As we have discussed so far, culture encompasses a lot of how we live and experience our day-to -day lives. However, culture is not neutral. It can be used to create and sustain inequalities. Specifically, it can be used in the production of class, gender, and race inequalities. In this section, we will explore some of the cultural processes involved in creating inequalities.

High Culture and Popular Culture

One area where culture is intertwined with inequalities is within taste cultures. Scholars and the general population will commonly refer to taste cultures, such as high culture, popular culture, or mass culture. Gans (1974) defined taste culture as areas of culture that share aesthetics and standards of taste. Aesthetics broadly refers to standards of beauty, but also to a variety of other emotional and intellectual values people see in particular cultural content.

High culture is the form of cultural expression associated with elite groups. This includes art museums, opera, the symphony, ballet, classical music, plays, and high-end restaurants. In the United States, this is typically the culture of elite White people from coastal cities (for example, New York City, Boston, and San Francisco). Historically, this culture was called “highbrow” because of eighteenth century theories that associated the capability to understand this type of culture with intellectual superiority and having a particular skull shape that had a high brow. These theories are discredited. Familiarity with high culture can be used by the elites to help determine access to opportunities, as we will explore in the next section on cultural capital.

Popular culture refers to the pattern of cultural experiences and attitudes that exist in mainstream society (figure 6.6). Popular culture events might include a parade, a baseball game, or the season finale of a television show. Music, anime, and cosplay are pieces of popular culture.

Popular culture is accessible by most and is expressed and spread via commercial and social media outlets such as radio, television, movies, the music industry, publishers, and corporate-run websites. For example, you can share a discussion of your favorite football team with a new coworker or comment on a reality show when making small talk in line at the grocery store. But if you tried to launch into a deep discussion on the classical Greek play Antigone in these settings, you might get some strange looks. Although high culture may be considered by some to be superior to popular culture, the lines between high culture and popular culture vary over time and place. Shakespearean plays, considered to be popular culture when they were written, are now part of our society’s high culture. From a sociological perspective, high culture is not inherently better or more important than popular culture, and sociologists study both.

Cultural Capital

The concept of cultural capital has its origins in the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984; 1986), a well-known French sociologist. Cultural capital can be defined as the resources and power derived from being familiar with high (or legitimated) culture. This includes tastes, habits, expectations, skills, knowledge, and other dispositions.

Cultural capital is something that is learned. It is taught in the family, primarily in the families of the upper-middle class and upper class. Cultural capital is also taught and reinforced in the education system, especially higher education (think art history classes, studying literary classics). The idea is that schools are middle-class institutions that put a value on particular tastes, behaviors, and skills. Schools will reward people who have the “correct” cultural capital, while also helping build one’s cultural capital. As we will discuss more in Chapter 8, schools tend to reward children from middle-class backgrounds. The concept assumes there is a one-to-one mapping of class onto culture; those in the dominant class will consume high or legitimate culture, while those that are working class or poor will consume mass or popular culture.

The three types of cultural capital identified by Bourdieu are embodied cultural capital, objectified cultural capital, and institutionalized cultural capital. Embodied cultural capital is cultural capital that is internalized during socialization and constitutes schemes of appreciation and understanding. It requires the investment of time by parents, family members, or hired professionals to sensitize one to cultural distinctions (Swartz 1997). It is not only how we think, but also how we hold ourselves and present ourselves to others (Hallett 2003). Objectified cultural capital is when cultural capital is turned into specific objects, such as books or works of art, that require embodied cultural capital to be understood. An example could be possessing and displaying an original work of a well-known artist in your home. Institutionalized cultural capital materializes as degrees and diplomas from the education system that show you have the correct cultural capital (Lamont and Lareau 1988). It means going to the “right” school and having the diploma to show it.

Cultural capital preserves and reproduces the class structure, because it’s used to include and exclude others, defining access to a particular class. For those wishing to get important jobs or acquire (political or economic) power, cultural capital serves as a criterion for access. You have to show a familiarity with high culture to be accepted. Research by Lauren Rivera (2012) shows that notions of “fit” will be used to evaluate applicants for jobs at elite professional service firms. “Fit” ends up meaning having the same culture as the people who already work there. This limits opportunities for a diverse workforce and the exchange of different perspectives.

Further, familiarity and participation in high culture operate to build connections among the dominant class. Attending something like an opera in New York City is an opportunity to interact with other people in a similar class situation and create class solidarity. Furthermore, participating in such events could be used in interactions as a means to judge others’ class standing. The overall point of the concept in Bourdieu’s work was “to suggest that culture (in the broadest sense of the term) can become a power resource” (Swartz 1997: 75).

Taste Patterns

Within sociology, there are a variety of arguments about the relationship between class hierarchies and cultural hierarchies. Bourdieu’s perspective aligns with the homology argument, which states that consumption patterns and cultural tastes are associated with specific occupations and class fractions. Similar to cultural capital, we see a one-to-one mapping of class onto culture. This means that the elite consume high culture, while the lower class consumes popular culture.

Bourdieu (1984) specifically argued the upper class has a “taste for freedom” that informs all of their cultural choices. This entails a distance from the material necessities and practical urgencies of everyday life. Those in the upper class don’t have to worry about paying rent or providing food for their family. Instead, they can focus on things like art or opera, high culture, things that aren’t that practical to everyday life (figure 6.8). In contrast, the working class must confront the needs and urgencies of making a living, resulting in a “taste for necessity.” Here there is a general preference for things that are substantive and informal.

The opposite of the homology argument is the individualization argument, which is a rather postmodern argument. From this perspective, consumption patterns are no longer determined by class. Theorists holding this position generally point to the supposed decomposition of class hierarchies and the rising influence of gender, race, and religion as sources of consumption patterns. They also point to the changing production, marketing, and consumer patterns and how they have led to a proliferation of images and identities that no longer correspond to particular classes. Just think of the number of cultural objects that are now available to us through the internet. With so many options available, it might be hard to predict someone’s consumption based on their social location. Some supporters of this argument claim that it is almost a free-for-all, and there is no way to determine consumption patterns (Beck 1992).

Between the class homology argument and the individualization argument is the omnivore/univore argument. Here the argument is that there has been a transition in the tastes of the dominant class away from participation in a limited number of high-status activities. Instead, there is a move by the dominant groups toward greater participation in all types of activities and taste preferences, some of which are considered low status. They become cultural omnivores (Chan and Goldthorpe 2005). This has been referred to as a shift from snobbishness to omnivorousness (Peterson and Kern 1996). It means a new way to show your eliteness is by being open to appreciating a wide range of cultural activities and genres. However, there are limits to this openness, with particular activities or genres associated with groups seen as having a lower social standing being excluded (Bryson 1996).

While this has occurred, those in the dominated classes have been shown to mainly participate in just a few types of cultural activities or a narrow range of activities. Usually, those cultural activities are associated with their ethnicity, occupation, or locality, hence their label as cultural univores. One of the best ways to think about this is in terms of a particular medium, like music. An omnivore would like a bunch of different types of music, while a univore would probably like only one. This taste pattern has been found in a variety of national contexts and different areas of life, such as the visual arts and food consumption (Alderson et al. 2007; Katz-Gerro 2002). What might be a limit to understanding taste patterns in terms of omnivores and univores?

Boundary Drawing

Another way culture can be used to create and sustain inequalities is through the process of boundary drawing. Boundaries can be symbolic or social. Symbolic boundaries are conceptual distinctions made by people to categorize a wide variety of social things. This can include people, groups, and objects, but also more broadly how we categorize space and time. You can think of them as defining who or what is included and excluded. Social boundaries result when symbolic boundaries are widely agreed upon. Social boundaries involve unequal access to resources and opportunities (Lamont and Molnar 2002). These social boundaries can be built into our society, including some people, while excluding others.

A concrete example of boundary drawing is the borders that exist between countries (figure 6.9). It is at these borders that citizenship is enforced. Decisions are made to allow some people into a country while denying access to others. Some sociologists have described borders as “instrumental in the construction of difference” (Lamont and Molar 2002: 184).

We could also apply boundary drawing to the attempted construction of a southern border wall in the United States. One way to interpret it would be through the writings of Frantz Fanon. He developed a sociology of walls to explain French colonization practices in Algeria (Go 2020). He argued “The colonized world is a compartmentalized world. The dividing line, the border, is represented by the barracks and the police stations. . . . The ‘native’ sector is not complementary to the European sector. The two confront each other, but not in the service of a higher unity” (Fanon [1961] 1968:3–4). In his framework, such a boundary is tied to race, while having strong effects on those that are included and those that are excluded. While both a symbolic and social boundary, the southern border wall also has clear connections to race and exclusion.

Boundary drawing can also be used to define who belongs and who benefits in terms of race, class, and gender. Determining ethnic group membership and identity is wrapped up in processes of boundary drawing (Sanders 2002). Boundary drawing is also closely tied to the dynamics of in-groups and out-groups. Cultural capital is one way people draw boundaries along the lines of class. We will explore classed boundary drawing more in Chapter 8. In terms of race, the boundaries around Whiteness are something that sociologists have increasingly turned their attention toward. Over time, some groups that were previously defined as non-White became to be seen as White. Being included as White comes with a variety of privileges. We will explore this more in Chapter 11.

Othering

Othering refers to the process through which a group that already has a lot of power defines into existence a group they construct as an “other.” The powerful group does this by attributing negative characteristics to the “other” and deems the less powerful group as inferior (Schwalbe et al. 2000). In other words, it involves creating categories and assigning people to those categories. Those with power assume the less powerful group is inferior in some manner. Often, the “other” is seen and treated as part of an out-group. As a recent example, some political actors have othered transgender people and passed a series of anti-trans laws, negatively impacting the lives of trans individuals in those states (Narea and Cineas 2023).

Othering is commonly used to support racial and imperial oppression. Within the West, there is a tendency to engage in Orientalism. Here “the Orient” is seen as an “other.” Edward Said (1979) argues that “the Orient” was invented by those in the West during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This process “is predicated upon an unquestioned belief in Western superiority and upon the conviction that, as the East cannot understand itself” (Macey 2000:283). It allowed those in the West to develop an identity as “Western,” and to present themselves as the center of the world and human progress. Simultaneously, this included defining those outside the West as “other,” “inferior,” “backward,” or “child-like.” This helped justify European colonialism and exploitation. Even sociology and anthropology from the United States have reinforced such othering (Fabian 1983; Connell 2007). Orientalism as a particular form of othering still exists in the United States—look no further than media coverage of people from the Middle East (Lajevardi 2021).

Licenses and Attributions for Culture and Inequality

Open Content, Original

“Culture and Inequality” by Matthew Gougherty is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

“Popular Culture” definition and paragraph is modified from “High, Low, Pop, Sub, Counter-culture and Cultural Change” by Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang, Introduction to Sociology 3e, Openstax is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Edited for consistency and clarity.

Figure 6.6. “Food Carts – Portland, Oregon” by Daderot is in the Public Domain, CC0 1.0.

Figure 6.8. “Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra” by IndyMayorsOffice is in the Public Domain, CC0 1.0.

Figure 6.9. “U.S. – Mexico Border Wall” by Amyyfory is licensed Under CC BY-SA 4.0.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 6.7. “Cultural Capital” by Sociology Live! is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.