01 Section A, Key question 1 - Types of culture (part 2)

Subcultures and shared belonging

A subculture has distinctive shared meanings and practices within a wider society.

Culture means learned, shared ways of life. Within a society, people need not share every taste or expectation. Norms are expectations about behaviour, while values are ideas about what matters. A group can develop particular norms, values, language, styles and activities which give its members a recognisable sense of belonging.

For example, cosplay involves dressing as characters from fiction. An organised community of cosplayers may share specialist knowledge and expectations about costumes, performances and participation. Its members can also participate in ordinary school, family and working life. They do not have to reject the whole wider culture to form a subculture. Subcultures are not necessarily criminal, and they are not confined to young people.

Consider this original teaching example. A community of skateboarders values persistence and creativity. Members recognise particular tricks, use specialist terms and expect beginners to wait their turn at a ramp. Persistence and creativity are values; waiting a turn is a norm. These shared meanings help people recognise fellow participants and learn how to belong. The board alone does not create the subculture: the meanings and expectations surrounding its use matter.

This also shows why a subculture is more than any small collection of people. Five strangers waiting for a bus are a small group, but size alone provides no evidence of a distinctive shared way of life. Conversely, a subculture can have many members spread across different places. An occasional skateboard user need not identify with the community, and members may disagree about its rules. Avoid assuming that everyone with the same hobby, age or background shares one uniform subculture.

High culture and popular culture

High culture concerns cultural prestige, whereas popular culture concerns widespread participation and circulation.

High culture refers to cultural forms accorded elevated status, often associated with social elites and recognised by established cultural institutions. Opera, classical concert music and fine art are familiar examples in many European contexts. Popular culture refers to cultural forms widely enjoyed or familiar in everyday life, such as television entertainment, chart music and widely played videogames. These are common examples rather than permanent labels for every work in each genre. The distinction and its variation over time and place are discussed in OpenStax's sociology introduction.

The word “high” describes a social valuation. It does not establish that one form is inherently more intelligent, enjoyable or morally valuable. A sociologist asks who grants prestige and how that recognition is maintained. For example, a museum can select works for preservation, experts can discuss their artistic importance, and a school can teach them as a recognised tradition. These processes can give a cultural form authority beyond an individual's preference.

Popular culture often circulates through commercial media and large audiences, but it can also spread through ordinary conversation and shared participation. A person can discuss a television series with colleagues who are otherwise quite different from them. Familiar stories and references make this interaction possible. Widespread recognition does not mean that every person enjoys the programme, or that its audience has identical interpretations.

Price is an unreliable shortcut. An expensive ticket for a commercially successful pop concert does not by itself make that concert high culture. A free performance of a recognised classical work does not lose all its cultural prestige because admission costs nothing. Access and status can be related, but they are different questions.

Nor are people restricted to one category of taste. Someone can enjoy both a classical concert and a television comedy. A cultural form can gain both institutional recognition and a broad audience. Instead of dividing people into “cultured” and “uncultured”, explain the particular evidence for prestige and popularity.

Global circulation and consumer identity

Global culture concerns cultural connections across countries, while consumer culture concerns the importance of markets and consumption in everyday meaning and identity.

Communication, migration, travel and trade can carry music, stories, sports and styles between places. People in different countries may recognise the same fictional characters or participate in related fan activities. Manga, Japanese comics and graphic storytelling, provides an example of cross-border circulation: the Kyoto International Manga Museum's collection includes internationally published manga books as well as Japanese magazines and artwork. This is evidence of circulation beyond its original national setting, although a museum collection cannot tell us how familiar manga is to every population.

“Global” does not mean everyone participates, or that the practice has exactly the same meaning everywhere. A text may need translation; readers may understand its humour differently; access may depend on money or technology. A cultural form can cross borders while retaining local variations. Global culture is also not necessarily Western: this example begins with cultural production associated with Japan.

Identity is a person's sense of who they are and how they are recognised by others. Consumer culture involves more than buying necessities. A product can become a symbol of a desired identity: fashionable, environmentally concerned, knowledgeable or loyal to a particular fan community. Advertisements and brands offer meanings, but consumers can interpret and adapt those meanings rather than simply accepting them.

Arnould and Thompson's 2005 review of consumer culture research describes markets as resources through which people construct identities and relationships. It synthesises roughly twenty years of research, mainly articles in the Journal of Consumer Research. This is a thematic review rather than one population survey; it supports an account of possible cultural processes, not a claim that every consumer behaves identically.

An original comparison makes the distinction clearer. Friends in several countries share a freely available dance routine. Their shared reference illustrates global culture without requiring a purchase. In contrast, a local fan buys a limited-edition jacket to display loyalty and gain recognition among other fans. This illustrates consumer identity even if the jacket is sold only locally. A widely circulated branded football shirt used to display allegiance can illustrate both. Buying an ordinary replacement shirt because the old one has worn out provides less evidence of identity through consumption unless we know more about its meaning to the wearer.

These distinctions help prevent a common error: treating every global practice as a commercial product, or treating every purchase as evidence of an identity claim.

Classifying culture in context

Cultural categories describe different features of social life, so their boundaries can overlap and change.

The five categories are not five sealed boxes. Subculture concerns a distinctive group within a wider culture; high culture concerns prestige; popular culture concerns broad participation; global culture concerns cross-border reach; consumer culture concerns meanings organised around consumption. Before classifying material, identify which of these features the evidence actually shows. Several classifications can be justified if each has its own supporting explanation.

Consider this original example of a fan community. A widely enjoyed videogame is played in several countries. A smaller community within its audience shares specialist vocabulary and expectations about teamwork. Some members use purchased character merchandise to express their affiliation. Broad enjoyment supports popular culture, cross-border participation supports global culture, the distinctive community supports subculture, and the symbolic use of merchandise supports consumer culture. The game's price alone provides no basis for high culture. These classifications apply to related features of the example, rather than meaning that every player must belong to all four groups or practices.

Changing recognition

Institutions can also reconsider what deserves serious cultural attention. The V&A's Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition, held from 8 September 2018 to 24 February 2019, displayed game design work, including concept art and prototypes, alongside installations. The factual evidence is that an established design museum selected videogames for exhibition. A sociological interpretation is that a form associated with popular entertainment can also receive institutional cultural recognition.

This is evidence of a boundary being questioned, rather than proof that all videogames have become high culture. A museum display can increase prestige without eliminating everyday popular use. Classification can change because the institutions and audiences who value a form change; it is not an unchanging property built into the object.

Comparing cultural settings

Cross-cultural comparison must preserve context. Kyoto's manga museum treats comics as material for preservation and research, while also describing manga as mass media enjoyed by many people. Popular use and scholarly recognition therefore coexist in this Japanese institutional setting. Its 2025 exhibition comparing manga culture in Taiwan and Japan explained that shared roots had been followed by different historical and political paths. This gives a concrete reason to avoid assuming that related cultural forms carry identical meanings across societies.

An original comparison illustrates the classification decision. In a hypothetical Japanese town, comics are familiar routine leisure reading across many social groups. A small UK club might make the same comic central to a distinctive fan identity, sharing specialised knowledge and participation rules. Popular culture can describe the broad use in the first setting; subculture can describe the group's distinctive practices in the second. These are hypothetical situations, not claims that all Japanese readers or UK fans behave this way. The object stays the same, but its social setting differs.

To make a supported comparison, name the setting, identify the relevant practice or meaning, and connect that evidence to a definition. Then limit the conclusion to what the evidence supports. Calling a form high culture in one setting does not make that society inherently superior. Calling a form popular does not make it simple or unworthy of study. The relative nature of classification means that who participates, who grants recognition and how people use the form all matter.