4. Growing availability of material possessions and their increasing variety.
5. Growth of individual home ownership - embourgeoisement.
6. Relative conformity was the expected norm. Few actually left their class of origin.
CULTURE: SOME DEFINITIONS
Culture has been defined by Giddens as
the way of life of the members of a given society - their habits and customs, together with the material goods they produce.
(A. Giddens, Sociology, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989 edn.)
The standard sociological definition of "Culture" was given by Ralph Linton as long ago as 1945:
The culture of a society is the way of life of its people; the collection of ideas and habits which they learn, share and transmit from generation to generation.
R. Linton, 'Present World Conditions in Cultural Perspective' in R. Linton (ed.), The Science of Man in World Crisis, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945, cited Haralambos, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 5th edn., 2000, page 884; 6th edn., 2004, page 791).
However, culture is not a prime topic for investigation by sociologists of a Functionalist persuasion.
DURKHEIM AND THE STUDY OF CULTURE
According to one view, Functionalism begins in nineteenth-century Europe, with Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) projected as the most influential figure. Many would see Durkheim as "the father of Functionalism" although Durkheim can equally be seen as a commentator on modernity or as a radical.
In Primitive Classification, their collection of essays published in 1902, Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss produced an evolutionary perspective of culture, partly based on Mauss' fieldwork in Polynesia (islands in the south Pacific Ocean).. This evolutionary perspective was concerned with the origins of human nature.
[Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) was both Durkheim's nephew and his professional collaborator; as an anthropologist he did fieldwork among the peoples of the islands of the south Pacific.]
