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Summary Cultural Studies lecture notes 1-12 except 10
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Cultural Studies Leiden University lecture notes. Lecturer: Bram Ieven. Lecture notes from .
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Cultural StudiesLecture 1 (ch 2 and 5): What is culture and how to use Cultural
Studies in International Studies
Today:
- Introduction to the definition of culture that CS works with
- Couple of the heritages of CS
- Looking at the influence of Marxist theory on CS
- Criticism of CS on Marxist theory
- Globalization
Core concepts
Every lecture focuses on core concepts (cf. syllabus for the list)
Make sure you can define and explain these concepts (exams)
And use them in an analysis of culture (writing assignment, exam)
Today’s key concepts: culture, class, ideology, hegemony
Course goals: the starting point is..
That cultures are never monolithic – there are always tensions, culture is dynamic and full of
contestation. For example: Dutch culture is not monolithic, it has different issues, different
elements. When you look into a culture it will always be diverse, full of contestations, always
be dynamic and constantly changing.
There is a contestation between (examples of why culture can never be thought of
monolithic)
Elite and mass culture
Different global trend and local culture
What is available in the mainstream and what is produced by subcultures
Why culture matters:
- Because it shapes how we think and how we act
- Because global exchanges and communication are reshaping the outlines of our
cultures
- Because studying culture allows you to understand globalization, nationalism,
customs and rituals of people
Examples:
- Personal space; it is a cultural determined phenomenon.
- The different cultural significances of a swastika; relevant to understand different
cultures
1
,What is culture? Culture is a contested concept
Culture is one of two or three most complicated words in the English language
As Raymond Williams says:
- Noun: growing crops
Working on the land culture is a material thing; it is grounded in material activity
- Expanded: cultivating the mind (Bildung)
Civilization of mind: by studying (culture), reading the best books available
- Culture as lived experience connected to a specific group (19th century)
Romantic concept; really about traditions and how these traditions help you create a
sense of identity.
The Cultural Studies approach:
Don’t ask what culture is. Ask what culture does, how it’s used etc.
Culture is not out there, its created, performed, enacted, transformed
Culture is dynamic, changing, continually contested
Two possible definitions of culture
High culture: culture is the best of what a society produces
- Literature
- Fine arts
- Ballet, classical music etc.
High culture (Culture with a capital C)
Culture is… ‘the best that has been thought and said in the world’ (Mathhew Arnold).
CS will criticise Matthew Arnold. Civilization at large.
Culture is… the high point of civilization
Culture is… the concern of an educated minority (F.R. Leavis)
Ordinary culture: culture is a society’s way of life
- Everyday lived experience of a group or community
- Traditions and habits of people
Cultural Studies takes the ordinary culture approach:
An anthropological definition of culture
Culture is… ordinary
Culture… belongs to a group of people
Culture is… about everyday meanings: values, norms, material/ symbolic goods
The focus on ordinary culture we call culturalism
- The ordinariness of culture
- The active, creative capacity of common people to construct shared meaningful
practices.
2
,Why this matters? ‘The democratic edge’
- Humanities traditionally study high culture in its ‘Arnoldian’ sense (i.e. as a canon of
the ‘best’ literary and artistic texts available), with little or no regard for ordinary
culture
- Cultural studies uses a broad, anthropological definition of culture, and studies both
elite and mass culture. It studies the tensions between these two, and looks at how
ordinary people give meaning to their lives through culture. This gives it a democratic
edge.
A little more in depth: Raymond Williams (1921-1988) and Culture
How did this concept of culture came about?
Three major figures in the history of CS
Richard Hoggart: The uses of Literacy
His book didn’t discuss for example Shakespeare, but the way that ordinary people use their
ability to read what the impact of reading was on culture and on English society. He tried to
understand how culture (the ability to read) interacted with social issues and political issues.
E. P. Thompson: The making of the English Working Class
He was a historian, but he became very interested in common culture.
Raymond Williams: The long revolution
He is seen as the founding father of CS. He was trying to understand why and how cultural
meanings are inscribed at the moment of production.
Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism
Williams wanted to understand how and why cultural meanings are inscribed at the moment
of production.
Two aspects of culture according to Williams:
A culture has two aspects:
1. The known meanings and directions, which its members are trained to
2. The new observations and meanings, which are offered and tested.
Culture is always both traditional and creative both the most ordinary common meanings
and the finest individual meanings.
We use the word culture in two senses:
1. To mean a whole way of life - the common meanings
2. To mean the arts and learning – the special processes of discovery and creative
effort. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind.
3
, I (Raymond Williams) insist on both senses and on the significance of their conjunction.
The fact that these two traditional and creative are always interacting, always going
together, struggling with one another this is what culture is, dynamic process of culture.
Williams introduced the cultural materialism approach:
Cultural materialism explores how and why meanings are inscribed at the moment of
production. what it means is that we want to understand how culture is given meaning
since it is produced. Something that is produced requires materials. Every form of culture
requires practical work. How does that production inscribe meaning?
It involves the exploration of signification in the context of means and conditions of its
production. The exploration of signification how and why something signifies, why
something means something to us. Means and condition of its production where is
something produced? What kind of materials were available? Under which (material)
circumstances is something produced?
Cultural materialism is concerned with the connections between cultural practice and
political economy. Looking at economic, political, social circumstances that’s what it means
to look at the conditions of production and trying to understand how these conditions of
production influence or even create a cultural practice.
Williams distinguishes three levels of culture:
- The lived culture of a particular time and place
The culture that we are living right now. Clothes you wear, the books you read, the
way you give handshakes to your friends, whether you like to wear hoodies or not.
- The culture of the selective tradition: the factor connecting lived culture and
recorded culture
Society has a tendency of creating canons. As history moves on, you need to select
which things you will remember and which thingsbase you can forget about
- The recorded culture, of every kind from art to the most everyday facts
Archive all those things that are being filmed, written down etc. There is a culture
of selective tradition. For culture issues there are selective traditions selects from
that archive and constructs an image of it.
For Williams culture is all three things. He is studying the interaction between these
three levels of culture. Lived culture, what is recorded from that culture and selective
tradition and how selective tradition influences lived culture which influences
recorded culture which influences selective tradition.
Why call this cultural materialism?
- Culture is part of an excessive totality of social relations:
o You cannot isolate culture from material conditions, economic possibilities,
social position of those who create this culture
o We can use culture to understand social relations
- Culture must be understood through the representations and practices of everyday
life in the context of the material conditions of their production.
4
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