Culture Industry

In the modern world, there are changes that have led to creation of a comfort zone which is more like an imaginary zone where human beings comfort themselves in an imaginary world. These comfort zones are intended to comfort human beings from the numerous pressures of earning a living that have come up due to the increasing competition for the opportunities and the limited resources at the disposal of the existing population. It is these competitions that have led to creation of the culture industry which is hyped by the media such as televisions, print media and the radio. Culture industries can simply be explained to mean the changes in cultural characteristics brought about by human beings under the influence of the changing lifestyles. However, most of the comfort zones created by human beings are capitalistic in nature and they are intended for gaining wealth for those who create them.

As used in the mid-20^th century, culture industry was used to refer to the human beings social, political and economic positioning. These as are explained as the parameters for defining where a person can be categorized culturally (Steinert 2002). Although they are the main contributors towards categorization of a person to a certain culture, they are not wholly representative of what constitutes belonging to a certain culture. For instance, a person's social characteristics may not totally subscribe to the culture to which the person is classified to belong. A person's social behavior is as a result of various characteristics and so constricting it to the few social characteristics will be limiting the diversity in cultures.

Therefore according to the criteria as it was in the mid-20^th century, a person may have been restricted to belonging to a certain culture just because they exhibited certain social characteristics. There may be several other characteristics that can make the person to be classified to another cultural group or even to several other cultural classifications which recognize and share the same social characteristics (Steinert 2002).

It was also common to find that at about the same period, peoples' economic characteristics were aligned along certain economic activities and also based on how much they owned (Cook1996). Therefore the people were classified as belonging to a certain culture based on their economic characteristics. There were cultural groups formed behind activities such as herding, modeling and farming. These were however simulations just formed within human beings mind but with a critical observation, economic characteristics of a person or a group of people should not be used to classify them as belonging to a certain cultural group. It is possible to find people that have only that single characteristic making them to be classified as abiding to a certain culture but they should be classified to other cultures if the other factors were to be considered in classifying them (Cook1996).

There was also the heavy tendency to classify people as belonging to a certain cultural group based on their political ideologies (Langer 1988). Those who abided to certain political ideologies were thought to belong to certain cultural groups. This has continued to the present and especially in most developing countries. Most of the political groups are formed along the traditional cultural lines and the leaders usually belong to the said cultural groups (Buchloh 2003). The political leaders get close to total political support from the people who belong to the same cultural group as them. However, there are people who are restricted to identifying themselves to certain political groups only because they want to attain political gains. Others fear intimidation from the bigger groups even if their political ideologies are unpopular and therefore they identify themselves with the cultural groups that they are unwilling to join (Langer 1988).

Culture industry or cultural industry as the later acquired coined name was developed by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their essay "The Culture industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" (Huntyk 2001). It is based on the nature of human beings whereby they attempt to gain popularity each for their own culture which they think is the best. Every human being is usually convinced that whatever is theirs is what holds more value than what others hold. Therefore human beings try to convince other people to agree that their culture is the best. It is not uncommon to find a person defending a trait he or she has or their ownership of certain things which to other people they are valueless or they may be even offensive.  

Theodor and Max pointed out that human beings human beings are very much controlled in their behavior by what their culture upholds as being right and they ensure they remain within what is culturally acceptable regardless of how the same attribute is viewed by other cultural groups. However, most of the cultural practices are relatively acceptable across all cultural organizations but it is not a guarantee that one cultural practice will be acceptable across the different cultural groups. The theory used by Theodor and Max is based on the three major components of a cultural description which are the social, economic and political characteristics of a community. Their theory of culture industry was later revised and renamed "culture industries" which is thought to be more inclusive as it includes other modern factors that are used to popularize a culture such as the electronic media such as television and radio and also through print media such as magazines and books (Berry, Liscutin and Mackintosh 2009).

Although the theory is considerate of the three major contributors that define the cultural characteristics of the various communities, it fails to consider that there exists a major dynamism for all cultural groups. These are the already existing differences and also the differences that have developed over time and they have been adopted by the different communities as one of their characteristics. These changes are unexplained by the theory on how they will be considered in future as more changes are expected with time as the world is changing quickly. Culture industry has also been commercialized over time so much so that some cultures are losing their original traits to other communities which have used those characteristics for commercial gain (Hesmondhalgh 2007).

Therefore there has come up a new commercialized culture which has its emphasis on commercial gain. The traits that are generally viewed as strong points in a different culture are modified by other cultural groups with a materialistic approach. Some people have started selling products that were originally produced by people abiding to different cultural groups. This has led to the products losing their cultural meaning and value as it was attached to them initially. Commercialization of other aspect of cultures has made them lose the intended meaning but in culture industry this was not considered (Ward 2008). Culture industry also failed to consider that there were likely changes which would overrun the original value of the each culture. It is therefore even culture industries which tried to acknowledge other factors affecting what a specific culture is made of (Ward 2008).

Culture industries also failed to consider that with time there would be a change in characteristics of certain cultures as a result of migration (Budde 1998). Most of the traditional cultures were closely interrelated due to people being placed in a specific geographical area. However, with time there has been movement of people from different regions and they interchange their cultural practices and in the process some practices are dropped while others are modified to fit the several cultures situated in the same place (Dorland 1996).

Conclusion

Culture industry is a desirable model for analyzing the cultural dynamism and the changes that have occurred to human behavior as associated to certain cultures. Its limitation to the three major aspects defining the cultural characteristics of all the groups cannot be used to define the cultural characteristics as time progresses. There are changes that are happening which cannot be accommodated for over time there are changes happening to humanity which shape the different cultures differently. Although the later coined term of "culture industries" is more inclusive, it also failed to consider the other changes such as migration and technology which have affected culture characters so much. These changes can be incorporated in later theories which will be focused on the changes occurring in a fast changing world. Therefore the culture industries cannot be said to be effective in defining the changing aspects of the cultures.