Working class culture is a range of cultures created by or popular among working class people. The cultures can be contrasted with high culture and folk culture, and are sometimes equated with popular culture and low culture (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 viewpoint see its importance as arising from the proletariat they champion. Some states that claim to be communist have declared an official working class culture, most notably socialist realism, 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, and that high culture should not be outside the experience of workers.
Working class culture developed during the Industrial Revolution. Because most of the newly created working class were former peasants, 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 prints and ornaments, and events such as music hall and cinema.
Read more about Working Class Culture: Portrayals in Popular Culture, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words working, class and/or culture:
“Stay-at-home mothers, . . . their self-esteem constantly assaulted, . . . are ever more fervently concerned that their offspring turn out better so they won’t have to stoop to say “I told you so.” Working mothers, . . . their self-esteem corroded by guilt, . . . are praying their kids turn out functional so they can stop being defensive and apologetic and instead assert “See? I did do it all.””
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“We of the sinking middle class ... may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)