This summary contains all the lectures and additional information from the handbook "Understanding Culture" by Babette Hellemans. The document is structured as followed. The first part is about the key terms and their defintions whereby, I also mention the scholars relating to the concepts and in w...
The main aspects of all the chapters and all key terms
October 18, 2018
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2018/2019
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cultural history
understanding culture
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Summary 'theme cultural history'
Samenvatting Cultuurgeschiedenis
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Patricia Leistner
Key terms
- Agency = ability of individual/ group to think + act autonomously actions could
affect (cultural) process (Chapter 4,6)
- Allegory = form of imagery personifying an abstract concept
- Anthropology = study of societies, cultures + their development (in present + past)
Objective view of society + culture with regard to social environment (chapter 1-6)
- Atheism = worldview in which it is assumes that there is no such thing as ‘the divine’
(chapter 2)
- Axiom = generally accepted. Self-contained principle needs no further proof
- Bildung = “self-development” 19th ct ideal people develop into better version of
themselves (related to German ‘historians’, ex: Burkhardt but also Gramsci)
- Binarity (binary thinking) literally: duality thinking in opposites, no middle ground
- Canon = whole of (written) work contributing to a frame of reference (chapter 5-6,
Pierre Nora, remind that the western literary canon influenced history writing from the
‘beginning’)
- Causality = link between cause + effect
- Chauvinism = extreme form of patriotism compromises biased opinion + + blind
loyalty to one’s own affairs
- Close reading = accurate, detailed study of a literary text
- Constructivism = arrive at construction of past using source material construction
can’t be compared with past itself (Past = gone)
Possible to compare different constructions deepen understanding of subject
- Determinism = everything is caused by laws each event = definite cause (chapter 3
relation to Marxist determinism, chapter 4 feminism & biological determinism)
- Diachrony =development occurring over time
- Dichotomy = differentiation of a variable into 2 categories, ex: sex = woman + man
(chapter 3 Strauss, chapter 4 Julia Kristeva & gender studies, chapter 5 Homi Bhabha
& hybridity)
- Discourse = way something is discussed linguistic construct/ framework in which
word gets meaning (chapter 2 Febvre, chapter 3 Hayden White & Lacan, Foucault &
épistème, new historicism Chapter 4 Thompson & Joan W. Scott & Canning:
experience as discourse
- Emancipation = striving for equality + recognition for disadvantaged groups (chapter
4)
- Epistemology = Literally: theory of knowledge nature of knowledge + its origin =
examined (chapter 6 Foucault & history of senses) = what is knowledge? How do we
know what we know?
Difference with épistème: episteme is scientific knowledge a principled system
of understanding
- Eschatology = doctrine concerning final or ultimate things, ex: gathering of
knowledge about end of (individual) life or world
- Establishment = group (usually from upper layer) lays down the law in society
(chapter 2 Begriffsgeschichte)
- Aesthetics = branch of philosophy dealing with art + various forms of beauty + taste
, Patricia Leistner
- Ethics = branch of philosophy dealing with good + evil and moral conduct
- Ethnology = study of different ‘races’ focus: cultural + social differences (chapter
2 Strauss, Chapter 5 interest in non-western cultures)
- Exegesis = English speakers referring to explanations of Scripture since early 17th ct
Today mainly associated with the Bible
- Feminism = social + political movement, emerged from wish that women receive
same rights as men (chapter 4 Feminist theory, Beauvoir)
- Fetishism = originally (in anthropological context) assignment of supernatural,
external forces to object + the idolatry of those objects
- Free will = ability of individual to act independent (chapter 4 Beauvoir on men)
- Gender = Female or male (chapter 4 gender studies s. Butler & Kristeva)
- Hegemony = dominance of ruling class resulting in manipulation of other social
groups (chapter 4 Gramsci cultural hegemony, chapter 6 visual hegemony)
- Hermeneutics = theory of interpretation key: to understand a text we have to
imagine ourselves in situation described (chapter 1 Dilthey)
- Holism (> holistic aspect) = emphasis on interrelated whole (not on different separate
parts)
- Iconography = scientific discipline dealing with depiction of people, animals or
objects in art addresses deeper significance of it (symbolism as important part)
(chapter 6 art history)
- Quantitative research = researching numerical data
- Linguistic turn = turning point in 1960s Lang. = prominent role in History +
determines our perspective on reality
Study language to understand how groups of people perceive reality
paradigm shift (away from purely social explanation for change in culture)
roots in structuralism (explicitly mentioned in chapter 1 new cultural history, but
all scholars writing after 1960 are influenced by it)
- Linguistics = scientific discipline insights into language + its use focus on how
language developed + underpinning structures (chapter 3 Saussure & linguistic
structuralism)
- Mediation (from media studies) = interrelation between change of communication +
sociocultural changes (in past + present) (chapter 6 culture as societal function)
- Metaphor = someone making comparison between 2 things with no connection at first
glance, ex: my love is a rose
- Narrativity = narrative elements in texts important = the (logical) underlying
relationships between events reproduced in a text (chapter 3 narrativity, Saussure
consequences for understanding culture)
- Subconscious = collection of intuitive mechanisms + mental processes (emotions,
feelings) influence one’s behaviour without being aware of it (chapter 2 Freud &
psychoanalysis, chapter 3 new historicism)
- Patriarchy = term used for a society in which men = superior position in relation to
women men = active role & women = passive (chapter 4 Feminist theory)
- Polis (ancient Greece) = political form of organisation + unit of society (city-state)
- Postmodernism = movement in philosophy + arts developed in 1960s
Believe: every individual looks at reality from his/ her own perspective
Truthful statements or depictions = illusion (chapter 2 Lacan & the perfect other)
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