Disintegrations and Reintegrations: Future Directions in the Sociology of Culture

Abstract

We have seen that historians, sociologists, anthropologists, literature specialists and others have made significant contributions to our understanding of culture and in turn the study of culture has led to the breaking-down of disciplinary boundaries. The history of the study of culture is therefore complex and it is difficult to indicate directions without seeming to suggest an oversimplified unilinearity. Bearing this in mind, nevertheless, it might be said that as the study of culture has developed, conceptual distinctions have been made and refined. For example, high culture has been distinguished from low culture and concepts of mass and popular culture developed. In order to distinguish the specifically cultural aspects of a society and refine the theoretical usefulness of the concept of culture the distinction between social structure and culture has generally been drawn. Marxist researchers have located culture within the superstructures and some have distinguished more general aspects of culture from those with the specifically ideological function of reproducing the social relations of production. In all this it has mostly been taken for granted that knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, could be distinguished from the general pattern of beliefs in society which could be seen as culturally defined.