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182-732: A subculture is a group of people within a cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, political, and sexual matters. Subcultures are part of society while keeping their specific characteristics intact. Examples of subcultures include BDSM , hippies , hipsters (which include 1940s original parent subculture and nipster ), goths , steampunks , bikers , punks , skinheads , gopnik , hip-hoppers , metalheads , cosplayers , otaku , otherkin , furries , hackers and more. The concept of subcultures

364-410: A clarinetist . The terms incomparability and incommensurability are often used as synonyms. However, philosophers like Ruth Chang distinguish them. According to this view, incommensurability means that there is no common measure to quantify values of different types. Incommensurable values may or may not be comparable. If they are, it is possible to say that one value is better than another, but it

546-659: A formal science , akin to logic and mathematics . It uses axioms to give an abstract definition of value, understanding it not as a property of things but as a property of concepts. Values measure the extent to which an entity fulfills its concept. For example, a good car has all the desirable qualities of cars, like a reliable engine and effective brakes, whereas a bad car lacks many. Formal axiology distinguishes between three fundamental value types: intrinsic values apply to people; extrinsic values apply to things, actions, and social roles; systemic values apply to conceptual constructs. Formal axiology examines how these value types form

728-425: A majority , "which passively accepted commercially provided styles and meanings, and a 'subculture' which actively sought a minority style ... and interpreted it in accordance with subversive values ". In his 1979 book Subculture: The Meaning of Style , Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is a subversion to normalcy. He wrote that subcultures can be perceived as negative due to their nature of criticism to

910-452: A monoculture in a social group can bear risks, just as a single species can wither in the face of environmental change, for lack of functional responses to the change. Thus in military culture, valor is counted a typical behavior for an individual and duty, honor, and loyalty to the social group are counted as virtues or functional responses in the continuum of conflict . In the practice of religion, analogous attributes can be identified in

1092-527: A thought experiment that imagines the valuable thing in isolation from everything else. In such a situation, purely instrumentally valuable things lose their value since they serve no purpose while purely intrinsically valuable things remain valuable. According to a common view, pleasure is one of the sources of intrinsic value. Other suggested sources include desire satisfaction, virtue , life , health , beauty , freedom , and knowledge . Intrinsic and instrumental value are not exclusive categories. As

1274-451: A truth value , a position known as non-cognitivism . For example, emotivists say that value claims express emotional attitudes, similar to how exclamations like "Yay!" or "Boo!" express emotions rather than stating facts. Cognitivists contend that value statements have a truth value. Error theorists defend anti-realism based on this view by stating that all value statements are false because there are no values. Another view accepts

1456-409: A "Westernized" emo style. Culture Culture ( / ˈ k ʌ l tʃ ər / KUL -chər ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior , institutions , and norms found in human societies , as well as the knowledge , beliefs , arts , laws , customs , capabilities, attitude , and habits of the individuals in these groups. Culture is often originated from or attributed to

1638-485: A broader horizon of values, including those beyond anyone's control. Some perspectives contrast ethics and value theory, asserting that the normative concepts examined by ethics are distinct from the evaluative concepts examined by value theory. Axiological ethics is a subfield of ethics examining the nature and role of values from a moral perspective, with particular interest in determining which ends are worth pursuing. The ethical theory of consequentialism combines

1820-407: A commodity provides—and exchange value —the proportion at which one commodity can be exchanged with another. It focuses on exchange value, which it says is determined by the amount of labor required to produce the commodity . In its simplest form, it directly correlates exchange value to labor time. For example, if the time needed to hunt a deer is twice the time needed to hunt a beaver then one deer

2002-779: A common hobby or interest but lack permanent social bonds to become a brand community . The sexual revolution of the 1960s led to a countercultural rejection of the established sexual and gender norms in the Western world , particularly in the urban areas of Europe, North and South America, Australia, and white South Africa. A more permissive social environment in these areas led to a proliferation of sexual subcultures —cultural expressions of non-normative sexuality . As with other subcultures, sexual subcultures adopted certain styles of fashion and gestures to distinguish themselves from mainstream Western culture. Lesbian , gay , bisexual , and transgender ( LGBT ) people express themselves through

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2184-406: A culture with an abacus are trained with distinctive reasoning style. Cultural lenses may also make people view the same outcome of events differently. Westerners are more motivated by their successes than their failures, while East Asians are better motivated by the avoidance of failure. Culture is important for psychologists to consider when understanding the human mental operation. The notion of

2366-475: A desire can only provide value if a fully informed and rational person would have it. This view excludes faulty desires. Perfectionism identifies the realization of human nature and the cultivation of characteristic human abilities as the source of intrinsic goodness. It covers capacities and character traits belonging to the bodily, emotional, volitional, cognitive, social, artistic, and religious fields. Perfectionists disagree about which human excellences are

2548-437: A distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between "civilized" and "primitive" or "tribal" cultures. In 1860, Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) argued for "the psychic unity of mankind." He proposed that a scientific comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of

2730-468: A full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation ." There are a number of international agreements and national laws relating to the protection of cultural heritage and cultural diversity . UNESCO and its partner organizations such as Blue Shield International coordinate international protection and local implementation. The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in

2912-473: A fundamental aspect of reality and how they affect phenomena such as emotion , desire , decision, and action . Its topic is relevant to many human endeavors because values are guiding principles that underlie the political, economic, scientific, and personal spheres. Value theory analyzes and evaluates phenomena such as well-being , utility , beauty , human life, knowledge , wisdom , freedom , love , and justice . The precise definition of value theory

3094-574: A group of people and expressed in their behavior but which does not exist as a physical object. Humanity is in a global "accelerating culture change period," driven by the expansion of international commerce, the mass media, and above all, the human population explosion, among other factors. Culture repositioning means the reconstruction of the cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. These forces are related to both social structures and natural events, and are involved in

3276-633: A hierarchy and how they can be measured. Value theorists employ various methods to conduct their inquiry, justify theories, and measure values. Intuitionists rely on intuitions to assess evaluative claims. In this context, an intuition is an immediate apprehension or understanding of a self-evident claim, meaning that its truth can be assessed without inferring it from another observation. Value theorists often rely on thought experiments to gain this type of understanding. Thought experiments are imagined scenarios that exemplify philosophical problems. Philosophers use counterfactual reasoning to evaluate

3458-422: A hierarchy of values reflecting the relative importance and weight of different value types to help people promote higher values when faced with difficult choices. For example, philosopher Max Scheler ranks values based on how enduring and fulfilling they are into the levels of pleasure, utility, vitality, culture, and holiness. He asserts that people should not promote lower values, like pleasure, if this comes at

3640-476: A historical event should not be thought of as culture unless referring to the medium of television itself, which may have been selected culturally; however, schoolchildren watching television after school with their friends to "fit in" certainly qualifies since there is no grounded reason for one's participation in this practice. In the context of cultural studies, a text includes not only written language , but also films , photographs , fashion , or hairstyles :

3822-438: A larger brain. The word is used in a general sense as the evolved ability to categorize and represent experiences with symbols and to act imaginatively and creatively. This ability arose with the evolution of behavioral modernity in humans around 50,000 years ago and is often thought to be unique to humans . However, some other species have demonstrated similar, though much less complicated, abilities for social learning. It

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4004-847: A limited concentration scoped on the intricacies of consumerism, which belongs to a wider culture sometimes referred to as Western civilization or globalism . From the 1970s onward, Stuart Hall's pioneering work, along with that of his colleagues Paul Willis , Dick Hebdige , Tony Jefferson, and Angela McRobbie , created an international intellectual movement. As the field developed, it began to combine political economy , communication , sociology , social theory , literary theory , media theory , film/video studies , cultural anthropology , philosophy , museum studies , and art history to study cultural phenomena or cultural texts. In this field researchers often concentrate on how particular phenomena relate to matters of ideology , nationality , ethnicity , social class , and/or gender . Cultural studies

4186-435: A lot while others benefit little, even if the two outcomes have the same sum total. Axiological prioritarians are particularly concerned with the benefits of individuals who are worse off. They say that providing advantages to people in need has more value than providing the same advantages to others. Formal axiology is a theory of value initially developed by philosopher Robert S. Hartman . This approach treats axiology as

4368-406: A member of society." Alternatively, in a contemporary variant, "Culture is defined as a social domain that emphasizes the practices, discourses and material expressions, which, over time, express the continuities and discontinuities of social meaning of a life held in common. The Cambridge English Dictionary states that culture is "the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of

4550-461: A modern context, meaning something similar, but no longer assuming that philosophy was man's natural perfection. His use, and that of many writers after him, " refers to all the ways in which human beings overcome their original barbarism , and through artifice, become fully human." In 1986, philosopher Edward S. Casey wrote, "The very word culture meant 'place tilled' in Middle English, and

4732-551: A multidisciplinary area of inquiry that covers research from fields like sociology , anthropology , psychology , and economics in addition to philosophy. In a narrow sense, value theory is a subdiscipline of ethics that is particularly relevant to the school of consequentialism since it determines how to assess the value of consequences. The word axiology has its origin in the ancient Greek terms ἄξιος (axios, meaning ' worth ' or ' value ' ) and λόγος (logos, meaning ' study ' or ' theory of ' ). Even though

4914-518: A new approach to culture was suggested by Rein Raud , who defines culture as the sum of resources available to human beings for making sense of their world and proposes a two-tiered approach, combining the study of texts (all reified meanings in circulation) and cultural practices (all repeatable actions that involve the production, dissemination or transmission of purposes), thus making it possible to re-link anthropological and sociological study of culture with

5096-428: A particular group of people at a particular time." Terror management theory posits that culture is a series of activities and worldviews that provide humans with the basis for perceiving themselves as "person[s] of worth within the world of meaning"—raising themselves above the merely physical aspects of existence, in order to deny the animal insignificance and death that Homo sapiens became aware of when they acquired

5278-407: A particular level of sophistication in the arts , sciences, education , or manners. The level of cultural sophistication has also sometimes been used to distinguish civilizations from less complex societies. Such hierarchical perspectives on culture are also found in class-based distinctions between a high culture of the social elite and a low culture , popular culture , or folk culture of

5460-435: A person is responsible for or guilty of. For example, if Mei promises to pick Pedro up from the airport then an agent-relative value obligates Mei to drive to the airport. This obligation is in place even if it does not benefit Mei, in which case there is an agent-relative value without a personal value. In consequentialism , agent-relative values are often discussed in relation to ethical dilemmas . One dilemma revolves around

5642-592: A person or group based on their culture or subculture. In the United States and the United Kingdom, the concept of subculture has always been the main explanatory tool for sociological and criminological understanding of deviant behavior.In 2013, the Greater Manchester Police in the United Kingdom began to classify attacks on subcultures such as goths , emos , punks , and metalheads as hate crimes, in

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5824-432: A person to make sense of the culture they inhabit, "can blind us to things outsiders pick up immediately." The sociology of culture concerns culture as manifested in society . For sociologist Georg Simmel (1858–1918), culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." As such, culture in the sociological field can be defined as

6006-415: A positive or negative value even if they are not right or wrong in a strict sense. Despite the distinction, evaluative and normative concepts are closely related. For example, the value of the consequences of an action may affect whether this action is right or wrong. Value theorists distinguish various types or categories of values. The different classifications overlap and are based on considerations like

6188-403: A predicate to talk about the unqualified value of pleasure. Attributive and predicative goodness can accompany each other, but this is not always the case. For instance, being a good thief is not necessarily a good thing. Another type of relative value restricts goodness to a specific person. Known as personal value , it expresses what benefits a particular person, promotes their welfare , or

6370-427: A prominent dispute between naturalists and non-naturalists hinges on the conceptual analysis of the term good , in particular, whether its meaning can be analyzed through natural terms, like pleasure . In the social sciences , value theorists face the challenge of measuring the evaluative outlook of individuals and groups. Specifically, they aim to determine personal value hierarchies, for example, whether

6552-473: A result, a thing can have both intrinsic and instrumental value if it is both good in itself while also leading to other good things. In a similar sense, a thing can have different instrumental values at the same time, both positive and negative ones. This is the case if some of its consequences are good while others are bad. The total instrumental value of a thing is the value balance of all its consequences. Because instrumental value depends on other values, it

6734-431: A result, there has been a recent influx of quantitative sociologists to the field. Thus, there is now a growing group of sociologists of culture who are, confusingly, not cultural sociologists. These scholars reject the abstracted postmodern aspects of cultural sociology, and instead, look for a theoretical backing in the more scientific vein of social psychology and cognitive science . The sociology of culture grew from

6916-430: A short period.Even religious groups can be seen as subcultures. In his research on British punk rock in the late 1970s, Hebdige proposed a controversial proposition at the time: punk portrayed the entire history of post-war working-class youth culture in a "cut" form, blending elements that originally belonged to completely different eras. Some subcultures reject or modify the importance of style, stressing membership through

7098-428: A social group. Cultural change , or repositioning, is the reconstruction of a cultural concept of a society. Cultures are internally affected by both forces encouraging change and forces resisting change. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies. Organizations like UNESCO attempt to preserve culture and cultural heritage. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology , encompassing

7280-464: A solution. In the work of John Clarke, Stuart Hall , Tony Jefferson, and Brian Roberts of the Birmingham CCCS ( Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies ), subcultures are interpreted as forms of resistance. Society is seen as being divided into two fundamental classes, the working class and the middle class , each with its own class culture, and middle-class culture being dominant. Particularly in

7462-413: A specific region or location. Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and socialization , which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies. A cultural norm codifies acceptable conduct in society; it serves as a guideline for behavior, dress, language, and demeanor in a situation, which serves as a template for expectations in a social group. Accepting only

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7644-459: A subcultural model will furnish him/her with growing status within this context but it will often, in tandem, deprive him/her of status in the broader social context outside where a different model prevails. Cohen used the term 'Corner Boys' which were unable to compete with their better secured and prepared peers. These lower-class youths didn't have equal access to resources, resulting in the status of frustration , marginalization , and search for

7826-473: A subgroup."Some subcultures are formed by members with characteristics or preferences that differ from the majority of society, who generally have a preference for body modifications such as tattoos , punctures, and certain forms of plastic surgery. Unlike mainstream social relationships, subcultural communities are characterized by transience, informality, and a lack of typical social kinship relationships. As early as 1950, David Riesman distinguished between

8008-577: A subject gives more weight to truth than to moral goodness or beauty. They distinguish between direct and indirect measurement methods. Direct methods involve asking people straightforward questions about what things they value and which value priorities they have. This approach assumes that people are aware of their evaluative outlook and able to articulate it accurately. Indirect methods do not share this assumption, asserting instead that values guide behavior and choices on an unconscious level. Consequently, they observe how people decide and act, seeking to infer

8190-428: A typical example of an "urban tribe". In the context of consumer culture , the notion of consumer tribes indicate ephemeral groups of individuals that often share a common interest and a share a subculture. Unlike traditional tribes that share kinship and language, consumer tribes are elective and ephemeral because they disperse without necessarily building long-term relationships. Consumer tribes often fluctuate around

8372-448: A way for people with similar backgrounds, lifestyles, professions or hobbies to connect. According to a co-founder and executive creative strategist for RE-UP, as technology becomes a "life force," subcultures become the main bone of contention for brands as networks rise through cultural mash-ups and phenomenons. Where social media is concerned, there seems to be a growing interest among media producers to use subcultures for branding. This

8554-402: A widely accepted main classification. Some focus on the types of entities that have value. They include distinct categories for entities like things, the environment, individuals, groups, and society. Another subdivision pays attention to the type of benefit involved and encompasses material, economic, moral, social, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Classifications by the beneficiary of

8736-425: A woman, or they are single. In a 2011 study, Brady Robards and Andy Bennett said that online identity expression has been interpreted as exhibiting subcultural qualities. However, they argue it is more in line with neotribalism than with what is often classified as subculture. Social networking websites are quickly becoming the most used form of communication and means to distribute information and news. They offer

8918-456: Is comparative cultural studies , based on the disciplines of comparative literature and cultural studies. Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States developed somewhat different versions of cultural studies after the late 1970s. The British version of cultural studies had originated in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly under the influence of Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson , and Raymond Williams , and later that of Stuart Hall and others at

9100-557: Is a closely related field focusing primarily on normative concepts about which behavior is right, whereas value theory explores evaluative concepts about what is good. In economics, theories of value are frameworks to assess and explain the economic value of commodities . Sociology and anthropology examine values as aspects of societies and cultures, reflecting their dominant preferences and beliefs. Psychologists tend to understand values as abstract motivational goals that shape an individual's personality . The roots of value theory lie in

9282-427: Is a property of desire satisfaction itself, while others say that it is a property of the objects that satisfy a desire. One debate in desire theory concerns whether any desire is a source of value. For example, if a person has a false belief that money makes them happy, it is questionable whether the satisfaction of their desire for money is a source of value. To address this consideration, some desire theorists say that

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9464-563: Is a property of the fact that Bill is pleased. This distinction affects various disputes in value theory. In some cases, a value is intrinsic according to one view and extrinsic according to the other. Value realism contrasts with anti-realism , which comes in various forms. In its strongest version, anti-realism rejects the existence of values in any form, claiming that value statements are meaningless. Between these two positions, there are various intermediary views. Some anti-realists accept that value claims have meaning but deny that they have

9646-447: Is about whether the entity carrying the value is a concrete individual or a state of affairs . For instance, the name "Bill" refers to an individual while the sentence "Bill is pleased" refers to a state of affairs. States of affairs are complex entities that combine other entities, like the individual "Bill" and the property "is pleased". Some value theorists hold that the value is a property directly of Bill while others contend that it

9828-413: Is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for

10010-745: Is also used to denote the complex networks of practices and accumulated knowledge and ideas that are transmitted through social interaction and exist in specific human groups, or cultures, using the plural form. Raimon Panikkar identified 29 ways in which cultural change can be brought about, including growth, development, evolution, involution , renovation, reconception , reform, innovation , revivalism, revolution , mutation , progress , diffusion , osmosis , borrowing, eclecticism , syncretism , modernization, indigenization , and transformation. In this context, modernization could be viewed as adoption of Enlightenment era beliefs and practices, such as science, rationalism, industry, commerce, democracy, and

10192-599: Is an older and less common synonym. Value is the worth, usefulness, or merit of something. Many evaluative terms are employed to talk about value, including good , best , great , and excellent as well as their negative counterparts, like bad and terrible . Some value terms, like good and bad , are pure evaluations in that they only express the value of something without any additional descriptive content. They are known as thin evaluative concepts . Thick evaluative concepts , like courageous and cruel , provide more information by expressing other qualities besides

10374-483: Is an open question whether it should be understood as a value in a strict sense. For example, the overall value of a chain of causes leading to an intrinsically valuable thing remains the same if instrumentally valuable links are added or removed without affecting the intrinsically valuable thing. The observation that the overall value does not change is sometimes used as an argument that the things added or removed do not have value. Traditionally, value theorists have used

10556-454: Is as important as human rationality. Moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of Bildung : "For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people." In 1795, the Prussian linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835) called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kant's and Herder's interests. During

10738-422: Is concerned with the meaning and practices of everyday life. These practices comprise the ways people do particular things (such as watching television or eating out) in a given culture. It also studies the meanings and uses people attribute to various objects and practices. Specifically, culture involves those meanings and practices held independently of reason. Watching television to view a public perspective on

10920-401: Is context-independent. Theories of value aggregation provide concrete principles for calculating the overall value of an outcome based on how positively or negatively each individual is affected by it. For example, if a government implements a new policy that affects some people positively and others negatively, theories of value aggregation can be used to determine whether the overall value of

11102-457: Is disputed and some theorists rely on alternative characterizations. In a broad sense, value theory is a catch-all label that encompasses all philosophical disciplines studying evaluative or normative topics. According to this view, value theory is one of the main branches of philosophy and includes ethics , aesthetics , social philosophy , political philosophy , and philosophy of religion . A similar broad characterization sees value theory as

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11284-697: Is good asserts that kindness possesses the property of goodness. Value realists disagree about what type of property is involved. Naturalists say that value is a natural property. Natural properties can be known through empirical observation and are studied by the natural sciences. This means that value is similar to other natural properties, like size and shape. Non-naturalists reject this view but agree that values are real. They say that values differ significantly from empirical properties and belong to another realm of reality. According to one view, they are known through rational or emotional intuition rather than empirical observation. Another disagreement among realists

11466-539: Is good in itself, independent of external factors. An entity has instrumental value if it is useful as a means leading to other good things. Some classifications focus on the type of benefit, including economic, moral, political, aesthetic, and religious values. Other categorizations, based on the meaning and function of evaluative terms, discuss attributive, predicative, personal, impersonal, and agent-relative values. Value realists state that values have mind-independent existence as objective features of reality. This view

11648-405: Is in their interest. For example, a poem written by a child may have personal value for the parents even if the poem lacks value for others. Impersonal value, by contrast, is good in general without restriction to any specific person or viewpoint. Some philosophers, like G. E. Moore , reject the existence of personal values, holding that all values are impersonal. Others have proposed theories about

11830-605: Is interested in marginal utility , the additional satisfaction gained from consuming one more unit of the commodity. Marginal utility often diminishes if many units have already been consumed, leading to a decrease in the exchange value of commodities that are abundantly available. Both the labor theory and the marginal theory were later challenged by the Sraffian theory of value . Sociology studies social behavior, relationships, institutions, and society at large. In their analyses and explanations of these phenomena, some sociologists use

12012-434: Is known as an organic unity , a whole whose intrinsic value differs from the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. Another perspective, called holism about value , asserts that the intrinsic value of a thing depends on its context. Holists can argue that happiness has positive intrinsic value in the context of virtue and negative intrinsic value in the context of vice. Atomists reject this view, saying that intrinsic value

12194-469: Is necessarily situated within the value system of a given culture. The modern term "culture" is based on a term used by the ancient Roman orator Cicero in his Tusculanae Disputationes , where he wrote of a cultivation of the soul or "cultura animi", using an agricultural metaphor for the development of a philosophical soul, understood teleologically as the highest possible ideal for human development. Samuel Pufendorf took over this metaphor in

12376-405: Is not possible to quantify how much better it is. Several controversies surround the question of how the intrinsic value of a whole is determined by the intrinsic values of its parts. According to the additivity principle, the intrinsic value of a whole is simply the sum of the intrinsic values of its parts. For example, if a virtuous person becomes happy then the intrinsic value of the happiness

12558-515: Is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture: biological anthropology , linguistic anthropology , cultural anthropology , and in the United States and Canada, archaeology . The term Kulturbrille , or "culture glasses," coined by German American anthropologist Franz Boas , refers to the "lenses" through which a person sees their own culture. Martin Lindstrom asserts that Kulturbrille , which allow

12740-405: Is rejected by anti-realists , some of whom argue that values are subjective human creations, whereas others claim that value statements are meaningless. Several sources of value have been proposed, such as hedonism , which says that only pleasure has intrinsic value, and desire theories, which identify desires as the ultimate source of value. Perfectionism , another prominent theory, emphasizes

12922-406: Is seen most actively on social network sites with user-generated content , such as YouTube . Subcultures can be and have been successfully targeted by firms commercially. A stream of academic research in consumer culture shows the multiple ways in which companies and firms target subcultures with commercial offerings. Discrimination -based harassment and violence are sometimes directed towards

13104-520: Is simply added to the intrinsic value of the virtue, thereby increasing the overall value. Various counterexamples to the additivity principle have been proposed, suggesting that the relation between parts and wholes is more complex. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that if a vicious person becomes happy, this happiness, though good in itself, does not increase the overall value. On the contrary, it makes things worse, according to Kant, since viciousness should not be rewarded with happiness. This situation

13286-561: Is the assessment or measurement of value, often employed to compare the benefits of different options to find the most advantageous choice. Evaluative terms are sometimes distinguished from normative or deontic terms. Normative terms, like right , wrong , and obligation , prescribe actions or other states by expressing what ought to be done or what is required. Evaluative terms have a wider scope because they are not limited to what people can control or are responsible for. For example, involuntary events like digestion and earthquakes can have

13468-411: Is the only source of value. This theory overlaps with hedonism because many people desire pleasure and because desire satisfaction is often accompanied by pleasure. Nonetheless, there are important differences: people desire a variety of other things as well, like knowledge, achievement, and respect; additionally, desire satisfaction may not always result in pleasure. Some desire theorists hold that value

13650-520: Is the physical evidence of a culture in the objects and architecture they make or have made. The term tends to be relevant only in archeological and anthropological studies, but it specifically means all material evidence which can be attributed to culture, past or present. Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany (1918–1933), where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie ('cultural sociology'). Cultural sociology

13832-430: Is the view that values have mind-independent existence. This means that objective facts determine what has value, irrespective of subjective beliefs and preferences. According to this view, the evaluative statement "That act is bad" is as objectively true or false as the empirical statement "That act causes distress". Realists often analyze values as properties of valuable things. For example, stating that kindness

14014-434: Is worth two beavers. The philosopher Karl Marx extended the labor theory of value in various ways. He introduced the concept of surplus value , which goes beyond the time and resources invested to explain how capitalists can profit from the labor of their employees. The marginal theory of value focuses on consumption rather than production. It says that the utility a commodity is the source of its value. Specifically, it

14196-500: The Chinese philosopher Zhang Dainian, says that the value of truth belongs to knowledge, the value of goodness belongs to behavior, and the value of beauty belongs to art. This three-fold distinction also plays a central role in the philosophies of Franz Brentano and Jürgen Habermas . Other suggested types of values include objective, subjective, potential, actual, contingent, necessary, inherent, and constitutive values. Value realism

14378-475: The LGBT culture , considered the largest sexual subculture of the 20th and 21st centuries. With the ever-increasing acceptance of homosexuality in the early 21st century , including its expressions in fashion, music, and design, the gay culture can no longer be considered a subculture in many parts of the world, although some aspects of gay culture like leathermen , bears , and chubs are considered subcultures within

14560-594: The Native Americans who were being conquered by Europeans from the 16th centuries on were living in a state of nature; this opposition was expressed through the contrast between "civilized" and "uncivilized." According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and some people as more cultured than others. This contrast led to Herbert Spencer 's theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgan 's theory of cultural evolution . Just as some critics have argued that

14742-773: The Romantic movement was an interest in folklore , which led to identifying a "culture" among non-elites. This distinction is often characterized as that between high culture , namely that of the ruling social group , and low culture . In other words, the idea of "culture" that developed in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries reflected inequalities within European societies. Matthew Arnold contrasted "culture" with anarchy ; other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau , contrasted "culture" with "the state of nature." According to Hobbes and Rousseau,

14924-532: The Romantic era , scholars in Germany , especially those concerned with nationalist movements—such as the nationalist struggle to create a "Germany" out of diverse principalities, and the nationalist struggles by ethnic minorities against the Austro-Hungarian Empire —developed a more inclusive notion of culture as " worldview " ( Weltanschauung ). According to this school of thought, each ethnic group has

15106-434: The ancient period in the form of reflections on the highest good that humans should pursue. Value theory, also known as axiology and theory of values , is the systematic study of values . As the branch of philosophy examining which things are good and what it means for something to be good, it distinguishes different types of values and explores how they can be measured and compared. It also studies whether values are

15288-431: The 20th century. Some schools of philosophy, such as Marxism and critical theory , have argued that culture is often used politically as a tool of the elites to manipulate the proletariat and create a false consciousness . Such perspectives are common in the discipline of cultural studies . In the wider social sciences , the theoretical perspective of cultural materialism holds that human symbolic culture arises from

15470-570: The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham . This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as "capitalist" mass culture ; it absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the " culture industry " (i.e. mass culture). This emerges in the writings of early British cultural-studies scholars and their influences: see

15652-638: The Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions deal with the protection of culture. Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights deals with cultural heritage in two ways: it gives people the right to participate in cultural life on the one hand and the right to the protection of their contributions to cultural life on

15834-593: The Tribes (1988). In 1996, this book was published in English. According to Maffesoli, neo tribes are microgroups of people who share common interests in urban areas. The members of these relatively small groups tend to have similar worldviews, dress styles and behavioral patterns. Their social interactions are largely informal and emotionally laden, different from late capitalism 's corporate - bourgeoisie cultures, based on dispassionate logic. Maffesoli claims that punks are

16016-813: The U.S. feminist movement involved new practices that produced a shift in gender relations, altering both gender and economic structures. Environmental conditions may also enter as factors. For example, after tropical forests returned at the end of the last ice age , plants suitable for domestication were available, leading to the invention of agriculture , which in turn brought about many cultural innovations and shifts in social dynamics. Cultures are externally affected via contact between societies, which may also produce—or inhibit—social shifts and changes in cultural practices. War or competition over resources may impact technological development or social dynamics. Additionally, cultural ideas may transfer from one society to another, through diffusion or acculturation. In diffusion ,

16198-493: The United States, down-low is a slang term specifically used within the African-American community to refer to Black men who usually identify as heterosexual but actively seek sexual encounters and relations with other men , practice gay cruising , and frequently adopt a specific hip-hop attire during these activities. They avoid sharing this information even if they have female sexual partner(s), they are married to

16380-478: The United States. In the 19th century, humanists such as English poet and essayist Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) used the word "culture" to refer to an ideal of individual human refinement, of "the best that has been thought and said in the world." This concept of culture is also comparable to the German concept of bildung : "...culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all

16562-563: The adoption of an ideology which may be much more resistant to commercial exploitation. The punk subculture 's distinctive (and initially shocking) style of clothing was adopted by mass-market fashion companies once the subculture became a media interest. Dick Hebdige argues that the punk subculture shares the same "radical aesthetic practices" as the Dadaist and Surrealist art movements: Like Duchamp's 'ready mades' - manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such,

16744-576: The anxious, unstable, and rebellious adolescent has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein , who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized this understanding of adolescence, classifying it as a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. According to Robert Epstein and Jennifer, "American-style teen turmoil

16926-421: The cheek, ear or lip ... fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops. In 1985, French sociologist Michel Maffesoli coined the term urban tribe or neotribalism . It gained widespread use after the publication of his The Time of

17108-490: The concept of bildung : "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity." He argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged: " Sapere Aude " ("Dare to be wise!"). In reaction to Kant, German scholars such as Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) argued that human creativity, which necessarily takes unpredictable and highly diverse forms,

17290-476: The concept of values to understand issues like social cohesion and conflict , the norms and practices people follow, and collective action . They usually understand values as subjective attitudes possessed by individuals and shared in social groups. According to this view, values are beliefs or priorities about goals worth pursuing that guide people to act in certain ways. This subjective conception of values as aspects of individuals and social groups contrasts with

17472-425: The contrast between absolute and relative value. Absolute value, also called value simpliciter , is a form of unconditional value. A thing has relative value if its value is limited to certain considerations or viewpoints. One form of relative value is restricted to the type of an entity, expressed in sentences like "That is a good knife" or "Jack is a good thief". This form is known as attributive goodness since

17654-411: The cultivation of characteristic human abilities. Value pluralism holds that there are diverse sources of intrinsic value, raising the issue of whether values belonging to different types are comparable. Value theorists employ various methods of inquiry , ranging from reliance on intuitions and thought experiments to the description of first-person experience and the analysis of language. Ethics

17836-441: The cultural industry and mass media, as Steve Redhead and David Muggleton emphasize. The very idea of a unique, internally homogeneous, dominant culture is explicitly criticized. Thus forms of individual involvement in subcultures are fluid and gradual, differentiated according to each actor's investment, outside clear dichotomies. The ideas of different levels of subcultural capital ( Sarah Thornton ) possessed by each individual, of

18018-520: The culture industry is often capable of re-absorbing the components of such a style and once again transforming them into consumer goods for the mass society . At the same time the mass media , while they participate in building subcultures by broadcasting their images, also weaken subcultures by depriving them of their subversive content or by spreading a socially stigmatized image of them and their members. The most recent interpretations see subcultures as forms of distinction. In an attempt to overcome

18200-434: The distinction between high and low cultures is an expression of the conflict between European elites and non-elites, other critics have argued that the distinction between civilized and uncivilized people is an expression of the conflict between European colonial powers and their colonial subjects. Other 19th-century critics, following Rousseau, have accepted this differentiation between higher and lower culture, but have seen

18382-534: The dominant societal standard. Hebdige argued that subculture brings together like-minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and allow them to develop a sense of identity. In 1995, Sarah Thornton , drawing on Pierre Bourdieu , described "subcultural capital" as the cultural knowledge and commodities acquired by members of a subculture, raising their status and helping differentiate themselves from members of other groups. In 2007, Ken Gelder proposed to distinguish subcultures from countercultures based on

18564-452: The economic basis (such as tourism) of a state, region or municipality. Tourism is having an increasing impact on the various forms of culture. On the one hand, this can be physical impact on individual objects or the destruction caused by increasing environmental pollution and, on the other hand, socio-cultural effects on society. Axiology Value theory is the systematic study of values . Also called axiology , it examines

18746-418: The evaluation, such as character traits . Values are often understood as degrees that cover positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to good and bad. The term value is sometimes restricted to positive degrees to contrast with the term disvalue for the negative degrees. The terms better and worse are used to compare degrees, but it is controversial whether this is possible in all cases. Evaluation

18928-411: The event of war and armed conflict. According to Karl von Habsburg , President of Blue Shield International, the destruction of cultural assets is also part of psychological warfare. The target of the attack is the identity of the opponent, which is why symbolic cultural assets become a main target. It is also intended to affect the particularly sensitive cultural memory, the growing cultural diversity and

19110-524: The existence of values but denies that they are mind-independent. According to this view, the mental states of individuals determine whether an object has value, for instance, because individuals desire it. A similar view is defended by existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre , who argued that values are human creations that endow the world with meaning. Subjectivist theories say that values are relative to each subject, whereas more objectivist outlooks hold that values depend on mind in general rather than on

19292-434: The expense of higher values. Radical pluralists reject this approach, putting more emphasis on diversity by holding that different types of values are not comparable with each other. This means that each value type is unique, making it impossible to determine which one is superior. Some value theorists use radical pluralism to argue that value conflicts are inevitable, that the gain of one value cannot always compensate for

19474-530: The field, distance themselves from this view. They criticize the Marxist assumption of a single, dominant meaning, shared by all, for any cultural product. The non-Marxist approaches suggest that different ways of consuming cultural artifacts affect the meaning of the product. This view comes through in the book Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (by Paul du Gay et al. ), which seeks to challenge

19656-483: The form of something (though not necessarily its meaning) moves from one culture to another. For example, Western restaurant chains and culinary brands sparked curiosity and fascination to the Chinese as China opened its economy to international trade in the late 20th-century. "Stimulus diffusion" (the sharing of ideas) refers to an element of one culture leading to an invention or propagation in another. "Direct borrowing", on

19838-553: The gay movement itself. The butch and femme identities or roles among some lesbians also engender their own subculture with stereotypical attire, for instance drag kings . A late 1980s development, the queer movement can be considered a subculture broadly encompassing those that reject normativity in sexual behavior, and who celebrate visibility and activism. The wider movement coincided with growing academic interests in queer studies and queer theory . Aspects of sexual subcultures can vary along other cultural lines. For instance, in

20020-415: The globe during the process of colonization . Related processes on an individual level include assimilation (adoption of a different culture by an individual) and transculturation . The transnational flow of culture has played a major role in merging different cultures and sharing thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated an individualist definition of "enlightenment" similar to

20202-483: The highly stratified capitalist systems of the West . In 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor (1832–1917) applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion . According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms. In the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved

20384-555: The idea of subcultures as forms of deviance or resistance, they describe subcultures as collectivities which, on a cultural level, are sufficiently homogeneous internally and heterogeneous with respect to the outside world to be capable of developing, as Paul Hodkinson points out, consistent distinctiveness, identity, commitment and autonomy. Defined by Sarah Thornton as taste cultures, subcultures are endowed with elastic, porous borders, and are inserted into relationships of interaction and mingling, rather than independence and conflict, with

20566-424: The immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions ), mythology , philosophy , literature (both written and oral ), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society. In the humanities , one sense of culture as an attribute of the individual has been the degree to which they have cultivated

20748-479: The individual mind. A different position accepts that values are mind-independent but holds that they are reducible to other facts, meaning that they are not a fundamental part of reality. One form of reductionism maintains that a thing is good if it is fitting to favor this thing, regardless of whether people actually favor it. The strongest form of realism says that value is a fundamental part of reality and cannot be reduced to other aspects. Various theories about

20930-409: The individual. Traditionally, most value theorists see absolute value as the main topic of value theory and focus their attention on this type. Nonetheless, some philosophers, like Peter Geach and Philippa Foot , have argued that the concept of absolute value by itself is meaningless and should be understood as one form of relative value. Other classifications of values have been proposed without

21112-414: The intersection between sociology (as shaped by early theorists like Marx , Durkheim , and Weber ) with the growing discipline of anthropology , wherein researchers pioneered ethnographic strategies for describing and analyzing a variety of cultures around the world. Part of the legacy of the early development of the field lingers in the methods (much of cultural, sociological research is qualitative), in

21294-619: The level of immersion in society. Gelder further proposed six key ways in which subcultures can be identified through their: Sociologists Gary Alan Fine and Sherryl Kleinman argued that their 1979 research showed that a subculture is a group that serves to motivate a potential member to adopt the artifacts, behaviors, norms, and values characteristic of the group. Contemporary subcultures typically refer to popular culture, including animation, comics, video games, and popular music. The evolution of subcultural studies has three main steps: The earliest sociological studies on subcultures came from

21476-431: The liberatory aspects of fandom . The distinction between American and British strands, however, has faded. Some researchers, especially in early British cultural studies, apply a Marxist model to the field. This strain of thinking has some influence from the Frankfurt School , but especially from the structuralist Marxism of Louis Althusser and others. The main focus of an orthodox Marxist approach concentrates on

21658-399: The loss of another, and that some ethical dilemmas are irresolvable. For example, philosopher Isaiah Berlin applied this idea to the values of liberty and equality , arguing that a gain in one cannot make up for a loss in the other. Similarly, philosopher Joseph Raz said that it is often impossible to compare the values of career paths, like when choosing between becoming a lawyer or

21840-405: The lower classes, distinguished by the stratified access to cultural capital . In common parlance, culture is often used to refer specifically to the symbolic markers used by ethnic groups to distinguish themselves visibly from each other such as body modification , clothing or jewelry . Mass culture refers to the mass-produced and mass mediated forms of consumer culture that emerged in

22022-623: The mainstream culture and developing imaginary solutions for structural problems. However, the Birmingham School believes that the symbolic rejection of mainstream bourgeois lifestyles by subcultures is illusory. As Paul Willis and Dick Hebdige underline, identity and resistance in subcultures are expressed through the development of a distinctive style which, by a re-signification and " bricolage " operation, use cultural goods and services as standardized products to buy and consume , in order to communicate and express one's own conflict. Yet

22204-551: The mainstream culture, proposing different ones in their place—thereby becoming, depending on circumstances, innovators, rebels, or retreatists ( Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin ). Subcultures, however, are not only the result of alternative action strategies but also of labelling processes on the basis of which, as Howard S. Becker explains, society defines them as outsiders. As Cohen clarifies, every subculture's style, consisting of image, demeanour and language becomes its recognition trait. And an individual's progressive adoption of

22386-416: The material conditions of human life, as humans create the conditions for physical survival, and that the basis of culture is found in evolved biological dispositions. When used as a count noun , a "culture" is the set of customs, traditions , and values of a society or community, such as an ethnic group or nation. Culture is the set of knowledge acquired over time. In this sense, multiculturalism values

22568-407: The matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world." In practice, culture referred to an elite ideal and was associated with such activities as art , classical music , and haute cuisine . As these forms were associated with urban life, "culture" was identified with "civilization" (from Latin: civitas , lit.   'city'). Another facet of

22750-429: The money people are willing to pay for it. Economic theories of value are frameworks to explain how economic value arises and which factors influence it. Prominent frameworks include the classical labor theory of value and the neo-classical marginal theory of value . The labor theory, initially developed by the economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo , distinguishes between use value —the utility or satisfaction

22932-530: The most important. Many are pluralistic in recognizing a diverse array of human excellences, such as knowledge, creativity, health, beauty, free agency, and moral virtues like benevolence and courage. According to one suggestion, there are two main fields of human goods: theoretical abilities responsible for understanding the world and practical abilities responsible for interacting with it. Some perfectionists provide an ideal characterization of human nature, holding that human excellences are those aspects that promote

23114-457: The most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion ... Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic 'utility' context and worn as gruesome ornaments through

23296-451: The nature, sources, and types of values in general. Some philosophers understand value theory as a subdiscipline of ethics. This is based on the idea that what people should do is affected by value considerations but not necessarily limited to them. Another view sees ethics as a subdiscipline of value theory. This outlook follows the idea that ethics is concerned with moral values affecting what people can control, whereas value theory examines

23478-551: The nature, sources, and types of values. As a branch of philosophy , it has interdisciplinary applications in fields such as economics , sociology , anthropology , and psychology . Value is the worth of something, usually understood as a degree that covers both positive and negative magnitudes corresponding to the terms good and bad . Values influence many human endeavors related to emotion , decision-making , and action . Value theorists distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental value . An entity has intrinsic value if it

23660-422: The notion of progress. Rein Raud , building on the work of Umberto Eco , Pierre Bourdieu and Jeffrey C. Alexander , has proposed a model of cultural change based on claims and bids, which are judged by their cognitive adequacy and endorsed or not endorsed by the symbolic authority of the cultural community in question. Cultural invention has come to mean any innovation that is new and found to be useful to

23842-538: The notion that those who produce commodities control the meanings that people attribute to them. Feminist cultural analyst, theorist, and art historian Griselda Pollock contributed to cultural studies from viewpoints of art history and psychoanalysis . The writer Julia Kristeva is among influential voices at the turn of the century, contributing to cultural studies from the field of art and psychoanalytical French feminism . Petrakis and Kostis (2013) divide cultural background variables into two main groups: In 2016,

24024-541: The organization of production. In the United Kingdom, cultural studies focuses largely on the study of popular culture ; that is, on the social meanings of mass-produced consumer and leisure goods. Richard Hoggart coined the term in 1964 when he founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies or CCCS. It has since become strongly associated with Stuart Hall , who succeeded Hoggart as Director. Cultural studies in this sense, then, can be viewed as

24206-532: The other hand, tends to refer to technological or tangible diffusion from one culture to another. Diffusion of innovations theory presents a research-based model of why and when individuals and cultures adopt new ideas, practices, and products. Acculturation has different meanings. Still, in this context, it refers to the replacement of traits of one culture with another, such as what happened to certain Native American tribes and many indigenous peoples across

24388-405: The other. In the 21st century, the protection of culture has been the focus of increasing activity by national and international organizations. The UN and UNESCO promote cultural preservation and cultural diversity through declarations and legally-binding conventions or treaties. The aim is not to protect a person's property, but rather to preserve the cultural heritage of humanity, especially in

24570-509: The overall organisational culture. In some instances, subcultures have been legislated against, and their activities regulated or curtailed. British youth subcultures had been described as a moral problem that ought to be handled by the guardians of the dominant culture within the post-war consensus . It may be difficult to identify certain subcultures because their style (particularly clothing and music) may be adopted by mass culture for commercial purposes. Businesses often seek to capitalize on

24752-776: The overall value of the world. One motivation for value pluralism is the observation that people value diverse types of things, including happiness, friendship, success, and knowledge. This diversity becomes particularly prominent when people face difficult decisions between competing values, such as choosing between friendship and career success. Since monists accept only one source of intrinsic value, they explain this observation by holding that other items in this diversity have only instrumental value or, in some cases, no value at all. Pluralists have proposed various accounts of how their view affects practical decisions. Rational decisions often rely on value comparisons to determine which course of action should be pursued. Some pluralists discuss

24934-755: The participants' lives, aiming to understand the relative importance assigned to each of them. The Schwartz theory of basic human values is a modification of the Rokeach Value Survey that seeks to provide a more cross-cultural and universal assessment. It arranges the values in a circular manner to reflect that neighboring values are compatible with each other, such as tradition and security, while values on opposing sides may conflict with each other, such as tradition and self-direction. Ethics and value theory are overlapping fields of inquiry. Ethics studies moral phenomena, focusing on how people should act or which behaviors are morally right. Value theory investigates

25116-439: The peaceful coexistence and mutual respect between different cultures inhabiting the same planet. Sometimes "culture" is also used to describe specific practices within a subgroup of a society, a subculture (e.g. " bro culture "), or a counterculture . Within cultural anthropology , the ideology and analytical stance of cultural relativism hold that cultures cannot easily be objectively ranked or evaluated because any evaluation

25298-422: The perpetuation of cultural ideas and practices within current structures , which themselves are subject to change. Social conflict and the development of technologies can produce changes within a society by altering social dynamics and promoting new cultural models , and spurring or enabling generative action. These social shifts may accompany ideological shifts and other types of cultural change. For example,

25480-425: The perspective of individual agents and societal systems. Economists view evaluations as a driving force underlying economic activity. They use the notion of economic value and related evaluative concepts to understand decision-making processes, resource allocation, and the impact of policies. The economic value or benefit of a commodity is the advantage it provides to an economic agent , often measured in terms of

25662-511: The perspectives of ethics and value theory, asserting that the rightness of an action depends on the value of its consequences. Consequentialists compare possible courses of action, saying that people should follow the one leading to the best overall consequences. The overall consequences of an action are the totality of its effects, or how it impacts the world by starting a causal chain of events that would not have occurred otherwise. Distinct versions of consequentialism rely on different theories of

25844-457: The phenomenological method is to suspend preconceived ideas and judgments to understand the essence of experiences as they present themselves to consciousness. The analysis of concepts and ordinary language is another method of inquiry. By examining terms and sentences used to talk about values, value theorists aim to clarify their meanings, uncover crucial distinctions, and formulate arguments for and against axiological theories. For example,

26026-403: The policy is positive or negative. Axiological utilitarianism accepts the additivity principle, saying that the total value is simply the sum of all individual values. Axiological egalitarians are not only interested in the sum total of value but also in how the values are distributed. They argue that an outcome with a balanced advantage distribution is better than an outcome where some benefit

26208-420: The possible consequences and gain insight into the underlying problem. For example, philosopher Robert Nozick imagines an experience machine that can virtually simulate an ideal life. Based on his observation that people would not want to spend the rest of their lives in this pleasurable simulation, Nozick argues against the hedonist claim that pleasure is the only source of intrinsic value. According to him,

26390-439: The production of meaning . This model assumes a mass production of culture and identifies power as residing with those producing cultural artifacts . In a Marxist view, the mode and relations of production form the economic base of society, which constantly interacts and influences superstructures , such as culture. Other approaches to cultural studies, such as feminist cultural studies and later American developments of

26572-414: The question of whether an individual should murder an innocent person if this prevents the murder of two innocent people by a different perpetrator. The agent-neutral perspective tends to affirm this idea since one murder is preferable to two. The agent-relative perspective tends to reject this conclusion, arguing that the initial murder should be avoided since it negatively impacts the agent-relative value of

26754-434: The range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies . Cultural universals are found in all human societies. These include expressive forms like art , music , dance , ritual , religion , and technologies like tool usage , cooking , shelter , and clothing . The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas

26936-553: The realization of this goal. This view is exemplified in Aristotle 's focus on rationality as the nature and ideal state of human beings. Non-humanistic versions extend perfectionism to the natural world in general, arguing that excellence as a source of intrinsic value is not limited to the human realm. Monist theories of value assert that there is only a single source of intrinsic value. They agree that various things have value but maintain that all fundamentally good things belong to

27118-495: The refinement and sophistication of high culture as corrupting and unnatural developments that obscure and distort people's essential nature. These critics considered folk music (as produced by "the folk," i.e., rural, illiterate, peasants) to honestly express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial and decadent. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as " noble savages " living authentic and unblemished lives, uncomplicated and uncorrupted by

27300-478: The relation between personal and impersonal value. The agglomerative theory says that impersonal value is nothing but the sum of all personal values. Another view understands impersonal value as a specific type of personal value taken from the perspective of the universe as a whole. Agent-relative value is sometimes contrasted with personal value as another person-specific limitation of the evaluative outlook. Agent-relative values affect moral considerations about what

27482-508: The roots of value theory reach back to the ancient period , this area of thought was only conceived as a distinct discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the term axiology was coined. The terms value theory and axiology are usually used as synonyms but some philosophers distinguish between them. According to one characterization, axiology is a subfield of value theory that limits itself to theories about what things are valuable and how valuable they are. The term timology

27664-418: The same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of "elementary ideas" ( Elementargedanken ); different cultures, or different "folk ideas" ( Völkergedanken ), are local modifications of the elementary ideas. This view paved the way for the modern understanding of culture. Franz Boas (1858–1942) was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for

27846-423: The same type. For example, hedonists hold that nothing but pleasure has intrinsic value, while desire theorists argue that desire satisfaction is the only source of fundamental goodness. Pluralists reject this view, contending that a simple single-value system is too crude to capture the complexity of the sphere of values. They say that diverse sources of value exist independently of one another, each contributing to

28028-696: The same way they record abuse against people because of their religion, race, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity. The decision followed the murder of Sophie Lancaster and beating of her boyfriend in 2007, who were attacked because they were goths. In 2012, human rights activists have denounced the occurrence of emo killings in Iraq , which consisted of between at least 6 and up to 70 teenage boys who were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq , due to being targeted because they dressed in

28210-449: The same word goes back to Latin colere , 'to inhabit, care for, till, worship' and cultus , 'A cult, especially a religious one.' To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly." Culture described by Richard Velkley : ... originally meant the cultivation of the soul or mind, acquires most of its later modern meaning in

28392-683: The so-called Chicago School , who interpreted them as forms of deviance and delinquency. Starting with what they called Social Disorganization Theory , they claimed that subcultures emerged on one hand because of some population sectors' lack of socialization with the mainstream culture and, on the other, because of their adoption of alternative axiological and normative models. As Robert E. Park , Ernest Burgess , and Louis Wirth suggested, by means of selection and segregation processes, there thus appear in society "natural areas" or "moral regions" where deviant models concentrate and are re-inforced; they do not accept objectives or means of action offered by

28574-442: The source, beneficiary, and function of the value. A thing has intrinsic or final value if it is good in itself or good for its own sake. This means that it is good independent of external factors or outcomes. A thing has extrinsic or instrumental value if it is useful or leads to other good things. In other words, it is a means to bring about a desired end. For example, tools like microwaves or money have instrumental value thanks to

28756-512: The sources of value have been proposed. They aim to clarify what kinds of things are intrinsically good. The historically influential theory of hedonism states that how people feel is the only source of value. More specifically, it says that pleasure is the only intrinsic good and pain is the only intrinsic evil. According to this view, everything else only has instrumental value to the extent that it leads to pleasure or pain, including knowledge, health, and justice. Hedonists usually understand

28938-438: The sources of value. Classical utilitarianism , a prominent form of consequentialism, says that moral actions produce the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest number of people. It combines a consequentialist outlook on right action with a hedonist outlook on pleasure as the only source of intrinsic value. Economics is a social science studying how goods and services are produced, distributed, and consumed, both from

29120-562: The subversive allure of subcultures in search of Cool , which remains valuable in the selling of any product. This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society. Music-based subcultures are particularly vulnerable to this process; what may be considered subcultures at one stage in their histories – such as jazz , goth , punk , hip hop , and rave cultures  – may represent mainstream taste within

29302-474: The supermarket of style ( Ted Polhemus ) and of style surfing (Martina Böse) replace that of the subculture's insiders and outsiders – with the perspective of subcultures supplying resources for the construction of new identities going beyond strong, lasting identifications. The study of subcultures often consists of the study of symbolism attached to clothing , music , hairstyles , jewellery , and other visible affectations by members of subcultures, and also of

29484-476: The term pleasure in a broad sense that covers all kinds of enjoyable experiences, including bodily pleasures of food and sex as well as more intellectual or abstract pleasures, like the joy of reading a book or being happy about a friend's promotion. Pleasurable experiences come in degrees, and hedonists usually associate their intensity and duration with the magnitude of value they have. Many hedonists identify pleasure and pain as symmetric opposites, meaning that

29666-401: The terms intrinsic value and final value interchangeably, just like the terms extrinsic value and instrumental value . This practice has been questioned in the 20th century based on the idea that they are similar but not identical concepts. According to this view, a thing has intrinsic value if the source of its value is an intrinsic property , meaning that the value does not depend on how

29848-435: The texts of cultural studies comprise all the meaningful artifacts of culture. Similarly, the discipline widens the concept of culture. Culture, for a cultural-studies researcher, not only includes traditional high culture (the culture of ruling social groups ) and popular culture , but also everyday meanings and practices. The last two, in fact, have become the main focus of cultural studies. A further and recent approach

30030-771: The theories (a variety of critical approaches to sociology are central to current research communities), and in the substantive focus of the field. For instance, relationships between popular culture , political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field. In the United Kingdom, sociologists and other scholars influenced by Marxism such as Stuart Hall (1932–2014) and Raymond Williams (1921–1988) developed cultural studies . Following nineteenth-century Romantics, they identified culture with consumption goods and leisure activities (such as art, music, film, food , sports, and clothing). They saw patterns of consumption and leisure as determined by relations of production , which led them to focus on class relations and

30212-455: The thing is related to other objects. Extrinsic value, by contrast, depends on external relations . This view sees instrumental value as one type of extrinsic value based on causal relations. At the same time, it allows that there are other types of non-instrumental extrinsic value. Final value is understood as what is valued for its own sake, independent of whether intrinsic or extrinsic properties are responsible. Another distinction relies on

30394-471: The thought experiment shows that the value of an authentic connection to reality is not reducible to pleasure. Phenomenologists provide a detailed first-person description of the experience of values. They closely examine emotional experiences, ranging from desire, interest, and preference to feelings in the form of love and hate. However, they do not limit their inquiry to these phenomena, asserting that values permeate experience at large. A key aspect of

30576-555: The tradition of textual theory. Starting in the 1990s, psychological research on culture influence began to grow and challenge the universality assumed in general psychology. Culture psychologists began to try to explore the relationship between emotions and culture , and answer whether the human mind is independent from culture. For example, people from collectivistic cultures, such as the Japanese, suppress their positive emotions more than their American counterparts. Culture may affect

30758-464: The underlying value attitudes responsible for picking one course of action rather than another. Various catalogs or scales of values have been proposed to measure value priorities. The Rokeach Value Survey considers a total of 36 values divided into two groups: instrumental values, like honesty and capability, which serve as means to promote terminal values, such as freedom and family security. It asks participants to rank them based on their impact on

30940-491: The useful functions they perform. In some cases, the thing produced this way has itself instrumental value, like when using money to buy a microwave. This can result in a chain of instrumentally valuable things in which each link gets its value by causing the following link. Intrinsically valuable things stand at the endpoint of these chains and ground the value of all the links that come before them. One suggestion to distinguish between intrinsic and instrumental value relies on

31122-411: The value distinguish between self- and other-oriented values. A historically influential approach identifies three spheres of value: truth , goodness, and beauty. For example, the neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband characterizes them as the highest goals of consciousness , with thought aiming at truth, will aiming at goodness, and emotion aiming at beauty. A similar view, proposed by

31304-422: The value of pleasure balances out the disvalue of pain if they have the same intensity. However, some hedonists reject this symmetry and give more weight to avoiding pain than to experiencing pleasure. Although it is widely accepted that pleasure is valuable, the hedonist claim that it is the only source of value is controversial. Desire theories offer a slightly different account, stating that desire satisfaction

31486-435: The way for the modern understanding of religion. Although anthropologists worldwide refer to Tylor's definition of culture, in the 20th century "culture" emerged as the central and unifying concept of American anthropology , where it most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically , and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology

31668-572: The way that people experience and express emotions. On the other hand, some researchers try to look for differences between people's personalities across cultures . As different cultures dictate distinctive norms , culture shock is also studied to understand how people react when they are confronted with other cultures. LGBT culture is displayed with significantly different levels of tolerance within different cultures and nations. Cognitive tools may not be accessible or they may function differently cross culture. For example, people who are raised in

31850-489: The ways in which these same symbols are interpreted by members of the dominant culture. Dick Hebdige writes that members of a subculture often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which includes fashions , mannerisms , and argot . Subcultures can exist at all levels of organizations, highlighting the fact that there are multiple cultures or value combinations usually evident in any one organization that can complement but also compete with

32032-412: The ways of thinking, the ways of acting, and the material objects that together shape a people's way of life. Culture can be either of two types, non-material culture or material culture . Non-material culture refers to the non-physical ideas that individuals have about their culture, including values, belief systems, rules, norms, morals, language, organizations, and institutions, while material culture

32214-400: The word "good" modifies the meaning of another term. To be attributively good as a certain type means to possess certain qualities characteristic of that type. For example, a good knife is sharp and a good thief has the skill of stealing without getting caught. Attributive goodness contrasts with predicative goodness. The sentence "Pleasure is good" is an example since the word good is used as

32396-465: The work of (for example) Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Paul Willis, and Paul Gilroy . In the United States, Lindlof and Taylor write, "cultural studies [were] grounded in a pragmatic, liberal-pluralist tradition." The American version of cultural studies initially concerned itself more with understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture ; for example, American cultural-studies advocates wrote about

32578-497: The working class, subcultures grow out of the presence of specific interests and affiliations around which cultural models spring up, in conflict with both their parents' culture and mainstream culture . Subcultural groups emphasize voluntary, informal, and organic subordinate relationships formed in unregulated street public spaces.Facing a weakening of class identity, subcultures are then new forms of collective identification , expressing what Cohen defined "symbolic resistance" against

32760-471: The writings of the 18th-century German thinkers, who were on various levels developing Rousseau 's criticism of " modern liberalism and Enlightenment ." Thus a contrast between "culture" and " civilization " is usually implied in these authors, even when not expressed as such. In the words of anthropologist E.B. Tylor , it is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as

32942-419: Was developed in sociology and cultural studies . Subcultures differ from countercultures . The Oxford English Dictionary defines subculture, in regards to sociological and cultural anthropology, as "an identifiable subgroup within a society or group of people, esp. one characterized by beliefs or interests at variance with those of the larger group; the distinctive ideas, practices, or way of life of such

33124-675: Was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the cultural turn of the 1960s, which ushered in structuralist and postmodern approaches to social science. This type of cultural sociology may be loosely regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis and critical theory . Cultural sociologists tend to reject scientific methods, instead hermeneutically focusing on words, artifacts and symbols. Culture has since become an important concept across many branches of sociology, including resolutely scientific fields like social stratification and social network analysis . As

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