Summary
Samenvatting Cultural media studies Communicatiewetenschappen
- Course
- Institution
Samenvatting Cultural media studies Communicatiewetenschappen
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
michelledewit
Reviews received
Content preview
Cultural media studies –Communicatiewetenschappen
What is popular culture?
Popular culture defined by what it is not
• Culture (Raymond Williams: 3 definitions)
o A general process of intellectual, spiritual and aesthetic development
o A particular way of life (connected to place, time and communities)
▪ Usually referred to as lived cultures or practices
o Products and practices of intellectual and artistic activity
▪ Usually referred to as texts
• Ideology (5 definitions)
o Systematic body of ideas and justification of ideas of any social group
o Indicates how texts and practices present distorted images of reality
▪ Masking, distortion or concealment
▪ Produce ‘false consciousness’
▪ supports the powerful to maintain worldviews
▪ subordinate classes do not see themselves as oppressed
o ‘ideological forms’ draw attention to the way in which texts present an image of the world
▪ Society as conflictual rather than consensual
▪ Texts consciously or unconsciously take sides in this conflict
o Ideology operates mainly at the level of connotations
▪ Attempt to make universal and legitimate what is in fact partial and particular
▪ Attempt to pass of cultural as natural
o Not simply a body of ideas, but a material practice
▪ Practices of everyday life (rituals, customs… binding us to the social order)
> Popular culture is political, because it is a continuous struggle over ideology
Popular culture (6 definitions)
• Culture that is widely favoured or well liked by many people
o Quantitative index (necessary but not enough)
o Useless as a conceptual definition
• Left over after we have decided what is high culture
o Popular culture as residual category
o Texts &practices that fail to meet required standards to qualify as high culture
o Difficulty = exclusive status and high culture legitimates social differences
o Popular culture as mass-produced commercial culture
o Division is thought to be clear, trans-historical and fixed for all time
• As mass culture
o Produced for mass consumption
o Taken our dreams, packaged them and sold them back to us (Maltby)
• Originates from ‘the people’
o Instead of imposed on the people
o Romanticised concept of working-class culture
o Who qualifies as the people?
o Ignores commercial nature > people do not spontaneously produce culture from
raw materials of their own making, materials are commercially provided
• Site of struggle between the ‘resistance’ of subordinate groups and the forces of
‘incorporation’ operating in the interests of dominant groups
o Terrain of ideological struggle between dominant and subordinate classes
, o Area of negotiation
o Theory of reading positions (Hall)
▪ Subordinate
▪ Dominant
▪ Negotiated
o Theories of popular culture are really about the constitution of ‘the people’
• Postmodern culture no longer recognizes distinction between high and popular culture
> popular culture only emerged following industrialization and urbanization
> idea of culture depends on a capitalist market economy
Popular culture
• The art of making do (Fiske)
o The culture of everyday life lies in the creative discriminating use of the recourses
that capitalism provides
o people need not to be seen as passive dupes of a commercial popular culture, we need
to distinguish between a financial and cultural economy
▪ in a cultural economy, the circulation is not money, but meanings and pleasures
• Shapes our identities
o People attach to popular culture’s meanings, finding subject positions with which they
can identify with (or resist)
• not a historically fixed set of popular texts and practices, nor a historically fixed category.
Culture is plural and should be situated contextually.
• (Popular) culture is about power and ideology: social conflict!
• Popular culture is about taste, values, norms and morals
• We can study popular culture by looking at texts or cultural practices
Media in popular culture
• mass media have been the vehicle for communicating the many texts of (popular) culture
• Media have also become increasingly interwoven into our ways of life
• Some thinkers argue our cultural life cannot be seperated from media anymore, we live a life
‘in’ media
• asking questions about power, ideology and media are becoming increasingly important, but
also complex
• Roger Silverstone
o major voice in the study of media culture, in particular on thinking about media,
morality and ethics
o how does media culture contribute to the exercise of power in society
▪ within politics
▪ within society
▪ within our everyday life
o responsibility of those studying media culture is taking a position
▪ ‘Understanding cannot be morally neutral because understanding is based
in identification of common humanity and the rights of others’
The ‘culture and civilization’ tradition
The ‘culture and civilization tradition’ characteristics
• Situated mainly in Britain, but some ideas expanded to U.S., Western Europe
, • 19th C until 1950’s – but ideas still persist today
o A period of important social change (industrialization and urbanization)
o ‘The masses’ are organising themselves, a meaningful popular culture of the working
class comes into being, which functions not only as a means for cohesion and pleasure,
but also to express political agitation
• Cultural critics/intellectuals
o Popular culture as an uncontrolled form of leisure: danger to society
▪ Threatens religion, morals and social order
> threatening “culture and civilization”
• Binary thinking about culture: High vs low
• Elite Minority vs majority/masses
• Culture vs anarchy
• Conservative and nostalgic: Pre-industrial society
• Top down: social order
Matthew Arnold: start cultural criticism
• Cultural critic, poet, educator
• Victorian England
o time of economic prosperity, strong conservative morals
• Culture begins by meaning 2 things
o Body of knowledge
▪ “the best that has been thought and said”
o To make reason and the will of God prevail
▪ Moral, social and beneficial character of culture becomes manifest
▪ “culture being a pursuit of our total perfection”
• Attain culture by active use of reading, reflection and observation
• Culture is now
o The ability to know what is best
o What is best
o The mental and spiritual application of what is best
o The pursuit of what is best
• Cultural criticism
o Normative: defense of the dominant order
o Victorian, bourgeois morality and values
• Culture as having a ‘social function’
o Policing the ‘raw and uncultivated masses’
• Division of society
o Barbarians (aristocracy)
o Philistines (middle class)
o Populace (working class)
> under all class divisions, there is a common basis of human nature
• The role of the state
o A strong state that claims cultural authority to overcome anarchy
• The role of education
o The ‘road to culture’
o The civilization of the middle and working class through ‘culture’
• Upward mobility
o Trough culture/art
o Yet limited for the working class
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller michelledewit. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $5.41. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
67866 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now