us the ability to carry things while in motion since the hands were not needed to walk. One more thing is a generalized forelimb with an opposable thumb which in turn allowed humans to be able to do many tasks and then have the opposable thumb to lock either a power or precision grip on to things. The last biological base needed was the symbolic capacity which was a cranial capacity of seven hundred and fifty to nine hundred and fifty cubic centimeters. This gave the ability to develop symbols which we know is very important in a culture and is a way to distinguish differences between cultures.

Next would be how culture is transmitted through language. This is done by the creation of symbols which allow people to develop complex thoughts that can be exchanged to other people. A human has the ability to pass on knowledge through their specific language and this allows for a greater transfer of information over a smaller period of time. This is how they will pass on customs and beliefs too. Also the ability for a group to learn something new by having only one person from the group having a specific experience is gained from the ability to transmit culture through language, unlike with an animal how they must come into a predicament to learn the outcome.

The second to last part of culture is about culture embracing both artifacts and attitudes. From the text book culture embraces artifacts because they are adaptive functions and must be included. These artifacts are the result of cultural thought processes, which come from the environment triggering the need to adapt to be able to survive and reproduce.

The thesis project synthesized general knowledge in the field of media, culture and communication as well as demonstrates a high level of competency in the candidate's chosen area of study in accordance with institutional and state regulations.

The culture industry concept is a thesis proposed by Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt school. It contends that cultural industries exist to enforce (and reinforce) the capitalist ethos. This essay discusses the specifics and the ramifications of the concept for culture and society, with particular regard to its consequences for the television industry. The key claims of the thesis are as follows:

With this is mind, let us define what we mean by "culture industry". Although history has not respected this, Adorno and Horkheimer coined the "culture industry" term to replace the concept of "mass culture", which they felt had a semantic at odds with the truth. I will use the two terms interchangably. Today, the term "mass culture" (and also "pop culture") is itself part of the mass culture, and is usually used with positive connotation. It should be stated that "industry" does not necessarily imply industrial production means, although many works of culture commodification do indeed reach us in this way. Rather, it refers to the standardization and psuedo-singularity of cultural items, and to the regulation of how they are promoted and distributed.

I contend that much of the effects of capitalist life, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant, are results of inherencies in the capitalist system and need not be intended consequences of design. Many scholars of capitalism and its alternatives despair at the manipulation of people by other people in 20th century society, but capitalism, especially when viewed as accepted and normal, instigates these manipulations. It is seen as natural and normal to do one's best to succeed in society, and capitalism has great facility in negating all alternatives to itself. The Frankfurt School were skilled in discerning the flaws in society but less adept at projecting a suitable replacement for it; Marx is still waiting for society to destroy itself. Perhaps capitalism will be crushed under the weight of its own cultural trash, but it is likelier that mass culture will continue to perpetuate itself. And this seems reasonable, for a greedy consumer has little use for acquiring taste.

Henry Ford, while not the inventor of the production line (it was Eli Whitney with his cotton gin) nevertheless inspired such techniques of assembly enough to have his name put to it. Fordism was a series of piecemeal additions to a product, most properly carried out in the manufactory on a black Model T, later to inform the development and dissemination of most industrial production, including works of culture. It does not stand alone as an example of a means of production transposed onto the realization of an artisitc vision. Rather, it is symptomatic of society, and how culture acts within it, as interdependent but lesser, as a function.

It seems oxymoronic to talk of "culture industries" as though culture was merely a product; there exists much of a person's culture that will not be industrialized or is safeguarded against it. Further, the implied malignant meaning of "culture industries" suggests a means of production precluded from producing anything of real worth. It is not so simple as that: a capitalism is not so clever as to be unexploited by the ingenious, nor is it likely that any creator living under a capitalism can be truly free from it. All artists could be considered as having at least a peripheral role in the culture industry. If capitalism can successfully belittle all alternatives to itself, then even its opponents must articulate with it in order to survive. It moves then, in a seemingly unstoppable fashion, towards a greater control over its increasingly unthinking society. It becomes aligned to despotism, pursuing homogenity because it can fulfil all of the homogenite's needs.

So, by a culture industry producing commodified culture, we mean an industry and a product where each purchase reinforces the politics of the dominant worldview: Horkheimer's insistence that cultural industries served the ideological role of perpetuating the capitalist ethos. This is unusual, in that the relationship is apparently the reverse, with capitalism seeming to perpetuate the production. But the above-mentioned homogenity of culture and apparent lack of alternative to capitalism are good support for Horkheimer's claims. The polarization of culture into mass and high distinctions is further evidence: mass culture is a satisfier of those desires that capitalist living provokes, high culture is that which cannot engage with capitalism. The semiotics of the mass, especially when allied to democratic notions, perceives itself as ordinary and decent and the high as abnormal and elitist. This nullifies the irony of how the masses perpetuate a vertically integrated industry (and society) though their fear and hatred of the perceived elite.

Freedom is another irony. It is key to Western democracy, an ideal much-vaunted and often claimed as reality. But freedom here is subjective stuff, in that it is under the thumb of the overarching ideology. Free time, for example, is defined in opposition to work time: a worker in work is not free. Further, not only does work decide leisure, but also the means of pursuing it. The culture industry performs a vital role in this cyclical manipulation of freedom: work evokes certain desires for escape, and the escape, when it comes, is underpinned so much by the ideology that it fits the leisuring worker to work once more.

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