I have argued in previous chapters that the theorisation of culture in sociology focused primarily on culture's role in social change, socialisation and everyday life; Marxist theorists went further, attempting to develop a cultural theory based in aesthetic problems seeking to elucidate the links between culture and different forms of art and literature. A major preoccupation shared by Marxists (notably Gramsci) and sociologists (especially Weber, Simmel and Parsons) was the growing autonomy of culture and the necessity to develop analytical concepts to address this issue. However, this emphasis on the principle of autonomy, while challenging reductionist accounts of culture and the non-problematic assimilation to specific elements in the social structure, never succeeded in adequately integrating the "ideal" with the social-material determinants of cultural forms and production. Culture became synomous with essentialist universal values, floating free of its social context. Thus Parsons, following Kant, identified a transcendent core of values, hopes and aspirations which, embedded in specific socio-historical contexts, form an autonomous cultural realm above material social life.