Last Updated on October 9, 2025 by Karl Thompson
Culture and Identity is an module on the AQA’s A-level Sociology specification. It is usually taught in the first year of study.
The AQA specification sates that for Culture and Identity students are required to understand:
- different conceptions of culture, including subculture, mass culture, folk culture, high and low culture, popular culture and global culture.
- socialisation process and the role of the agencies of socialisation.
- the self, identity and difference as both socially caused and socially constructed.
- the relationship of identity to age, disability, ethnicity, gender, nationality, sexuality and social class in contemporary society.
- the relationship of identity to production, consumption and globalisation.
This page provides links to in-depth and summary posts on the above content. It should be sufficient to cover the whole of the culture and identity specification.
To explore more topics across the A-level sociology specification, please visit my A-level Sociology homepage where you’ll find resources on education, families, crime, theory, methods and more.
🏛️ Culture
Culture refers to the shared norms and values of a group.
In A-level sociology (AQA) students are required to understand different conceptions of culture, including subculture, mass culture, folk culture, high and low culture, popular culture and global culture.
🔗 Explore posts:
- What is Culture?
- Four Types of Culture
- Culture: Functionalist Perspectives
- Marxism and Culture
- Mass Culture
- Dominic Strinati: A Critique of Mass Culture Theory
- Herbert J Gans: The Plurality of Taste Cultures
- Raymond Williams
- John Berger’s Was of Seeing
- Bourdieu’s Cultural Capital Theory
- Culture, Class and Distinction
- Postmodernism and Popular Culture
- Global Culture
- The Postmodern Perspective on Globalisation and Popular Culture
👨👩👧 Socialisation
Socialisation is the process of learning culture — how individuals internalise society’s norms and values through families, schools, peers and media.
In A-level sociology students are required to understand the socialisation process and the role of the agencies of socialisation.
🔗 Explore posts:
- An Introduction to Culture, Socialisation and Social Norms
- Socialisation
- What is Socialisation?
- Feminist Perspectives on Socialisation
- Gender Socialisation in Schools
🪞 The Self and Identity
Students must grasp the social construction of the self — drawing on social action theory, symbolic interactionism, and postmodern views of identity.
🔗 Explore posts:
- An Introduction to Social Action Theory
- Social Interactionism and Socialisation
- Symbolic Interactionism
- Herbert Blumer’s Theory of Society
- The Presentation of the Self in EveryDay Life
- The Postmodern Subject
- Comparing Post and Late Modern views of the Self
👥 Social Identity
Identity relates to age, gender, ethnicity, class, nationality, sexuality, and disability.
🔗 Explore posts:
Social class
- The Great British Class Survey
- Social Class and Identity
- A Brief History of Class Identification in Britain
- Britain’s New Ordinary Class Elite
- The Precariat
Gender and Sexuality
Ethnicity
Age
- Age and the Life Course
- Defining Youth
- Neo-marxist theories of youth subcultures
- The Transition from Youth to Adulthood in Modern Britain
- Ageing in the UK
- Old Age
- Ageism
- Generational Inequality Keeps on Growing
- Income and Wealth Differences by Age in the U.K.
- The Exploitation of Young People in the UK
- The Myth of the Generational Divide
📊 External data: Ethnicity facts and figures – regional diversity
Globalistion and Identity
Explores the relationship between identity, production, consumption and globalisation.
National Identity
- Nations as Imagined Communities
- Types of Nationalism
- Nationalism and Modernity
- Nations and Nationalism in Developing Countries
- Nations Without States
The relationship of identity to production, consumption and globalisation
- Globalisation, Nations and National Identity
- Modern and Postmodern Subcultures
- Neo-Tribes
- Sarah Thornton Club Cultures
Exam questions
- Outline and explain two ways in which consumption may be affected by social class (10)
📚 References
- AQA (2025). A-Level Sociology Specification (7192).
- Giddens, A. & Sutton, P. (2021). Sociology (10th ed.) Polity.
- Hall, S. (1992). The Question of Cultural Identity.
- Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.