The distinction between high and low culture is largely centred upon relations of class and power.
Bourdieu (1984) says to understand and enjoy the high culture, such as theatre art need a certain amount of knowledge, which means high culture is for people who have educational and cultural capital. He also mentions popular culture is for the public and it mostly contains the ordinary circumstances of life. Williams (2002) also mentions industries in popular culture work to gain the favor of the majority that means popular culture is mundane.
Bourdieu (1984) thinks the distinction between high and low culture is the distinction between the ruling class and the working class. He uses the term social nobility to describe the situation that the ruling class tries to introduce high and low culture to emphasize the fact that proletariats are disgusting and much lower than them. He also thinks the working class can never go up to the ruling class because of the lack of capitals and education.
Most of the sociologists think the strongest argument Bourdieu (1984) has made would be the relationship between cultural capital and the high culture. First, in terms of the biased education resources, Lareau (2000), Ball (2013), Cassen, Kingston (2007) and Wexler (1992) agree to a point that ruling class occupies all the good educational resources to maintain the distinction. Lareau (2000) uses the example of childhood education to pose the fact that children from the ruling class have more opportunities than the children from the working class because they receive more resources, such as piano lessons, that help understand more about the high culture. Ball (2013) also advocates schools to care more about students who do not have much resourc...
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...A publication . 39 (5), P.965-982.
Sulivan, A. (2002). The Netherland's Journal of Science. How useful Bourdieu's theory is for the researchers. 38 (2), P. 144.
Williams, R. (2002). 9. In: Highmore, B Culture is ordinary . USA: Routledge. 92-100.
Reay, D. (2009). The Authors. Strangers in Paradise’? Working-class Students in Elite Universities. 43 (6), 1103-1121.
Lareau, A (2000). Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, 2nd Edition with an Update a Decade Later. 2nd ed. USA: University of California Press. P.289 .
Swartz, D (1997). Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: The University of Chicago . P.4-6 .
Goldthrope, J (2012). Understanding – and Misunderstanding – Social Mobility in Britain: The Entry of the Economists, the Confusion of Politicians and the Limits of Educational Policy . Oxford : Oxford University press. P.1.
The working class stays working and the middle class stays being middle. Author Nick Tingle, wrote “The vexation of class”, he argues that the working class and the middle class are separated educationally based on culture and the commonplace. Tingle uses his own personal experiences and Ethos, to effectively prove his point about the difference in class based on culture ; although, Tingle also falls short by adding unnecessary information throughout the article that weakens his belief entirely.
Lareau, Annette. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011. Print.
For millennia, there have been constant conflicts between the upper class and the lower class, characterized by the upper class’s sense of superiority towards those less economically prosperous. Mansfield, Gordimer, and Orwell describe these conflicts between the upper and lower classes to propose that completely transcending class prejudices is impossible and suggest that societal values have greater impact than individual values as they degrade both a person’s behavior and morality.
Preventing poverty and improving the school system can help prevent class reproduction, but Macleod argues that, "what is required is the creation of a truly open society--a society where the life chances of those at the bottom are not radically different from those at the top and where wealth is distributed more equitably" (260). Until structural inequality is eliminated, wealth is more evenly distributed, and discrimination between classes ends, social reproduction will be to well known by society.
Ream, Robert K., and Gregory J. Palardy. "Reexamining Social Class Differences in the Availability and the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital." American Educational Research Journal 45.2 (2008): 238-273. JSTOR. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
Debord uses the term 'cultural theory' to denote the common ground between class and society. It could b...
Some people may believe that education all over the United States is equal. These people also believe that all students no matter their location, socioeconomic status, and race have the same access and quality of education, but ultimately they are wrong. Throughout history, there has been a huge educational disparity between the wealthy and marginalized communities. The academic essay “Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work” by Jean Anyon, an American critical thinker and researcher in education, conveys that depending on the different economic backgrounds students have, they will be taught in a specific way. He reveals that the lower economic background a child has then the lower quality their education will be and the higher their economic background is the higher quality their education is. Anyon’s theory of a social ladder is extremely useful because it sheds light on the
The first difference you see between the middle and working class in education is the selection of primary schools as for some it is the first time they are going to enter into the academic world. At this point the family as a whole are entering into “unfamiliar worlds” (Jackson and Marsden, 1966, page 99) in the process of selecting and applying for schools. The middle class aim is to have their children go to a successful school with a good Ofsted report just like the working class. However it is harder for the working class to get into these schools due to a range of factors. Some of these restricting factors are their knowledge of the system and economic status or wealth; they may not have the facilities for tra...
Before entering into defense of the argument, it is important to communicate that the current situation is one which demands reform. It must be understood that the state of the public school system is not simply confined to the domain of education but is instead very much interrelated with the distribution of wealth. The current opportunity gap-which affords those who are middle and upper class greater access to higher quality education-is the cause of the inequality seen in the distribution of income. “Children born into the top fifth of the income distribution have about twice as much of a chance of becoming middle class or better in their adult years as those born into the bottom fifth (Isaacs, Sawhill, & Haskins, 2008)”.
Beller, Emily and Hout, Michael. “Intergenerational Social Mobility: The United States in Comparative Perspective”. The Future of Children 16, no. 2 (2006): 19-36. Accessed April 9, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3844789
The members of theses higher levels are seen as groups of people that commonly interact with each other and in take each other’s opinions and concerns into account when formulating a decision. They are seen as a whole as the “upper class.” They are all a part of this social class and because of this treat people of diverse social classes differently. The people of the upper class gain an understanding of what they have in similarity to each other and use their stature to close ranks against outsiders, or people of different social
Furthermore, to say that only bourgeoisie or higher class can experience culture would also be a false approach. People may give the inability to get academic education as an example for this situation. For example, in the UK or the USA, one must pay some certain tuition fee in order to go to college or universtiy. While some in countries this tuition f...
Stephens, N. M., Markus, H. R., & Phillips, L. T. (2014). Social class culture cycles: how three
In the beginning, the relationship between everyday culture and mass media culture are closed but there are some difference between popular culture and traditional culture. The traditional culture is known as ‘high culture’ which refer to literature, art, music etc. However, popular culture is the produced by mass media, may know it as low culture. People used to entertainment or relaxation. It shared and spread rapidly in groups, communities, societies and so on. Some people may say popular culture help us to understand more about the world because of the globalization factor.
Pop culture is everything, it is the culture of people. It defines and dictates the desires and fears of the mainstream members of society. It is so ingrained into our lives that we collectively overlook how integral it is to our development as a society. Adults, especially teens, never even bat an eyelash at all the pop culture and advertising that surrounds them, it has become just another part of everyday life. Pop culture has and is somewhat still seen as entertainment that is enjoyed by the lower class members of society; but what is considered pop culture frequently changes over time. A notable example of this is the sixteenth century author, William Shakespeare, since his works were once considered pop culture, entertainment that could be enjoyed by everyone, but mostly the lower class. Now, he is one of the most renowned authors of the 21st century, with his works frequently adorning our English readings and receiving acclaim for his timeless classics such as Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. Pop culture influences