Cultural Identities

Cultures and Subcultures

According to many sociologists, the dominant culture of a society is the one exemplified by the most powerful group in the society. Taking the United States as an example, Andersen and colleagues (2015, p. 36-37) suggest that while it is hard to isolate a dominant culture, there seems to be a “widely acknowledged ‘American’ culture,” epitomized by “middle class values, habits, and economic resources, strongly influenced by . . . television, the fashion industry, and Anglo-European traditions,” and readily thought of as “including diverse elements such as fast food, Christmas shopping, and professional sports.” Philosopher and cultural theorist Kwame Appiah (1996) is more pointed, emphasizing America’s historically Christian beginnings, its Englishness in terms both of language and traditions, and the mark left on it by the dominant classes, including government, business, and cultural elites.

In contrast to the dominant culture of a society, say sociologists, are the various subcultures, conceived as groups that are part of the dominant culture but that differ from it in important ways. Many sociology textbooks are quick to propose race and ethnicity as important bases for the formation of subcultures. Other commonly mentioned bases include geographic region, occupation, social or economic class, and religion (Dowd & Dowd, 2003). Although this way of thinking about the connections between culture and groups has now fallen somewhat out of favor among cultural theorists, it is still common in basic sociology texts. Therefore, we will outline it here along with the caveat that there is an alternative way of looking at group membership, one grounded in the concept of identity rather than of culture.

Ethnicity

The term ethnicity has to do with the study of ethnic groups and ethnic relations. But what is an ethnic group? Let’s start by making clear what it is not. It is not a biological category. Therefore, it is not possible to establish a person’s ethnicity by genetic testing. Instead, an ethnic group is one whose members share a common ancestry, or at least believe that they do, and that also share one or more other features, possibly including language, collective memory, culture, ritual, dress, and religion (Meer, 2014; Zenner, 1996). According to Meer, the shared features may be real or imagined. Although sociologists once treated ethnic groups as if they were categories that could be objectively established, at least in principle, many scholars today see ethnicity primarily as a form of self-identification (Banton, 2015; Meer, 2014). In other words, an individual’s ethnicity is not something that can be tested for by checking off a list of defining features that serve to establish that individual’s ethnicity.

If you ask an American about his/her ethnicity, you might get a variety of different answers. Some people will emphasize their American-ness, by which they mean they do not think of themselves as belonging to any particular ethnic group. Others may point to national origins, emphasizing the fact that they are children of immigrants (or even perhaps themselves immigrants). If they identify strongly with their immigrant heritage, they might use a term, such as Italian American, Cuban American, or Mexican American. Americans of African ancestry are likely to identify (or be automatically identified by others) as African American. Americans of various Asian backgrounds, may specify that they are Chinese American, Japanese American, Korean American, etc. (although if they think they are speaking to someone that wouldn’t know the difference, they might just say, Asian American).

Many U.S. cities abound in ethnic neighborhoods. (Dragon Gate to Chinatown in San Francisco)

A common phenomenon in the United States is the presence of neighborhoods, popularly characterized as ethnic, especially in large cosmopolitan cities. Such neighborhoods result from the fact that the U.S. has historically been a country open to immigration, and immigrants are often likely to settle where their fellow countrymen have previously settled. Many American cities, for instance, have their Little Italy(s), China Towns, Korea Towns, and so on. The residents of these ethnic enclaves might be more or less integrated into the larger society depending upon such factors as how long they have lived in the U.S., or how well they speak English.

A Native American (i.e., an American Indian) might interpret an inquiry about ethnicity as a question about tribal identity. He or she might say—Ute, Shoshoni, Navaho, Lakota, etc. On the other hand, since not all of these tribal names are names that the tribes claim as their own, they may refer to themselves in their native language. For instance, the Navajo call themselves Diné. Tribal affiliations would also be salient in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. For instance, two major tribes in Afghanistan are the Tajiks and Pashtuns.

It may be tempting to think that people who share an ethnic identity also share a common culture. Indeed, that is what is implied in calling an ethnic group a subculture. Sometimes it is the case that people who share an ethnic identity are also culturally similar. But it is shared identity and not shared culture that makes a group ethnic. In fact, scholars specializing in ethnic studies have discovered many examples of different groups claiming a common ethnic identity but not sharing a common language, nor even common beliefs, values, customs or traditions. This shows that the connections between culture, group membership, and identity are loose at best.

Racial identity

Since the demise of the idea that race is grounded in biology—race, like ethnicity, has come to be regarded primarily as a matter of social identity. Also like ethnicity, it is often presumed, incorrectly, that individuals who share a racial identity must share a common culture. As Appiah (1994, p. 117) has noted, “it is perfectly possible for a black and a white American to grow up together in a shared adoptive family—with the same knowledge and values—and still grow into separate racial identities, in part because their experience outside the family, in public space, is bound to be racially differentiated.” In other words, it is a mistake, not only to assume that race and ethnicity represent biological categories; it is also a mistake to assume them to be cultural categories.

As we mentioned in the previous section, ethnic identification is typically (although not always) self-determined. On the other hand, racial identities are more likely to be imposed on an individual by others. For example, “white” Americans are likely to presume certain individuals to be “Black” or African American based on perceived physical characteristics, including skin color, hair texture and various facial features alleged to be characteristically African. Long before “African American” children have ever had time to reflect on matters of identity, that identity has been decided for them. As with any identity, individuals have it within their power to resist ethnic or racial identification. Ironically, the best, and perhaps only way to effectively resist an ascribed identity is to proudly embrace it.

Barack Obama and family in the White House Green Room

No doubt, one of the most well-known Americans to reflect publicly on the perplexities of racial identification in America is Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States and the first black president. In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama (1995), writes eloquently of the confusion he experienced growing up the son of a white woman born in Kansas and a black man from Kenya. How did Barack Obama come to embrace a Black, or African-American identity?

Born in Hawaii, a cauldron of ethnic diversity, peopled by groups from all across Asia and the Pacific Islands, Obama tells a story of race and identity that is nuanced and reflective. Barack’s father was somewhat of a mystery to him since his mother and father divorced and his father returned to Kenya shortly before Barack turned 3 years old. Throughout his childhood, Obama recounts, his white family nurtured in him a sense of respect and pride in his African heritage, anticipating that his appearance would eventually require him to face questions of racial identity. These questions surfaced gradually during adolescence, when he began to experience a tug of war between his white and his Black identities.

Inspired by a nationally ranked University of Hawaii basketball team with an all-Black starting lineup, Barack joined his high school basketball team. There, he says, he made his closest white friends, and he met Ray (not his real name), a biracial young man who introduced Barack to a number of African Americans from the Mainland. Barack’s experiences in multiracial Hawaii caused him to reflect deeply on the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, indignities frequently faced by Blacks. Increasingly confronted by the perspectives of his Black friends and his own experiences with discrimination, Obama writes:

I learned to slip back and forth between my black and white worlds, understanding that each possessed its own language and customs and structures of meaning, convinced that with a little translation on my part the two worlds would cohere. Still, the feeling that something wasn’t quite right stayed with me (p. 82).

Amid growing confusion, Obama writes that he turned for counsel to black writers: James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, W. E. B. DuBois, and Malcolm X. After high school, Barack’s quest continued throughout two years of study at Occidental University in LA before he transferred to Columbia University in New York. Gradually, he constructed a provisional Black identity, while never really disavowing his white one.

But it seems to have been in Chicago that Barack Obama finally put the finishing touches on the African American identity that he would eventually embrace when he ran for president in 2008. After years of working as a community organizer in the Black neighborhoods of Chicago, he had become well known in the black community. He joined an African American church. And he married Michelle Robinson, herself African American and a lifelong Chicagoan.

President Obama’s story illustrates some of the dynamics involved in racial identification. Obama faced questions of racial identity initially because his appearance prompted people to label him as Black. In the end, after years of reflection and self-exploration, including a pilgrimage to Kenya after the death of his father to acquaint himself with his Kenyan heritage, Obama eventually publicly embraced an African American identity.

Social class and culture

Social class refers to the hierarchical ranking of people in society based on presumably identifiable factors. American sociologists, in trying to define these relevant factors more precisely have tended to use the term socioeconomic status (SES) which is measured by combining indices of family wealth and/or income, educational attainment, and occupational prestige (Oakes & Rossi, 2003). While Americans are sometimes reluctant to acknowledge the existence of social class as a determinant of social life in the U.S., scholars have long argued that social class is a culturally marked category. Clearly social class is reflected in the material lives of people. For instance, lower class and upper class people typically live in different neighborhoods, belong to different social clubs, and attend different educational institutions (Domhoff, 1998).

Sociologists argue that different social classes seem to embrace a different system of values and that this is reflected in childrearing. For instance, Kohn (1977) showed that middle-class parents tended to value self-direction while working class parents valued conformity to external authority. Middle class parents aimed to instill in children qualities of intellectual curiosity, dependability, consideration for others, and self-control, whereas working class parents tended to emphasize obedience, neatness, and good manners.

More recent research (e.g., Lareau, 2011) confirms Kohn’s findings, further emphasizing the advantages that middle-class parenting tends to confer on middle-class children. For example, in observational studies of families, Lareau found “more talking in middle-class homes than in working class and poor homes, leading to the development,” among middle class children, of “greater verbal agility, larger vocabularies, more comfort with authority figures, and more familiarity with abstract concepts” (p. 5).

According to Kraus and colleagues (2011), social class is also signaled behaviorally. For instance, in videotaped interactions between people (in the U.S.) from different social classes, lower-class individuals tended to show greater social engagement as evidenced by non-verbal signs such as eye contact, head nods, and laughs compared to higher-class individuals who were less engaged (as evidenced by less responsive head nodding and less eye contact) and who were more likely to disengage by means of actions such as checking their cell phones or doodling (Kraus & Keltner, 2009).

Lower-class and upper class individuals also exhibit different belief systems, with lower-class people more likely to attribute social circumstances such as income inequality to contextual forces (e.g., educational opportunity). On the other hand, upper-class people are more likely to explain inequality in dispositional terms (e.g., as a result of differences in talent; Kluegel & Smith, 1986).

In short, different social classes seem to be distinguished from one another by many of the characteristics that we have previously identified as elements of culture, e.g., patterns of beliefs, values, collective habits, social behavior, material possessions, etc.

National identity

Political scientists have made similar moves in their studies of nationalism. Rather than focusing wholly on ethnocultural roots or civic transformations, the recent trend among many scholars is to focus on the social and psychological dynamics of national identity.

Let’s consider the issue of national identity in the United States. Now the criteria of American citizenship are quite clear. Anyone born in the United States or a U.S. territory (e.g., Puerto Rico) is a citizen, regardless of whether one’s parents are citizens or not. Anyone born outside of the United States is a citizen as long as at least one parent is a citizen. And anyone who goes through the naturalization process becomes a U.S. citizen by virtue of established law. Nevertheless, many Americans, despite clearly being citizens (by either birth or naturalization) are sometimes regarded by other Americans as somehow less American. Some Americans, for instance, view themselves as more American if they are white and of English descent, or at least if their non-English ancestors immigrated several generations ago instead of more recently. We refer to this phenomenon as nativism, the belief that the longer one’s ancestors have been here, the greater one’s claim on an American identity. And we can call a person who espouses such a belief, a nativist.

 

To what extent then do individual Americans differ in the degree to which they embrace an American national identity? Elizabeth Theiss-Morse (2009) has studied this question and suggests that Americans can be distinguished from one another according to whether they are strong, medium, or weak identifiers. Furthermore, the strength of national identity appears to be tied to other social characteristics.

For example, compared with weak identifiers, strong identifiers are more likely to be: older, Christian, less educated, more trusting of others, and more likely to identify with other social groups in general. On the other hand, Black Americans and Americans with extremely liberal political views are less likely to claim a strong American identity. Strong identifiers are also more likely to describe themselves as “typical Americans.” People who espouse a strong national identity are also more likely to set exclusionary group boundaries on the national group—to claim, for instance, that a “true American” is white, or Christian, or native-born. In contrast, weak identifiers are less likely to believe that their fellow Americans must possess any particular qualities to be counted as American.

Religion

In examining the state of religion in the United States today, we see the complexity of religious life in our society, plus emerging trends like the rise of the megachurch and secularization.

Religion has historically been an impetus to social change. The translation of sacred texts into everyday, nonscholarly language empowered people to shape their religions. Disagreements between religious groups and instances of religious persecution have led to wars and genocides. The United States is no stranger to religion as an agent of social change. In fact, the United States’ first European arrivals were acting largely on religious convictions when they were compelled to settle in the United States.

A megachurch is a Christian church that has a very large congregation averaging more than 2,000 people who attend regular weekly services. As of 2009, the largest megachurch in the United States was in Houston Texas, boasting an average weekly attendance of more than 43,000 (Bogan, 2009). Megachurches exist in other parts of the world, especially in South Korea, Brazil, and several African countries, but the rise of the megachurch in the United States is a fairly recent phenomenon that has developed primarily in California, Florida, Georgia, and Texas.

Since 1970 the number of megachurches in this country has grown from about fifty to more than 1,000, most of which are attached to the Southern Baptist denomination (Bogan, 2009). Approximately six million people are members of these churches (Bird & Thumma 2011). The architecture of these church buildings often resembles a sport or concert arena. The church may include jumbotrons (large-screen televisual technology usually used in sports arenas to show close-up shots of an event). Worship services feature contemporary music with drums and electric guitars and use state-of-the-art sound equipment. The buildings sometimes include food courts, sports and recreation facilities, and bookstores. Services such as child care and mental health counseling are often offered.

Typically, a single, highly charismatic pastor leads the megachurch; at present, most are male. Some megachurches and their preachers have a huge television presence, and viewers all around the country watch and respond to their shows and fundraising.

Besides size, U.S. megachurches share other traits, including conservative theology, evangelism, use of technology and social networking (Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, blogs), hugely charismatic leaders, few financial struggles, multiple sites, and predominantly white membership. They list their main focuses as youth activities, community service, and study of the Scripture (Hartford Institute for Religion Research, b).

Critics of megachurches believe they are too large to promote close relationships among fellow church members or the pastor, as could occur in smaller houses of worship. Supporters note that, in addition to the large worship services, congregations generally meet in small groups, and some megachurches have informal events throughout the week to allow for community-building (Hartford Institute for Religion Research, a).

Secularization

Historical sociologists Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Karl Marx and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud anticipated secularization and claimed that the modernization of society would bring about a decrease in the influence of religion. Weber believed membership in distinguished clubs would outpace membership in Protestant sects as a way for people to gain authority or respect.

Conversely, some people suggest secularization is a root cause of many social problems, such as divorce, drug use, and educational downturn. One-time presidential contender Michele Bachmann even linked Hurricane Irene and the 2011 earthquake felt in Washington D.C. to politicians’ failure to listen to God (Ward, 2011).

While some scholars see the United States becoming increasingly secular, others observe a rise in fundamentalism. Compared to other democratic, industrialized countries, the United States is generally perceived to be a fairly religious nation. Whereas 65% of U.S. adults in a 2009 Gallup survey said religion was an important part of their daily lives, the numbers were lower in Spain (49%), Canada (42%), France (30%), the United Kingdom (27%), and Sweden (17%) (Crabtree & Pelham 2009). Secularization interests social observers because it entails a pattern of change in a fundamental social institution.

Sociology in the Real World

Thank God for that Touchdown: Separation of Church and State

 

Access for free at OpenStax, Introduction to Sociology 2e