Cultural value is historically mobile as forms move between elite and popular

Evidence

These forms are frameworks for the creative life which, however, soon transcends them. They should also house the imitative life, for which, in the final analysis, there is no space left. They acquire fixed identities, a logic and lawfulness of their own; this new rigidity inevitably places them at a distance from the spiritual dynamic which created them and which makes them independent. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: What counts as popular culture is defined by power relations, not by content inventory; The bourgeoisie expropriated popular culture to legitimize its rule; Popular-class culture is always shaped by dominant cultural production institutions (+16 more)

Related

• Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined (similarity 0.85)
• Cultures represent themselves as fixed but are always changed by history (similarity 0.84)
• Culture is a constant battlefield with no permanent victories (similarity 0.82)
• Each cultural form is inevitably replaced by its successor (similarity 0.82)
• Culture names the forms, not the content, of social relationships (similarity 0.82)
• Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them (similarity 0.81)
• Popular-class culture is always shaped by dominant cultural production institutions (similarity 0.81)
• The popular is defined relationally by opposition to elite culture, not by its contents (similarity 0.81)
• What counts as popular culture is defined by power relations, not by content inventory (similarity 0.80)
• Even the swastika has no fixed cultural meaning (similarity 0.80)
• Culture as shared meaning-making became democratized rather than elite civilization. (similarity 0.79)
• Human culture originates in the socially mediated relation between man and nature (similarity 0.79)
• Objectified cultural forms always lag behind the life that created them (similarity 0.79)
• Tradition is about how elements are articulated, not about persistence of old forms (similarity 0.79)
• The tension between life and form drives cultural change. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them #complicates (0.78) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 837
• Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field #corroborates (0.75)
• Culture as shared meaning-making became democratized rather than elite civilization. #corroborates (0.70)
• Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound #corroborates (0.60)