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Summary Cultural studies lecture notes and workgroup notes 1-12
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Week 1Read: Barker & Jane, Chapter 2 “Questions of Culture and Ideology” 44-49, 51-52, 55-56,
63-67, 71-72.
Key Concepts:
- Culture → Both the arts and the values, norms and symbolic goods of
everyday life. While culture is concerned with tradition and social
reproduction, it is also a matter of creativity and change. Meanings are
generated by collectives thus culture refers to shared meanings. Why does
it matter?
- Shapes how we think and (re)act
- Global exchanges and ncommunication are reshaping outlines of our cultures
- Studying it allows you to understand globalization, nationalism, custums and
rituals of people, communities, and groups.
- Cultures are never monolithic → it’s always dynamic and full of
contestation:
- Between elite and mass culture
- Between different global trends and local culture
- Between what is available in the mainstream and what is produced by
subculture.
- High culture → culture is the best of what society produces (literature, fine
art, classical music etc). Matthew Arnold (1822-1888):” Culture is a form of
human civiliation that counters the anarchy of the raw and uncultivated masses.
Culture is the best that has been thought and said in this world”
- Ordinary culture → culture is a society’s way of life. Lived experiences of a
group or community, traditions and habits of people. Cultural studies takes
this approach, an anthopoligical definition of culture
Key thinker
- Raymond Williams → 1921-88 Cambridge professor. Understanding of
culture as a whole way of life (working class experience and its everyday
construction) & the arts and learning. His work engages with Marxism but
is critical of its economic reductionism. 2 Aspacts: the known meanings
and directions, and the new observations and meanings. Culture is always
traditional and creative.
- We use the world culture in these two sensen to mean:
- a whole way of life: the common meanings
- the arts and learning: the special processes of discovery and creative effort.
Williams insists on both senses and on the significance of their conjunction.
- Cultural Materialism → Williams insists that culture be understood through
the representations and practices of daily life in the context of the
material conditions of their production. It involves the analysis of all forms
of signification within the actual means and conditions of their production.
Explores how and why cultural meaning is produced and organized. It
involves the exporation of signification in the context of the means and
conditions of its production. It’s concerned with the connections between
, cultural practice and political economy. Lived culture, recorded culture
and culture of selective tradition.
- Cultural materialism → is the analysis of all forms of signification of
cultural practices. You can’t isolate clulture from material conditions,
economic possibilities, social position of who creates this culture. Means
and conditions of production of culture are key (recall marxism!) Think of:
- Institutions: publisher, event organizer
- Formations: movements, types of cultural production
- Modes of production: infrastructure, money involved
- Identifications/forms of culture: style, aesthetic form that means something to
people
- Reproduction: what values and means are carried on/challenged?
- Organisation: close reading of all elements in their interaction
- Williams distinguishes three levels of culture:
- The lived culture
- The recorded culture of every kind from art to the most everyday facts
- The culture of selective tradition. The factor connecting lived and recorded
culture making selections about what to record and archive.
The focus on ordinary culture we call culturalism and/or Anthropological approach to culture
→ William’s concept of culture is anthopological since it centres on everyday
meanings:
values (abstract ideals), norms (definite principles of rules), and material/symbolic goods.
This gives it a democratic edge. Humanities traditionally study high culture in its Arnoldian
sense whereas cultural studies does both the elitist and mass culture and the tensions
between the two. This approach is taken:
- to understand how other cultures are impacted by globalization you need to study
ordinary culture
- to understand the impact of globalization means to learn how culture is intertwined
with politics and economics
- to understand a particular area of community you can look at ordinary culture.
Other key thinkers:
- Stuart Hall → Popular culture is an arena of consent and resistance in the
struggle over cultural meanings. It is the site where cultural hegemony is
secured or challenged.
- Karl Marx → Marxism is a philosophy that attempts to relate the production
and reproduction of culture to the organization of the material conditions
of life. Culture is a corporeal force tied int o the socially organized
production of the material conditions of existence.
Williams identifies three categories when defining the term culture. The first defining
category, the ‘ideal’, is where culture is viewed as a state of human perfection through
universal values. The ‘documentary’ category looks at culture as the body of intellectual and
imaginative work. Lastly the social definition of culture, describes it as being a way of life,
where certain meanings and values are formed in art, learning, institutions and so on.
Analysing culture, using this social definition, involves clarifying meanings and values within
a particular culture and way of life.
, Williams states that the term culture, is complex, and is unable to be categorised into a ‘neat
exclusive definition‘. Any theory of culture therefore should make reference to the three
outlined definitions. William’s defines the theory of culture, as the study of relationships
between elements, in a whole way of life. The analysis of culture is therefore, an attempt to
discover the nature of the organization, involved with and central to these relationships.
Week 2
Read: Barker & Jane, Chapter 2 “Questions of Culture and Ideology” 64-67, 71-72, 75-80,
Chapter 5 “A New World Disorder?” 163-169, 186-192
Key words:
- Ideology → the binding and justifying ideas of any social group. It is
commonly used to designate the attempt to fix meanings and worldview in
support of the powerful.
Here Ideology is said to be constituted by maps of meaning that, while they purport to
be universal truths, are historically specific understandings which obscure and
maintain the power of social groups (eg. class, gender, race). It provides you with
meaning and ankorage, it presents to be a universal truth which according to cultural
studies is false.
- Globalization → an increasing multidirectional economic, social, cultural
and political connections across the world and our awareness of them.
Globalization is associated with the institutions of modernity and time-
space compression or the shrinking world. Intensified compression of the
world:
- Economic interactions increasingly take place over the entire globe
- Communication technologies allow us to communicate with people around the
world
- Transportation technologies allow for easy transportation around the globe
Increasing consciousness of the world:
- We are more and more aware of the global economic flows
- We use global communication technologies daily and interact with different
parts of the world
- We are able to travel more widely and more easily around the globe
- Fordism → In present-day economic theory Fordism refers to a way of
economic life developed around the mass production of consumer goods,
using assembly-line techniques. A few large companies came to dominate
the key sectors of the economy, they dictated the market, and dictated
what consumers would be offered.
- Post-Fordism → Post-Fordism is the dominant system of economic
production, consumption, and associated socio-economic phenomena in
most industrialized countries since the late 20th century. Under Fordism,
the industrial worker had to work at a pace dictated by the speed of the
assembly line. Work was repetitive and often exhausting. Under Post-
Fordism, if you have job, you have to work at a speed dictated by
computers, and you are competing, wage-wise, with other desperate
people in low-wage countries.
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