Elite Theory

Marxist Conflict theorists, by concentrating on the way cultural artefacts are used, generally tend not to make judgements about the relative worth of various cultural artefacts (whether or not, for example, classical music is a superior cultural form to pop music) - although as we will see in a moment, there are exceptions to this.

Elite theorists, on the other hand, have tended to try to isolate those aspects of a culture that are "the best in thought and deed" (the highest cultural forms to which a society should aspire) and to separate them from the worthless, the mass produced and the artificial (the lowest cultural forms characteristic of the masses).

Shils (1971), for example, argues we can characterise this approach by the way it argues that modern societies are characterised by three basic cultural levels:

a. Highbrow (the superior and refined, containing the best qualities of a society).

b. Middlebrow (the mediocre that aspires to be highbrow but which lacks originality, subtlety or depth) and

c. Lowbrow (the brutal and worthless aspects of a culture. Forms which lack any pretence at sophistication, insight or refinement and which supposedly characterise many of the cultural forms of modern, working class, culture).

For Elite theorists, modern societies basically consist of a small, cultured, elite and a large, acultured, mass (acultured means, in this context, a culture that is relatively shallow and worthless in terms of the things it values). The problem, as such theorists see it, is how to protect, preserve and accentuate high culture from the negative effects of low culture.

The rise of mass culture is related to the rise of modern societies, where the process of industrialisation brought cheap, mass produced, ideas and items to the mass of society, replacing, in the process, the folk culture and traditions of pre-industrial societies.

The main agency responsible for this (supposed) diminution and cheapening of popular cultural forms is the mass media and, in particular, cinema and the popular press. The basic idea behind this theory is that the masses, easily lead and manipulated by an unscrupulous media pursuing their own narrow interests and profits, are sold cultural products (films, gossip and the like) that appeal simply to the lowest common denominator is society. These products lack depth and subtlety and their consumption by the masses (who knew no better) supposedly made (makes?) them easy to control and manipulate.

Problems.

Criticisms of this types of elite cultural theory are numerous, but we can note that some of the most frequent are as follows:

• Elite theorists conveniently assume that high culture is inherently superior to what they term low culture, yet it does not seem possible to differentiate this easily between cultural differences without making an arbitrary judgement. I may feel that the works of William Shakespeare represent a higher cultural level than the works of Jeffrey Archer, for example, but it is difficult to see how this belief could be supported objectively.
  
• The easy distinction between elite and mass / popular culture is oversimplified.
  
• Many critics of this approach argue that there is little evidence to support the notion that popular culture is, by definition, brutish and impoverished. On the contrary, whilst some cultural forms are undoubtedly manufactured simply for profit and seem to have little intrinsic cultural value or longevity, many originally popular cultural forms have evolved into something of lasting value and worth.
  
• Finally, elite theorists contrast an idealised pre-industrial past filled with poor-but-happy peasants participating proudly in a dynamic folk culture with a supposedly moribund present where manufactured (both literally and metaphorically) cultural artefacts are passively consumed by an unthinking, forever unsatisfied, mass.
  
• This is an important source of criticism (the idealisation of the past as a contrast to an unhappy present).
  

More modern theories and arguments about culture and class, within the general Conflict perspective, have focused much more on the nature and development of different cultural forms. In this respect, these theories tend to be less damning of working class cultural forms and activities.

Thus, to complete this section on Conflict perspectives we will look briefly at Humanistic Marxism, Feminism, Pluralism

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