Essay on Sub-culture

Submitted By Bayayee
Words: 1506
Pages: 7

Yosef underlines that culture is a social construct and includes symbols and knowledge of the work into the definition of culture. He also expresses the importance of the dynamic between culture and resistance and takes into attention the forms of resistance in literature and art. Rameisha underlines the cultural aspects of political oppositions like slave revolt in Haiti. Brian (Dhaniam) highlights how cultures stabilize and destabilize norms in society and moreover how cultural norms themselves are stabilized. He also refers to culture as a means of identification. Samantha tells that some cultures are held at a higher standard than others and further placing cultures in a hierarchy is compatible with how capitalism views people since “in capitalism you are defined by your relation, superiority and/or inferiority to others”. Samantha also gives a perfect example of sub-culture as a form of resistance, namely youth culture that resisted Nazi regime in Germany. Anna takes into attention that culture influences the formations of political movements and involvement into them. Madjeen puts forward a very interesting hint, which is “culture is the idea that holds a group of people together”. I think that considering culture as an idea deserves much attention.
Rebecca focuses on the link between culture and resistance and suggests that we may think the relationship between them as a “dialectical relationship” (I suppose she means that one constitutes the other as in Marxist/Hegelian thinking). Related to this, Rebecca puts forward the idea that “resistance is manifested through the production of culture”. Brian (Freeman) also underlines that culture and resistance go hand in hand and cannot exist without each other. Indeed, throughout the class we will circle around the discussion on how to see resistance in relation to culture; dialectical relationship or culture as the pattern provides a ground for resistance -or oppression?
Another point of Brian is that “capitalism defines who we are as people or who we are supposed to be”. This point has been widely discussed by Marxists (especially by Marx himself and Frankfurt School) and comprises the heart of our fourth week (Culture Industrialised) class discussion. Pamela introduces us a very important concept to think about while discussing culture, that is tradition! In fact, the concept of tradition, like some other concepts that many of you mentioned in your initial ideas, such as language, religion, beliefs, customs, symbols, is highly important in terms of its relation to the production of cultural values and norms. We will focus on this discussion especially when we read Raymond Williams and Peter Burke.
Erdogan suggests us to think about culture as an instrument for holding people together. Therefore, with the contribution of Anna, we acquire a window to see culture as a political construct. Busra underlines the importance of culture as a political tool especially in the context of unifying attempts through culture against other ethnic groups. In her reply to Dannovan, Busra also emphasizes the role of states and colonial processes in the production of certain cultural values. Suyeon makes a contribution to Busra’s point by referring to the relationship between culture and nation formation. Together with Yosef’s point that culture as a social construct and Madjeen’s point that culture as an idea, I think that we are already observing the richness of the concept of culture.
Alexander states that “culture represents our ways of thinking and acting” and “material objects” too. Putting culture at the level of representation (including material objects) reminds me another crucial concept regarding culture: ideology. We will turn back to this discussion while reading Stuart Hall and Pierre Bourdieu. Dannovan emphasizes a very important aspect of culture that is culture is never a total thing, though it is often represented as a singular image as in the case of saying