Defining “Culture” and Understanding how Cultures Change Part 1—The Bagel

Sociologists define “culture” as the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define themselves, conform to society’s shared values, and contribute to society.  I am interested in how the “culture” changes, and specifically, how the culture has drifted in recent years from its foundational attitudes, beliefs and practices. The “American” culture encompasses a number of sub-cultures based on race, religion, ethnicity, location, work, education, etc. Two sub-cultures are particularly salient to our discussion of “cultural drift.”  The first of these is what I will call the “elite sub-culture,” which consists of people who are the most educated and influential: writers, reporters, artists, academics, political leaders, celebrities of various stripes, and pundits.  The second sub-culture is everybody else, the mass sub-culture.

Cultural change.  There are many sources of cultural change –technological innovations and diffusion, contact with other cultures, major historical events such as war or economic downturns, etc.  Let’s look at a simple example of cultural change that occurred in the mass culture –the bagel. Bagels came to America with large-scale immigration of Eastern European Jewish communities between 1880 and WWI (How Raphael Peale knew about bagels in his 1818 painting above is unclear).  They remained largely confined to this ethnic niche until the 1950s when Family Circle Magazine published a recipe for bagels to be used as the basis for smoked salmon canapès. In 1958, Harvey Lender invented a process to mass produce bagels, and soon bagels were appearing in supermarkets in the bread aisles, not separated as kosher foods. Later bagels appeared on the menus of fast food chains like McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts.

Then adaptation set in –bagels now come in blueberry and asiago cheese flavors among others (all of which would cause my grandmother, who knew only plain and pumpernickel, to plotz). In Japan, which imports three million bagels a year, you can find green tea, chocolate, maple-nut, and banana-nut flavors. 

The spread of the bagel is a typical example of small-scale gradual cultural change that occurs in the mass culture. A new cultural object is brought into the mainstream culture (in this case, by immigrants), slowly (over 100 years) becomes embedded in that culture, and then, sparked by technological change that makes mass market expansion possible, diffuses across the mainstream through traditional marketing mechanisms. It spreads because of the invention of a complimentary food (cream cheese), because it isn’t too different from what is traditionally eaten, and because it begins getting notice in mainstream media (in this case Family circle). Eventually it finds new marketing channels (fast food establishments) and becomes less an ethnic food than a mainstream food. This is largely how other foods such as hamburgers and tacos became widely popular.

But however far the bagel has spread it remains precious to those of us who eat it with cream cheese and lox.

The boiled, baked dough, excites one so,
As if by impulse Vagal,
Bite through the crust, with passion, lust,
Possess the inner Bagel.
In Joy or Woe, jaded and low,
While scanning Marx or Hegel,
What food is more simpatico,
Thrills more than Lox on Bagel.

Larry Eisenberg

The next post will discuss a much more important cultural change –the increasing acceptance of homosexuality.