In sociology, the term Low culture identifies the forms of

popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...

that have mass appeal, which is in contrast to

High culture High culture is a subculture that emphasizes and encompasses the cultural objects of aesthetic value, which a society collectively esteem as exemplary art, and the intellectual works of philosophy, history, art, and literature that a society con ...

, which has a limited appeal to a smaller proportion of the populace. Culture theory proposes that both high culture and low culture are

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...

s within a society, because each type of popular culture is mass produced by the

culture industry The term culture industry (german: Kulturindustrie) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment ...

, for every social class.

Standards and definitions

In ''Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste'' (1958), Herbert J. Gans defines and identifies ''Low culture'':

Culture as social class

Each

social class A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inc ...

possess their own types of high-culture and of low-culture, the definition and content of which are determined by the socio-economic and educational particulars, the '' habitus'' of the people who compose a given social class. Therefore, what is ''high culture'' and what is ''low culture'' has specific meanings and usages collectively determined by the members of a social class.

History

Physical artefacts from low culture are normally small, cheaply and often crudely made, in contrast to the often grand

public art Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...

or luxury objects of high culture. The cheapness of the materials, many perishable, generally means that survivals to modern times are rare. There are exceptions, especially in

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and ...

and

graffiti Graffiti (plural; singular ''graffiti'' or ''graffito'', the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from s ...

on stone. An

ostracon An ostracon (Greek: ''ostrakon'', plural ''ostraka'') is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeological or epigraphical context, ''ostraca'' refer to sherds or even small pieces of ston ...

is a small piece of pottery (or sometimes stone) which has been written on, for any of a number of purposes, among which

curse tablet A curse tablet ( la, tabella defixionis, defixio; el, κατάδεσμος, katadesmos) is a small tablet with a curse written on it from the Greco-Roman world. Its name originated from the Greek and Latin words for "pierce" and "bind". The tabl ...

s or more positive magical spells such as

love magic Love magic is the belief that magic can conjure sexual passion or romantic love. Love magic is often used in literature, like fantasy or mythology, and it is believed it can be implemented in a variety of ways, such as by written spells, dolls ...

are common. Wood must have been a common material, but only survives for long periods in certain climatic conditions, such as Egypt and other very arid areas, and permanently wet and slightly acid

peat bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; a ...

s. Once

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

(and paper) became relatively cheap, by the late

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ide ...

, popular prints became increasingly widespread, and cheap texts of street literature such as broadsides and sheets with

broadside ballad A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between t ...

s, typically new topical words to a familiar tune. These became extremely common, but were treated as

ephemera Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in ...

, so that survivals are few. Much traditional

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has ...

was only written down, and later mechanically recorded, in the 19th century, when nationalist sentiment in many countries made it of interest to middle class enthusiasts.

Mass media

Audience

All cultural products (especially high culture) have a certain demographic to which they appeal most. Low culture appeals to very simple and basic human needs plus offers a perceived return to innocence, the escape from real world problems, or the experience of living vicariously through viewing someone else's life on television.

Stereotypes

Low culture can be formulaic, employing trope conventions,

stock character A stock character, also known as a character archetype, is a fictional character in a work of art such as a novel, play, or a film whom audiences recognize from frequent recurrences in a particular literary tradition. There is a wide range of s ...

s and character

archetype The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...

s in a manner that can be perceived as more simplistic, crude, emotive, unbalanced, or blunt compared to high culture's implementations—which may be perceived as more subtle, balanced, or refined and open for interpretations.