Culture and Identity – Introduction

“Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think.” So wrote the cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1990), arguing that identity is never a finished fact. Hall described identity as something always being built and rebuilt, shaped by history, culture and power, rather than something a person simply has.

A single teenager growing up in Britain today shows what Hall meant. She might speak a family language at home, support a local football club every Saturday, dress in styles borrowed from social media, and still describe herself as British, working class and Muslim, all at once. None of these labels cancel each other out. Sociologists call this whole area of study Culture and Identity: where a shared way of life comes from, and how each person builds a sense of who they are within it.

This page introduces Culture and Identity, one of the four Option 1 topics examined on Paper 2 of AQA A Level Sociology (7192). It sets out what the topic covers, how it is assessed, and how the pages published in this section of histpology.co.uk are organised, before the first full topic page, L13: The Concept of Culture, begins the detailed content.

The main sections of this page are:

What Is Culture and Identity?
Where This Topic Sits on the AQA Course
The Five Strands of Culture and Identity
Perspectives on Culture and Identity
How the Pages in This Section Work
What’s Coming in This Section
Summary

Key terms

Culture: the whole shared way of life of a group or society, including its norms, values, beliefs, customs and language, passed on through socialisation.

Identity: a person’s sense of who they are, built partly from their own choices and partly from the groups and categories society places them in.

Norms: the specific, everyday rules that guide behaviour in particular situations, for example queuing quietly at a bus stop.

Values: the broad beliefs a society holds about what is right, wrong or worth aiming for, for example valuing honesty.

Socialisation: the lifelong process through which people learn the culture of their society, mainly through agencies such as the family, education and the media.

Perspective: a broad theoretical viewpoint, such as functionalism or Marxism, that offers a distinct explanation of how society and identity work.

What Is Culture and Identity?

Culture and Identity is the sociological study of two connected ideas. Culture is the shared way of life a society passes on to its members. Identity is the sense of self each individual builds, partly from that shared culture and partly from their own experience.

The topic asks two central questions. First, where does culture come from? Why does it take such different forms, from high culture (culture associated with a small, educated elite) to the mass culture (culture produced for the widest possible audience) of streaming platforms and social media? Second, how do individuals build an identity within that culture? How far is that identity chosen, rather than imposed by class, gender or ethnicity?

Culture and Identity is one of eight optional topics offered across Paper 2 of AQA A Level Sociology, split into two groups of four. It sits in Option 1, alongside Families and Households, Health, and Work, Poverty and Welfare. Students study one topic from Option 1 and one from Option 2, not all eight.

Where This Topic Sits on the AQA Course

AQA A Level Sociology (7192) is assessed across three written papers, each worth a third of the final grade. Paper 2, Topics in Sociology, asks students to answer questions on two optional topics: one from Option 1 and one from Option 2.

Culture and Identity is examined in Section A of Paper 2, worth 40 of the paper’s 80 marks and a sixth of the whole A Level. Questions are built around a short printed item, so a strong answer must use the item directly rather than writing everything from memory.

This topic is also where AQA’s two core themes are introduced most directly:

Socialisation, culture and identity, the theme this topic is named after and the one it teaches first.
Social differentiation, power and stratification, which becomes central once the topic turns to how identity relates to social class, gender, ethnicity and other social divisions.

Key Takeaways

Culture and Identity is Option 1 content, examined in Section A of Paper 2, worth 40 marks.

Paper 2 questions are item-based: a strong answer applies the printed item rather than ignoring it.

This topic introduces both of AQA’s core themes, and both are examinable across every other topic too.

The Five Strands of Culture and Identity

AQA’s specification breaks Culture and Identity into five connected strands. Histpology.co.uk builds a separate run of pages around each strand, starting with the concept of culture itself.

Strand	What it covers	A thinker you will meet
Different conceptions of culture	High, popular, mass, folk and global culture, and how a smaller subculture can exist within a wider society’s dominant culture.	Bourdieu (1984)
Socialisation	How people learn their society’s culture through agencies such as the family, education, peer groups, religion and the media.	Parsons and Bales (1955)
The self, identity and difference	Whether identity is built through everyday social interaction (socially constructed) or shaped by forces largely outside a person’s control (socially caused).	Cooley (1902)
Identity, class and social division	How identity relates to social class, age, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality and sexuality in contemporary Britain.	Oakley (1972)
Production, consumption and globalisation	How identity is shaped by what people buy and consume, and by living in an increasingly connected, globalised world.	Bauman (2000)

^{Table 1: The five strands of AQA 7192 3.2.1 Culture and Identity.}

A pattern runs through all five strands:

Every strand eventually feeds into the same underlying question: how far a person’s identity is their own choice, and how far it is built for them by culture and society.
The first strand, on types of culture, is covered first on histpology.co.uk, because every later strand assumes students already understand basic terms such as subculture and dominant culture.
The final strand connects Culture and Identity directly to globalisation, a theme AQA also expects students to recognise in other Paper 2 topics such as The Media.

Key Takeaways

AQA 7192 3.2.1 has five strands: conceptions of culture, socialisation, the self and identity, identity and social division, and production, consumption and globalisation.

Bourdieu (1984), Parsons and Bales (1955), Cooley (1902), Oakley (1972) and Bauman (2000) each anchor one strand.

Pages in this section follow the same order as the five strands, from culture itself through to globalisation.

Perspectives on Culture and Identity

Sociologists disagree fundamentally about where culture comes from and how identity is formed. Six broad perspectives recur across every strand of this topic, and each will reappear throughout every page in this section.

The table below gives each perspective‘s general view of culture and identity, one key thinker or study, and its main criticism. Individual topic pages develop each of these views in far more depth.

Perspectives
Perspective	View on culture and identity	Key thinker or study	Main criticism
Functionalism	Culture creates value consensus (widespread agreement on core norms and values), which holds society together and is passed on through socialisation.	Durkheim (1893)	Understates conflict, and assumes too readily that shared culture benefits everyone equally.
Marxism and neo-Marxism	Culture, especially mass culture, spreads the ideology (a set of ideas that justifies inequality) of the ruling class and can act as a form of control.	Gramsci (1971)	Underestimates how far ordinary people can resist or reinterpret dominant culture rather than simply absorbing it.
Feminism	Cultural products, from children’s toys to teen magazines, transmit patriarchal ideas about how women and men should behave.	McRobbie (1978)	Tends to treat women as a single group, understating differences of class, ethnicity and generation.
Interactionism	Identity is not fixed at birth but built gradually through everyday interaction, as people interpret how others see them.	Cooley (1902)	Says relatively little about the wider structures of power that limit which identities are realistically available to a person.
Postmodernism	In a media-saturated world, culture has fragmented into countless competing styles, and identity has become a matter of individual choice.	Strinati (1995)	May exaggerate how much freedom people really have, since income and cultural capital still shape which identities are genuinely available.
Late modernity	Identity has become more of a personal project than in the past, but it is still shaped by real risks and inequalities in a fast-changing world.	Giddens (1991); Beck (1992)	Possibly overstates how much genuine freedom ordinary people, especially those with fewer resources, actually have to choose their identity.

A clear pattern separates these six perspectives:

Structural perspectives (functionalism, Marxism and feminism) tend to argue culture is produced for people, shaping identity from the outside.
Social action and postmodern perspectives (interactionism, postmodernism and late modernity) give individuals more credit for actively building their own identity.
No perspective stays confined to one strand of this topic. Marxism‘s account of culture as ideology, for example, returns once the topic turns to social class and identity.

Key Takeaways

Six perspectives recur throughout this topic: functionalism, Marxism and neo-Marxism, feminism, interactionism, postmodernism and late modernity.

Structural perspectives see culture shaping identity from outside the individual; social action and postmodern perspectives give the individual more control.

Late modernity, associated with Giddens (1991) and Beck (1992), is often used as a middle position between these two camps.

How the Pages in This Section Work

Every topic-content page in this section, starting with L13: The Concept of Culture, follows the same shape. Each begins with a definition of the key idea and an explanation of why it matters to sociology, before working through each type or example in turn.

Every named sociologist appears with their surname in bold and the date of their work in brackets, for example Durkheim (1893), so a claim can always be traced back to its source. Full titles and first names are kept for the Further Reading list at the end of each page, rather than cluttering the main text.

Look out for the following recurring features as you read through this section:

Key terms box: definitions of the vocabulary needed before a section can be understood.
Perspectives box: a compact table giving each theoretical perspective‘s view of the topic, one key thinker and its main criticism.
Case Study and Extension Task boxes: a current, real-world example applying the sociology just covered, closing with short tasks.
Key Takeaways box: three to five sentences summarising exactly what to remember from a section.
Check your understanding box: short recall and evaluate questions, each with a note on how to approach it.

What’s Coming in This Section

Content pages in this section are published in the same order as AQA’s five strands, starting with the concept of culture. Each page carries an “L” lesson number, matching the point in histpology.co.uk’s own scheme of work where that content is taught.

Page	Focus	Status
L13: The Concept of Culture	High culture, popular culture, mass culture, folk culture and global culture.	Published
L14: Cultural Diversity, Subculture and Cultural Hybridity	How subcultures form, and how cultures mix and change through contact with one another.	Coming soon
L15: Culture, Socialisation and the Formation of Identity	The agencies of socialisation and how they build a person’s early sense of self.	Coming soon
L16: The Self and Identity	The looking-glass self and other interactionist approaches to how identity is built through interaction.	Coming soon
Identity, class and social division	Social class, age, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality and sexuality.	Coming later in this section
Production, consumption and globalisation	How identity is shaped by consumer choices and by living in a globalised world.	Coming later in this section

Table 2: Planned pages within the Culture and Identity section of histpology.co.uk.

New pages are added to this section as they are written, so this table will be updated to keep pace.
Every later page assumes the vocabulary and perspectives introduced on this page, so it is worth reading before starting L13.

In Summary

Hall‘s (1990) point that identity is never simply “transparent” is worth returning to. The teenager described at the start of this page is not unusual. Everybody builds an identity from more than one source: family culture, peer groups, social class, gender, ethnicity, and an increasingly globalised media environment. Culture and Identity, as an A Level topic, gives students the theoretical tools to explain how.

Key Takeaways

Culture and Identity is Option 1 content, examined in Section A of Paper 2, worth 40 marks.

The topic covers five strands: conceptions of culture, socialisation, the self and identity, identity and social division, and identity in a globalised world.

Six perspectives recur throughout: functionalism, Marxism and neo-Marxism, feminism, interactionism, postmodernism and late modernity.

Every page in this section bolds named sociologists and their publication dates, and closes with a Further Reading list.

L13: The Concept of Culture is the first published page in this section, and the right place to start.

Check your understanding

1. Explain what sociologists mean by the difference between culture and identity. You could: use one example, such as a shared national culture, and show how an individual’s identity draws on it without simply copying it.

2. Outline two of AQA’s five strands within Culture and Identity. You could: pick two strands from Table 1 above and use one named sociologist for each.

3. “Identity is built entirely by the individual, not given to them by society.” Evaluate this claim, drawing on the perspectives introduced on this page. You should: set out at least one perspective supporting the claim and one challenging it, using a named thinker for each, before reaching a reasoned judgement.

^{Specification links: AQA 7192 3.2.1 (Culture and Identity), covering all five strands of the specification, and both of the course’s core themes: socialisation, culture and identity; and social differentiation, power and stratification.}