Cultural Sociology Glossary

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham, which pioneered the study of subcultures, media, race, and resistance in popular culture.

The practices through which people create, maintain, or challenge symbolic and social distinctions between categories.

Jeffrey Alexander's concept of a distinct social domain governed by universalistic ideals of solidarity, justice, and democratic inclusion.

Durkheim's term for the heightened emotional energy and sense of unity produced during collective rituals and gatherings.

Shared memories and narratives held by a social group that shape collective identity, developed by Maurice Halbwachs.

Non-financial social assets such as education, taste, and cultural knowledge that confer social advantage and reproduce inequality.

A system of binary symbolic classifications (sacred/profane, pure/polluted) that structure interpretation of social life.

Gramsci's theory that dominant groups maintain power by making their worldview appear natural and commonsensical.

Richard Peterson's concept describing high-status individuals who consume a broad range of cultural forms rather than exclusively highbrow culture.

The process by which cultural institutions and practices transmit social inequality from one generation to the next.

A branch of sociology that treats culture as an autonomous force with independent causal power over social life.

A socially constructed claim that a horrendous event has fundamentally damaged a group's collective identity.

A system of language, practices, and knowledge that structures how a topic is understood, as theorized by Foucault and others.

Bourdieu's concept that aesthetic tastes and cultural consumption serve as markers of social class position.

Goffman's analytical framework treating social interaction as theatrical performance with front stage and back stage regions.

Stuart Hall's model of media communication emphasizing that audiences actively interpret messages rather than passively receiving them.

A structured social space with its own rules and hierarchies in which agents compete for position and various forms of capital.

Deeply ingrained dispositions and habits acquired through socialization that shape perception and behavior below conscious awareness.

A structured account of events and experiences that creates meaning and shapes how individuals and groups understand the social world.

The idea that language and social actions do not merely describe reality but actively constitute and produce it.

The process through which meaning is produced via language, images, and cultural signs, actively constructing rather than reflecting reality.

Formalized collective practices that generate emotional energy, reinforce group solidarity, and produce shared cultural meanings.

An approach treating culture as autonomous and causally significant, rather than reducing it to a reflection of social structure.

Conceptual distinctions that people draw to categorize and differentiate social groups, objects, and practices.

Geertz's ethnographic method of interpreting behaviors within their full context of layered cultural meaning.