SOCY 122 : Notes on high, mass, popular, and taste cultures.

• School: Queen's University
• Department: Social Sci, Edu and Soc Work - Sociology
• Course: SOCY 122
• Professor: Rob Beamish

Document Summary

High culture and popular culture are different taste cultures. Herbert gans --> masse kulture : masse = uneducated, working and middle classes, poor and lower classes, etc, kulture = well-educated, elite; includes art, music, and literature. Mass culture has a negative meaning; represents undefined styles, modes of thought, expressions, and lower orders of european society. Taste cultures consist of values and the cultural forms which express certain values (music, art, design, literature, drama, comedy, poetry, criticism, news) and the media in which these are expressed (books, records, films, tv, newspaper, etc). Taste cultures are lived cultures --> cannot be abstracted from the social contexts within which they are created and consumed: ensures that taste cultures are a vibrant dimension to people"s social lives. In a stable and homogenous society, cultural expression is relatively consistent and narrow. In diverse societies, there is a wide range of cultural expression and a number of tastes to which different taste cultures appeal.