Well, no. How does commercial advertising function to alter the social status of demands? It works on the individual level by building a false social image, and when that false social image becomes institutionalised by individuals, actual society conforms more closely to the false image.
So is culture essentially subjective or intersubjective?
If culture is subjective than we can understand it through though the internalized meanings that people give to concepts that vary person to person. So culture doesn't exist in any real sense.
If culture is intersubjective then we can understand it as shared symbols and meanings, that are socially determined rather than resulting from the individual internalizing social values. Individuals don't determine meanings, and may not even be aware that what they believe to be their own opinion results from social influence not individual choice. In a real sense, we are not entirely "free to choose" with our decisions being conditioned by social rules. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Societal structures and individual social behavior are in a mutually self-reproducing loop. Societal structures are composed of rules and common understandings distributed among individuals, and they constrain and enable individual social behavior. In turn, it is those individual social behavior that creates those rules and common understanding.
That is, at least, my view of it. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
