Culture and Symbolic Transformations III: Education, Cultural Identity and Mobilization, Culture and Politics, Gender and the Body, Sports, and Culture and Environment

The last of this platform's three chapters on Unit 10 takes the items that connect culture to power: education — formal and informal; cultural identity and mobilization; culture and politics; gender, body and culture; sports and culture; and culture and environment. Culture here is not a set of inherited customs but a field of struggle — over what is taught, which identities are recognised, how bodies are disciplined and displayed, what a national game means, and how sacred traditions relate to nature. The theory draws on Bernstein, Freire and Illich; Hall and Brass; Gramsci, Williams and Taylor; Mauss, Foucault, Bordo and Mulvey; Elias, James and Nandy.

1. Education: formal and informal

Formal education is the graded, certified system of schools and universities; non-formal education is organised learning outside it (adult literacy, open schooling); informal education is the lifelong learning that happens through family, community, work, apprenticeship and media. Sociology asks what schooling does beyond its official aims. Basil Bernstein (Class, Codes and Control, 1971) argued that working-class children often use a restricted code (context-bound, implicit meanings) and middle-class children an elaborated code (explicit, context-independent), which the school rewards. Philip Jackson (Life in Classrooms, 1968) coined the 'hidden curriculum' — the unstated lessons of punctuality, obedience and waiting that schools teach. Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society (1971) argued that institutional schooling confuses process with substance and should be replaced by learning webs. Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) contrasted 'banking' education, in which teachers deposit knowledge in passive students, with problem-posing education that develops critical consciousness (conscientização).

Indian thinkers offered their own alternatives: Gandhi's Nai Talim (1937), basic education through productive craft that joins hand, head and heart; and Tagore's Santiniketan, education in harmony with nature and the arts. Sociologists such as Krishna Kumar (Political Agenda of Education, 1991; What Is Worth Teaching?, 1992) have examined how curricula carry colonial and nationalist agendas and how textbook knowledge is distanced from children's lives, and studies of schooling show Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim children facing exclusion through discrimination, language and distance, even as enrolment has become near-universal.

2. Cultural identity and mobilization; culture and politics

Two approaches explain how culture becomes a basis of political mobilisation. Primordialism — Edward Shils's 'primordial ties' and Clifford Geertz's 'primordial attachments' (1963) of blood, language, religion and region — treats such identities as deeply felt givens that new states must accommodate. Instrumentalism — most influentially Paul Brass (Language, Religion and Politics in North India, 1974) — argues that elites select, standardise and manipulate cultural symbols to mobilise groups in competition for power and resources, so identities are made and remade. Stuart Hall ('Cultural Identity and Diaspora', 1990) held that cultural identity is a matter of 'becoming' as well as 'being' — positioned within history and power. Indian cases include linguistic movements (the Tamil and Punjabi Suba agitations), the Adivasi cultural revival that fed the Jharkhand movement, and Dalit literature and cultural assertion that turned stigmatised identity into a source of pride.

ThinkerIdea linking culture and politics
Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notebooks)Hegemony: ruling classes rule through consent secured in culture and civil society, not only force; 'organic intellectuals' articulate a class's worldview
Raymond Williams'Culture is ordinary' (1958); cultures contain dominant, residual and emergent elements (Marxism and Literature, 1977)
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (founded 1964)Under Richard Hoggart and then Stuart Hall, studied popular and youth culture, media and subcultures as sites of hegemony and resistance
Charles Taylor ('The Politics of Recognition', 1992)Misrecognition inflicts real harm; groups demand recognition of their distinct identities, not only equal rights
Will Kymlicka (Multicultural Citizenship, 1995); Nancy FraserGroup-differentiated rights for minorities; Fraser's argument that justice needs both redistribution and recognition

3. Gender, body and culture; sports and culture

The body is culturally made. Mauss's 'techniques of the body' and Foucault's 'docile bodies' showed bodily habits and discipline as social products. Susan Bordo (Unbearable Weight, 1993) read eating disorders as the inscription of cultural ideals of slenderness and control on women's bodies; Laura Mulvey ('Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema', 1975) described the 'male gaze' of cinema that positions women as objects to be looked at; Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (1990) analysed beauty norms as social control; R.W. Connell (Masculinities, 1995) introduced 'hegemonic masculinity', the culturally dominant ideal of manhood against which other masculinities and women are subordinated. In India, the body is marked by caste purity and gender — menstrual taboos, the controversy over women's entry to the Sabarimala temple, veiling and seclusion (analysed by Hanna Papanek as 'purdah', 'separate worlds and symbolic shelter', 1973), and a market for fairness creams that trades on colourism.

  • Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (Quest for Excitement, 1986): modern sport is part of the 'civilising process' — a 'controlled decontrolling' of emotions in which excitement is enjoyed within rules that limit violence.
  • C.L.R. James (Beyond a Boundary, 1963) showed cricket in colonial Trinidad as a stage for race, class and anti-colonial self-assertion — 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?'
  • Ashis Nandy (The Tao of Cricket, 1989) wrote that 'cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English'; Arjun Appadurai ('Playing with Modernity', 1995) described the indigenisation and decolonisation of Indian cricket through vernacular commentary and media; Ramachandra Guha (A Corner of a Foreign Field, 2002) recovered the career of the Dalit cricketer Palwankar Baloo and the communal Quadrangular tournaments of colonial Bombay.
  • Sport also carries nationalism (Mohun Bagan's 1911 IFA Shield victory over a British regimental team in Calcutta) and commercialisation (franchise leagues that turn players and fans into markets).

4. Culture and environment

Cultural traditions encode relationships with nature. Sacred groves — the devrai of Maharashtra, the kavu of Kerala, the sarna of Jharkhand's Adivasis — protected by taboo and ritual, conserve biodiversity; Madhav Gadgil and V.D. Vartak's studies in the 1970s documented them as indigenous conservation. The Bishnoi of Rajasthan, whose sacrifice at Khejarli in 1730 is remembered as defence of trees, and totemic prohibitions among many tribes show religion doing ecological work. Yet reverence does not guarantee protection: Kelly Alley's On the Banks of the Ganga (2002) showed that the river's ritual purity (its power to purify) is held separate from its material pollution, so devotion coexists with degradation; festival practices such as idol immersion and firecrackers add to pollution. The Steward and Rappaport tradition of cultural ecology (Unit 7) and Radhakamal Mukerjee's social ecology (Unit 1) provide the theoretical frame.

🎯 Why the syllabus ends Unit 10 with environment
Placing culture and environment last ties the symbolic unit back to the material world: the same sacred groves, rivers and totems are sites of meaning (Unit 10), of resource conflict and movements (Unit 7) and of development policy (Unit 5). Questions often test exactly this linkage — for instance, sacred groves as both religious institution and biodiversity reserve.

Key takeaways

  • Bernstein's restricted and elaborated codes, Jackson's hidden curriculum, Illich's deschooling and Freire's banking versus problem-posing education are key to the sociology of formal and informal education; Nai Talim and Krishna Kumar add Indian perspectives.
  • Primordialism (Shils, Geertz) and instrumentalism (Brass) explain cultural mobilisation; Hall treats identity as becoming as well as being.
  • Gramsci's hegemony, Williams's dominant, residual and emergent cultures, the Birmingham school, and Taylor's politics of recognition link culture and politics.
  • Bordo, Mulvey, Wolf and Connell analyse gendered bodies and masculinities; Elias and Dunning's civilising process, C.L.R. James, Nandy, Appadurai and Guha analyse sport and culture.
  • Sacred groves, the Bishnoi and totemic taboos show culture conserving nature, while Alley's study of the Ganga shows ritual purity coexisting with pollution.

Practice questions (10)

Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.

  1. Paulo Freire contrasted problem-posing education with which model?

    1. The banking model
    2. The elaborated code
    3. Nai Talim
    4. The correspondence principle
    Show answer

    Answer: A — The banking model

    In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire criticised 'banking' education, in which knowledge is deposited in passive learners, and proposed dialogical, problem-posing education that develops critical consciousness.

  2. Basil Bernstein's distinction between restricted and elaborated codes was used to explain:

    1. Differences between sects and churches
    2. Patterns of pilgrimage
    3. Differences in educational achievement between social classes
    4. The rise of the nation-state
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Differences in educational achievement between social classes

    Bernstein argued that schools operate in the elaborated code more familiar to middle-class children, which helps explain class differences in achievement without assuming differences in ability.

  3. Paul Brass's approach to ethnic and cultural mobilisation in Language, Religion and Politics in North India is best described as:

    1. Primordialist
    2. Ethnomethodological
    3. Structural-functionalist
    4. Instrumentalist
    Show answer

    Answer: D — Instrumentalist

    Brass argued that elites select and manipulate cultural symbols such as language and religion to mobilise groups for political ends — the instrumentalist position, opposed to Geertz's and Shils's primordialism.

  4. Which of the following elements of culture did Raymond Williams distinguish? Select all that apply.

    1. Liminoid
    2. Dominant
    3. Emergent
    4. Residual
    Show answer

    Answer: B — Dominant; C — Emergent; D — Residual

    In Marxism and Literature (1977) Williams distinguished dominant, residual (formed in the past but still active) and emergent (new meanings and practices) elements. 'Liminoid' is Victor Turner's term.

  5. Laura Mulvey's concept of the 'male gaze' refers to:

    1. Surveillance of workers by male supervisors
    2. Men's greater visual acuity
    3. The tourist gaze of male travellers
    4. The way cinema positions women as objects of a masculine look
    Show answer

    Answer: D — The way cinema positions women as objects of a masculine look

    In 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' (1975) Mulvey argued that mainstream film is structured for a heterosexual male spectator, with women coded for 'to-be-looked-at-ness'. The tourist gaze is John Urry's concept.

  6. Assertion (A): Elias and Dunning treat modern sport as part of the civilising process. Reason (R): Sport allows a 'controlled decontrolling' of emotions — the enjoyment of excitement within rules that restrain violence. Choose the correct option.

    1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A
    2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A
    3. A is true, but R is false
    4. A is false, but R is true
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

    In Quest for Excitement (1986), sport fits the civilising process precisely because it provides regulated excitement in societies where everyday emotional expression and violence are increasingly restrained.

  7. 'Cricket is an Indian game accidentally discovered by the English.' This line is from:

    1. Norbert Elias, Quest for Excitement
    2. Ramachandra Guha, A Corner of a Foreign Field
    3. Ashis Nandy, The Tao of Cricket
    4. C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Ashis Nandy, The Tao of Cricket

    Nandy's The Tao of Cricket (1989) opens with this provocation, reading the game's leisurely, fatalistic and ritual qualities as resonant with Indian culture.

  8. Which two-word term did R.W. Connell introduce for the culturally dominant ideal of manhood that subordinates other masculinities and women?

    Numerical answer — type the value.

    Show answer

    Answer: hegemonic masculinity

    Connell's hegemonic masculinity (Masculinities, 1995), drawing on Gramsci's hegemony, describes the form of masculinity that legitimates men's dominance and ranks subordinate and marginalised masculinities below it.

  9. Kelly Alley's study of the Ganga at Banaras found that:

    1. Devotees distinguish the river's ritual purity from its material pollution, so reverence coexists with degradation
    2. The river has no religious significance today
    3. Religious reverence has fully prevented pollution
    4. Pollution is caused only by upstream industry
    Show answer

    Answer: A — Devotees distinguish the river's ritual purity from its material pollution, so reverence coexists with degradation

    On the Banks of the Ganga (2002) showed that for many devotees Ganga's power to purify is not diminished by waste, which complicates the assumption that sacredness automatically produces environmental care.

  10. Which pairing is NOT correct?

    1. Susan Bordo — Unbearable Weight
    2. Charles Taylor — the politics of recognition
    3. Ivan Illich — Beyond a Boundary
    4. Philip Jackson — hidden curriculum
    Show answer

    Answer: C — Ivan Illich — Beyond a Boundary

    Beyond a Boundary (1963) is C.L.R. James's book on cricket and colonialism; Illich wrote Deschooling Society and Medical Nemesis.