Peterson proposes revitalizing the sociology of culture by asking how

culture is deliberately produced. Once several inhibitions to comparative

analysis are overcome, numerous unexplored communalities in the
production of art, science, and religion are revealed. These suggest a
genetic theory of the role of culture for society.

The Production of Culture

A Prolegomenon

RICHARD A. PETERSON
Vanderbilt University

For a full generation now, most new developments in sociology

have been at the periphery. Substantively defined sociologies of
-

have proliferated, and a rich load of empirical findings has

accumulated. These have been set out in numberless mono-
graphs and in a baffling diversity of specialized journals. At the
same time, general sociology, grounded as it has been on a priori
functionalist or Marxist grand theory, has languished. It may
now be time to turn more systematically to reworking the
central turf of the discipline by building general sociology
inductively on a solid empirical base. This can be done by
seeking out the conceptual and substantive communalities
shared by the diverse substantive specialities. It is in this spirit
that we focus on the grand old term &dquo;culture.&dquo;
Reading theoretical essays and introductory texts leads one
to suppose that sociologists take culture to be a central concern
and view it as closely linked with social structure. In the corpus

Author’s Note: Please see note 1 for the history of this research and
acknowledgements.

[669]

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[670] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

of sociological research, however, &dquo;culture&dquo; is focal only in

scattered works of individual scholarship. Yet this apparent
disinclination to study culture may prove illusory. Although the
term is seldom used, a goodly number of us laboring in the
sociologies of art, science, religion, knowledge, law, media,
education, sports, and popular music are researching culture,
and doing so in a common way by focusing on how culture is
produced.
While reorientation of the sociology of culture around the
a

problem of production may seem an obvious and straight-

forward proposal, it has not emerged heretofore for several
reasons: first, because of the ways in which the society-culture

relationship has been conceptualized and, second, because of

several characteristic habits of thought which have led workers
to compartmentalize and fragment rather than integrate theo-
retical development and research.2 These alternative concep-
tions and blinding habits of thought are discussed in the
prolegomenon which follows in order to more clearly define the
production-of-culture perspective and to facilitate the search for
communalities in the cultural domain.

THE SOCIETY-CULTURE RELATIONSHIP

Over a century ago, Edward Tylor (1871 : 1 ) defined culture

as &dquo;that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts,
morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits
acquired by man as a member of society.&dquo; While refinements
have been made, most authors have accepted this definition
(Schneider and Bonjean, 1973) and have focused their attention
on the ways in which culture is related to social structure. The

empirical locus for addressing this question ranges from

face-to-face laboratory groups to entire societies and epochs,
but three analytically distinct perspectives can be identified.3
The first asserts that culture and society are autonomous
systems which evolve independently according to quite dif-
ferent rules. At its grandest level, this autonomous culture cycle
theory can be seen in the work of Sorokin (1937). The

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 Peterson / PRODUCTION OF CULTUREI[671]

perspective has also been taken by persons studying fashion

(Kroeber, 1957; Sapir, 1937), styles in art (Bensman and
Gerver, 1958), collective behavior (Blumer, 1939), and fads
(Meyerson and Katz, 1957).
The second theory is that social structure creates culture.
This &dquo;materialist&dquo; view is congenial with the presumption of
most sociologists that economic and political factors are the
most potent elements defining the structure of society. Within
this view, culture is seen as a more or less accurate mirror of
social structure so that the content analysis of cultural products
provides a convenient unobtrusive measure of social structure
(Harap, 1949; Rosenberg and White, 1957; Lowenthal, 1961,
1964; Kavolis, 1968, 1972; Wolfe, 1969; and Denisoff and
Peterson, 1972).
The third major perspective is that culture creates social
structure. This &dquo;idealist&dquo; position starts from the premise that
&dquo;in the beginning there was the Word.&dquo; This position is taken
by several otherwise quite different intellectual traditions. They
include symbolic interactionists (Duncan, 1968; Klapp, 1969),
the humanistically oriented massification theorists (cf. Ortega y
Gasset, 1950, MacDonald, 1965; Adorno, 1968), and social
linguists and semioticists (cf. Williams, 1961; Searle, 1972;
Bloch, 1975; and Eco, 1976).
Numerous elegant formulations have been spawned from
these three perspectives, but surprisingly little progress has been
made in understanding the society-culture relationships since
the parameters of the problem were sketched by Karl Marx,
Jacob Burckhardt, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Fustel de Cou-
langes well over a century ago.4 In the absence of a demon-
strable superiority of any one of the perspectives, debate has
tended to polarize scholars into self-perpetuating schools in
sociology along the materialist versus idealist lines of cleavage
(Mullins, 1973).
Rather than enter the debate over differences, it seems
strategic to ask what characteristics are shared by the three
contending perspectives. There are three assumptions which
may prove unnecessary. The first is that culture is a global and

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[672]AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

relatively coherent structure of

symbols which (depending on
one’s perspective) is the social glue cementing social structure
together, or it is a fog which provides the appearance of
coherence while masking conflict and exploitation. The second
common assumption is that substantive content of culture
should be the focus of investigation.5 The third common
assumption is that culture changes only gradually and then by
the unplanned process of accretion.6

THE PRODUCTION PERSPECTIVE

The production-of-culture perspective neither denies the

utility of these assumptions, nor denegrates studies made using
them. Rather, it chooses the alternative tack of turning
attention from the global corpus of habitual culture and
focusing instead on the processes by which elements of culture
are fabricated in those milieux where symbol-system production
is most self-consciously the center of activity.’
As used here, the term &dquo;production&dquo; is meant in its generic
sense to refer to the processes of creation, manufacture,

marketing, distribution, exhibiting, inculcation, evaluation, and

consumption. The first systematic research on the production
of symbols in a single industry (in the United States, at least)
was carried out by Robert Merton, Paul Lazarsfeld, and their
associates at the Bureau of Applied Social Research following
World War II. This line of research on mass media ground to a
halt for a number of reasons by the mid 1950s (Wilensky, 1964;
Jay, 1973; Gans, 1974; Peterson and DiMaggio, 1975).
Diverse studies of the immediate milieux in which elements
of culture are produced have proliferated in the two decades
since. The studies within each area are as diverse in intellectual
orientation and methodology as the substantive foci are diverse.
In consequence, there has been scant cumulative development.
In sharp contrast to these exciting but scattered efforts, the
sociology of science has moved ahead rapidly in recent decades.
The progress has been made possible by turning away from
grand questions about the relationship between science and

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 Peterson / PRODUCTION OF CULTURE [673]

society (cf. Merton, 1936), and focusing instead on the contexts

in which science is made and remade (Hagstrom, 1965, 1976;
Merton, 1973; Bourdieu, 1975; Ben-David and Sullivan, 1975).
This rapid cumulative development in a sociology of science
hints at the potential fruitfulness of a production process-
oriented perspective.8
Drawing on the example of science, there seem to be three
advantages in employing the production perspective. First, the
scope of research is circumscribed enough in time and subject
matter that small research projects can be cumulative. Second,
concepts and methods developed in industrial, organizational,
and occupational sociology as well as those employed in social
psychology and economics can be borrowed.9 Third, compari-
sons across diverse areas will readily highlight communalities
and parallels in the production of symbol systems. The search
for communalities should not, however, be interpreted as a
presumption that there are no consequential differences. On the
contrary, as Crane (1976), Kadushin (1976), and Useem (1976)
show, there are important differences between culture-
producing milieux deriving from the ways they are socially
structured and linked to society at large. This structuring is not
inherent in the subject matter (cf. Becker, 1973; 1976) and is
subject to quite remarkable variations over time.10
Perhaps the greatest shortcoming in the production perspec-
tive is that, while it is made to order for explicating the
common mechanisms for making &dquo;normal culture&dquo;-to para-

phrase Kuhn’s (1970) term &dquo;normal science,&dquo; it is ill-equipped

to predict or even identify &dquo;cultural revolutions&dquo; in the making.
Building on Kuhn, however, Heirich (1976) has suggested the
conditions within which the regularly occurring fads in normal
culture production are most likely to become revolutionary in
scope. So that this initial search for communalities does not
take us too far afield, the focus of the discussion which follows
will be primarily on the three symbol-creating domains most
often identified: art, science, and religion (cf. Parsons, 1961;
Crane, 1972).

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[674] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

INHIBITIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Two deep-seated habits of thought have inhibited the search

for communalities in symbol production in art, science, and
religion. The first is the belief that the three domains are
essentially incompatible-that each follows a unique quest. A
number of writers, for example, have asserted that while science
advances, the arts follow a cycle of fashion. &dquo;Unlike the artist
or author who has an infinite variety of paintings to paint,

sculptures to sculpt or novels to write,&dquo; Gaston (1973: 4)

asserts, &dquo;the scientist has only one world to discover.&dquo; This
quest for a singular truth makes scientific communities different
from those in the arts or religion, according to Price (1963) and
Kuhn (1969, 1970: 160-173). But scientists are hardly the only
ones to assert that they are on a unique quest. Theologians
work within a specialized frame to more perfectly reveal God,
while artists use shared techniques in search of Beauty beyond
the realm of mundane experience.
If we find the occupational ideology of scientists more
persuasive than these others, perhaps it is because we live in a
highly rationalistic era. Whatever the case, it is counter-produc-
tive for us, as sociologists, to be drawn into a Kantian debate
over &dquo;the reality of really real.&dquo; As outside observers, we should
treat such assertions of scientists, artists, and religionists as
artifacts of occupational ideology, worthy of our investigation
rather than our affirmation (Hughes, 1958: 42-50, 90-91;
Thompson et al., 1969; Gusfield, 1976). A number of compara-
tive research questions emerge when the assertions of a unique
quest are taken as social fact rather than as existential fact.
Several are suggested in the discussion which follows and in the
other articles in this journal issue.
The assertion of unique quest has also served to inhibit
comparative analysis within each of the three major domains. In
part, the problem is like that of comparative anthropologists
who must struggle to get beyond the assertion that traits of
each society form a unique configuration and lose their meaning
when abstracted from it. To be sure, it takes a great deal of time

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 Peterson / PRODUCTION OF CULTURE [675]

and effort to understand New York grand opera or Nashville

grand ole opry. Nevertheless, it makes little sense to assert a
priori that specific genres, fields, or faiths are unique and thus
incomparable to others.
The second inhibition to the search for communalities is the
assertion that high culture is more virtuous than low (or vice
versa).11 In each of the areas-art, science, and religion-the
range of work contexts in which culture is produced can be
viewed as a continuum from the pure, basic, theoretical,
esoteric, or fine, to applied, practical, mundane, or popular.
Since these terms are evaluatively loaded, the former sort will
be called &dquo;academic&dquo; and the latter &dquo;commercial.&dquo; While these
terms, too, could be used normatively, they have the advantage
of highlighting the work context in which culture is produced.
In the religious realm, researchers have contrasted the
academic context where theology is created and modified with
the competitive world of popular religion (Bellah, 1964;
Heirich, 1974). In the arts, a cognate contrast has been drawn
between the realm of academic fine arts and the world of
mass-produced commercial art (Albrecht, 1973; Gans, 1974;
Peterson, 1972a, 1975). The academic-commercial dimension
does not seem to fit the case of science. As reflected in the
sociology of science literature at least, all scientists appear to
work in context at or near the &dquo;academic&dquo; end of the
continuum. But if one looks at the production and dissemina-
tion of cognitive knowledge more broadly, it is apparent that
the sociologists of science have focused on the elite academic
end of a continuum which also includes, near the commercial
end, engineering and popular science of diverse sorts which have
received scant scholarly attention of the sort advocated here. 12
Even less systematic attention has been focused on that murky
domain of discredited ideas where science, art, and religion
meld (Bainbridge, 1973).
Notwithstanding its utility, the academic-commercial distinc-
tion itself has hindered comparative analysis. As Selznick and
Selznick (1964), Nye (1970), and Gans (1974) have noted,
researchers have all too often absor-bed the self-serving ideologi-
cal assertions of the academic culture-creators they study.

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[676] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

Academic practitioners often elevate their own activity by

denigrating commercial culture as brutalizing, inauthentic, or
mere entertainment. The impact of commercial forms on their
consumers is a vital question, but too often a dehumanizing
effect is assumed, and the study of popular culture itself is
denigrated or dismissed as slumming. Such an elitist posture ill
becomes the spiritual children of Francis Bacon.
Taken together, the two habits of thought just described,
unique quest and false virtue, lead to a glorification of the
creator and foster the simplistic view that the unique creative
genius is always and everywhere threatened by the debasing
demands of culture consumers (Morris, 1956; Becker, 1963;
Guerard, 1969). This view systematically blinds the researcher
to the complex mediating infrastructure between the two. It is
perhaps the distinctive characteristic of the production-of-cul-
ture perspective that it focuses attention on this infrastruc-
ture. 13

MODES OF ANALYSIS

The production-of-culture perspective can be explored

through either of two alternative modes of analysis, one
synchronic and the other diachronic. Synchronic analysis
involves the comparative study of the production process from
creation to consumption. Of the numerous studies that have
been made, those at the &dquo;academic&dquo; end of the range have
focused primarily on the creation process, while most research
on the &dquo;commercial&dquo; end has focused on the latter stages of the
process. Among the numerous foci of inquiry in the synchronic
mode of analyses, the following seem most important: the
mechanisms by which &dquo;originality&dquo; and &dquo;innovation&dquo; are
judged; the effects of different means of financing production
(from patronage to market economy) on the sorts of symbols
produced; the means of managing tensions of seeking esoteric
group goals while being constrained by patrons and consumers
to produce practical products; the impact of technology and the
social organization of production on the kinds of symbols
produced; the impact of &dquo;gatekeepers&dquo; (company executives,

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 Peterson / PRODUCTION OF CULTURE [677]

editorial boards, museums, ecumenical councils, censors, ref-

erees, accountants); the contexts in which culture products are
used; and the impact of consumers on the production process.
The alternative mode of analysis is diachronic; here the effort
is to find patterns in the ways in which culture forms change
over time. Crane (1972: 129-142) has suggested that science,
art, and religion each go through cycles of the sort described by
Kuhn (1970) in which a phase of normal puzzle-solving within
established paradigms alternates with revolutionary periods in
which the paradigms themselves are altered. A second kind of
cycle can be seen in each of the areas. Periods of purity (art,
science, or theology for its own sake) alternate with periods
when the social responsibility of culture producers is accentu-
ated (Bensman and Gerver, 1958). Numerous other cyclical
trends have been identified in the arts (Peterson, 1975). Are
there comparable cycles in the other realms as well? To what
extent are cycle phases in the different areas parallel in time?
What sorts of forces propel the cycle, and to what extent are
they internal to the realm or based in the environing society?
Here again, the production-of-culture perspective opens up a
world of interesting research questions.

A GENETIC CONCEPTION OF CULTURE

The production perspective has been offered as a strategic

retreat necessary to get around the difficult-to-research ques-
tions about the society-culture relationship. While research on
the production of culture may strengthen one of the classical
perspectives mentioned above, there is some indication that it
will help to crystalize a new &dquo;genetic&dquo; perspective on the
society-culture relationship. Talcott Parsons (1973) has offered
the sketch for a genetic theory of culture, asserting that the
&dquo;materialist&dquo; versus &dquo;idealist&dquo; debate which fueled so much
sociological research over the past century has become increas-
ingly sterile. He suggests that we turn our backs on such
captivating classical questions as the association between pro-
testantism and capitalism or the link between liberal democracy
and an open class system. Drawing a parallel with developments

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[678] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

in biology, he notes that the cognate &dquo;nature versus nurture&dquo;

debate in biology was never resolved. Rather, it was supplanted
by a detailed search for the genetic mechanisms such as DNA
which, though trivial in their appearance, are the primary
determinants of biological pattern and continuity. For these
reasons, Parsons (1973: 45) suggests that mechanisms which
create the pattern and form of society will be discovered by
those of us working &dquo;in the human sciences dealing with
cultural matters.&dquo;
The orienting assumption of the genetic perspective is that
culture is the code by which social structures reproduce
themselves from day to day and generation to generation. In
this view, culture plays the same role in sociology as genetics
plays in biology.l44 The genetic perspective incorporates the
commitments of the production perspective mentioned above,
but it goes beyond the immediate milieux in which culture is
deliberately produced as an end in itself to focus on those
contexts where the culture code is inculcatedlwith or without
deliberate modification. 16 The family, education, and media
are clearly focal within this genetic perspective. Fully devel-

oped, it would cut across and suggest means of reintegrating

most of the substantive sociologies of - noted at the outset.
This fresh look at the concept &dquo;culture&dquo; as &dquo;produced&dquo; and
&dquo;genetic&dquo; is offered as a means of reinvigorating general
sociology. The first fruits of this joint venture into cultural
sociology are exemplified by, and cited in, the seven articles
which follow.

NOTES

1. A number of people were most helpful in nurturing the ideas reported here,
and I would particularly like to thank Peter Blau, Alvin Gouldner, Robert Merton,
Anthony Oberschall, Donald Ploch, Harrison White, and Mayer Zald. Funding for the
Vanderbilt Symposium for which this paper was written was provided by grants from
the National Science Foundation, Shell Foundation, and Vanderbilt University
Research Council. Russell Davis, Patsy Doherty, and Betsy Schmidt have given
unflagging assistance in producing the symposium and this special issue of the
American Behavioral Scientist. Each of the symposium participants commented on

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 Peterson / PRODUCTION OF CULTURE [679]

an earlier draft, and I would like particularly to thank the two discussants, Leo
Lowenthal and Bernard Beck, for their incisive comments. In addition, Bernard
Barber, Ivar Berg, Peter Berger, Pierre Bourdieu, Tom Burns, Priscilla Clark, Jerry
Gaston, Thomas Gutterboch, Alex Inkeles, Rene Konig, Rosanne Martorella, John
Meyer, Tim Patterson, Claire Peterson, Joachim Singelmann, Marcello Truzzi, and
Barbara Walters made specific useful suggestions on at least one of the earlier drafts.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my debt to Paul DiMaggio, who has commented
fruitfully from the earliest days of problem formulation to final editing.
2. In the final chapter of her study of invisible colleges of scientists, Diana
Crane (1972) notes that there are numerous similarities in the production of science,
art, and religion. Unhappy with the designation "sociology of knowledge," she proposes
"sociology of culture" for this common field. The prime difference between her
formulation and the one discussed here is that while she focusses on "high" science,
art, and religion, we would incorporate the analysis of the production of "low" or
popular culture in these three realms as well.
3. Of course it does violence to the ideas of many of the authors cited to place
them exclusively in one or another of these orientations; think, for example, of David
Riesman’s (1950) The Lonely Crowd . Most would argue that all three have some
utility, but the questions remain-where, when, and how?
4. A number of commentators have noted the lack of cumulative development
in the sociology of culture (Duncan, 1968; Crane, 1972; Parsons, 1973; Geertz,
1973). While differing in other respects, each calls for a greater focus on the ways in
which symbols are generated and changed.
5. Content can be focal for several quite different reasons. Symbolic artifacts
may be analyzed to learn about the workings of social systems. This is the strategy of
the structuralism developed by Levi-Strauss (Pettit, 1975). Alternatively, the content
of culture may be prime grist for the sociologically informed critic of society (cf.
Burns and Burns, 1973). Among American scholars at least, this tradition, which
dates back to the debates over the efficacy and ethics of socialist realism, was put
into eclipse in the 1950s by the paranoid excesses of McCarthyism. Yet today some
critic-essayists including Susan Sontag, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, Vincent Canby, and
Tom Wolfe regularly use elements of culture to assay the condition of society in a
way which research sociologists might find quite informative.
6. When symbol systems are deliberately fabricated or changed, they are usually
labelled "ideology" and considered quite apart from culutre (Peterson, 1972b:
15-16).
7. It is noteworthy that those polemical opponents Mills (1959) and Parsons
(1961) long since agreed that in complex industrial societies culture-symbol systems
are increasingly produced in self-conscious, limited milieux.
8. As Michael Useem has noted in correspondence, this progress in the sociology
of science has been bought at the price of accepting scientists’ own definition of their
domain as divorced from the rest of society, a focus which sets aside intriguing
questions about the changing place of the scientific community in society. That this
myopia is not inherent in the paradigm of culture production is suggested by his
work (cf. Useem, 1976) as well as that of Bourdieu (1975), Hierich (1976), and
others.
9. The focus on production should not obscure the fact that there is a
difference between producing a refrigerator on the one hand, and a president, a play,

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[680] AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

a law, a god, or a scientific formula on the other. In common these latter are invested
with symbolic meaning well beyond their utility, and their creators are vested, in
some degree, with "sacred" powers.
10. For example, contemporary American religious groups must compete for
"consumers" in a free competitive market (Heirich, 1974), and their every assertion
about the world is subject to the test of science. Science in turn is made by a
self-perpetuating elite of esoteric specialists. Yet, the relative power position of these
two systems of thought and the groups of persons who control them were very nearly
just the opposite in Europe only 500 years ago. See also Kavolis (1974).
11. Highly educated and for the most part from the middle class, academics are
thoroughly familiar with the high-culture critique of low culture. Because of their
experience, however, they are less exposed to the inverse critique. In their review of
the evidence on the injuries middle-class culture has had on the working class,
Sennett and Cobb (1972) have not explicated the lower-culture critique of high
culture. We are convinced, however, from work with the fans of country music, that
there is a widely felt, if not clearly articulated, moralistic critique of high culture
which is very nearly the same as the condemnation of low culture made by Haag and
Rosenberg (Peterson and DiMaggio, 1975).
12. A most interesting example of the sorts of investigations possible in this area
is provided by Kurt Back’s (1972) study of the sensitivity training and encounter
movement.
13. The research (cited in the references) made separately and in concert by
Denisoff, Hirsch, DiMaggio, Berger, and Peterson has shown that even in the
American commercial music industry, which is ostensibly devoted to giving the
buying public exactly what it wants, the numerous elements of the infrastructure
between creator and consumer significantly shape what the public gets. Similar
findings seem to be emerging from a study of the quite different French recording
industry being conducted by Jean-Pierre Vingolle and Antoine Hennion of the Ecole
Nationale Superieure des Mines.
14. To date, what we know suggests that society is reproduced by amorphous
mechanisms of a Lamarckian sort analogous to "acquired characteristics" in biology.
Thus, it is unlikely that a mechanistic DNA of culture will soon be discovered.
15. Inculcation has a harsh sound but, it has the same place for society as
socialization has for the individual.
16. No American general sociologist engaged in research today articulates this
is fundamental to the broad range of linked
view, but just such a conception
empirical studies being carried out at the Center for European Sociology of the
Sorbonne under the general direction of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu often employs an
economic metaphor in talking of cultural "stock," "capital," and "investments;" but
he also speaks of culture as "reproducing" society in a way cognate with the genetic
metaphor The Bourdieu group has not published a fully developed statement of its
perspective, but the range of its interests can be gauged by the projects described in
"Current Research," published by the Center for European Sociology in 1972, and in
its new journal, Actes de la Recherche en Scierices Sociales. The sophistication of this
research is exemplified in Bourdieu ( 1968, 1973, 1974, 1975) Bourdieu and Darbel
(1966) and Bourdieu and Passeron (1970)

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 Peterson / PRODUCTION OF CULTURE [681]

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