Sociological Explanation of Culture

Question: Discuss about the Sociological Explanation of Culture. Answer: Introduction Culture generally refers to the collective deposit of the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, hierarchies, meanings, numerous notions, religion, spatial relations, and other materialistic possessions acquired by a certain group of people through generations (Shimizu, Lee and Uleman 2017). The groups define themselves through culture as they conform to the cultural values of the society while contributing to it. There are numbers of general understanding about the culture; some views it as a feature of the entire group of the society, whereas another group views it as a separate realm of the human expression. This essay will discuss the sociological meaning of culture with the help of sociology of consumption. Discussion Culture as a Meaning Maker In a society, culture highlights the meanings that are embedded in the interactions. The general connotation associated with culture being the meaning maker in the society has gained popularity in the branch of sociology and acts as a common perspective of studying the culture. The cultural sociologists has a tendency to view the culture as a creation of collective meaning making procedures that is utilized during the interactions and embedded within it. The culture is mostly regarded as the social construction than certain objective reality. Scholars have considered the culture as the behaviours and ideas that are learnt socially, therefore there have been long debates especially regarding the meaning making approach of culture (Bell et al. 2013). On one hand, the scholars have suggested that the meaning is the referent of a certain term or a sentence. However, on the other hand, other scholars have also argued that the linguistic expressions are external factors, but the associated ideas that are marked in the mind of people have gained meanings after relating to those concepts (Kvecses 2014). In other words, whatever an object, a word or a phase means to an individual that entirely depends on the interpretive framework that was drawn from their past experiences. Sociology of Consumption If the sociological consumption is considered, it is the subfield of the sociology where the consumption is viewed as the social order, identity and culture within the contemporary society in different ways which has exceeded the rational principles of demand and supply (Warde 2015). The sociologists indicates to the consequential and fundamental relationships between the socioeconomic structure, societal categorization, identity, social strata and consumption, as it has intersected the contemporary society with the inequality and power issues, therefore it has a central place in the societal process of the meaning making (Stillerman 2015). The sociological consumption is not only the act of purchasing goods; rather it has a close relationship with the vast range of self-expression, social distinction, emulation, ideological manipulation that circulates the buying of services and products. Conclusion In conclusion, it can be said that culture has its impact on the understanding and perception of the outer world. For instance, the picture that media portrays influence the individuals and their purchasing habits. The pictures that the fashion magazines publish has a strong impact on the adolescent girls, even if they criticize those pictures being entirely unrealistic, they are somehow affected by those images as they think their peers will judge them on the basis of those images. Reference List and Bibliography Bell, M.C., Fosse, N.E., Lamont, M. and Rosen, E., 2013. Beyond the Culture of Poverty: Meaning-Making among Low-Income Population around Family, Neighborhood, and Work.The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism. Kvecses, Z., 2014. Metaphorical meaning making: discourse, language, and culture.Quaderns de Filologia-Estudis Lingstics,14, pp.135-151. McArdle, F. and Wright, S.K., 2014. First literacies: Art, creativity, play, constructive meaning-making. InLiteracy in the Arts(pp. 21-37). Springer International Publishing. Shimizu, Y., Lee, H. and Uleman, J.S., 2017. Culture as automatic processes for making meaning: Spontaneous trait inferences.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,69, pp.79-85. Stillerman, J., 2015.The Sociology of Consumption: A Global Approach. John Wiley Sons. Warde, A., 2015. The sociology of consumption: Its recent development.Annual Review of Sociology,41, pp.117-134.