A-Level Sociology: culture and identity

Culture and Identity is one of the four options in the first section of Paper 2 in A-level Sociology (for example, AQA A-level Sociology 7192), alongside Families and Households, Health, and Work, Poverty and Welfare. It asks what culture is, how people become social beings, and how identities are shaped by age, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexuality and class, and by consumption and globalisation. This material covers each of those areas.

The quiz opens with conceptions of culture. You recognise the Frankfurt School's critique of mass culture and the culture industry, identify folk culture, explain why one pupil's tastes count as cultural capital in Bourdieu's sense, and apply Ritzer's McDonaldisation to an invented coffee chain. Two questions on the self use Cooley's looking-glass self and Goffman's front-stage and back-stage behaviour.

The questions on identity then move group by group: a British Asian teenager's hybrid identity, Butler's idea that gender is performative, Anderson's nation as an imagined community, Skeggs's working-class women seeking respectability, and the difference between the medical and social models of disability. The last question sets the postmodern view that identity is built through consumption against the criticism that choice depends on income. Age and sexuality appear in the flashcards and written work.

Every quiz question describes an invented person, group or organisation, has one defensible answer, and comes with an explanation that places the idea in the structure-and-action debate and adds a criticism.

The material offers four formats. The 12-question quiz explains each answer. The 17-card flashcard deck covers the key concepts, from high and folk culture to the Great British Class Survey. The printable written work sets eight open questions, from comparing structural and interactionist views of socialisation to assessing whether class is still a source of identity, with ruled space for handwritten answers that are then checked. The oral exam puts you in front of an examiner who asks one question at a time, follows up on your reasoning and gives brief feedback at the end.

Use it if you are studying the Culture and Identity option, or to add evidence on identity to answers in education, media and beliefs.

• Distinguish high, popular, folk, mass, sub- and global culture and evaluate the Frankfurt School and Bourdieu
• Explain socialisation and the social construction of the self using Cooley, Mead and Goffman
• Explain identity in relation to ethnicity, gender and nationality using hybrid identities, Butler and Anderson
• Assess the significance of class, age, sexuality and disability for identity
• Evaluate the postmodern view that identity is constructed through consumption and globalisation

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the Culture and Identity option of A-level Sociology specifications (for example AQA A-level Sociology 7192, specification version 1.2, section 4.2.1).