Page 78

AD ALTA

JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

MASS AND POPULAR CULUTRE, THEIR FEATURES AND SPECIFICS

VLADIMÍRA HLADÍKOVÁ

Faculty of Mass Media Communication, University of Ss. Cyril
and Methodius in Trnava, Nám. J. Herdu, 2, 91701 Trnava,
Slovak Republic
email:

vladka.hladikova@gmail.com

Abstract: The paper deals with the issues of culture with a specific emphasis put on the
matter of mass and popular cultures. In the paper the author reflects fundamental
theoretical outcomes of culture and submitted subcultures, their definitions and
characteristics according to different authors and from different perspectives of
investigation. A part of the paper also involves individual difference attributes and
specifics of mass and popular cultures, as well as briefly depicted and defined
individual philosophical streams (schools) related to a concrete type of culture. The
paper is of theoretical character and by means of theoretical reflection in introduces to
and simultaneously compares two independent units of culture.

Keywords: culture, mass culture, popular culture, mass media, audience.

1 Introduction

Generally speaking, culture as such is a part of any society.
Individual societies are characterised by different spiritual and
tangible values, which they have acquired during its origin,
development and existence. In a complex way, it is possible to
call a set of such values with the term culture. However, sole
exact defining of this term is very difficult. The etymological
origin of the term culture lies in the Latin language, where this
notion was connected with the term colere – to cultivate, to farm.
Later, a Roman statesman, rhetor and philosopher Cicero called
philosophy the so-called culture of spirit (cultura animi), which
meant that the term culture started to be understood in
intellectual meaning, as well.

E. Delgadová (2010, pp. 142) states that the first modern global
and scientific definition of ethnological and anthropological
understanding of culture, which is one of the most respected
benefits in anthropology, was presented in the second half of
1890th by the English anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor. He
understands culture as a unit, which includes knowledge, belief,
art, moral, law, customs and all other abilities and habits that
a human being has acquired as a member of the society. Tylor
understood culture from the positions of consistent evolutionism
i.e. theoretical approach, which seeks to objectively describe and
explain long-term processes of cultural changes as
a configuration of learnt behaviour and its results shared by
members of certain society. This new theory of culture is
definitely diverted from until then accepted definitions and
conceptions of culture. According to Tylor´s definition, culture
is thus manifestation of the whole social life of a human being, it
is characterized by collective dimension, it is not transferred
biologically – by inheriting, but it is acquired unconsciously in
the process of socialization of a human being.

V. Gažová (2003, pp. 105) explains how we can come across  -
most often in theoretical reflection, but also in everyday usage -
the definition of culture based on its understanding as an
adaptive system; culture is here perceived as a set of typically
human means of a human being´s adjusting to their environment.
Therefore, we can talk about culture in at least two levels, as
follows:



Culture as a universal human phenomenon, a specifically
human activity, which is not natural to other biological
forms of life. From universal standpoint it is thus the most
important sign with which a human being differs from
other animals. This universal all human culture is
manifested in huge amount of local cultures.



Culture is reflected and investigated as a specific way of
life of different groups of people. In this sense individual
local cultures represent unique and unrepeatable
configurations of artefacts, socio-cultural rules, ideas,
symbolical systems and cultural institutions, typical for
a certain society or a social group.

From psychological perspective, a definition is offered by
psychoanalyst S. Freud (1990, pp. 276), who perceives culture as
everything with which human life elevated over its animal
conditions and with which it differs from the life of animals. We
consider B. Kafka (1992, pp. 7) to be the author of one of the
most pertinent specification of culture; for him culture is what
comes into existence through work and leads to genuine human
good. He says: „Human world is culture“. Since a human being
is born into a culture and not with it, they have to pass through
processes of learning and acquiring cultural values. Therefore it
is clear that the process of enculturation is practically identical
with socialisation of an individual into society, at which it comes
to the development of their cultural identities and civilisation as
such.

However, the word culture can also have a broader meaning,
when it includes whole area or set of meanings, by means of
which people of certain society understand each other and the
world, in which they live. Here, we may involve language and
scholarship, experience and techniques, religion, art or the field
of science.

Sociologists say that culture is an inseparable part, feature and
attribute of a society. It originates together with the society and
thus the society develops due to it, whereas with the decline of
the society there comes to disappearance of the culture. The
culture is thus something that is shared by all members of the
given group and that is transferred from older generations to the
younger ones. It is the basis of interpersonal relationships; it
influences behaviour of people and communication among them.
The culture is a manifestation of us; it has its own features –
values, opinions, attitudes or norms, which provide it with a
unique character that distinguishes it from other cultures.

Therefore, from sociological perspective we may say following:

1.

In culture there are fundamental activities of people, or
better to say values and rules, norms that regulate these
activities; exerted procedures, or other circumstances and
conditions of activities;

Culture is not inborn, inherited or instinctive, but it is
social, learnt, educated;

Culture as a unit is a collective product that is created in
social interactions of people;

Cultural norms and values are passed on from generation to
generation, culture as a unit keeps certain continuity over
the time, even though individual parts of culture can arise
and fade out from time to time;

Culture is adaptable, thus it is able to adjust to internal and
external changes on the basis of activities of a human being
(Búzik-Sopóci, 1995, pp. 29-33).

Communication is closely related to culture. Cultural parts or
values are spread mainly by means of communication;
simultaneously at the sole process of communication there
comes to the exchange of cultural contents. Here, we identify
with the media theorist D. McQuail (1999, pp.119), who
considers exactly communication to be the most elementary
feature of culture. Ways, with which cultural contents were
spread in the framework of communication, have gradually
developed together with the sole form of communication – from
verbal manifestation, through written one up to current media
that brought along culture of homogeneous type – aimed at
a large amount of people. It is one of subsystems of culture – the
so-called mass culture. Apart from mass culture, other
subsystems include popular or media culture.  It is right the
more detailed issue of mass and popular cultures, signs, their
characteristics and definition that makes the core of this paper
and we will deal with it in the following chapters.

- 78 -