Culture names the forms, not the content, of social relationships

Evidence

Now, since each mode of material and social organization was historically specific, so the forms of social life corresponding to it was bound to assume a “definite” and historically distinct shape and form. “This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather, it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce it” (Marx and Engels, The German Ideology ). The social and material forms of production, the way labor was organized and combined with tools to produce, the level of technical development, the institutions through which goods circulated and value was realized, the types of civil association, of family life and of the state appropriate to it—this ensemble of relations and structures exhibited an identifiable configuration, a pattern, a “mode of living” for the social individuals and groups within it. This patterning was, so to speak, the result of the interconnections between the different levels of social practice. The pattern also expressed how the combined result of these interconnecting levels was “lived,” as a totality, by its “bearers.” This seems to be the best way of grasping, within a materialist theory (in which the term itself plays no insignificant part), where precisely culture arises. To put it metaphorically, “culture” refers us to the arrangement—the forms —assumed by social existence under determinate historical conditions. Provided the metaphor is understood as of heuristic value only, we might say that if the term “social” refers to the content of the relationships into which men involuntarily enter in any social formation, then “culture” refers to the forms which those relationships assume. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 882

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines culture within materialist theory as the forms of social relationships, as opposed to their social content.
• XREF: This form/content framing of culture connects to how cultural studies later distinguishes culture from base/superstructure, and to how economic analysis treats culture as productive rather than epiphenomenal. — connects to: Society provides the categories of thought, not the content of taxonomies; The popular is defined relationally by opposition to elite culture, not by its contents; Popular culture is defined by its tension with dominant culture — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1011 (+20 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 882

Broader Connections

• Social forms can be classified by the interpersonal distances they create #expands (0.82) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 81
• Society provides the categories of thought, not the content of taxonomies #corroborates (0.80)
• The popular is defined relationally by opposition to elite culture, not by its contents #corroborates (0.75)
• Popular culture is defined by its tension with dominant culture #corroborates (0.60) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1011