Q.How is culture connected to a person's sense of identity? Explain what is meant by a 'subculture', with an example.
A person's identity is not something fixed at birth; it is built up over time, jointly by the individual and the group, through relationships with other people. One important source of identity is the set of social roles a person performs -- in a modern society, usually several roles at once, each carrying its own specific responsibilities and expectations. But performing a role is not, by itself, enough to secure an identity from it; the role also has to be recognised and acknowledged by others. This recognition often happens through a group's shared, distinctive language or code -- for instance, students develop their own particular ways of referring to teachers, classmates and school events, building a private world of meaning that marks who is an insider, which is precisely how culture becomes bound up with a person's sense of who they are: identity is not private and internal alone, it depends on culturally shared codes of recognition.
A subculture is a smaller group operating within a larger culture, marked out by its own distinctive style, taste and associations -- recognisable through things like characteristic speech, dress, preferred music, or a particular manner of interacting within the group. A helpful example is a neighbourhood group of young people who form a club to pursue sports or similar activities together. The shared activity gives the group its own internal structure of leaders and followers, bound together by a common purpose; but just as importantly, it gives its members a positive self-image and, through the recognition the group earns from the wider neighbourhood, a distinct collective identity that sets the group apart from others in the area -- an identity that exists only because the group is recognised, from outside, as different.
Culture connects to identity because identity is built through social roles that must be recognised by others via shared cultural codes, not simply performed privately. A subculture is a smaller group within a larger culture, marked by its own distinct style, taste, speech or dress -- for example, a neighbourhood youth club whose shared activity and recognition by the wider community gives its members a collective identity distinct from the surrounding culture.
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