Working class culture - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Working class culture is a range of culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

s created by or popular among working class

Working class

Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...

people. The cultures can be contrasted with high culture

High culture

High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of cultural products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture...

and folk culture

Folk culture

Folk culture refers to the lifestyle of a culture. Historically, handed down through oral tradition, it demonstrates the "old ways" over novelty and relates to a sense of community. Folk culture is quite often imbued with a sense of place...

, and are sometimes equated with popular culture

Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

and low culture

Low culture

Low culture is a term for some forms of popular culture. Its opposite is high culture. It has been said by culture theorists that both high culture and low culture are subcultures....

(the counterpart of high culture).

Working class culture is extremely geographically diverse, leading some to question whether the cultures have anything in common. Many socialists with a class struggle

Class struggle

Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....

viewpoint see its importance as arising from the proletariat

Proletariat

The proletariat is a term used to identify a lower social class, usually the working class; a member of such a class is proletarian...

they champion. Some states that claim to be communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

have declared an official working class culture, most notably socialist realism

Socialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

, which aims to glorify the worker. However, glorification of the worker in abstract is seldom a feature of independent working class cultures. Other socialists such as Lenin believed that there could be no authentic proletarian culture free from capitalism

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, and that high culture should not be outside the experience of workers.

Working class culture developed during the Industrial Revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

. Because most of the newly created working class were former peasant

Peasant

A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...

s, the cultures took on much of the localised folk culture. This was soon altered by the changed conditions of social relationships and the increased mobility of the workforce, and later by the marketing of mass-produced cultural artefacts such as print

Printmaking

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...

s and ornaments, and events such as music hall

Music hall

Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

and cinema

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

Portrayals in popular culture

Working class culture has been portrayed on TV shows such as Roseanne
Roseanne (TV series)
Roseanne is an American sitcom broadcast on ABC from October 18, 1988 to May 20, 1997. Starring Roseanne Barr, the show revolved around the Conners, an Illinois working class family...

and Good Times
Good Times
Good Times is an American sitcom that originally aired from February 8, 1974, until August 1, 1979, on the CBS television network. It was created by Eric Monte and Michael Evans, and developed by Norman Lear, the series' primary executive producer...

, in which American families struggle to pay for basic needs. In the United States, working-class culture is often conflated with Southern culture. Thus, shows like The Dukes of Hazzard

The Dukes of Hazzard

The Dukes of Hazzard is an American television series that aired on the CBS television network from 1979 to 1985.The series was inspired by the 1975 film Moonrunners, which was also created by Gy Waldron and had many identical or similar character names and concepts.- Overview :The Dukes of Hazzard...

or The Beverly Hillbillies

The Beverly Hillbillies

The Beverly Hillbillies is an American situation comedy originally broadcast for nine seasons on CBS from 1962 to 1971, starring Buddy Ebsen, Irene Ryan, Donna Douglas, and Max Baer, Jr....

can be seen as examples of that culture. The English TV show Shameless

Shameless

Shameless is a British television drama series set in Manchester on the fictional Chatsworth council estate. Produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4, the first seven-episode series aired weekly on Tuesday nights at 10pm from 13 January 2004...

highlights working class life in a Manchester

Manchester

Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

suburb.

One of Australian pub rock

Pub rock (Australia)

Pub rock is a style of Australian rock and roll popular throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and still influencing contemporary Australian music today....

singer Jimmy Barnes

Jimmy Barnes

James Dixon Swan , better known as Jimmy Barnes, is a Scottish-born Australian rock singer-songwriter. His father Jim Swan was a prizefighter and his older brother John Swan is also a rock singer. It was actually John who had encouraged and taught Jim how to sing as he wasn't really interested at...

's more popular songs, "Working Class Man

Working Class Man

"Working Class Man" is a song performed and made famous by Australian singer Jimmy Barnes. It was written by Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain. "Working Class Man" is generally considered Barnes' signature song as a solo artist....

" references working class culture and hardships.

Some youth subculture

Youth subculture

A youth subculture is a youth-based subculture with distinct styles, behaviors, and interests. Youth subcultures offer participants an identity outside of that ascribed by social institutions such as family, work, home and school...

s such as skinhead

Skinhead

A skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian rude boys and British mods,...

s, punks, rockers and metalheads have been associated with working class culture.

Some sports such as rugby league football, darts

Darts

Darts is a form of throwing game where darts are thrown at a circular target fixed to a wall. Though various boards and games have been used in the past, the term "darts" usually now refers to a standardised game involving a specific board design and set of rules...

and association football, which is sometimes referred to as the working man's game, are associated with the working class.

Portrayals in popular culture

Further reading